Autoimmune Disease of the Spiritual Kind

Here we are, looking at The Yaochi Palace Temple, located on Qingliang Mountain in Huyi district of the northwestern province of Shaanxi.  It is a one-thousand-years old Taoist temple, previously protected as a historical site, but has suddenly been deemed illegally built and without proper documents and permits.  Parts of it have already been demolished, and the rest of it has been sealed off.

Pray tell, how is it possible that a century-old building can suddenly be deemed to have been illegally built?  Quick answer is:  It was tainted with religious Taoist effigies and superstitious signs like the tao symbol and I Ching trigrams, that’s how.  It even has red paint all over doors and signs.  Its lanterns are also red, indicative of an unholy house of worship.  This is considered evil in China.  It must not be allowed to stand.

So it got condemned.

Historic Temples Too

You see this temple here?

This is Lianhua Temple.  It is a folk religion temple and it is almost a thousand years old. It was designated as a major historical and cultural site that was protected by the city of Zhengzhou in 2009. Two years later, they even erected a monument in front of the temple to commemorate this event, proving that it had, indeed, been blessed by the local authorities.

Suddenly, out of the blue, it got condemned by the same people who endorsed it only years before because it was associated with being a “White Lotus”, which is an ancient Chinese folk religious movement that was established at the end of the 13^th century and later persecuted.

The people guarding the temple said that they had never heard of White Lotus before, and that Lianhua Temple and “White Lotus” were completely unrelated.  That didn’t matter though.  They could have been Pink Lotus or Wilted Lotus, it really wouldn’t have mattered.  They were on the documents to be eliminated, and that was that.  There would be no recourse.

And if you think this is just isolated incidents, let me hasten to assure you that it’s widespread and deeply enforced.  At last count, just for Taoist pagodas and temples alone, the number stands far above five thousand temples.

You may think that the destruction looks like a war zone, and you would be correct.  The CPC is at war with its own people.  It is truly a devastating autoimmune disease of the worst kind.  It rots from the inside out.

According to a local official who spoke with Bitterwind, a newspaper that talks about what is happening in China:

“The government claims in public that believers are also citizens and should be respected, but during internal meetings, it is said that believers are enemies and that religion should be eradicated despite the freedom of belief prescribed by the Chinese Constitution.”

This is what you do to the enemies.  You destroy their communities, destroy their way of life, destroy their customs and religions.  Then, once they no longer have faith in anything, you assimilate them so that they are easier to control.  This is one of Confucius’ tenets, and it has been followed religiously all these centuries.

It is also the reason why, of the three faiths my family followed, Confucianism is the one teaching I don’t even bother to study.  I have to save my brainpower for the really important lessons in life, such as the power of spells and lá bùa.  Do you remember  the post I wrote on the deconstruction of the magic spell?

Here is the spell that was created and invoked by the CPC.

It’s written out in clear edict.  Even has a stamp, which gives it power.  This is the spell I call DESTRUCTION.  It has the power to destroy many things.

Here are just a small sample, taken from Bitterwinter, of the various temples and statues that have been demolished, defaced, redesigned, or covered up due to this lá bùa magic spell.

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Sadly, it is not just Taoist temples that have been targeted.  Buddhist temples and Christian churches have also been defaced and razed to the ground.

Christians too

This lovely piece of architecture is The Golden Lampstand Church.  It’s not Catholic.  It’s a Protestant Church, but it ain’t a church no more.  Yep.  It’s gone.  Blasted by dynamite and razed to the ground, it got demolished for being a bad influence to society, for spreading superstitions and evil, and for promoting gang violence.

Many of the buildings where Christians congregated were bulldozed to the ground.  Of those that still stand, many have been condemned, and the rest have been sealed with brick and mortar, because you know…evil influences and gang members hang out here too, and corrupt the good people.

Nothing is sacred.  No Jesus statues, no Mary statues. No crosses.  All the saints and angels got smashed to rubble as well.

Christian influences have been so very evil and unholy that the government has begun prohibiting religious ceremonies during funerals and weddings, eliminating any faith-related rituals and traditions.

That’s right.  No more baptisms for your babies or prayer groups for the elderly.  All that stuff is evil and bad for society, and promotes gang violence.  So says the new (small-g) god of China, Xi Jinping.

Singing religious hymns will cost you jail time.  Congregating around a dead person and saying a few words to console the living will cost you some time and money in the clinker.

Your charge:  Spreading false information to dead people—which brings me to dead people.

Dead people too

It is quite amazing, how it terrorizes the people who are affected by this plague, but it is not only living people who are suffering from the crackdown—even dead believers are unable to rest in peace.  Don’t even get me started on dead people’s rights.

