“Tao, can be Tao, very Tao.” For more than two thousand years, the influence of Laozi, who preached the “Way”, has endured in ancient and modern China and abroad, and there are more than three thousand Chinese and foreign commentaries on his book “Tao Te Ching”, “Blessing is the dependence of misfortune, misfortune is the ambush of blessing”, ” A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step” and other aphorisms hang in the mouth of the world today. His thoughts were not only considered by Confucius as a dragon in the clouds, “I see Laozi today, it is like a dragon!” Many emperors, generals, sages, and scholars were inspired by it and praised it in words, and even today’s Western academia also holds Laozi’s thoughts in high esteem.
Emperor Taizong of Tang said: “The Tao Te Ching is about the management of the body and the state. The state is not to be reserved and flamboyant, and to be taught by doing nothing and saying nothing. The body is less selfish and less desirous, with an empty heart and a solid belly as a matter of business.”
Emperor Shunzhi of the Qing Dynasty praised: “Laozi’s path through the heavens, virtue beyond the product sphere, wrote a book of more than 5,000 words, clarifying the purpose of purity and inaction. However, it is cut in the body and mind, clear in the Lunmu, the world can rarely know it.”
Wei Yuan, a thinker of the Qing Dynasty, said, “Laozi’s book, the upper can clarify the way, the middle can cure the body, and the push can cure people.”
And the study of the Tao Te Ching began in Europe at the beginning of the nineteenth century, with German philosophers Hegel, Nietzsche, and Heidegger, and a generation of literary figures, Tolstoy, also held Laozi in high esteem. Dr. Joseph Lee, a two-time Nobel laureate from England, wrote in his famous book, A History of Chinese Science and Technology, “Many of the most attractive elements of the Chinese character derive from Taoist thought. China without Taoist thought would be like a great tree whose certain deep roots have rotted away. These great trees are still alive and well today.” It is true that the origin of all the hundred schools of thought that emerged during the period of the hundred schools of thought in Chinese history is Taoism, from which they all diverged, and they are the various manifestations and refractions of the Tao operating in the world.
For more than 2,000 years, countless people have followed in the footsteps of Laozi, understood the essence of “the state and the body”, and even penetrated the “Tao” which is not the “common way” of Laozi, and embarked on the path of monasticism. For example, the famous “Wenjing’s rule” in Chinese history and the “Zhengguan’s rule” in Tang Dynasty are examples of Laozi’s way to rule the country and the world. In addition, since the Han Dynasty, various schools of Taoism, such as Taoist talisman and rhododendron, have revered Laozi, leaving behind miracles such as Zhang Daoling, Qiu Hongji, Xu Jingyang, Ge Hong and other monks who ascended to heaven by day. The emperors of successive dynasties also often took Taoist monks as their national masters, Zhang Liang said he was “a teacher of the emperor with a three-inch tongue”, and the rest, such as Zhuge Liang of the Shu Han Dynasty, Yuan Tiangang and Li Chunfeng of the Tang Dynasty, Miao Guangyi of the Song Dynasty, and Liu Bo Wen of the Ming Dynasty, were all treated as national masters by the founding emperors. In the Ming Dynasty, almost every family turned to the Tao. In his later years, Genghis Khan invited Changchunzi Qiu Douji from far away to give a sermon. There were countless monks in all dynasties.
However, in the current morally corrupt mainland China, how many people can see through the distorted figure of Lao Tzu by Mao and the Chinese Communist Party and set out on the path to return to the truth?
Lao Tzu’s Transmission of the Way
The modern world sees Laozi as a philosopher, and treats Laozi’s “Laozi” (i.e. “Tao Te Ching”, also known as “Tao Te Ching” and “Laozi’s Five Thousand Writings”) as a philosophical work to be studied critically and so-called, which actually equates Laozi with ordinary people in the world. In fact, what Laozi preached was the “Great Way”, and what he taught was the way to return to the truth. At that time, with the decline of human morality, the Way of the Three Emperors and Five Emperors had been gradually lost, so Laozi came to the world at this time, on the one hand, he passed down the Way of “Pure and Quiet” and the Way of “Ascension” to the “Later Sages On the one hand, Lao Tzu passed down the way of “pure and unrestrained” and “attainment of ascension” to the “later sages”, Yin Xi and other immortals, laying down the culture of cultivation for future generations, enabling people to learn the door of “cultivation” and “longevity”, so as to return to their true nature, transcend mortality and attain sainthood, and escape the suffering of the cycle of birth and death.
