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Natasha Heller, "Literature for Little Bodhisattvas: Making Buddhist Families in Modern Taiwan" (U Hawai'i Press, 2025)
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Li Ping Chen
Welcome to the New Books Network.
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Interviewer/Host
Hello everyone and welcome back to the New Books Network. I'm Li Ping Chen, your host for today's episode. Today we will be talking to Dr. Natasha Heller about her new book, Literature for Little Making Buddhist Families in Modern Taiwan. This book was published by University of Hawaii Press in 2025. In Literature for Little Bodhisattvas, Natasha Heller makes two key interventions. First, she argues that picture books are a new genre of Buddhist writing. And second, she calls attention to an emergent family Buddhism in Taiwan that fashions children as religious subjects through shared attention with adult readers. Surveying Taiwanese Buddhism from the ground up, Heller explores the changing family dynamics that have made children into a crucial audience for Buddhist education and the home as a key site for Buddhist cultivation. By taking picture books seriously as part of the Buddhist textual tradition, Heller demonstrate their engagement with canonical sources alongside innovations for modern audiences. Close readings and analyzing both text and image, trace narrative themes about Buddhist figures and connect representations of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas to a visual culture where new values such as cuteness are articulated. Heller shows that picture books have become an integral part of contemporary Buddhist education that equips children with strategies to interpret everyday life in Buddhist ways and provide religious models for action in the modern world. Literature for Little Bodhisattva is a path breaking work revealing how contemporary picture books reframe Buddhism and offer fresh perspectives on on his teachings and ideals for family for both kids and adults. So that's a brief introduction about the book. Now let's hear it from the author. Natasha, welcome to the show.
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Li Ping Chen
Hi, Li Ping. Thanks so much for having me.
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Interviewer/Host
Of course. Thank you for agreeing to doing this interview. And first of all, I wonder if you can begin the interview by telling us a little bit about yourself and what you want us to know.
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Li Ping Chen
I am an associate professor in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia, and there I teach classes in Buddhism and Chinese religions. My training is in both Buddhist studies and Chinese intellectual and cultural history. And I think those strands inform my work in this book and in my other research.
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Interviewer/Host
All right. And so I know your previous research is a little bit different, different from this book. So we are just wondering, can you tell us about how you started this project?
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Li Ping Chen
Right. So my first book was actually out of Yuan Daishti Chan Monk. So this book is pretty far away from that in time period and really in some way in subject matter as well. And early on in the book, I tell a story about going to the International association for Buddhist Studies conference that was held in Taiwan now kind of a long time ago, and it was held at the Dharmadrum center. And there, there is a bookstore. So I think we're all familiar with, you know, during breaks in a conference, you might wander off and have a look at the books. And so I was doing that in that bookstore. And what really struck me was that as I walked around the bookstore, I kind of came to this area where there were a series of children's books on display. And I was struck by the contrast between the topics of the conference, which were very, you know, traditional, maybe even philological Buddhist studies and these children's books and that contrast between this kind of material that was on the shelves in this bookstore stuck with me and was really the seed for this project. I will say that originally I thought maybe it would just be an article, something that I would do after my first book. But it pretty quickly expanded, like I didn't realize how much material there would be. And so once I sort of got into. Went from article length to book length pretty quickly.
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Interviewer/Host
Yeah. You know, in the conference and in the break and now you have a book. So it's very productive. And also there's a lot of very rich material in this book. But before we talk about specific book and also the publisher that you analyzed in this book, I was wondering, can you tell us a little bit about how Buddhism is developed and practice in contemporary Taiwan?
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Li Ping Chen
Right. So in this book I focus on some of the larger Buddhist organizations in Taiwan. And I think that for readers and listeners, perhaps what's important is that the Buddhism that I'm talking about in Taiwan really Begins with the 1940s Emigration of monks from what is now the People's Republic of China. And so it's Chinese Buddhism, and it's a specific kind of flavor of Chinese Buddhism that sometimes is called humanistic Buddhism, that this was a Buddhism that emerged in reaction to critiques of Buddhism that saw it as backwards, as old fashioned, maybe too focused on death. And so that there were a number of monks who wanted to focus on what Buddhism's role in society would be. So that's kind of some of the intellectual framework of these monks. That's, of course, an oversimplification that the landscape is much more complex. But there were these kind of reformer monks and to a lesser degree, nuns active in the middle of the 20th century. And Buddhism in Taiwan, I would also say, is shaped by. By a couple of other forces, which is Taiwan's economic boom. Anyone who's familiar with Taiwan knows that there was, I'd say, an economic acceleration starting maybe in the late 80s and going into the 90s and onward. And this created new kinds of resources that could be invested in or religious projects. Of course, it's also important to keep in mind the end of martial law and the loosening of rules around religion, which provided this greater space for religious organizations to act and to be more creative, I think, in their outreach to lay Buddhists in particular.
