The White Lotus Sect is a kind of secret religious association that has been circulated among the people since the Tang and Song dynasties. Originated from the Pure Land Sect of Buddhism, according to legend, the ancestor of the Pure Land Sect of the Eastern Jin Dynasty Shi Huiyuan in the Lushan Forest Temple and Liu Yimin and others to chant Buddha together, and later generations of believers thought it was a model. During the Northern Song Dynasty, the Pure Land Buddha Association was popular, and it was mostly called the White Lotus Society or the Lotus Society. During the Shaoxing period of the Southern Song Dynasty, Mao Ziyuan (legal name Cizhao), a monk in Kunshan (now Kunshan, Jiangsu), founded a new sect on the basis of the popular Pure Land Association, called the White Lotus Sect, that is, the White Lotus Sect.

In the early days, the White Lotus Sect worshiped Amitabha Buddha, advocated chanting Buddha and keeping precepts, and stipulated that believers should not kill, steal, commit adultery, lie or drink alcohol. It calls on believers to worship their ancestors and is a secret society that is half-monk and half-layman. Its doctrine is simple, and the Scriptures are relatively easy to understand. It is accepted by the lower classes, so it is often used as a tool to organize the people to resist oppression. In the Yuan and Ming dynasties, the White Lotus Sect organized peasant uprisings many times. In the early Qing Dynasty, it developed into an anti-Qing secret organization, although it was repeatedly bloodily suppressed by the Qing government, but in the first year of Jiaqing (1796), the White Lotus Rebellion had developed into the largest uprising in the Jiaqing period.

During the Jiaqing period

The White Lotus uprising during the Jiaqing period lasted for nine years and four months, and most of the earliest participants were White Lotus disciples. The uprising broke out in the border areas of Sichuan, Hubei, and Shaanxi, and the struggle area spread throughout the five provinces of Hubei, Sichuan, Shaanxi, Henan, and Gansu, and even spread to Longshan County in Hunan Province. In the battle that lasted more than nine years, the White Lotus rebel army occupied or broke through 204 Qing Dynasty mansions, prefectures, counties, halls, and guards.

It resisted the troops requisitioned by the Qing government from 16 provinces across the country, annihilated a large number of Qing troops, and caused the Qing army to lose more than 20 first- and second-class senior generals, more than 400 officers below the rank of deputy general and staff general, and more than 1,000 local tyrants and inferior gentry. The Qing government spent 200 million taels of silver to suppress the uprising, which was equivalent to the fiscal revenue of the Qing government for five years at that time.

As a religious concept, White Lotus encompasses a wide range of contents. It can be said that it is the sum total of all kinds of "heretics," "leftists," and "cults" that have occurred in this ancient land of China for more than 1,000 years. It is another very important religion in addition to Buddhism and Taoism, which reflects the life, thoughts, beliefs, and struggles of the people of the lower classes of China, and plays a prominent role in the history of China's peasant war.

The main characteristics of the White Lotus followers are burning incense, reciting the treasure scroll, and believing in Maitreya Buddha and King Ming. Their classics have "Maitreya Sutra", "The Sutra of the Birth of the Great and Small Ming King" and so on, in order to adapt to the actual situation of the lower class of people working during the day, the White Lotus disciples are mostly "gathering at night", and those who are willing to join the religion are not subject to any restrictions, regardless of wealth and poverty, surname, age, men, women and children can join as long as they want, "men and women are mixed". By the end of the Ming Dynasty and the beginning of the Qing Dynasty, the White Lotus Sect gradually became more complete in terms of teachings, and its teachings became more systematic.

