By Franz Schurmann

fschurmann@pacificnews.org

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During the years to come, the clash between secular and spiritual forces in China will intensify. That will endanger China's stability and progress far more than the challenges that came from the Tiananmen dissidents.

Short Introduction:

The Falungong has made headlines for over a year now. Yet who knows what it is? Certainly not in the West where the word Falungong is rarely translated. The media seem to see it as an exotic sect that is defying the Chinese Communist authorities the way the students and others defied them in the spring of 1989. The latter defiance led to the massacre of Tiananmen Square which was widely publicized all over the world at the time and is still remembered.

To understand what the Falungong is the best point to start is through the meaning of the word Falungong. Falun is the Chinese translation of the Indian Buddhist expression Dharma-Chakra, the Wheel of the Law. That translation was made some 16 or 17 hundred years ago when Buddhism spread over China, East and South Asia like a vast spiritual inundation. Dharma refers to the laws that govern the universe and therefore humans as well.

Chakra literally means wheel. But in this case it means the Buddha Truth that can crush all evil and rolls on from human to human, place to place and epoch to epoch. The word "gong," sometimes written "kung," is a Chinese word that means merit or achievement. But in Buddhism and Falungong, it means the natural and moral power one gets by long practice, xiulian or hsiu-lien in Chinese, of Falun cultivation. Those who practice Falungong generally call their faith Falun Dafa. The Dafa means "Great Law," a word widely used in the Chinese Buddhist tradition.

Remarkable about the Falungong is the fact that it began in 1992 and, according to its founder Li Hongzhi, now numbers some 100 million adherents mostly in China but also in some 30 different countries. Anyone interested can easily find a lot of information on the Falun Dafa through any major search engine in the Internet.

Prediction #75 is written in an unusual way. It starts with quotes and then introduces a number of different themes. It is not easy, as an outsider, to understand the great magnetism the Falungong movement radiates. My own view, as a historian, is that partial understanding can come from looking at the flow of the river of Chinese and world history. I write about one movement, the Yellow Turbans, who suddenly mushroomed up almost two millennia ago under circumstances and with ideas that have similarity to Falungong as well as Maoism.

The Falungong adherents form a deeply spiritual movement arising at a time many people in China and East Asia as a whole are tired of feeding a vast consumer capitalism that has engulfged and is devouring them. But at the same time great moral voids have arisen in a region where the teachings of Confucius have deep roots. What Confucianism is cannot realistically be stated in a few words but let me try. Confucianism instructs people from the laws of the cosmos to the norms that must guide the most intimate of human relations.

Until the traumatic crashing-in of the West into China a century and a half ago Chinese followed the beliefs and practices of three great religions: Taoism, Buddhism and Confucianism. Taoism holds that the Individual and Nature are the basic realities of life. Its main practice is individual self-strengthening through knowledge of Nature.

Buddhism holds that there is a true reality beyond Humans and Nature which are false reality, only illusions. Buddhist practice is detaching from all attachments, zhizhuo in Chinese, abhinivesha in Sanskrit. The void, kung in Chinese (as in the martial art kungfu), shunya in Sanskrit, is the ultimate happiness, nirvana.

Confucianism makes Humans the centerpiece of reality. It uses two words to express this centrality, both pronounced ren with the same second or rising tone. The first written very simply with only two strokes means any human individual. The second is written with four strokes. Two strokes mean individual. The other two form straight parallel lines meaning the number two. The latter ren is often but incorrectly translated as humanity or compassion. It really means that though we are all individuals we also are inextricably attached to other humans.

Falungong is in the Buddhist and Taoist traditions.It holds that all humans can gain Buddha nature (Fo). It holds that all humans can find the Correct Path (Tao). And it holds that all humans can become God (shen). It is definitely not in the Confucian tradition. In China today two entirely rational philosophical systems of thought have great influence over Chinese, Confucianism and Marxism. Deep anger is growing between the two sets of adherents. Each call the other evil (ngö, third tone). For short one can say that the intellectual confrontration between the two is Spiritual versus Secular.

Many Chinese like to say that they are "special" in world history, having been so long isolated (fengbí) from the rest of the world. But that has been true only, and then partially, of the last few centuries. From its beginning some 4-5000 years ago China has very much been a part of the world and the world a part of China. And now this is again the case. What we are increasingly seeing on the world stage is not "clashes of civilizations," as Professor Samuel P. Huntginton Jr. argues, but rather clashes within civilizations. The greatest of these worldwide is between the Spiritual and the Secular. Most spectacularly we see it in much if not most of the Islamic world. We even now see it rising up in the American presidential election in the anger and counter-anger aroused by vice-presidential nominee Sen. Joseph Lieberman's (Dem.Ct.) forays into religious matters.