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Interviewer/Host
Yeah, as you mentioned, the kind of the space for a religious organization to develop in Taiwan. And so we see there are a lot of institutions, there are some schools, education as well. So I was just wondering, can you tell us a little bit about, especially in your book, you argue in terms of the picture book as a new genre of writing. So how do picture books offer a model that's different from a traditional or those institutionalized Buddhist education in Taiwan?
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Li Ping Chen
Right. Well, I think when you would say, when we say Buddhist education, I think what often comes to people's mind is monastic education. What is the training necessary for someone to become a monk? Is it mastery of certain sutras, commentarial literature, doctrines? Is it mastery of rituals? Is it being able to meditate and to be able to explain that meditation? And if we extend from the monastics, I think the next place that people's minds often go to when you're thinking about Buddhist education is education for adult lay practitioners. So if we went back into, you know, if we could imagine going into a bookstore that has a section on Buddhism, either a commercial bookstore or a bookstore run by one of these Buddhist organizations, you'd see on their shelves like lots of material that explains different scriptures. Some of it explains the iconography of images. But all of this is for adults. Right? So I think what is distinct about picture books is that here we have this material that is clearly child focused. And I think this is one of the areas where it is very difficult when we're looking at the pre modern period to have a strong grasp of what children were getting in terms of education. Clearly they were being exposed to Buddhism in various ways. But how that education happened is often less clear from the surviving sources. So one of the things that intrigues me about picture books is that it provides us an opportunity to see this kind of new child, child focused materials. And I also think the picture books, since we know that they're always intended to be re read, right? That these are books that parents and children read together or that children might flip through on their own, that they have a different kind of relationship to the reader than some other texts that might be more doctrinal in focus might have.
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Interviewer/Host
Yeah, totally agree with you. In terms of read over and over and also read differently as well. Maybe this time it's about the text, next time it's about image and next time maybe it's both. And also it's about specific color or specific elements that included in the image or even how the text, the textual element is being designed in together with the image as well. And I believe later on we will talk about how they are read together with the dots as well. And so with that we're now going to the chapter one and specifically you mentioned, there are three important development and especially for Buddhist picture book in Taiwan, they are the result of this development. Can you tell us about these developments?
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Li Ping Chen
We've already touched on one of these developments, which is how Buddhism in Taiwan developed at the end of the 20th century. So that's kind of one of the key pieces that you have these Buddhist organizations with funds to innovate, to have publications that reach out to different kinds of audiences and Buddhist organizations that have this. This kind of socially oriented outlook. So that's one development. I think the next one that I'll mention is that there are changes in family structures in Taiwan during the late 20th century, that families have fewer children, that families are. Or children are more likely to grow up in urban environments. There's a kind of urbanization. Parents can often devote more resources to their children, and those resources can include time, money and energy. So this is in what some places is called the kind of intensification of parenting. And that parenting is often done in the context of a sense of global competitiveness. The children need to do certain things to excel, to be competitive, not just within Taiwan, but maybe within a kind of global market place that they're going to have to find jobs and that they may. That they're situated not just in a small, localized place, but really within the broader world. And I do want to mention Pei Cha Lun's book Raising Global Families, which was really important to me to help think about these different kinds of parenting models. And she discusses both Taiwan and the United States and suggest how some of these changes came about. So we've got Buddhism as one development, and the second is that the changing family structure is another development. And the third development is that of a robust picture book culture in Taiwan. And this is in. We should distinguish here between picture books and illustrated books. So, you know, picture books, you've already kind of mentioned the kind of deep relationship between images and text. And that's sort of the hallmark of picture books. That they are. Those two things are together, right? That it's not just that they're every other page or something, that there's a black and white illustration that would be something that we would think of as illustrated books, but that these books combine pictures and text in a particular way. And for Taiwan this develops. Or for Buddhism, this Buddhist picture books develop actually kind of late. And when I started talking about this project, people were always somewhat surprised at how late this developed. But if we kind of go back into the sort of the picture book history of Taiwan, what we see is that Post World War II, the United States made. Was involved in Taiwan in various ways in sort of intervening in family structures and so forth. And one of the things that happened in that context is that they brought over picture books from the United States and indeed actually they brought over picture book authors. And so that maybe is one of the key points in introducing what we think of as true picture books to Taiwan. And they start to develop from there. And Buddhist picture books are a relatively late comer to this scene. So by the 1990s, there are a couple of examples and they really take off in the 2000s with publishing by these big Buddhist organizations that all have these publishing and editorial departments. So now I think that Taiwanese picture books are just a really rich. It's a really rich corpus of materials. Right. That I always, whenever I go back to Taiwan, even though I'm no longer. This project has sort of come to an end, I still can't help but go into the picture book sections of any bookstore and just kind of look around to see what's there. And I'm always so impressed with the quality of illustrations, with the new kinds of stories that are being told. There are still a lot of translations from both English and Japanese into Chinese. But then there's a growing sort of Taiwanese produced picture books as well. So that's kind of the third development is that you have this robust picture book scene of which Buddhist picture books are one part.
