Love is a Precious Gift Bestowed Upon Humankind by The Greatest Creator

--Lifechanyuan’s View of Affectionate Love

Xuefeng

December 16, 2005

Nature is beautiful and pleasing to the eye and heart with all of its rich colors; human life lingers and is sentimental because of affectionate love. Without color, nature would be dull and boring; without affectionate love, human life would be the same.

"What is affectionate love and why are people willing to die for it?"

• It was written that, “A British prince loved beauty more than power".

• In “The Butterfly Lovers”, Liang Shanbo jumped into Ju Yingtai's grave without hesitation.

• Romeo sang the Nightingale Song under Juliet’s window every night.

• Many European musicians and artists and some great Russian writers created enduring masterpieces after they had been inspired by the love in their hearts.

• In the fairy tale, Prince Charming inspired innumerable girls' beautiful dreams of their futures.

• “The Seventh Fairy Maiden” descended down into the mortal world to love and marry Dong Yong.

• The Jade Hare did the same from the moon in order to enjoy a good marriage.

• The beautiful courtesan Du Shiniang tossed her precious jewel box into a river when she lost her lover.

• Ying Ying risked everything by daring to love Zhang the Scholar.

• A maiden from an official family surrendered her comfortable lifestyle for love when young married women complained about their sheltered lives.

• Gifted youth dueled and died for the love, which often brought the heroes to tears.

• Love has made countless men and women bow in homage when they would rather die than live without it.

• White Snakes, Green Snakes, Foxes, and Spiders who had practiced for thousands of years and achieved excellent practice also tried to escape the chasing of Fa Hai Masters, Sun Wukong, the Monkey King, and Taoist priests to enjoy passionate relationships with handsome young man in the mortal world.

• Love makes people toss and turn in bed; it makes us unable to fall asleep and gives us the strength to search for our lovers across many thousands of miles; it makes us pine away for many days and suffer regrets for the rest of our lives; it even makes many of us surrender our precious lives.

Affectionate love is a precious gift bestowed upon humankind by the Greatest Creator. Jesus and Sakyamuni are our two bright lights on our way to happy lives; in our hearts, they are the most respected of mortals, but one is God while the other is Buddha, so we cannot use their standards to demand anything from people because that would deviate completely from the Greatest Creator’s original intention. The Greatest Creator designed sexual organs for people to enjoy; physical contact raises our passions while orgasms bring us to ecstasy. Missing our lovers leaves us depressed and lazy but seeing them elevates us unable to think straight, speeds our metabolisms, and flushes our faces. Is this not all beautiful? Is it necessary for us to set up barriers, obstacles, and difficulties which prevent people from loving each other sincerely? The suppression and obstruction of love destroys human nature and rebels against the Greatest Creator. Someone once said, "Life is precious, love is expensive, but both can be dethroned for freedom", so my question becomes, “What is the use of freedom once you have abandoned LIFE and love?”.

Chairman Mao was a great man whom I admire dearly, but during his era, the repression of love was extreme. Not only did he suppress young people’s innocent yearnings for love, but he also destroyed the most splendid time for love in human nature and directly distorted its most beautiful and normal psychological state. “The Memorial Archway for Chastity" is still constraining people's normal psychological state which was given to us by the Greatest Creator and is a defilement of human nature.

I hope that people can reflect on the culture of affectionate love calmly and rationally, including the religious teachings on affectionate love. First, lower the standards and consider affectionate love from a human level instead of elevating ourselves by applying those divine standards of Godhood and Buddhahood; in other words, we can only play human roles well by conforming to the original intentions of the Greatest Creator from when humans were created. Only this will prepare us to enjoy the life in higher level spaces that the Greatest Creator has established for us.

Without passionate love lives, we can scarcely feel the great love of the Greatest Creator for mankind and can hardly understand ITS will. Therefore, anyone who rejects affectionate love is rejecting the Greatest Creator and violating ITS will. Lifechanyuan advocates monogamous, "life-long love from childhood to old age", because this is the noblest, purest, most beautiful, and most stable love life for us. I hope everyone in the world can enjoy this kind of love life. Lifechanyuan opposes "prostitution and whoring", because they corrupt affectionate loving relationships. They are only commodity exchanges, low-level, taste-based physical desires; They have absolutely NOTHING to do with affectionate love. If prostitution and whoring were rampant, the ancient tragedy of Rome would surely befall our society.