Today China's river of history flows from and through many different parts of the world. When Buddhism came into China 16-17 centuries ago Indian religions were transforming China as American civilization is now doing. Buddhism was a global faith whereas both Taoism and Confucianism had purely Chinese roots. During the 18th century China seemed very satisfied with its isolation from the world. In the 19th century the world came crashing into China. In the earlier part of the 20th century Russian Communism had a magnetic effect on China. And in the latter part of the 20th century American civilization, especially consumer capitalism, is having a magnetic effect on China. And now Falungong is arising as a purely Chinese spiritual current. Yet, ironically, Falungong is now spreading way beyond China over the rest of the world. The graphic attacked to Prediction #75 shows Master Li Hongzhi meditating on a rock ledge in a natural setting that clearly is in the United States somewhere. But Falungong is an enemy of American-style consumer capitalism that has taken hold massively in China. Ironically the Confucian and Marxist traditions in China are cheering on consumer capitalism while its ideological enemies, like the Falungong, at its best see it as an illusion and at its worst an evil.

"The 'Master' is a master con-man. Too bad so many fools get taken in by his deviltry. Some Americans would love it if all Chinese fell under the spell of Li Hongzhi's evil doctrines. America would then do its high-tech, China would forever remain far behind and the Americans could manipulate us however they wanted." --- response to a warning by Master Li Hongzhi of new Tiananmen bloodshed.

"You give Falun Dafa a try while overcoming genuine hardships and

tribulations. When it looks impossible, you give it a try. If you can really make it, you will indeed find." Quotation from Master Li by University of Toronto student Quincy Yu, a practioner for two years.

"Why are the Chinese authorities so upset about Falungong? They're only individuals doing their 'cultivation'. They're are not an organization." A respondent in a Mandarin-language talk show , China Cross Talk, in the San Francisco Bay Area.

What's this Falungong or, as adherents call it, Falun Dafa, that is now roiling China? Judging from the parties concerned, media and talk shows nobody really knows. But the opinions held by Chinese seem to fall into three clear stances: they either hate it or love it or wonder what all the fuss is about.

One thing is certain. Li Hongzhi founded the Falun Dafa movement in 1992. Today it has not only spread throughout China but to many other countries as well. Li claims the movement's adherents number over a hundred million.

Master Li and Dafa adherents say Dafa is not a religion but a practice. Li says it arose out of a Taoist self-strengthening practice called Qigong or Chi-kung but has gone way beyond it. But many observers says its astonishingly rapid spread is more characteristic of religions than therapeutic practices.

Because China is a country with some four thousand years of written history many Chinese think of possible historical parallels that could provide clues for understanding Falungong. One is the great Yellow Turban peasant uprising of 184 C.E.

At the time the Han Empire, with extent comparable to the Roman Empire, was saturated with corruption. The powerful got richer and the peasants poorer.

A leader Zhang Jiao arose who prophesied the blue sky would soon end and be replaced by a yellow sky, whence the name of his adherents. The yellow sky meant the beginning of the Road (Tao) towards Great Peace. So was born one of traditional China's three great religions, Taoism.

Zhang fought the Imperial Army with some 300,000 soldiers. They shook the 400 year old Han Dynasty to its foundations. But when he suddenly died the Yellow Turbans fell apart. But a decade or so later the Han Empire disintegrated.

When the Soviet Union disintegrated many Westerners believed the People's Republic of China would also soon fall. Not only didn't it but it has become powerful and prosperous. Yet corruption is so pervasive that many officials don't hesitate to write back and say a proposed bribe is not enough. Many Chinese inside the PRC and beyond wonder whether Falun Dafa could become a reincarnation of the Yellow Turbans.

On the other hand there is much in Falun Dafa that resembles Maoism. Mao Zedong's first publication around 1912 was on self-strengthening, a theme at the center of Taoist beliefs and martial arts. Mao then became an intellectual who discarded Confucianism and opted for Marxism. After April, 1927 when Chiang Kai-shek's opereatives slaughtered most of the Communist leaders, he became a soldier.

In many ways Mao seemed more like a Zhang Jiao than a Lenin. The stories with which he inspired his peasant followers, like the "Old Man who moved a mountain," were more in the Taoist than any Marxist tradition. So were the "barefoot doctors" of the Cultural Revolution. When he was already nearing death he said to his American biographer Edgar Snow "I feel like a lonely Taoist monk."

People in the PRC often remark that there is a "vacuum of faith" in China. Chinese today function with fragments of ideologies, a mix of Marxism for socio-economic thought, Confucianism for personal relations and Capitalism for economic and technological growth. But absent is that moral core that, like the "Thoughts of Mao Zedong," once inspired people to move mountains.

Those who hate Falun Dafa see it as a throw-back to China's past of poverty, superstition and fatalism. Those who love Falun Dafa see it as a moral lifeboat in a sea of depravity. Those who wonder why the fuss about Falun Dafa believe that pragmatism and democracy are the best road leading towards a good society.

But from the perspective of history two other roads become visible. One is marked by growing hatred, clashes and bloodshed between the Communist authorities and the passionate adherents of Falun Dafa. That will lead to a disintegration of China similar to what happened almost two millennia ago. The other road will be marked by recognition by both sides that divided both, and China as well, will fall but united China will stand and move ahead under a brilliant sky whatever the color.