Chapter 3: Zhang Yingchen's Fanfiction on the New Daoism
The following pieces were all written by DĂ oquĂĄnzÇ (cameo character: Zhang Yingchen) from the Longkong Forum. Founder of the Lingao New Daoism concept:
Excerpts from Zhang Yingchen's Diary:
The assembly is about to convene. Over the past few days, I have visited the temples of the Lingao region, and the picture that emerges is clear: religious activities here have yet to find their proper footing. The clergy of both Daoism and Buddhism occupy extremely low status locally, and these religious personnel themselves scarcely possess the qualifications of proper clergy. Beyond chanting precious scrolls, they fundamentally lack the training of true religious professionalsâthey are skilled in neither the rites for releasing hungry ghosts nor the ceremonies of repentanceâand a considerable number of them are entirely illiterate.
The poor quality of Daoist and Buddhist clergy has granted Lingao's folk religions enormous room to flourish. Likewise, it has given the Jesuits tremendous growth prospects.
After meeting with the Lingao Monastery and that Rector Wu, I am convinced that if the Lingao Church develops without any counterbalance, it will ultimately attain the status of state religion under the transmigrators' regime.
Yet most of our fellow transmigrators seem not to realize what a state religion truly entails. Yes, at present our traversal collective remains an elite shaped by atheism, and the Lingao Churchâconstrained by the Religious Affairs Officeâcannot compete with us on any level. However, in this seventeenth century, where neither universal education nor materialist thought has yet taken root, the Church will doubtless wield far broader influence than our educational efforts.
We transmigrators may be immune to their supernatural claptrap, but what of our descendants, our subjects? Clearly, we will not employ Marxist-Leninist materialism or any industrial-society theory to shape the majority of them. In fact, judging by the behavior of the "soy sauce faction" that dominated the Maid Revolution, they will not concern themselves with this matter in the slightest.
It is foreseeable that within a few decades, the Lingao Church will become a force of considerable weight in society, and after the transmigrators grow old, its influence will expand further stillâperhaps even reversing course to consume the transmigrators' regime itself.
I believe we need a counterweight to balance this monster we ourselves have created, to prevent its monopoly. Perhaps this is precisely the mission heaven has bestowed upon me.
In modern times, we observe the Quanzhen and Zhengyi sectsâstandard models of immortal-seeking Daoism. But if we trace back to the earliest Celestial Masters and the Taiping Way, paying close attention to the Taiping Jing and the Xiang'er Commentary, we find that primitive Daoism was not particularly interested in the various arts for attaining immortality.
The Xiang'er Commentary, for example, characterized the breathing exercises, daoyin, spirit-preservation, and visualization techniques practiced by contemporary fangshi as "false arts," and labeled sects sacrificing to ghosts and spirits as "false paths." What the Xiang'er Commentary advocated instead was keeping precepts as the path to approach the Dao. Yet the Celestial Masters soon merged with the ghost-worship practices of Bashu, absorbing vast quantities of talismanic magic and other elements they had originally opposed. Such "carrying the red flag while opposing the red flag" religious evolution occurred similarly in various medieval sects.
Consider Christianity, whichâinfluenced by Roman pagan beliefâbegan incorporating European folk deities as saints. Or Islam in South and Central Asia, which preserved the spirit worship traditions of shamanism. Or Indian Buddhism, which upon entering China combined with Daoist philosophy to produce Chan Buddhism, famous for its iconoclastic tradition of reviling the Buddha and cursing the patriarchs.
Even our own Religious Affairs Office's Father Bai and Rector Wu, when spreading Christianity, find they must accommodate the customs of the Great Ming.
That doctrine becomes distorted upon contact with alien civilizations is an inevitable problem in missionary work. Though we of the Lingao collective possess knowledge and historical experience far surpassing this era, this issue cannot be avoided. Yet Lingao's thought is destined to replace old thought; Lingao's religion is destined to replace old religionâwhether Roman Catholicism, Orthodoxy, Buddhism, or traditional Daoismâall will inevitably be supplanted. This is a great war of ideology, admitting no room for tenderness or modest yielding.