On the other hand, Laozi also explained the importance of virtue and the accumulation of virtue for cultivation and being a human being, and the “Laozi” on silk unearthed at Mawangdui in 1973 are all preceded by the “Virtue Sutra” and followed by the “Tao Sutra”. The written copies of the “De Dao Jing” found in the Dunhuang Cave of the Hidden Scriptures also mostly have the “De Jing” as the upper volume and the “Dao Jing” as the lower volume. This indicates that the person who attains the Tao must be a virtuous person, and those without virtue cannot attain the Tao. Later generations have undoubtedly obscured the true meaning of the Tao Te Ching by changing it into the Tao Te Ching.
Laozi also said in the Tao Te Ching, “After losing the Way, one loses virtue; after losing virtue, one loses benevolence; after losing benevolence, one loses righteousness; after losing righteousness, one loses propriety.” Undoubtedly Laozi believed that morality was far superior to benevolence, so he said, “The Great Way is abolished, and there is benevolence and righteousness.” It means that the pursuit of “benevolence and righteousness” is only because the Great Way is gone. In the modern concept, the emergence of benevolence, wisdom, filial piety, and loyal subjects are all happy events to be celebrated, yet Laozi believed that these are the results of the decline of the Great Tao, social chaos, and the decline of morality.
In addition, Laozi also instructed Confucius and enlightened him with wisdom, and Confucius was thus able to collect the great achievements of Confucianism and complete the way of grimoire, knowledge, sincerity, righteousness, cultivating one’s body, preparing one’s family, ruling one’s country, pacifying the world, and the inner sage and outer king. The Zhuangzi-Tian Yun says: “When Confucius saw Laozi returning, he did not talk for three days.” In Confucius’ view, Laozi’s thoughts were beyond his own reach.
Laozi was worshipped as a god
In fact, Taoist thought has been around since ancient times. From the ancestor worship in the Yellow Emperor period to the worship of heavenly gods in the Yin and Shang dynasties, from the Taoism of Laozi in the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods to the beliefs of the gods and the folk in the Qin and Han dynasties, to Zhang Jiao’s “Way of Peace” and Zhang Daoling’s “Way of Five Doumies” in the Eastern Han dynasty, and so on, there are still It can be said that the Chinese people’s faith in the Tao has never been extinguished.
The Taoist practice began to enter the secular level in the Eastern Han Dynasty when Zhang Daoling founded Taoism, and Laozi was honored as the eighteenth incarnation of the supreme God Tao Teh, also known as “Tai Shang Lao Jun”, one of the three supreme gods. This is fundamentally different from the modern atheists who classify the Tao Te Ching as Taoism in the religious sense and Taoism in the philosophical sense.
The Legend of the Immortals, which records the miracles of the pre-Qin deities, first classifies Laozi as a deity, saying that Laozi pursued inaction and did nothing without doing anything. His miracles are miraculous. He closed his eyes and listened to his inner cultivation, and there was no thought in the supreme realm. He has attained the Way in accordance with the vital energy, and his longevity is the same as that of heaven and earth. His miraculous life was also recorded in the later “The Complete Biography of the Immortals” and “Taiping Guangji”.
During the Eastern Han Dynasty, Wang Fu, a native of Chengdu, wrote the “Stele of the Holy Mother of Laozi”, which united Laozi and the Tao into one and regarded Laozi as the divine being who gave birth to heaven and earth. This became the prototype of the Taoist theory of creation.
During the time of Emperor Huan of Han Dynasty, Emperor Huan personally worshiped Laozi as the ancestor of the Tao of Immortality. In the Tang Dynasty, the emperor honored Laozi as “Tai Shang Xuan Yuan Emperor”, and in the Song Dynasty, he added the title of “Tai Shang Lao Jun, the Emperor of Supreme Virtue”. In ancient China, Han, Tang, Song, Ming and Qing dynasties, all the wise rulers took Laozi’s philosophy of “ruling without doing anything” as the concept of governing the country and the state, and knew that “the one who wins the way wins the hearts of the people” and “the one who wins the hearts of the people wins the world The people’s heart will win the world”. As a result, these dynasties all had periods of prosperity, such as the reign of Wenjing in the Western Han Dynasty, the reign of Zhenguan and Kaiyuan in the Tang Dynasty, the reign of Yongle in the Ming Dynasty, and the reign of Kang and Qian in the Qing Dynasty.
