Their life is challenging. Their demanding and peculiar lifestyle radiates a quiet beauty.
Lifechanyuan
Inside Lifechanyuan. 5. Heaven, Earth, and the New Era: Xuefeng’s Eschatology
The community’s teachings describe multiple levels of afterlife heavens and hells, and a coming New Era on Earth.
Inside Lifechanyuan. 4. Xuefeng Communism in Practice: Daily Life in the Second Home
The abolition of private property and a radical criticism of the family are rooted more in the idea of the spiritual community as a living entity than Marxism.
Inside Lifechanyuan. 3. Cosmology and Creation
The community’s account of the origins of the universe and humankind is metaphysical, psychological, and ethical.
Inside Lifechanyuan. 2. A Journey Across Time, Spirit, and Borders
Persecution hit the movement after Xi Jinping came to power in China, leading many members to seek asylum in Thailand and Canada.
Inside Lifechanyuan. 1. A Community of Light in the Shadows of Persecution
I was the first scholar to visit the “Second Home” in Thailand of a unique spiritual family that combines Buddhism, esoteric traditions, and religion-based “communism.”
Raided and Terrorized: China Cracks Down Again on Life Zen Temple
A member who escaped abroad reports to “Bitter Winter” the terror of the new raids against an idiosyncratic but peaceful new religious movement.
Life Zen Temple Banned as a Xie Jiao and Raided
The movement promotes a radical “religious Communism,” eliminating in its communes private property and the family, replaced by free love.