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Interviewer/Host
Yeah. Especially you know, thinking about the kind of publishing field. And then as you mentioned, there are a lot of picture books as well. And now from 1990s, especially from 2000s, this kind of boom of Buddhist picture books and also other Buddhist books publication as well. And with that chapter two focus on one of that, that in Xinyun's picture book Heart Sutra. So I was wondering, can you tell us how you analyzed this book and particularly about how Xingyun introduced fables and stories for Buddhist audience and also how Xingyun introduced this to children for reading Buddhist texts and commentaries.
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Li Ping Chen
Right. Yeah. So first of all, I think if you think about trying to make a lot of Buddhist scriptures or Buddhist sutras into picture books, that it's pretty difficult to do that. Like that they're not necessarily a great match for the picture book format. Not that they're necessarily that there's a problem with sort of text and image in Buddhist scriptures, that there's lots of sort of images that could be drawn from them, but they're really, really long texts. Right. So one of the advantages perhaps was that the Heart Sutra is a really short text. However, it's also a really philosophically dense text. So if you've read it, this is a curious choice for a children's book. And so what Qing Yun does is to tell stories around it, right? So that the Heart Sutra is about form and emptiness. So this is kind of high level Buddhist philosophy. And you wouldn't necessarily expect a four year old to be able to grasp onto that, but you could have a four year old be able to understand certain kinds of metaphors or parables or the impulse behind certain fables. And so that's kind of where Xingyun does his work. And I should note that he takes actually a somewhat similar strategy for adults, that he has writings or sermons on the Heart Sutra that explain the core concepts through stories. So for kids, in the context of the picture book, I think there are a couple of interesting aspects. The first is that the illustrations can be a way of commenting on the text. And if I can just kind of give one example of this. We're obviously in an audio medium, so you'll just have to kind of use your imagination. But there are several depictions of waves, right? You know, these kind of big cresting waves. And these make the point that the waves are inseparable from the water. So it is a way of visualizing the non distinction of form and emptiness that you can't separate in the same way that you can't separate the waves and water. You can't separate form and emptiness. So the illustrations are one way of making a kind of argument in the course of this, this picture book. The other aspect that I wanted to highlight was Xingyun. Not only does he sort of tell stories from the Buddhist tradition or that seem to be perhaps kind of things that he invents, but in one place he uses one of Aesop's fables to illustrate a Buddhist idea. And the fable that he uses is the story about a dog who finds a piece of meat and he's carrying these really happy he's carrying this, as that's shown in the picture book, this nice juicy steak in his mouth. And of course, you know, there's in the background of this a kind of vegetarian message as well. So the dog is carrying this juicy steak, crosses over a bridge, looks down into the water and sees another dog with a stake in its mouth and immediately wants to get a hold of that steak too. Like, because two steaks would be better than one steak. So, so the dog opens his mouth to try and grab that steak and of course loses his piece of meat. And so this story has been told over and over again in Western cultures. And there's an interesting history of how Aesop's fables make their way into China. Xingyun clearly knows this fable, but he uses it to illustrate this Buddhist idea of being aware of being attached to things that are ultimately illusory as the meat in the water, the reflection, reflected meat is. And what's kind of interesting about this is that it's a kind of reversal of what usually happens in children's literature, that is that stories are often used to make something, an idea or a teaching more general, more global, to say, okay, this is an idea that could apply really widely. And here he kind of flips that on its head and he takes an idea, he takes a global story, a story that is really found through so many different traditions, and he makes it Buddhist. Right. He says that this isn't a general story, this has a particular Buddhist reading. And so in this chapter I try to make the argument that this is a form of commentary, this storytelling is a form of commentary, but it also introduces children, I think, in a preliminary way to how to approach scriptures or Buddhist texts. Children will almost certainly encounter the Heart Sutra again if they're being raised in Buddhist families. And so this first initial encounter sets them up for positive encounters later on. And when they next encounter the Heart Sutra, maybe they'll remember the story about the dog with his juicy steak and what happens to him, or maybe they'll remember the image of the water and the waves. And so when they next encounter the Heart Sutra, it'll be with being able to pull on those ideas from the picture book Heart Sutra for a deepened understanding.