However, in modern times, especially after the Chinese Communist Party seized power, the Chinese Communist Party, which believes in Marxism-Leninism atheism, has heavily criticized Laozi, Confucius and other sages, in addition to class analysis and distortion, and dragged them down from the altar.
Distortions and misinterpretations of Laozi (1950-1966)
Since the establishment of the Chinese Communist Party, the study of Laozi’s Tao Te Ching can be roughly divided into three periods: the first period from 1950 to 1966; the second period from 1967 to 1975; and the third period from 1976, after the Cultural Revolution, to the present.
In the 1950s and 1960s, I do not know whether it was because Mao liked Laozi or not, the philosophical circles of the Chinese Communist Party conducted a lot of research on Laozi’s thought and published nearly one hundred articles. The main differences were when Laozi was a person, when the Laozi was written, whether Laozi’s thought was materialistic or idealistic, which class interests the Laozi represented, and what Laozi’s “Tao What does Laozi’s “Tao” refer to?
Let us take one of the more representative figures in the study of Laozi in modern times, Feng Youlan, who was a professor in the philosophy department of Peking University, as an example of the different stages of his study of Laozi, and see how the Chinese Communist Party distorted and criticized Laozi.
The first stage was before 1949. Feng Youlan did not adopt the method of class analysis to study Laozi because he had not yet been influenced by Marxism-Leninism. At that time, he believed that Laozi, who was asked by Confucius, was not the same person as Laozi, who appeared after Confucius and Mo, and that the name of the author of Laozi was Li Er. In addition, he discusses Laozi’s thought from the perspective of the concept of heaven and the general rule of things changing, and highlights Laozi’s contribution in comparing him with Confucius, Mozi and Mencius. On the one hand, it compiles Laozi’s discussion on “Tao” and “virtue” and the relationship between morality and all things, and on the other hand, it compiles Laozi’s exposition on the methods of dealing with the world, personality cultivation, and social ideals, affirming the ideal of “small state and few people”. On the other hand, it compiles Laozi’s exposition on the methods of dealing with the world, personality cultivation, and social ideals, and affirms the ideal state of society of “small state and few people.
Although there are different views on whether Laozi and Laozi are the same person, and although Feng Youlan’s understanding of Laozi’s thought is still superficial, at least at that time, the research was still limited to the academic community and was not influenced by politics.
After the establishment of the Chinese Communist Party in 1949, the “socialist transformation” and brainwashing of intellectuals began. The “Anti-Hu Feng Campaign” and the “Anti-Rightist” campaign, which are still fresh in the minds of the older generation of intellectuals, killed many people and bent the backbone of many intellectuals, including Feng Youlan.
In the 1960s, Feng Youlan compiled the “New Draft of the History of Chinese Philosophy” (1960-1964), he still insisted on the view that Laozi was after Confucius, but due to the influence of Marxist views on class struggle and philosophical line struggle, he made a new statement on the elaboration and analysis of Laozi’s thought, emphasizing the class roots and analyzing the content accordingly. to analyze the content. This was also the common analytical approach adopted by scholars studying Laozi at that time.
According to Feng Youlan, Laozi was a philosophical form in the transition from slavery to feudalism, Laozi was a representative of the slave-owning aristocracy, Laozi’s “Tao” was “simple materialism,” and Laozi’s political thought was also a manifestation of the thought of the decadent aristocracy, and his words Laozi’s political thought is also the expression of the declining aristocracy’s thinking, and his statements are “full of criticism of the declining aristocracy against the then ruling class, that is, the emerging landowning class”, such as the state of “small state and few people” is “regressive, reactionary, and retrogressive view of history”, and so on. He also criticized Laozi’s “Tao”. Obviously, Feng Youlan denied his own research results before 1949.