In order to rectify the root, clear up the source, promote humanity, reduce tragedies, and reward true love, Lifechanyuan puts forward the following views on love:

1. Love Ethics

Love ethics refers to the order of seniority in the family hierarchy which is linked by kinship. For example, let us consider two brothers in which the older one marries woman A. If the younger one later married A's niece, it would violate ethics, because there would be a confusion of relationships; should A's niece call the older brother's wife her aunt or her sister-in-law? In another example, if a woman's father-in-law has an affair with her sister, that would also violate ethics because there would be confusion in addressing the woman's sister; would she call her sister's father-in-law, her uncle or her brother? A third example would be if the younger brother were to marry his brother's mother-in-law's sister. This would violate ethics in that it would be against Chinese traditional family tree structures because it is inappropriate for the older brother to call his brother's mother-in-law's sister his sister-in-law or call his brother's wife his auntie.

In conclusion, if love happens between relatives, they can be considered to have respected relational ethics as long as their addresses are consistent; otherwise, they would violate those ethics whether such relationship is near or far. Love between brothers and sisters would also be against ethics because it is inappropriate for anyone to identify their sibling as their spouse.

If you violate love’s ethics, you violate human principles, and if you violate human principles, then how can you be considered to be human?

2. Love Civilization

Love civilization refers to the behavior of expressing love which must be proper in time and location and cannot happen at just any occasion or it would violate love civilization.

For example, in public places, there are people of different generations, such as mothers with sons, fathers with daughters, aunts with nephews, fathers-in-law with sons-in-law, and grandmothers with grandsons. In these cases, if someone were to hug and kiss their lover passionately and behave intimately, they would be violating love civilization because expressing intimacy in front of older or younger people is also against love civilization and those who violate love civilization can only be thought of as being subhuman beasts because they should know better.

3. Love Age

Affectionate love refers to the love between people who can have physical relationships with mutual affection. It refers exclusively to those between adults and excludes all minors. Taking into account factors such as physical, emotional, and intellectual development, and the impact on their future lives, the occurrence of love behavior between an adult and anyone considered to be under the “age of maturity” or the “age of consent” violates the love age. For whatever reason, the adult’s behavior is criminal deception. As for the innocent love between young boys and girls, they are normal physiological and psychological phenomena should never be fussed over.

4. Love Relationships

Where love ethics, civilization, and age are not violated, and no other transaction-oriented principles are violated, the affection and attraction between people is called a love relationship. They are in line with human nature, and with the Greatest Creator’s intention to procreate humans. Love relationships have nothing to do with age (within the love age); twenty-year-olds and eighty-year-olds can enjoy so-called Spring-Fall relationships as they do not violate love ethics.

5. Love Diversity

People in human societies are different from each other. Some are enthusiastic while others are cold, some are omnivorous while others impose moral dietary restrictions, some are powerless while others are energetic. Therefore, it is impossible to formulate standard and universal rules for love relationships; they are unique and personal. Lifelong monogamy is good but changing lovers is also good; remaining single and loving many at one time are both good. As long as the lovers are willing and are in line with human nature, others have no right to interfere.

6. Love Morality

Love relationships established on the basis of not harming other people's love defines love morality.

This is really a tricky problem which we shall illustrate with the famous novel from the Song Dynasty, Water Margin on the relationship of Wu Dalang, his wife Pan Jinlian, and her lover, Ximen Qing. From the perspective of traditional morality, Pan should have been faithful to Wu throughout her life and her love affair with Ximen was against the traditional doctrine for a married woman because she should not have become involved with another man, but from the point of view of human nature, it was too cruel for Pan because her faith met Wu’s satisfaction at the cost of her own feelings. So, what should she have done? Could she have been satisfied with her husband throughout her life? It is too cruel for a physically and psychologically healthy woman with unfulfilled emotional needs to be loyal to a husband who was unable to meet her sexual needs, let alone to satisfy her emotional needs. So, the love relationship between Pan and Ximen was reasonable and she had the right to pursue it, but the situation was different for Ximen because his behavior would hurt the love relationship between Pan and Wu and it was contrary to love morality. Therefore, tragedy was inevitable because in this story, Pan was the victim of Ximen's desire; Wu's behavior is also against love morality because his relationship with Pan hurt Pan and Ximen's love, so he should bear some responsibility.

