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Buddha Maitreya: "The Buddha to Come", will appear, and the catastrophe can be avoided if men help him to set the world to rights.
III. THE CHINESE GOVERNMENT AND THE SECTS
Esoteric sects were regarded with the greatest suspicion in traditional times. They clothed much of their religious activity in secrecy; men and women met together for worship in their halls, even sometimes residing in the same premises (although in separate apartments); leaders did not wear clerical dress, they sometimes lived in their own homes and were not easily recognised as sectarians, and therefore could not be controlled like Buddhist monks; and such men wrote their own sutras. All these things were considered highly unorthodox.
But worse still, organizations of the group to which the Hsien-t'ien sect belongs believed strongly in a millenium. When Maitreya appears, it was believed, he will attempt to set things right by organizing (with man's help) an ideal form of government and preventing the spread of distorted doctrines and the catastrophes they lead to. During the last century the sects were under the control of patriarchs and it was commonly believed by members that Maitreya, when he appeared, would be incarnate in the body of one of these leaders (such men engaged in special religious practices similar to those of tantric Buddhism, to “absorb” Buddhas of their choice and take on their powers). When undertaking work for the millenium the sects took special secret names, one being, significantly, the White Lotus (from the symbol associated with Maitreya Buddha).
When the State, in the nineteenth century, heightened its campaigns to stamp out sects, it was particularly those of the Hsien-t'ien group which took its attention. Marjorie Topley has been able to examine the patriarchal records of several of these sects for the period, and they tell a violent tale: many of their top leaders were, at this time, banished, imprisoned or executed, often after torture. The campaign against the sects has continued into this century and in the 1950's mainland newspapers carried news of further punishment for sectarians for their interpretation of local floods and other natural disasters as signs of the distortion of Truth and bad leadership of the country.