Some other scholars believe that Laozi either represents the thoughts of peasants in declining communes or reflects the demands of small slave owners at that time, and that Laozi’s “Tao” refers to material entities.
However, neither Feng Youlan’s nor others’ viewpoints are free from class analysis. In other words, the Chinese Communist Party has successfully brainwashed intellectuals and divorced their analysis from the essence of Laozi’s thought and from the close relationship between the “Way” and “virtue” of Laozi. In other words, the Chinese Communist Party has successfully brainwashed the intellectuals and divorced their analysis from the essence of Laozi’s thought, from the connotation of the close relationship between “the Way” and “virtue”, and secularized Laozi, and analyzed him with the fallacy of Marxism-Leninism, so that Laozi is no longer a deity believed by the people.
The destruction of Laozi’s scriptures during the “Four Olds” of the Cultural Revolution
After the establishment of the Chinese Communist Party, Taoism, like other religions, was regarded as a superstition and criticized, and when the Cultural Revolution broke out in 1966, the “Four Olds” swept the country, and Laozi and other sages were also regarded as “Four Olds. Many Taoist palaces and temples were burned and destroyed, and many monks were persecuted to death and forced to go back to the world. Countless precious cultural relics were also destroyed at this time, including Laozi’s sermon platform and many Taoist temples and temples.
In the Northern Wei Dynasty, Li Daoyuan’s “Water Classic Note” contains: on the water out of the South Mountain on the valley, the northern diameter of the Daling West, the world is called Laozi’s tomb. The tomb of Laozi is located in the west bank of the river on the valley at the mouth of the valley, depending on the mountain for the tomb, the tomb mountain altitude 730 meters, the top of the natural stone cave named “Olao Cave”, unfathomable depth. According to the Ming Dynasty’s “Reconstruction of the Hall in Olao Cave”, there is a stone letter inside the cave where Laozi’s skull is buried. At the top of Lingshan Mountain, there is a Taoist temple in Wulao Cave, and there are two monuments of the tomb of Laozi erected by Bi Yuan, the governor of Shaanxi Province in the forty-first year of the Qianlong era (1776) of the Qing Dynasty. The stone tablet with three characters “Tomb of Laozi of Zhou” written by Bi Yuan, a famous scholar and governor of Shaanxi during the Qianlong period of the Qing Dynasty.
Five kilometers away from the tomb of Laozi, there is a place called “Louguantai”, where Laozi preached and wrote the Tao Te Ching, and there are more than fifty other monuments and Taoist temples within a ten-mile radius. During the Cultural Revolution, Louguantai and other monuments were destroyed, the Taoist priests were all forced to leave.
Another example is Shandong Laoshan is a Taoist holy land. Laoshan’s Taiping Palace, Qing Palace, Qing Palace, Doum Palace, Huayanan, Ningzhen Temple, Guandi Temple in the “idols, offerings, scripture scrolls, cultural relics, temple monuments were all destroyed and burned.
In such an atmosphere, many intellectuals were also beaten down, and those who were not beaten down were also silenced, and at this time Laozi research also fell into a period of stagnation.
Contemporary Laozi Studies Still Cannot Escape the Chinese Communist Brainwashing
After the end of the Cultural Revolution, some scholars began to study Laozi again. In addition to paying more attention to historical evidence and reinterpreting some of Laozi’s ideas such as “Wu Wei”, some of the studies so far have still not escaped the CCP’s class analysis method and the debate between materialism and idealism, and still carry out the so-called analysis at the philosophical level, while some newly developed studies from anthropology, aesthetics, medicine, management, linguistics, sociology, science, and so on. Some newly developed articles on Laozi from the perspectives of anthropology, aesthetics, medicine, management, linguistics, sociology, science, etc., have only caught some branch of Laozi’s thought, but deviated from the essence of Laozi’s thought. In other words, the research of today’s scholars has basically failed to understand what the core of Laozi’s “The Way” is.