However, it is easy to condemn Ximen while it is more difficult to condemn Wu because even though the love relationship between Wu and Pan pre-existed that of Pan and Ximen, Ximen's social standing was stronger than Wu’s, and offering sympathy to the weak is a human duty. Without sympathy for the weak, would human society not become like the animal world?

So, what should one do in Wu’s or Pan’s position? If we consider that since Wu had already established a marital relationship with Pan, then she should not have entered into a love relationship with Ximen, or at least she should have terminated it immediately and restrained and suppressed herself. Some would say that Wu needed care because without Pan, he might have remained a bachelor throughout his life. For that, I would hope that some moralist would be willing to persuade his daughter or sister to marry Wu; it would be perfect and would be worthy of our praise...NOT!

We must consider both Wu and Pan because we are people with human natures. We can neither allow the strong to bully the weak nor the weak to bully the strong, nor can we destroy human nature in order to take care of either. How do we deal with this public case? Should Pan have suffered all her life? Definitely not! We must save Pan from her jail. Should Wu endure humiliation and be helpless all of his? Of course not! Human society should build a world where everyone can be happy and free.

Wu and Pan became both each other’s freedom and their tragedy, so how could we have made both of them free but not tragic? Encourage Pan to divorce? Wu was too pitiful. Pan elopes with Ximen Qing? She could not have afforded the crime of bigamy and Wu's fate would have been more miserable. The only solution would have been an emancipation of their minds; Pan should have opened up to Wu and told him what she wanted, needed, and felt; Wu should have had a clear understanding about his inability and he should have loved Pan and understood her situation. An agreement could have been reached in which Pan would have been allowed to enjoy "wild fruit" appropriately, in order to make up for Wu’s inadequacy on the condition that Pan continues to perform her wifely duties for Wu.

As Ximen was very wealthy, he should have known that if he wanted to maintain his stable love relationship with Pan, then he needed to be fair to Wu and bring him no harm; he might have chosen to take care of Wu's life. If the three people in this story had agreed to such an arrangement, they could have lived in peace and Pan would have been satisfied both physically and emotionally. As the love relationships between Wu, Pan, and Xinmen would not have been based on hurting each other’s relationships, this would not have violated love’s morality.

It would have been fine if Wu would have agreed to divorce Pan, but if he chose neither to divorce her nor to accept the above suggestion, he would have ended up with nothing in his life. Suppressing of Pan Jinlian's human nature is discouraged STRONGLY in Lifechanyuan. On the other hand, if Ximen had also accepted the above suggestion, everything would have been fine, but if not, and he had acted as he pleased because of his wealth, he might have been charged with a crime or even been killed by Wu Dalang's younger brother, Wu Song.

My dear friend, do you have any alternative suggestions to raise for discussion? Every individual is different and no one wears anyone else’s shoes, so we should set moral rules based on human nature which should apply to everyone, whether they are poor or rich, weak or strong, in the minority or in the majority.

Most Chinese people are atheistic and materialistic. According to their point of view, there are no previous or future lives in any sense and our deaths are like lamps going out, so since we can only enjoy one life, we should live it to our fullest. No matter how beautiful the reason might be, there should be no sacrifice of human nature, and one of the most magnificent aspects of human nature is love.

Deprivation of human nature occurred during the Middle Ages in Europe and in feudal society in China. Those shopworn scholars who assumed to be moralists, those well-fed and prosperous high officials and noble lords, and those churchmen who did not know the real truth of the universe never thought about the emancipation of human nature, especially the human nature of ordinary people. Those young people who played their youths away in anticipation for following their outmoded conventions and customs, and some ignorant old people too, made no efforts to loosen the shackles on later generations. Whenever any love disputes occurred, their reply would be to "Endure it as we have done throughout our lives; you see how we survived, you will do the same" What did you say? You should just shut up! You men wore two pigtails; you women wrapped your feet; must our young generation do the same? A fox without its tail is not a good fox and a life without love is not a good life. People should not only live for survival but for life.

