The Body-Mind Practices and New Media Technologies: Two Taiwanese Walking Pilgrimages

Sacredness during walking pilgrimages arises more from bodily techniques than from material technologies. Drawing on Taiwan's Dajia and Baishatun annual pilgrimages, the article contrasts urban and rural pilgrims' body-mind practices and examines how both pilgrimages use modern media technologies. Bodily techniques—such as walking meditation, mental concentration, sensory sharpening, and mental reset—engender a sense of sacredness through direct bodily experience. Material technologies, including public transport and digital media, do not impede sacredness but play a lesser role. The analysis shows that embodied practices remain central to spiritual experience even in technologically mediated contexts.

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Abstract

Taking two long-distance walking pilgrimages (Dajia 大甲 and Baishatun 白沙 屯) held annually in Taiwan as an example, this article discusses how bodily techniques and material technologies engender a sense of sacredness through bodily experience during a walking pilgrimage. “Bodily techniques” include methods of physical action, walking meditation, mental concentration, reduction in logical thinking and discrimination, sharpening of the senses, and mental reset, etc. “Material technologies” include public transport, infrastructure, printing methods, and digital media technologies, etc. The first part of the article emphasizes the differences between urban and rural pilgrims concerning different body-mind practices. The second part focuses on the new media technologies shared by both the modernized Dajia and the traditional Baishatun pilgrimages. From these two pilgrimages we can see that, while technologies do not impede the emergence of a sense of sacrednesss, overall bodily techniques play a greater role in engendering a sense of sacredness than media technologies.