In July of 2018, the government ordered Zhenjiang Temple’s Pagoda to completely remove the ashes of Buddhists stored in their pagoda, which also included a columbarium (a room or building where funeral urns are stored).

The reason for the forced removal had to do with the fact that the ashes of those dead people who were currently placed inside that columbarium had paid the temple 3,000 RMB (about $430) for the privilege of owning a tiny space inside the pagoda for as long as the pagoda existed.  That was regarded by the government as making money off dead people, and was therefore, illegal.

And I’m like…$430 one-time-payment for a permanent space that I can park my dead ass and hang out amongst the living grounds of a lush beautiful temple (as opposed to a dead graveyard where nobody lives or visits)?  Heck, sign me up!  That’s a steal!

But I don’t think it has anything to do with the ‘extortion of money from dead people’ as it was about the fact that it’s on holy land, with monks taking care of the ashes.  And we all know how evil monks are.

Monks Too

In mid-April of 2019, more than 100 Taoist believers in Tonghua county were doing a Sermon for the Dead (I wrote about this type of sermon in one of my previous posts, Hungry Ghosts 3: Sermons for the Dead) and they got hauled off to jail too, even though they had gotten proper certificates from the government to hold the event.

The monks waved around permits and papers, proving that holding this particular traditional ceremony for the deceased was not illegal, but if you have ever tried to argue with a mad dog, you will find that you cannot argue with a mad dog.

To the monks who had the proper papers, the government officials proclaimed, “Even if you have a certificate, it’s still unacceptable. You’re deceiving the common people, and this is illegal.”

People…think about this.  The monks were accused of deceiving the common DEAD people, because the sermons were focused on helping the dead wandering souls, which meant it was a superstitious hocus-pocus event.

The temple’s director was subsequently arrested for “illegally engaging in superstitious activities” and went to the slammer for 15 days. The person who posted the video of the ceremony was also thrown in with the director for “picking quarrels, provoking trouble, and spreading rumors.”

It seems as if the only safe place left is safely dead and underground, but even graveyards have not been left in peace.  Most graves have some sort of religious icons on them, from crosses to Mary statues and Buddha statues.  Since it’s illegal for the deceased to decorate themselves in religious paraphernalia, these items were also removed and their graves desecrated.

Statues Too

Defacing buildings, beheading statues, leveling buildings to the ground–these are tactics that were used in order to ‘remove gangs and evil doers from society’.  But if that’s, what they are trying to eradicate (gangs doing evil deeds), I think the people who live here would prefer to have the gangs, because Jesus Christ!!! This is horrible.

Even gang members will not do this sort of destruction. They may go around tagging a few places, but they will never do this much damage.  They live in the area too, and they also go to these places to seek emotional solace and spiritual healing when things get bad.

Local government officials who get large monetary rewards for getting rid of temples and statues are the real gangs and bullies here.

I mean—just look at this photo of Buddhas that have had their heads knocked off.  That’s gotta take some serious mean streak to do something like that.  And now you know why hungry ghosts exist and why they cannot find peace, even in death.  The karmic damage that they do to their own soul is incalculable.

You see, beheading statues does not affect the deities in any way shape or form.  They are all enlightened and out there in nirvana-land doing fun stuff.  They don’t really care what happens to their effigies.

These crimes against ceramics and brass and brick and stone are really crimes against the PEOPLE who put time and effort and money to create and place them, in sacred places where the IDEA of the sanctity of the human soul is respected.

The golden rule:  DO NO HARM has been violated on such a huge scale that it will take a very long time for this karmic reverberation to subside.

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Once that respect for the human soul has been violated, the repercussions are colossal and long lasting.   Whether or not there is a hungry, thirsty soul that wanders around the world in search of spiritual redemption is hardly the point.  It is always about the living people who are living their daily lives, trying to make sense of what can often be senseless, who need redemption the most.

Destroying this part of their life is tantamount to striking their very psyche and causes serious emotional harm because it terrorizes the people who are involved.

Even if these statues are just for decorative purposes, it would still feel as if your rights as a human being have been violated in a vicious manner, perpetrated by a group of people in power, who come into your home and desecrate it.

These statues, however, are sacred.  They are the focus of morality in the heart and mind of that very common villager who may not have much, but they at least had spiritual sustenance.  Now that sustenance has been destroyed and all they have left is the empty, arrogant god of Xi Jinping.

Sadly, there is nothing that the people can do to stop this war against their way of life.  As one person laments:  “Government officials demanded it, so there’s nothing that can be done.  Doesn’t anyone who encounters a rabid dog have to sidestep it? If you’re obstinate with the government, you will suffer even more.”

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