Life Zen Temple Banned as a Xie Jiao and RaidedThe movement promotes a radical “religious Communism,” eliminating in its communes private property and the family, replaced by free love.
An image of the April 28 raid: the police forcibly take an old devotee away from his community. Source: Guizhou Public Security.
On April 28, 2021, starting at 1 a.m., Public Security and agents of the unit specialized in combating xie jiao (i.e., religious movements banned as “heterodox teachings”) started raiding the two communal settlements of Life Zen Temple (生命禅院, Life Chanyuan), located in remote areas of Tongzi county and Anlong county in Guizhou province. By 6:30 a.m., they had taken control of the two premises, where some 100 devotees from 13 different provinces lived. It was a classical raid against a “cult,” hailed by the police as a full success.
The communes in Tongzi county (above) and Anlong county (below). Source: Guizhou Public Security.
The agents gathered the Life Zen Temple members together, read them a statement that their movement had been banned, and proceeded to take all of them away from the communes to be “deprogrammed.” According to the officers, most of them resisted, and shouted that they preferred to die rather than leaving the community, but none of the devotees resorted to violence. After three months, according to Guizhou Public Security, most of the members have been deprogrammed and entrusted to the care of relatives. Their “reeducation” will continue at home.
The statement that Life Zen Temple has been banned is read to the devotees. Source: Guizhou Public Security.
This, the Public Security said, is not the end of the Life Zen Temple. They maintain more than 2,000 members, most of them hidden somewhere in China, and their leader is safely living in Canada. The hunt by specialized police to locate the remaining devotees in China continues. The case of the Life Zen Temple confirms a recent trend about the xie jiao. They are banned by decrees of local authorities at the provincial level, but are then denounced as xie jiao by the China Anti-Xie-Jiao Association, and for all practical purposes become part of the national list of the xie jiao.
The Life Zen Temple has a long and, indeed, extraordinary story. Its founder, Zhang Zifan, known to his followers as Xuefeng, was born on July 17, 1957, in Zhangjia village, Lianhua township, Yongjing county, in northwestern Gansu province. Due to the construction of the Liujiaxia Reservoir, the village no longer exists. Young Zifan and his family were relocated to Hetan Township, Dongxiang Autonomous County, Gansu province. Zifan’s father was a member of the CCP and a staunch Communist, described by the villagers as totally devoted to the Party, where he served in different local leadership positions. Zifan’s mother went to a Buddhist temple, and transmitted an interest in Buddhism to her son. Zifan went to Dongxiang County No. 3 Middle School, then to Zhangjiakou Geological Technical School of the Ministry of Geology and Mineral Resources, the Lanzhou Institute of Education, the Jiuquan Institute of Education, and the Beijing University of International Business and Economics.
Zhang Zifan, aka Master Xuefeng. Source: Life Zen Temple.
As was expected from the son of a local CCP bureaucrat, Zifan joined the Party when he turned 18, in 1975. He quickly became the CCP’s branch secretary in his rural production brigade. He taught English, and also worked as an interpreter for CCP local leaders and businesspersons. In this capacity, he was sent to Africa by the Gansu Bureau of Geology and Mineral Resources in 1993, and settled in Zimbabwe in 1995.
He liked the country, and decided not to return to China. He obtained a residency permit, and invested his savings in founding and developing a company that owned shops, restaurants and bars in Zimbabwe. He also explored the local Christian churches. Zifan later reported that he had a near-death experience after a car accident on the road between Zimbabwe’s capital Harare and Mutare, during which he “died” as Zhang Zifan and was “reborn” as Master Xuefeng, the prophet for the new era and the same divine spirit who had once incarnated as Lao Tzu, Buddha Sakyamuni, Jesus, and Muhammad. He started writing books and gathering followers, and in 2005 founded the Life Zen Temple (sometimes called in English Life Zen Center) in Zimbabwe.
He remained a Chinese citizen and a member of the CCP. At some stage, he left the Party, but states that “my lifelong belief in the realization of Communism has not changed,” and Marx and Chairman Mao remain among his main references.