Love morality goes like this: as long as love does not bring harm to others, it is moral. Let us analyze several cases and phenomena according to love ethics, love civilization, proper age for love, love relationship, love diversity, and love morality.

1. Mr. Yang Zhenning and Ms. Wong Fan's love. Mr. Yang was a mature eighty-two years old while Ms. Wong was only twenty-eight years old when they got married. Is there any problem with their love?

• Does their love violate any state rule or law?

• Does their love violate any societal ethic?

• Does their love violate any civil understanding?

• Does their love violate the proper age of love?

• Does their love violate the purpose of a love relationship?

• Does their love violate any limits on diversity?

• Does their love violate the morality of love?

If their love goes against or violates any of the above items, then that item should be blamed; if not, then their love should be defended or at least not challenged.

I do not know the details of their story, but from all the hearsay on the internet, we know that their love story violates neither any state rule or law, nor does it violate love ethics, love civilization, love age, or love morality, and Ms. Wong's reply to journalists showed that their love was based on mutual love and respect which means that their relationship conformed to the requirements of love relationships. Although he was much older than her, their age was within the proper age range for love. Therefore, the love relationship between them is worthy of affirmation and we should not only accept it, but should even encourage it.

They broke the constraints of traditional concepts under great pressure, posed as a good example for a lot of aged people, swept an obstacle, and created alternative outlets for the romantic desires of the elderly. Such a great disparity of age did not stop their love which displayed a broad and beautiful love relationship for older people. It is really a beautiful thing for elderly men who may enjoy obtaining a twenty-year-old girl's love. The comfort brought to elderly people is that it is absolutely possible to "dance a tango on the edge of death". It displayed the beautiful side of human nature.

Lifechanyuan would like to give support to love relationships such as Mr. Yang’s and Ms. Wong’s. We would like to help them resist the sandstorm, severe cold, intense heat, and hail storms from human society because their love is consistent with human nature and is also consistent with the will of the Greatest Creator.

2. The love relationship between a female director of a public security bureau in Shenzhen and her subordinates:

According to web-based news media, the director of a public security bureau in Shenzhen had love affairs with many of her subordinates who cooperated very willingly. There was nothing wrong with what this director was doing as long as she did not violate any item of the above love principles because it was her right. A lot of people sneered at her diverse taste for men, but Lifechanyuan believes that no one has any right to suppress their feelings or activities. No matter how many men she might have associated with, it was her decision and everyone has freedom in their conception and practice of love. She preferred to live a natural and unrestrained life even at the cost of her LIFE. This was absolutely her own business and had nothing to do with other people. Has this given us any trouble? Lifechanyuan is willing to offer support to these kinds of people. We wish that women everywhere could break the chains of their traditional concepts of their human natures and strive for their freedom in love.

3. Couple Parties:

There was a journal from South Africa which described in detail the situation of “swingers parties” or “couple's parties”. It really refreshed people's spirits after reading it. “Couple's parties” are events in which several, even as many as a dozen couples, hold regular gatherings in a club. The married spouses separate to form new pairs as they wish or randomly by lot. After the “pleasure gathering”, each couple returns to their spouses peacefully.

These kinds of relationships between husbands and wives are worth advocating because every pair of couples tires of each other after living together for several years. Even if you were eating a variety of exotic delicacies every day, whoever you are, you would become bored with your food however delicious it was, so changing your diet to even simple food such as cabbage and carrots would be refreshing. These families are not destroyed, society is not disturbed, and it is good for one's health and their family's harmony, so in Lifechanyuan, couple’s parties are advocated.

4.Sex Parties:

A group of people who share a common faith and where there are no violations of the principles of love are willing to live together; this is their freedom of love and no one is blameworthy. I wonder why moralists love to blame them severely? Could they formulate a perfect rule to help them live their lives more happily? If the answer is no, then, what gives them the right to interfere with their lifestyles and criticize them? Anyone who cannot lead a happy life had better not advise anyone else how to manage theirs. It would be much better to give them their own space, more understanding, and no criticism.