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Interviewer/Host
Yeah, and specifically, as you mentioned, storytelling is a form of commentaries. And thank you also for your rich description about the image as well. And so just for the dog with a juicy stake. So for readers, if you're interested, there's a lot of the images in Natasha's book, so if you're interested, definitely recommend you to pick it up and see the different images including in the book that Natasha brilliantly analyzes. And with that, so we are going to chapter three and four. These two chapters specifically talk about some of the characters, some of the historical figures represented in the picture book. And especially for chapter three, you talk about one of the famous monk. This is Xuanzang. So for some of the audience, this is just a quick note about who Xuanzang is. So Xuanzang is a seven month, excuse me, seventh century Chinese Buddhist monk and who take this years of journey to India to bring back Buddhist texts and also translate them as well. And some of you might heard about him in the Journey to the west, the fiction novel as well. But for chapter three, Natasha, you analyze Xunzang in the Buddhist picture book and how him is being represented as relevant to the modern world. So can you tell us more about that?
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Li Ping Chen
Right, yeah. And thanks for giving that little history of Xuanzang. Right. He's a figure that basically any child is going to have heard of. If they haven't heard of him by the time they've read the picture book, they're going to encounter him in textbooks, like public school textbooks, and often what the Buddhist. I'm glad you mentioned, like, the Journey to the west, because this is this novel, this fictionalized version of his pilgrimage, and the Buddhist texts are often really eager to push back against that representation, Right, because it's not super flattering to Xuanzong. So basically, Buddhist books are trying to, in some sense, reclaim Xuanzang for Buddhist purposes. And so they look at him and sort of highlight characteristics that are relevant to, you know, the modern age. And in this chapter, I deal with. Most of the other chapters deal almost exclusively with picture books from Buddhist organizations. And in this chapter, I do look at a couple of picture books that are from commercial. Commercial presses. And I do want to also highlight that, as I mentioned, that Xuanzong appears in textbooks, and in some of these places, he's actually referred to as essentially what we would translate as like a foreign exchange student.
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Interviewer/Host
Right?
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Li Ping Chen
So he's being kind of mapped. And of course, he, in some sense was. He's being mapped onto a category of person that is recognizable in the modern era. Right. This is someone who goes off somewhere to deepen their own understanding, to get a more global perspective, and then come back with that knowledge. And that's an interesting framing that differs a bit from a pilgrim. Right? A pilgrim might be someone who is specifically devoted to a religious activity, whereas an exchange student is more intellectually oriented. So, but both of those, however he's classified both a foreign exchange student or a pilgrim really needs a couple of qualities. One of them, perhaps the most important, is a kind of persistence, right? That you're not going to give up when you run into difficulties, and that you're going to be able to navigate those difficulties. So we see that characteristic of persistence highlighted in these stories about Quanzhang. He's also depicted as curious. He wants to learn about other cultures and in some sense, like what we might term now culturally sensitive, Right? Like that he wants to learn about others. And one of the things that I think is Happening here is that there may be a general perception that monks aren't always the kind of role models parents might seek out for their children.
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Interviewer/Host
Right.
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Li Ping Chen
That if we're thinking about the role models that parents want to put in front of their children, monks might not be quite the right fit in some conceptions of it. Right.
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Interviewer/Host
So.
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Li Ping Chen
The Buddhist monk Sheng Yan writes an introduction to a series of Buddhist biographies. And Cheng Yan's one of the key figures of founding figures of Dharmadrum. And so he writes it to this introduction of Buddhist biographies for children, making the point that these are intended to show qualities that are valuable in contemporary times. So that a figure like Shenzhong isn't just this kind of distant historical figure who we look at from, you know, a thousand 1500 years away, but someone who we can actually take and hold up to young people and say, this is actually a model of what it means to be engaged in the world.
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Interviewer/Host
Yes. So children can learn from this 7th century months, even though it's a long, long time ago, but still relevant to our everyday life. Being persistent, being, you know, curious, having this intellectual curiosity and want to know about others, learn more from the world as well. And so with that, we are moving to chapter four. And now there's another chapter. This is what you call the naughty little monk. And this is specifically, you mentioned two historical figure. It will be Ikyu SEO Jungchun and also Shen Yan as well. And so I know you're gonna introduce a little bit about them before, introduce how they are being represented. I just want to mention that Ikyu Songjun has a very popularized animation about him. So in Taiwan and also I believe in China, in Japan. So this is about Ikkyu San Ishou He Shang. So it's very popular. So I just want to throw this in there. So in terms of how kids, how children might know some of the figure that you discussed in this book. So can you tell us about these noted little monk character and how they contrast with exemplar literature? And what does this tell us about the Buddhist path?
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Li Ping Chen
Right, so what I mean by exemplar literature in this context is the traditional monastic biographies, which were compiled at different points in history to elevate certain kinds of monks, often categorizing them for their proficiency in one area of Buddhism or another. And so they are being held up as exemplars, positive exemplars for people to admire and possibly emulate. And this is part of, like a broader sort of exemplar literature in Chinese history. So Shenzhen would be an example of someone who would be included in these monastic biographies. So most of these traditional monastic biographies emphasized monks as exceptional from birth or from a young age. Right. It's pretty common to say, to see in one of these biographies from the pre modern period, somebody remarking that a young boy always liked to play at ritual. And so he was already sort of sitting cross legged. And these were sort of the precursors to a wonderful monastic career. And so we have these kind of notes about them as exceptional children. But then of course, the biographies focus mainly on them as adults.
