BACKGROUND:
Confucius - His philosophy emphasized personal and governmental morality, correctness of social relationships, justice and sincerity and to honor your parents. He put the greatest emphasis on the importance of study and sincerity .
Lao-Tzu or Laozi - Taoist (Daoism) propriety and ethics emphasize the Three Jewels of the Tao: compassion, moderation, and humility. Taoist thought focuses on health, longevity, immortality and spontaneity. Also moderation and humility are important concepts.
Buddha - His philosophy included that all things are impermanent and the Noble Eightfold Path: right understanding, right thought, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration. And the search for true enlightenment.
These religious philosophies were suppressed when the Communists took over China in 1949 and during the Cultural Revolution (1966 to 1976). Today the government still looks to control religions but with a lighter hand than they did in the past.
CURRENT STATISTICS:
-Buddhism has a history of 2,000 years in China. Currently China has 13,000-some Buddhist temples and about 200,000 Buddhist monks and nuns. Among them are 120,000 lamas and nuns, more than 1,700 Living Buddhas, and 3,000-some temples of Tibetan Buddhism and nearly 10,000 Bhiksu and senior monks and more than 1,600 temples of Pali Buddhism.
-Taoism, native to China, has a history of more than 1,700 years. China now has over 1,500 Taoist temples and more than 25,000 Taoist priests and nuns.
-Confucianism is more a philosophy on how to live your life than a religion.
Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism have upheld the Chinese cultural tradition and moral standard for the last few thousand years. The Chinese Communist regime destroyed the belief of Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism during the Great Cultural Revolution. The negative impact was too great to miss from human right violation to poisonous milk formula. See Chapter 5 in the nine commentaries.com.
In the modern times, the Chinese Communist regime is persecuting Tibetan monks, Buddhists, and Falun Gong practitioners. The worst human right abuse is the harvesting of organs from live Falun Gong practitioners. The Chinese Communist regime has state sanctioned temples and churches for Confucianism, Daoism, Buddhism, Catholicism, and Protestanism, but the regime assigns party member to be head of the religion.
There are signs of some revival but it's entirely capitalist. A visitor to a famous temple might caught up paying very steep price for incense offerings. The Shaolin temple is now under MBA-degree management. Monks in many temples work as a 9 to 5 job with monk uniforms. At the end of the day, they took off the uniform and go home.
Confucianism, Daoism and Buddhismin in other countries, such as in Taiwan, Korea, and Japan enjoy freedom in practice.
A new Buddhist belief called Falun Gong was found in 1992. It is a unique Buddhist school, teaching an ancient practice for the mind, body, and spirit, based upon the universal principles of Truthfulness, Compassion, and Tolerance. Falun Gong consists of five sets of powerful exercises. Exercise demonstration mp3 files and the books about the practice can be freely downloaded. Meditation instruction and workshop are also free.
The most offensive human right violation is the organ harvesting from the Falun Gong practitioners in China. Can you kindly sign a petition to stop persecution of Falun Gong practitioners in China, please ?
http://cipfg.org/en/news/petition.html
How does the revival of Confucianism affect Chinese society? Daoism? Buddhism?