Throughout history, ordinary administrative measures have proven unable to eliminate old religions. Only when a people completely convert to a new religion do they thoroughly break with the old. That is to say, only religion can eliminate religion.
The task of our Daoist Council is not to completely annihilate the old sects, but ratherâby approaching believers, uniting believers, and mobilizing believersâto thoroughly isolate the old temple masters, monastery heads, and Daoist and Buddhist officials. We must completely shatter old religious models and systems and establish new sects obedient to us transmigrators...
Excerpted from Chairman Zhang Yingchen's "Summary of Speech at the Religious Affairs Office New Year Symposium"
Father Matteo Ricci always firmly believed that this ancient land bore traces of our Lord's salvation. Regrettably, when Father Ălvaro Semedo participated in excavating and translating the sacred Church stele erected by a Tang Dynasty emperor a thousand years ago for our Lord Jesus (namely the Nestorian Stele of China), Father Ricci was no longer alive to share in this holy relic that our Lord Jesus, through the hands of the separated brethren, had left in this empire.
Nevertheless, I believe the Almighty Lord had already, in His own way, granted revelation to the ancient sages of China. It is merely that the followers of Pythagoras in India (the Jesuits once believed Indian Buddhism and Hinduism were offshoots of Greek Pythagorean mysteries), with their fallacies and the poisonous views of heresy, contaminated the Gospel of the Lord.
This caused the Confucian philosophers to gradually lose the lofty ideals of their forebears, and the damage wrought by Pythagorean doctrines upon another school of inspired philosophers proved almost irreparableâtransforming scholars who should have dwelt in the Rose Garden of Supreme Bliss into alchemists and idolaters reminiscent of the Gnostics.
The erudite Elders of Lingao, when speaking of the present state of the old empire, generally consider the northern Tartars to be civilization's greatest enemies. They invoke Attila the Hun and the Tartar dynasty served by the Venetian Marco Polo, expressing grief over the destruction of ancient imperial civilization by nomadic peoples.
As a group of exiled descendants of the former dynasty's nobility, the "Yuan" dynasty is unforgivable. But to me, a foreign priest, the Tartars' most unforgivable crime is that they poisoned the two paths of salvation once belonging to the Chinese with the harmful thoughts of Pythagoras's Indian followers. They transformed the wise classics of Confucianism and Daoismâtexts that had received calling and revelationâinto the rigid rules of the philosophical-official "Mandarin" caste and the playthings of Daoist priests who know only soul-damaging heresies like alchemy and talismanic magic.
But the salvation of our Lord Christ enabled their most excellent leaders, at the very moment when barbarous pagans had nearly destroyed the most luminous and glorious aspect of this nation, to guide the finest peopleâlike that prophet in Exodusâto a new Jerusalem. There they preserved my Lord's salvation, along with their most glorious morals, traditions, knowledge, and dignity.
They also preserved their own religionâbut this religion had not been poisoned by India's harmful doctrines. Countless reasonable elements within it demonstrate that it once contained the path of salvation of our Lord Jesus, and that it remains the most fertile soil for the seeds of Jesus Christ to grow and bear fruit.
...
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Thirty years after this magnum opus was published, the famous "Rites Controversy" erupted between the Empire and the Italian Church. The ignorant, reactionary feudal chieftainâthe antipope Clement XIâdefied the tide of history and brazenly declared The Great Empire Record a forbidden book, placing it in the European Index of Prohibited Books. The historically significant movement of Eastern Learning spreading West consequently fell into decline due to his series of reactionary measures, which subsequently caused Europe to gradually fall behind the tide of historical development.
"Introduction to the Great Empire Record Section of the False Roman Curia's Index of Prohibited Books"
Zhang Yingchen's Letter to He Ying Before Departure
When He Ying received Zhang Yingchen's letter, the tall Mongolian doctor had already boarded a ship bound for the mining district.
