Protecting the Country and Preventing Calamities: The Pure Land Practice of Hwadzan Pure Land Society in the Physical and Virtual Realm

This case study explores the influence of a global health crisis on contemporary Taiwanese Buddhism. As prevention and control measures of COVID-19 enforced by the Taiwanese government constitute challenges and opportunities for religious actors and practice, the article examines how Hwadzan Pure Land Society (Huazang jing zōng xuehui 華藏淨宗學會) has responded to the pandemic by skilfully utilising digital technology to relocate “communal cultivation” (gongxiū 共 修) and rituals from the physical into the virtual realm. Compared to on-site participation in ritual, live streaming enables the practitioner to tune in simultaneously from every part of the world and even after the event has concluded since all videos are uploaded to YouTube. Whereas on-site participants recite and chant sūtras, bow and prostrate in front of Buddha statues, and make offerings, thus being temporally, spatially, and bodily integrated into each part of a ritual, off-site participants are detached from it in all three aspects. The communal practice viewed on the screen essentially becomes an individual practice in a secular environment far away from the sacralised space and time during the ritual. It is therefore the aim of the article to examine how religious practice and rituals in on-site and off-site settings differ in terms of religious experience.