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Interviewer/Host
Right.
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Li Ping Chen
So you mentioned, you know, Ikyu, Shojun and Chongyun as the two of the figures. And I also talk about Rahula, who is the Buddha's son, a picture book about him.
- [33:47]
Interviewer/Host
And.
- [33:49]
Li Ping Chen
In all of these I want to emphasize, or what I think we see is that children have qualities that are valuable and they may be qualities that differ from what a mature adult has, but they are valuable nonetheless. And actually, in the case of especially eq, he's often shown as being wiser in a certain way or more clever than adults. So if we think of, you know, there are often depictions of children or ways that children are thought about as being inferior or incomplete or undeveloped people that are on some sort of trajectory that makes them, you know, in which they end up as adults. That one of the things that I think these books are doing is kind of working against that and to show that childhood and being a child has its own value. Right. I also think that these show what we might kind of bluntly call nurture over nature.
- [35:00]
Interviewer/Host
Right.
- [35:01]
Li Ping Chen
That if we have sort of this earlier model where someone was destined to be a great monk and you could see that from the moment they were born or from a very young age, that suggests that it was in their nature. And this suggests rather that if figures who are naughty misbehave or do things that adults see as wrong and then they adapt, that it is possible for anyone to kind of change and become different. So that naughtiness or misbehavior isn't necessarily an obstacle and that change and growth are possible for children. And I think one of the things that I would want to emphasize in these books is the way in which picture books are for both children and adults. Right. I talked a little bit earlier on about the combination of pictures and images, but they're also usually intended for an adult to read to a child. Like there are signals in the text that these are for children who are probably not reading fluently yet, although they may be able to Sort of flip through and pick out the story based on the pictures. And that if you have a text that's intended for both adults and children at the same time, then you can think about how these stories resonate differently for children and for adult caregivers who might be reading them. So to kind of play this out right, when EQ is shown behaving badly, a child might, say, be entertained by it, might think, oh, you know, this is funny, and have a laugh. But a parent might also reflect on their own pasts or on the behavior of their children and think, how do adults in this book deal with this child? How might I deal with a child in this way? And so this naughty little children, I think, has some interesting potential that's drawn out by the fact that these picture books have dual audiences.
- [37:20]
Interviewer/Host
Yeah. Specifically, you mentioned that some of these naughty little monks behavior might be naughty or misbehave or kind of funny in a sense. But for adults and also children to think about it, and then also thinking about the changes and growth as possible, but at the same time, children themselves, being a child having this kind of childhood has its own value as well. And thinking about this and chapter five, you talk about the representation of Bodhisattva in the picture books, and you argue that they are very different. So I was wondering, can you tell us, first of all about how Bodhisattva is being represented in canonical models, and then secondly, thinking about how they are represented in the picture books that you analyzed?
- [38:16]
Li Ping Chen
Right. So to start with, this chapter focuses, if I can backtrack just a little bit, this chapter focuses on a series of books that discuss the depictions of Bodhisattvas and Buddhas or depict Bodhisattva, Bodhisattvas and Buddhas for children. And so thinking back to that kind of traditional model, if we were to go into a temple, you think of, for example, an image of a Buddha or a Bodhisattva that is often not necessarily brightly lit, that might be behind an offering table, that there might be other things in between the viewer and the image. And so there's a kind of built in distance between the viewer and the image. If they're encountering them in a temple, they are often depicted as what I would maybe we could describe as awe inspiring. Right. That these are supposed to be figures that cause us to think of or cause viewers to think of the greatness of the Buddhist teachings or the deep compassion of Guanyin, for example, so that they're depicted in ways that show them as mature Adults, often with ornaments, in the case of bodhisattvas, kind of princely ornaments with draped clothing, perhaps even kind of opulent. And I would say that the emphasis in these images is perhaps the features of the Bodhisattva or Buddha as well as their greatness. This series of picture books does something completely different, right? Which is to make these Buddhas and bodhisattvas cute. And maybe this doesn't need to be explained, but if you're making something cute, what you often do to make something cute is illustrators. They will make the head extra big, they will make the body somewhat smaller, they will soften any sort of hard lines and just make the figures seem approachable, perhaps touchable and almost cuddly, right? So that the theorization of cuteness often emphasizes the way in which things are made cute by making them like babies or making them like small young animals, right? So that they're kind of touchable. They want to inspire care. So this is in some ways almost the opposite of what I would think of as bodhisattvas or Buddhas as usually depicted. And they are designed to be approachable. They're not in distant temples, but they're in. In these picture books. They're right there in children's lives, right? So these picture books all present stories in which children are interacting, like one on one with these Buddhas and bodhisattvas. The Buddha or Bodhisattva will position themselves as a helper to the child or ask for the child's help, addressing them in the second person. Can you be my helper? So that's how they are depicted in these picture books. And I think that's quite a contrast with earlier models. And I also wanted to note in connection with these, that this particular set of picture books includes lots of games within the book where it asks you to maybe count or trace a line. And all of these books at the end have a sheet of stickers, right, that you can peel off, that readers could peel off and put on, presumably whatever they want. And I think one of the. That this points to the material incorporation of the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas into everyday life. So if the books on the one hand suggest. Well, yeah, just to maybe give a little bit more information. The Medicine Master Buddha in one of these books is depicted helping a little girl whose parents both work at the hospital. It's her birthday. Her parents can't be with her because they're working overtime. And so that they have this kind of interaction. And so if the Buddha is going to, if there's a Buddha who's going to show up and kind of have that interaction with you, there's also in the narrative frame, on the other hand, there's the kind of a materiality with this book with the stickers at the back of the books that allow readers to interact in a different way with these Buddhism bodhisattvas, but one that kind of echoes this kind of narrative interactions that we see in the stories themselves, that they can actually have, that a child reader might have a kind of relationship established through the material form of the sticker.