For example, Feng Youlan produced another concluding work, A New History of Chinese Philosophy (1982-1990), which no longer starts from the view of heaven and nature, but from its class roots. He still considered Laozi as a representative work of the declining slave-owning aristocracy, standing in the position of the slave-owning class, reflecting the two attitudes of the declining aristocracy at that time toward the emerging landowning class, one is to retreat as an advance, the other is to escape from reality, and he interpreted it with regard to specific contents, such as “softness and weakness are better than strength”, ” To take the world with nothing” is Laozi’s strategy for the emerging landowning class to retreat to advance and to win with weakness, i.e., to preserve strength first and then compete with the landowning class when their strength is mature.
Feng Youlan also classified Laozi’s thought as “objective idealism”, but again affirmed Laozi’s social ideal of “small state and few people”, which he considered as a spiritual realm pursued by Laozi.
If we follow Feng Youlan’s conclusion after 1949, the Tao Te Ching written by Laozi is really of little value, but it is easy to mislead the world. But apparently, it was the scholars like Feng Youlan who were brainwashed by the Chinese Communist Party who really misled the world. Not only did they fail to deeply understand Laozi’s “Great Way”, but they analyzed it with the class theory instilled by the Communist Party, and the result was predictable.
What is most frightening is that the findings of scholars like Feng Youlan are still found in the textbooks of schools and colleges in mainland China today.
The Fallacy of Analyzing Laozi with Class Theory and Materialism
The “class analysis” used by Chinese Communist scholars in their analysis of Laozi is one of the most compelling theories in Marxism, and one of the most skillful theories used by the Communist Party to deceive the public. In this regard, the mainland scholar Mr. Jing Chu has a clear analysis. According to Marx, “in a class society, the class status of a person is the basis for his or her views, ideas and class position”. Marx denied the existence of “universal humanity” on the basis of “class”, and then deduced that “class struggle” is everywhere and all the time; in this regard, Marx denied the existence of “universal humanity” on the basis of “class” and then deduced that “class struggle” is everywhere and all the time. On the basis of this, Marx takes “class struggle is a basket into which everything is loaded” as the basis of his argument.
Obviously, Marx’s denial of “universal human nature” is absurd, because people have the heart of kinship, compassion, sympathy, goodness, people are happy to live and fear death, tend to avoid harm; happy comfort and fear of danger, like health and evil disease, and so on. These are not different because of their class, origin, political and economic status. Therefore, universal human nature is objective. It is because of the existence of universal human nature that people have a common language, the possibility of forming basic values, in order to mutually beneficial cooperation, coexistence and co-prosperity.
From this it can be said that Marx’s exaggeration of class struggle to the absurd degree of being everywhere and all the time, while denying all natural laws of human beings, is fundamentally fallacious.
After the Chinese Communist Party seized power, it has rewritten the history of all human beings and the history of civilization accumulation through brainwashing, by having one or another imperial literati such as Guo Moruo, Jian Bozan, Feng Youlan, etc., according to the fallacy that “all human history is the history of class struggle”, while those scholars who study history from the perspective of history have been purged. The history interpreted under this fallacy, including Lao Tzu, Confucius, Qin Shi Huang and other historical figures, has also been distorted, and the distorted history has been put into the elegant hall, into the classrooms of universities, primary and secondary schools, and into all the media, brainwashing the Chinese people for years and years.
In addition to the fallacy of “classism”, the “materialism” propagated by Marx is also a fallacy. What can be seen is that “materialism” has been repeatedly instilled into the Chinese people by the CCP and has now become part of their thinking, so that in mainland China today, when the CCP’s propaganda calls for people to “uphold science and dispel superstition,” people do not feel that There is nothing wrong with saying so. When the Chinese Communist Party proclaims in its textbooks that “Gods and Buddhas were imagined in the minds of ignorant and backward ancient people, and with the development and progress of science and technology, these concepts have been abandoned,” people think that this is really the case.
Marx believed that man is only a material being, but denied the existence of his spirit and soul, and said that “matter determines consciousness, and consciousness is a reflection of matter. Engels said: “Life is nothing but the way of being of proteins”. Marx’s technical method of denying theism is to use a logical trick, i.e., to replace the denial of theism with the revelation of the hypocrisy of certain priests and ministers, the purpose of which is to turn people away from the Divine Principle and morality and to satisfy their demonic desire to dominate mankind.