The teachings of the White Lotus Sect believe that there are two forces in the world that fight against each other, called the light and dark sects. Light is light, it represents goodness and truth, and darkness is darkness, it represents sin and irrationality. These two aspects have been, are and will continue to be waged in the struggle. After the incarnation of Maitreya Buddha, light will finally triumph over darkness. This is the so-called "green yang", "red yang", "white yang" of the "three worlds". The believers serve the "childless mother" and believe in the eight-character mantra of "vacuum hometown, childless mother". The lifeless old mother successively sent the Buddha of the Lamp, the Buddha of Buddha Buddha, and the Buddha Maitreya. They ruled the human world in each period:

The Qingyang period was the initial stage ruled by the Burning Lamp Buddha, when there was no heaven and earth, but there was already light and dark. The bright department is smart and wise, and the dark department is stupid and stupid;

The Red Sun period is the middle stage ruled by Shakyamuni Buddha, when the dark forces prevailed, suppressed the forces of light, and formed a "great tribulation", which is the so-called "terrifying catastrophe", at this time Maitreya Buddha is about to be born, after a duel between the two sides, finally the light drives away the darkness;

The White Sun period is the later stage ruled by Maitreya Buddha, and the light and darkness are restored, the light returns to the great light, and the dark returns to the extreme darkness.

The opposition between light and dark at the beginning is the past. The struggle between light and dark in the middle is now. The light and dark in the back are the future. The leaders of the sect propagated that if people believed in the White Lotus Sect, they could be blessed by Maitreya Buddha and enter Cloud City in the year of the catastrophe to avoid catastrophe. After the old system is completely destroyed and the old order is destroyed, a new realm of millennium happiness can be established, and then people can live a good life in peace and contentment.

The White Lotus Sect believes that at this stage (i.e., in the middle of the world), although the dark forces have the advantage, Maitreya Buddha must be born in the end, and the light must finally defeat the darkness. It advocates breaking the status quo and encourages people to struggle. This attracts a large number of poor people. Let them be inspired and inspired. In addition, the leaders of the sect taught scriptures, charms, boxing, meditation, qigong and other ways to absorb the people's refuge, and established vertical and horizontal connections through the relationship between master and apprentice.

The White Lotus has many followers, mainly from the lower strata of society. The patriarchal rule within each faction, with respect and orderliness and strict hierarchies, became the organizational form of many peasant uprisings. At the end of the Yuan Dynasty, Luanxian County was the center, and the eastern Hebei and the Great Wall along the border had always been the area of White Lotus Sect activities, and from here it spread to the whole country, and the anti-Yuan uprising led by Han Shantong and Liu Futong broke out. In the early Ming Dynasty, there was an uprising led by Tang Sai'er during the Yongle period, and an uprising led by Xu Hongru and Wang Haoxian during the Apocalypse at the end of the Ming Dynasty, which was later suppressed by the governors Zhao Yan and Yuan Keli. In addition, there were many small-scale peasant uprisings, such as the peasant uprising led by Ma Zushi in the Taihu Lake basin in the south of the Yangtze River during the Jiajing period of the Ming Dynasty and the peasant uprisings in Shanxi and Inner Mongolia. During the Qianlong period of the Qing Dynasty, a peasant uprising led by Wang Lun broke out in Shandong. The largest one was during the Jiaqing period, that is, the Sichuan, Chu, Shaanxi and White Lotus Rebellion that broke out in the middle of the Qing Dynasty.

Qing Dynasty

The organization of the White Lotus Sect was widely distributed in the Qing Dynasty, up and down the Yellow River, and everywhere in the north and south of the Great River, especially in Zhili, Shandong, Shanxi, Hubei, Sichuan, Shaanxi, Gansu, Anhui, etc. People from all walks of life enthusiastically participated, and in the rural areas, there were "village appointments to eat and teach," and in towns and markets, there were "errand servants and secretaries to eat and teach." At that time, there were many sects, including Qingchamen, Niuba (Zhu), Cross, Incense, Mixed Yuan, Hongyang, Baiyang, Laojunmen, Mahayana, Qingxiang, Yuandun, Bazhen, Dayang, etc., and many of them were branches of the White Lotus Sect. The White Lotus Sect has the largest masses and the greatest influence. It itself is divided into many branches, each centered on the leader and leader, and the organization is quite complex. There are also many names of leaders, such as "patriarch", "master", "old shopkeeper", "young shopkeeper", "marshal in charge", "vanguard" and so on. This form of organization is suitable for secret preaching (sometimes lyrics are also written in scriptures, accompanied by folk tunes, beating fishing drums, beating bamboo boards, and preaching in the form of raps) and dispersed activities.