- [43:44]
Interviewer/Host
Yeah, as you mentioned, the traditional model depict Bodhisattva Buddha as this kind of awe inspiring fears of compassion and especially in this kind of mature adult image. Whereas in the picture book you selected to analyze here, and they are depicted as this kind of cute figure and specifically very friendly and very approachable in image. And they inspire care and also they encourage engagement, they encourage interaction as well. And as you mentioned, you know, there are some kind of materiality in the book, the stickers or so to help this kind of interaction participation as well. And with that. So chapter six, move on to another one of the publishers. This is the inset light Xiang Huang and particularly you mentioned, there are two kind of dimension in the books. One is about the home and the other is cross writing. So I was wondering, can you tell us about how home is depicted in the picture books published by Xiang Guang and also how these stories use cross writing?
- [44:57]
Li Ping Chen
Right, thanks. So just a little bit of background. Shangguang is an organization often translated as incense light. It was founded by nuns and they do lots of really innovative adult education. Shangguang is smaller than some of the other organizations I discuss in other chapters and they don't have quite the publishing reach that some of those other groups reach, but they did have this very interesting series about that depict that's organized around the senses. And so in these books, what I really wanted to highlight is the depictions of families. And so if we could kind of backtrack to the books about Bodhisattvas and Buddhas that were the subject of chapter five. To me, one of the interesting things about those books is how Buddhas and Bodhisattvas are shown interacting in an unmediated way with the children. And I kind of talked about this right, like that a child is shown in those narratives as having a Buddha or a Bodhisattva as a friend. It's not through the parents. And in some sense it may be instead of the Parents, but it's not something that is mediated through a connection that's mediated through the parents. On the other hand, in the Shanguang books, what we see is perhaps examples of family Buddhism, that there are several stories that feature families. And so just turning again to sort of definitions, when we talk about crosswriting, what that means is that we see both adult and child voices depicted in the story. And so that's something that we see in these texts that allows us, I would say, what I would argue that these books can work on their audience in different ways, right? That you have adults speaking, but you also have children speaking. And these books represent. Several of these stories represent home as a site of Buddhist learning and parents as having the authority to teach children, having the knowledge and authority to teach children. So the teaching, though, isn't through these kind of formal lessons, but through everyday conversation. And to maybe give a kind of visual example, in the book, I reproduce an image from an early 20th century text that shows a mother instructing her children. And the mother is kind of seated and the children are kind of at her knee. And so there's clear kind of hierarchical relation to them. The mother is teaching them. Right. And so that's not the kind of scene that we see in the Shangguang depictions of Buddhist learning. Rather, what we see is kind of these everyday conversations and how those everyday conversations can incorporate Buddhist ideas. So just to give a couple of examples, one of the books that I talk about starts off by a family of two daughters and a son, an older son talking about their dreams over dinner. And this leads it to the mother recounting a meditation ritual or a meditation retreat that she's been on and what she got out of that, but also her understanding of the dreams that her children tell her. Another story depicts a. A father driving his son home after preschool or after daycare. And in the course of that car ride home, they have a conversation that touches on the mother, who is deceased, and her Buddhist practice while she was living. And so these are just representing Buddhism, not sort of as, oh, the parent is giving a lesson on this Buddhist topic, but just how Buddhism comes up in family conversations in a more natural, everyday way. So, and I think this, you know, has lessons, perhaps especially for parents, is to. As a. Offering a kind of model for how to incorporate Buddhist instruction in everyday kind of contexts. So not only is it showing these families, but it's showing, perhaps modeling what Buddhist families could look like.