Holding this documentâmore a work plan than a personal letterâHe Ying could not help but admire the charlatan's courage and drive.
He sat down, unfolded the letter paper, and slowly read the parting words of Lingao's first Chancellor and Chairman of the Daoist Council:
"...When disparate civilizations collide, the result is typically that the advanced eliminates the backward, the civilized eliminates the barbarous. Thus, in this era, the Jesuits easily destroyed the Mayan priests of South America; going back three hundred years, Islam and Tibetan Buddhism readily induced two Mongol peoples to accept conversion. However, collision inevitably brings fusion, and for religions, contamination by the old traditions of new converts is likewise unavoidable.
"Comrade Wu Mangshi seems to wish to conduct a social experiment in reforming customs here in Lingaoâmuch as those Jesuits in Macau who have been building Churches of Our Lady to resemble Taoist temples of the Goddess of Mercy are now attempting. This sort of endeavor has been tried by the Islamic clergy of Central Asia and Southeast Asia, and by the Jesuit, Dominican, and Franciscan friars of South America. Without exception, they have failed shamefully.
"The herders of Central Asia still trust their shamans; the Muslims of the Philippines still worship sacred trees; the goddesses of the Maya and Inca, garbed in the guise of Our Lady of Guadalupe, continue to occupy the center of South American churches. It is foreseeable that in the Religious Affairs Office's future work, resisting the erosion of old culture will prove a long and arduous task.
"Therefore, conversion, changing beliefs, reforming customsâthese can only be preliminary work. As Matteo Ricci observed, 'This only cuts away some of the brambles from the thorny wasteland.'
"Only by reshaping the very soil in which old society and old culture survive can we truly achieve our purpose.
"The ultimate goal of transforming faith is transforming civilizationâthat is, converting medieval agricultural civilization into modern industrial civilization. I hope that I and my successors will always remember this, and never stupidly fall into some self-enclosed, regressive fetish of dogmatism.
"The medieval opiate of religion for the masses is beneficial to us in the short term. But in the long run, we must abandon the Catholic approach: we must convert the short-term investment of sheep-herding into sustained, long-term investment.
"The Church should shoulder educational duties. Beyond ideological education instilled through religious forms, basic education is the paramount priority of our work. The tedious 'Dispute over the Translation of Lord of Heaven,' the 'Dispute over Heaven and Hell,' the 'Dispute over Whether the Tai Yi, Hundun, Taiji, Li, and the Lord of Heaven Are the Same'âthese were nothing more than one set of European medieval philosophy and one set of Asian medieval philosophy fighting over orthodoxy and discursive authority.
"Our work is not to introduce a new opiate for easier rule, but to serve as a catalyst for the transformation from old society to new. We are not creating mere new wine in old bottles, replacing old gods with new gods, but rather using the hands of new gods to gradually erode the very foundation of divine authority. The secularization and simplification of religion is a sign of social progress in the seventeenth century. We must guide this new tide, not pile on elaborate new rituals after overthrowing the old ones, and certainly not engage in meaningless nonsense like transforming nature worship into machine worship.
"In my lifetime, I fear I must make some accommodation with the faiths of the old world. The Lingao Monastery may give birth to various cults of the seventeenth century; our Daoist Council may witness the emergence of a radical, restorationist True Lord Advent faction, or a Daoist version of the Golden Dawn. But we must firmly grasp educational work. Only a thoroughly secularized civilized world can cut off the specter of the medieval at its root.
"At this moment, let us not imitate the Prefect of Jiuzhou, whose sodden blue shirt would prove unbecoming indeed. Let us instead emulate that sage of Wenchuan and cry out, 'Pour me a cup of farewell wine!' as we embark upon the adventure that belongs to me and to all of you.
"Wish me fair winds, old friend."
(End of Chapter)