❤️ Asian Gothic: Seeing with the Eye of the Heart❤️

"Look at the gate of death as the gate of life. . . . Do not take the gate of life to be the gate of death. “ — — Chinese Alchemy

In Asia, most people have seen real ghosts, shapeshifting being and mad demons, but they are not afraid of them. I did and still do. . .

While the West experienced modernity along with its industrial revolution with some difficulties, the East because of its seclusion and fear of the West tried to avoid modernity.

It starts with love. .

Enter the Asian GOTHIC >Life Lessons to Learn

While the West experienced modernity along with its industrial revolution with some difficulties, the East because of its seclusion and fear of the West tried to avoid modernity.

However, once it found that to be a mistake, it rushed to modernize at an incredible rate, which caused much cultural, social, and political upheaval. To a certain degree, it is still trying to cope with the rush to become Westernized.

Though it tried to give up its belief in the supernatural and stories of the strange, there is a history of using such tales as stories of enlightenment , so depictions of hell and demons as found in Taoist and Buddhist temples can bring liberation to the visitor.

What did matter was whether or not the images could bring liberation from the cycle of birth and death (Teiser 461).

A potential didactic moment exists when facing evil, things of the night, and ghost stories. These strange tales represent the Asian Gothic.

Chinese “ghostwriters” [ of the Qing Dynasty] never attempt to strike horror into their readers” (Mc Craw 36).

Instead, such tales examined extensions of reality, not the exceptions.

Furthermore, Henry J. Hughes in “Familiarity of the Strange: Japan’s Gothic Tradition” writes, “Recognizing a transcultural Gothic genre, even one relying heavily on translation, may help us appreciate these strange gifts from a familiar heart of darkness” (16).

We can learn much from demons, ghosts, and fox spirits; these tales of the strange show us how demonic moments are integrated into our everyday lives of normalcy.

According to Henry J. Hughes, “. . . the Eastern Gothic more often depicts not a mission against some perceived singular evil but the discovery of an undivided world of good and evil.”

Evil and its counterpart, good, are more complex and more interactive than we want to think. When we think in terms of right and wrong, complicity exists that is often not acknowledged.

As you read these stories of the strange and supernatural, not this complicity; in Chinese mythology, even gods can fall into the burning fires of hell.

Further Lessons of the Mandala of Healing in the Asian Gothic

When approaching the Eastern Gothic, Mara, or Evil, in a Buddhism sense, remains impermanent. Gods can fall to Hell while Demons can rise up to heaven, for nothing is purely satanic forever.

In Hinduism, some of the greatest god and goddesses were once the greatest demons. They changed and become lovingly joyous, and not hatefully torturous.

“There is a greater sense within the East Asian Gothic of a complex multiplicity or East Asianicity of merging and interrelated cultural, political, and social resonances that helps create the construct called the ‘individual.’ This as to do with the intermixing of Taoism (animism and nature), Confucianism (politics, the ethical and social), and Buddhism (spiritual and psychological)” (Stein and Browning 211).

Evil is more about participating in ignorance of the potential good that everything possesses. The Eastern Gothic asks us to participate in the integrated nature of reality found in the here and now.

Furthermore, “Zen is about the power of immediacy and being fully aware of the here and now” (Stein and Browning 219); indeed, “[e]very moment becomes a part of the natural cycle of rejuvenation and destruction, of cause and effect.

Time is not so much a progressive march toward the future as it is a warping mechanism that results in either ennui or deja vu; such is the grandeur, the dread, and the paradox of samsara (the Buddhist cycle of death and rebirth)” (Stein and Browning 220).

In Taoism, an important rule is that everything is connected, so evil is more about discord in nature.

The Golden Flower of Love

In Chinese Alchemy, we see with the eye of the heart, as a golden flower emerges from the third eye of love. We emerge as a golden light, an aura and blend one with the world. We are awakened and eternal. We are everyone. A Chinese shaman wants me to write a book about Neidan, or Inner Alchemy of living, because he likes how I write and because I survived cancer twice. He told me all the books written about Chinese Alchemy are theoretical and not practical.

Bring back a sense of harmony, and evil exits. “Martin Buber, for one, marveled that in China men and ghosts share an ‘atmospheres of intimacy and concord,’ that the supernatural is not a violation of, but an extension of, the natural order” (qtd in McCraw 36).

Thank you for reading. . My childhood was hell and so painful, so when I was a young adult, I fought fire with fire.

However, I read books like Dictee and The Autobiography of Malcolm X, and I realized that we must forgive and be compassionate and caring, so I changed.

We are not here for ourselves, but for humanity, the animals as the star in the sky. We are the universe and universal love. . . .

I am an Asian Gothic scholar and a mindness wellness coach, so I see the world in a different light. Blessings to you

It starts with love. . . Make Love not War. . .

Works Cited

Hughes, Henry J. “Familiarity of the Strange: Japan’s Gothic Tradition.” Criticism, 24 (Winter 2000),

McCraw, David, R. “Stalking the Qing Ghost Story.” Literary History, Narrative, and Culture: Selected Conference Papers. Ed. Wimal Dissanayake, Steveen Bradbury. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1989. 25–39.

Stein, Wayne and John Edgar Browning. “The Western Eastern: DeCoding Hybridity and CyberZen Gothic in Vampire Hunter D (1985).” Ng, Andrew Hock Soon. Asian Gothic: Essays of Literature, Film and Anime. 210–223).

Teiser, Steven, D. The Ghost Festival in Medieval China. Princeton University Press, 1996.