- [49:40]
Interviewer/Host
Indeed. So this could happen in everyday conversation while you're in the car, in the dinner TABLE or so so these conversations, everyday conversation, could actually incorporate Buddhist teachings as well. We can discuss Buddhism, we can in some way practice Buddhism as well. So this is in terms of the family setting in everyday life context.
- [50:03]
Li Ping Chen
Exactly.
- [50:04]
Interviewer/Host
So with that, we talk about the publisher Shanghuang, and now chapter seven, we move to another organization. So this is ciji. Some of you might actually heard about CIJI or see in the news. So CIJI is organization from Taiwan, but it has global presence as well, especially in terms of its medical mission and also disaster relief work. And they also publish a lot of books and picture books as well. So I was wondering, Natasha, can you tell us about these picture books published by CIJI and how they extend the Buddhist understanding in terms of medicine and environment to young readers?
- [50:52]
Li Ping Chen
Right, yeah. So you've provided a kind of a useful overview of CIJI is that they're an organization that has really focused on medicine to begin with, that they founded this hospital in Hualien and then medical clinics and hospitals and other places. So that's been kind of one of the cores of their missions since their founding. And then they've added onto that, I think, a fairly strong focus on the environment, on activities that foreground recycling, that foreground vegetarianism as a way for caring for the environment. And so those are all aimed, you know, both those activities are. Or both those, both the environment and medicine. There are activities, teachings, et cetera, that are aimed at adults. And I looked at picture books that engage both of those, right. That the CICI has produced a fairly extensive at this point, series of books that are about everyday medical issues. And this is part of their public health initiative. The idea being that if people have sort of a better understanding of health issues, that they will lead healthier lives. And these books are sophisticated. They have often in the back kind of a more scientific explanation of whatever's being discussed, but they're presenting it through kind of child friendly modes. Right. So one of the books I talk about takes the, takes the perspective of a dust mite, right. Which we don't think very much about. But of course dust mites cause lots of allergies. And so it's kind of the travails of this dust mite who is being relocated from place to place. And in the back they'll sort of give scientific information about the dust mite. And then one of the other books, this is actually the latest publication date that is included in my book. And I had to sort of decide at some point I was going to stop. And so the last book that I talk about in terms of time is a book that Saji published about the coronavirus, about COVID shortly after, you know, this became a worldwide pandemic. And there it traces, it's a little less of a single narrative, but it traces the work of scientists who are trying to understand the coronavirus. And like the other books, it has a very kind of sophisticated scientific approach. So these books are trying to introduce children to these medical issues and give them more information, but give them information in a way that's friendlier than, you know, something that would be just kind of straight up science. And so that's kind of one area Tsigi works in in terms of their publications. It should be, or maybe it's not quite apparent from those descriptions, but on the face of it, like you could open these books and if you didn't know what Siji was like, if you didn't know that this is an organization that had Buddhist values at its center, that these were Buddhist books in some way. So you see here that their mission, their Buddhist mission is about improving healthcare outcomes. And the emphasis is on the improving the healthcare outcomes, not on the Buddhist part. Right. So they're fulfilling their Buddhist mission if healthcare outcomes are healthy, if people are healthier, and they don't necessarily need to play up the Buddhist dimensions of that for what is essentially Buddhist work to be successful.
- [55:10]
Interviewer/Host
Yeah, and specifically you mentioned this everyday issue or specific everyday medical issues. And I just want to add one example that you included in the book. This is a wanted poster for COVID 19. Here we see the COVID 19 virus itself dressed in a prisoner's clothes. And then there is a wanted poster. But at the same time there's this kind of introduction about what this COVID 19 virus is. Cold is coronavirus and virus is a virus and 19 is 2019. D is disease or COVID 19. So I think just a quick example as what you mentioned in terms of this kind of everyday medical issues, but in a way that is child friendly approach and also in a way that kind of presents, in a way is also educational, is also informative for kids as well.
- [56:08]
Li Ping Chen
Right. So yeah. And you know that the image that you're talking about, that picture were the COVID 19 virus, not in kind of prisoner's clothes and on a wanted poster. It's kind of cute, right? Like that this is kind of a cute image that it's not in some sense quite as scary as we might think. And I think one of their points is that in the book is that humans have done things that have changed the environment and made these kinds of diseases more likely. And that brings me to the kind of. The second set of books that I discuss in this chapter. And those are ones with a particular environmental focus. And. And here. So there are a couple of environmental stories that are told or books that I look at that talk about vegetarianism. And of course, Chinese Buddhists have been vegetarian for a very long time. And this book ties it in particular to issues of climate and issues of the environment. The other issue that. The other book that I look at talks about water conservation, that you don't wanna waste water. Taiwan, for many of us, when we visit, seems very humid and damp, but it has had sort of droughts, Right. It's not sort of a given that you don't need to conserve water. So water conservation is another key element and in these books to what we see is that children can participate in these activities, right? Like the children can be vegetarian. Children can do things to help conserve water. And when they do those things, they can be models, and they can be models both for other children. Right. So, you know, other children can look at them eating vegetarian or conserving water and emulate them, but also potentially for adults.