In fact, consciousness itself is also a substance, that is to say, the human mind is a more microscopic substance than the substance that can be seen by the human eye, so that human consciousness is on the same level as the substance that is generally said to be visible and tangible. There is a mutual action and influence between matter and consciousness, but it is not necessarily matter that determines consciousness. Because human behavior is governed by thought, people’s consciousness often determines the use and processing of external matter. Obviously, Marx was confusing the world through specious assertions.
Later, Lenin, Stalin, and Mao Zedong infiltrated “materialism” into people’s daily life by means of propaganda and education, thus combating people’s belief in God and making them gradually turn away from God and Buddha, thus believing in the existence of things that can be seen and touched, and believing that the world and human beings are naturally formed. In doing so, the Communist Party aims to maintain its rule.
Needless to say, the debate between “materialism” and “materialism” in the study of Laozi was also influenced by the theories of Marx and the Communist Party. According to the materialistic view of history, material production is the basis for the development of social existence, and morality is “false but not real”, so Laozi is also “big but not proper”. Naturally, the use of “classism” and “materialism” to analyze Laozi can only go on the road of distortion, and endless harm.
Mao’s distortion of Laozi’s thought
According to mainland media reports, Chinese Communist Party leader Mao Zedong was fond of reading the Tao Te Ching and often quoted it in his speeches and articles, and attached importance to the study of Laozi. However, what Mao saw was not Laozi’s exposition of “Tao” and “virtue” and did not learn from it how to be a virtuous person, but rather selected some words and phrases, took them out of context, used them for his own purposes and influenced the world.
For example, on April 24, 1945, Mao said in his oral political report at the Seventh Congress of the Communist Party of China, when talking about the difficulties faced and the policy to deal with them: “I have spoken to the liaison staff of the Kuomintang in this way, and I said our policy: the first one is the philosophy of Laozi, which is called ‘not to be the first in the world’. That is, we do not fire the first shot.” Here, Mao quoted Lao Tzu’s famous words “not daring to be the first in the world,” meaning to abandon before taking, to retreat before advancing, to yield before fighting.
However, Laozi’s original meaning was that he did not dare to deviate from the Way and do what the Way of Heaven could not do. Mao’s misinterpretation became acceptable to the nation with the propaganda machine of the Chinese Communist Party.
For example, on March 13, 1949, at the Second Plenary Session of the Seventh CPC Central Committee, Mao Zedong spoke about the working methods of the Party Committee, including the need to “exchange information, which is very important for obtaining a common language” and criticized “some people who do not do so, but as Lao Tzu said Some people do not do this, but as Lao Tzu said, ‘the sound of chickens and dogs is heard, and old people do not communicate with each other,’ and as a result, they lack a common language with each other.
However, Laozi’s words reflect the ideal social state of “a small country with few people”, which means a harmonious country with small land area, small population and simple people, where fighting apparatus is not useful. As the people live and work in peace and contentment, they do not have to move across regions, they will live in their own country until they die, which is the highest state of governance. Mao’s quotation is completely contrary to his intention. I don’t know if it is from Mao’s quotation that the phrase “the sound of chickens and dogs hearing each other, the old dead not communicating with each other” has been wrongly interpreted by modern people as not understanding each other and not communicating with each other.
Also, on February 27, 1957, at the 11th enlarged session of the Supreme State Council, Mao said in his speech on “the correct handling of internal conflicts among the people”: “Under certain conditions, bad things can lead to good results, and good things can also lead to bad results. Lao Tzu said two thousand years ago: ‘Misfortune leads to fortune, fortune leads to misfortune’.”
But Lao Tzu’s saying, “What goes around comes around, and what goes around comes around” is different from what Mao and even the current generation understand. On the surface, Laozi seems to be talking about the impermanence of life, but if we look at it from the perspective of Laozi’s “Great Way” cultivation, people’s happiness and misfortune can be transformed by their own good and bad deeds, because as people do good and bad deeds, there is also the problem of keeping virtue and losing virtue. Therefore, blessings and disasters depend on what the person does.
Mao’s statement that “under certain conditions” leads to different results ignores the transformation of “virtue” and “immorality” in virtue, which is the root cause of people’s happiness and misfortune. This is the root cause of people’s happiness and misfortune.