Another picture of Master Xuefeng. Source: Life Zen Temple.
From 2009, he started founding communities in China, which were initially tolerated by the authorities, who found their references to Communism and Chairman Mao reassuring. Tolerance was, however, short-lived. In 2014, the New York Times visited the Life Zen Temple community near Lincang, Yunnan province, spoke with Xuefeng and published a surprisingly favorable account of the group. The Times article also noted that other Life Zen Temple communities had been compelled to shut down, and the Yunnan commune was itself under heavy harassment by the local Public Security.
The Times described the commune as “a Communist experiment” and a “utopian pastoral community” somewhat reminiscent of the Cultural Revolution, with members working hard in the fields and living of the fruits of their own agriculture and poultry farming. But it was more than that. While Xuefeng insists that the Life Zen Temple is not a religion and does not have rituals, believers are supposed to acknowledge that the founder is a divine incarnation and will lead them into the Millennium. Each believer is called a “Zen garden grass,” and is asked to add the word “grass” to his or her name.
An image of the Millennium. Source: Life Zen Temple.
The Temple believes that a 30-year period of tribulations started in 2018. How this “Cold Winter” will be, and whether it will involve apocalyptic disasters, depends on the attitude of humanity and the Temple itself. What will happen next is presented as hypothetical, but it is possible that Planet Earth will merge with the Millennium, which already exists as a planet located 960 light-years from Earth. It is ten times larger than Planet Earth, and the souls of these deceased that have been saved go there in about sixteen minutes. The Temple denies that (as its opponents maintain) only its members will be saved. In fact, others who live a good and selfless life will also enter the Millennium, which will however welcome no more than 1% of the present Earth population.
The Millennium is also where the perfect “classless society” prophesied by Marx, Lenin, and Chairman Mao is realized. On Earth, however, the Temple’s mission is to establish small replicas of Planet Millennium in the shape of communes that should be “paradises for the working classes,” and where the “Xuefeng-style Communism” is realized. “Communism is the only way to happiness for the working masses, and it is also the only way out for mankind,” Xuefeng teaches. “Xuefeng-style Communism” is, however, different from “historical Communism” as it exists in present-day China. The Temple’s Communism includes a spiritual element, a way to immortality in the Millennium and to “Buddhahood” and enlightenment on Earth. It also criticizes the CCP for “having put Mao’s thought on the shelves” and re-introduced elements of capitalism.
A somewhat sexualized Millennium. Source: Life Zen Temple.
One important feature of “Xuefeng-style Communism,” which the Temple believes is part of the true essence of Communism, is the elimination of the bourgeois family, replaced by free love and the communal education of children. According to Xuefeng, “The family is the main source of suffering in life. If the family does not dissolve, humankind will not be able to enter a new era full of freedom and happiness.” In the Millennium on Earth (but by now in the Temple’s communes) “the family will disappear, the marriage ceremony will no longer exist, the marriage certificate will become a historical relic, the title of wife and husband will become a sign of ignorance and backwardness, and it will be confined to history museums. The love between men and women will be carried out at will as long as it is consensual.”
Dancing in Life Zen Temple communes. Source: Life Zen Temple.This does not mean that sexuality is regarded with suspicion by the Temple. It is in fact celebrated, and the Public Security released pictures of theatrical performances in the Guizhou communes that it believes prove the “immorality” of the group.
Pictures of theatrical performances seized in the Guizhou communes and released by the police. Source: Guizhou Public Security.
Pure Maoist Communism is already suspicious in China, as it implies a criticism of post-Mao Party leaders, including Xi Jinping, but free love promoted through religious millennialism is certainly not tolerated. In 2017, also in the anticipation of the coming 30 years of troubles, Xuefeng moved to Canada, where he has followers (other Life Zen Temple groups exist in Thailand), and ordered the communities in China to go underground. For how long they can survive there, now that they are mercilessly targeted by the anti-xie-jiao police, is an interesting question.
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发表于 2021-8-8 23:25:19
楼主
发表于 2021-9-18 08:23:21