- [58:10]
Interviewer/Host
Right.
- [58:11]
Li Ping Chen
So this is another moment where I think that one of the things that these Buddhist picture books open up on is that children aren't always sort of lesser than adults, but that they can have their own agency, that they can take action on their own. And so the environmental stories, I think, make this particularly clear in the way that they're presented, especially the vegetarian ones, where they give examples of young vegetarians and actually sort of try and capture their words.
- [58:48]
Interviewer/Host
Indeed. So children can actually participate, but they also can contribute as well. For example, as you mentioned, in terms of being a vegetarian, care for the environment and also safe water, water conservation, care for. For the environment as well. They themselves, even though still young, but can be role model for other people, other children, adults alike as well.
- [59:15]
Li Ping Chen
Exactly.
- [59:16]
Interviewer/Host
And with that. So we talk about all these seven chapters in this book, and then there's a lot of, as you guys hear already, there's a lot of examples and brilliant analysis. But I was wondering that in the process and journey of writing this book and doing research, is there any material that didn't get to be included in this book for whatever reason or there's anything that is very unexpected that you encounter in the journey?
- [59:47]
Li Ping Chen
Yeah, I mean, there's actually so much that didn't make it into this book. And so one of the things that I do is in the Back of the book, I have a kind of bibliography of Buddhist picture books, not all of which are discussed in the book, but I wanted to kind of include them as a list to give a sense of the richness of this material. So ultimately, I decided to focus on in each chapter, some key examples. But there are lots and lots of other books that didn't make it in there. There are books that discuss the afterlife, which I think would have been really interesting. Another set of materials that didn't make it into the book is that on other religions. Right. There are particularly interesting children's books on mazu and on the Earth God. And there are interesting children's books that talk about temples and gods and I guess ritual materials as cultural forms, as cultural heritage.
- [60:53]
Interviewer/Host
And.
- [60:53]
Li Ping Chen
And that didn't make it in. In terms of what was unexpected, I think it was glimpses of the process. Right. So one of the things that comes to mind is that in. We touched on this in the chapter four on Naughty Little Monks, there's a story that tells about Shen Yan, Naughty Youth. And the illustrator at the beginning of that book talks a bit about the process. And one of the things that the illustrator noted as a theme was of mending or stitching. And so if you look at the illustrations, and, you know, I probably didn't notice this on my first. When I first kind of flipped through it, that the illustrations are actually have stitching in them, and the illustrator made the illustration and then stitched over it, and then that was what was photographed. So hearing about the kind of care that goes into the process of making these books, I think was not something that I expected going in, but really drove home to me the multidimensional process of creating these books. And actually that any book is for picture books. It's the illustrator and the author that's on the COVID But then there are all sorts of other people who move the book from that initial idea to its being finished. So I think one of the things that stuck with me is that. But the enormous number of hands and ideas that go into producing any book, whether it's a picture book or an.
- [62:46]
Interviewer/Host
Academic book like my own, indeed it's a teamwork. So picture book, we see, you know, the words by which author, illustrated by which artist. But as you mentioned, it's the entire team, the editorial team, and then also the publisher. And I think about what material, what paper to print it on, color scheme and things like that. And so it's a whole team. And I'm so happy that you mentioned this. So we can Sort of talk about the team and their contribution in the process of making this book and publishing these books.
- [63:18]
Li Ping Chen
Right.
- [63:19]
Interviewer/Host
And now we're approaching the end of our interview and you've completed this amazing book and what's next? So can you share with us what you're working on right now or what's your next project?
- [63:33]
Li Ping Chen
Well, I'm working on a couple of projects. Both of them perhaps pick up on the environmental themes of that last chapter, some of which were also in some sense present in my first book. So a kind of longer term project is on the history of trees in Chinese Buddhism. And I've published a couple articles or I've written a chapter that should be out soon on trees in medieval China. So that's kind of a long term project. But I also, in the course of starting that project, got very interested in another Taiwan project and that is going to be a book on the cultural and religious history of Alishan, which has a sacred tree at its center, but also is a really interesting example of what happens to forests in the colonial encounter.
- [64:39]
Interviewer/Host
Yeah, these sounds great project and especially trees and also looking forward very much to the Alishan project as well. So we are looking forward to seeing more of your work and then reading more of your publications. And I also want to thank you for being on the show today. What a great conversation. I really enjoyed it.
- [65:04]
Li Ping Chen
Yeah, thanks so much for having me, Li Ping. This has been great.
- [65:07]
Interviewer/Host
And I also want to thank you, our audience, for staying with us till the end. I hope everyone is taking good care, staying safe and see you guys next time. Goodbye. Bye.
- [65:25]
Li Ping Chen
Sa.