On August 22, 1960, when Mao and others received the delegates attending the enlarged plenary session of the Central Committee of the six democratic parties, Zhou Jianren happened to sit next to Mao and they talked about the debate in the philosophical circles at that time on whether Laozi’s philosophy was materialistic or idealistic, and Mao agreed with Zhou’s statement that “Laozi is objective idealism”. In his speech at the closing session of the 12th Plenary Session of the 8th CPC Central Committee, Mao openly expressed his support for Tianjin professor Yang Liuqiao’s view that “Laozi is a materialist”. According to Ma Xulun’s “Commentary on Laozi” published in 1974, Mao also said that “Laozi” was “a book of war”.
The influence of Mao’s words on the academic community is not insignificant, and the impact of his distortion of Laozi on Chinese society is not insignificant.
Reasons for the Chinese Communist Party’s Distortion of Laozi
Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism have established a very stable moral system for Chinese people, as the saying goes, “If Heaven remains unchanged, so does Tao. This moral system is the basis for the existence, stability and harmony of society. Morality on a spiritual level is often abstract, and an important role of culture is to express the moral system in a popular way.
The “philosophy” of the Communist Party can be said to be the opposite of the true traditional Chinese culture. Confucius believed that “death and life have a destiny, and wealth and prosperity are in heaven”, while Buddhism and Taoism are theistic and believe in the reincarnation of life and death, and that good and evil are rewarded. Lawlessness”. The Communist Party not only believes in “atheism” but also “lawlessness. The way to “heaven on earth” is to rely on the leadership of the “vanguard of the proletariat”, that is, the Communist Party. The recognition of theism is a direct challenge to the legitimacy of the CCP’s rule.
Therefore, in order to seize and consolidate power, the Communist Party must destroy the traditional Chinese culture that is permeated by “theism. If the pre-Communist doctrine could only influence a small number of Chinese people, after the establishment of the CCP, the CCP destroyed traditional culture through one campaign after another, including the elimination of religion and the Cultural Revolution, and at the same time, through the use of imperial writers to distort history and historical figures, thereby denying the existence of God and Buddha. For example, the aforementioned distortion of Laozi was the “wail” of Laozi, who was a fallen nobleman, and pulled Laozi down from the altar.
For example, the Chinese Communist Party claims that “social suffering is fertile ground for the existence and development of religion,” and deliberately treats it as the norm for religious believers to join the religion of those who have suffered among ordinary people and have lost all hope. For example, Buddha Sakyamuni was a prince of the kingdom of Kabylia, who gave up his throne, beautiful women and rich life to cultivate. For example, the Taoist Zhang Daoling (or Zhang Tianshui) was thrice recruited by the Emperor of Han Dynasty to be a tai fu (a first-ranking official in the nine-ranking official system), but Zhang Daoling did not agree to it and lived in seclusion in Mount Heming. Therefore, becoming a monk was never an escape from real suffering (emotional disappointment or financial difficulties, etc.), but a great wish to develop bodhichitta and cut off earthly ties with a wise sword.
Before the Chinese Communist Party seized power, there was an environment of belief in God among the people. Practitioners in Shiism and Taoism were symbols of virtue and respect. Even the emperors of the traditional imperial dynasties gave courtesy and respect to the high priests when they met them. However, after the Chinese Communist Party seized power, it portrayed practitioners as foolish, ignorant, superstitious, and even using religion to enrich themselves. The images of Lao Tzu, the originator of Taoism, Confucius, the originator of Confucianism, and Sakyamuni, the founder of Buddhism, were also deliberately distorted and even criticized by the CCP. Practitioners have gone from being respected to being objects of public ridicule.
And the CCP arbitrarily misinterpreted and tampered with the traditional divine culture. The most common and most deceptive thing is to add atheistic meanings to the classics, such as Lao Tzu’s saying that Heaven and Earth are great and the Tao is great and the King is great, while the CCP used an overwhelming media machine and indoctrination from elementary school to university to say that the CCP’s grace is greater than Heaven. Who says that Mao does not dare to be the first in the world? The best footnote of his deviation from the Chinese Communist Party is that he dares to be the first in the world. The time has come to abandon the CCP, which has deviated from the way of heaven, destroyed our Chinese orthodox culture, distorted historical figures, and brutalized the people.
Recent Comments