5. Loose and Faithless Women:

I was once deployed to do my job in a new place. A lot of new colleagues informed me that **** was a loose woman and to stay away from her or my reputation would be ruined beyond repair. Their words piqued my curiosity, but gossip was a powerful thing and I dared not get close to her because doing so might have invited their contempt. By accident, this woman greeted me at a company gathering after a year. Oh my God, what should I have done? I considered rejecting her, but that would have been improper and impolite. Accepting her? No, that would have been like jumping into a fiery pit! I had no choice but to force myself, masking like a sacrosanct moralist for answering her greeting and hoping that she would stay away from me. “Please don't ruin my political career; I am a promising department manager". Unexpectedly, this “loose woman" seemed unaffected; she was so shameless that she did not even respond to my indifference. Rather, she stood there talking to me politely and gracefully, being neither humble nor pushy. Standing there and listening to her for almost half an hour, I found myself becoming more and more interested in her story. I eventually came to realize that she was really a considerate and unusual woman with abundant sentiment. Her humiliation, grief, indignation, idealism, and beautiful dream for her future moved me deeply. Her words were logical and reasonable, but neither flirting nor flattering. It was not until she said "thanks for listening to me" that I realized that this woman had been hurt by the indifference, numbness, and societal prejudice. It was not her, but us who had dirty souls; it was not her, but us with despicable natures. She was like a small white rabbit among a crowd of wolves being discriminated against and insulted helplessly.

It turns out that what seems normal is often abnormal and what seems abnormal is often normal. Lifechanyuan is willing to rehabilitate people who have been discriminated against and humiliated due to such "loose women'' and “lifestyle issues”. Your souls are beautiful and what you have suffered is unfair. Regarding the phenomena of people’s infidelity to their spouses, there are often more tortuous and complicated meanings which require large spaces to make them clear, and I will discuss them later.

6. Love Triangles within Marriages:

I have been transferred from rural areas to cities, from campuses to factories, from being a public official to becoming a businessman, and from living in my home country to living abroad. I have witnessed so many tragedies and miserable conditions of families where innumerable men and women have lived lovelessly and even hellishly, enduring great physical and spiritual torment, and waiting for their salvation or liberation. They were like prisoners staring at the outside world numbly through cold steel bars and stretching out their hands and pleading "Help me; I need freedom; I need love".

This phenomenon is even more complicated than the above examples with both reasonable and unreasonable aspects, so it is difficult to reach conclusions. If you are interested in this topic, some day in the future, I will write some analyses for you to read.

Conclusion:

Affectionate love is a precious gift bestowed upon us by the Greatest Creator. A life without it is imperfect because it is the most splendid part of a beautiful one. Denying it is denying life and thus deviating from the Way of the Greatest Creator.

• Affectionate love is the embodiment of human nature; without it, there would be no exhibition of human nature; therefore, suppressing or destroying it is destroying human nature.

• All human morality must be based on the promotion of human nature, and any that ignores love has no humanity.

• As humans, we must be humans first, and then celestials, Buddha, or gods; to expect people to have the standards of celestials, Buddha, or gods is a defilement and destruction of humanity.

• Everyone has the right to choose their lifestyle, but NOTHING, including religions, political parties, and governments must ever impose their views of love on others.

• Always consider how you will live through this lifetime before thinking about the next one.

• The Greatest Creator wants people to enjoy their lives, but very importantly, to enjoy an affectionate love life; anyone who does not enjoy a good love life cannot understand the true intentions of, and cannot revere the Greatest Creator.

• My dear friends, go and pursue your own love passionately!

Postscript:

This article was written about a year ago and I dare not publish the full text. Only parts of it are published here. The main reason is that this article might arouse anger among traditional people because of its "corrupting public morals" characteristic. Today, I read an article written by Mr. Guo Zhiyi in the “Boxun” blog, “Defense for Yang Zhenning(contest edition)” and got inspired. Fortunately, some of our fellow countrymen still keep cool heads, so I took the liberty to publish it to serve as a target for criticism by "righteous men".