China's comeback kids China faces a spirit issue. It's goals since 1978 when Deng Xiaoping left ideology for a guided freemarket economy, clearly accepting that some folks will get rich before others, hasbeen attained. In just over 30 years, advancesin science and technology fueled industrialization, along with a judicious nursingof its military might, leaving China on top of the development heap while gropingfor its soul. Development in the global race is on to increase GDP percapita at a pace to fuel a consumption-production system at the expense of natureand people. This purely economicdefinition is doing much harm to the world's natural systems and the ever-continuingcreation of a democratic rather than a consumer culture. China's soul hit a vacuum groping for rolemodels. Today, the comeback candidates are Christ, Mao, and theBuddha. The Chinese who sees comfort in the Christ has the undergroundhouse churches that attract devotion because they defy authority, anunderstandable reaction. Pastor poundedpulpits trained to wear evangelical enthusiasm up their sleeves are zealously tiedto the emotional allure of a cultic "savior" that takes away the "sinsof the world" through communal fellowship that gathers adherents warmheartedly. The communal comfort in Christianity fits into the Confucianethos of family and the ethics that comes along. Its metaphors and belief-nets remain in the regallanguage of a redeemer under a defunct three-story universe, a "belief"in a heaven in the sky, and a penal colony under; it appeals to the elderly'ssuperstition but the secular and scientific young, at best, say,"huh?" Mao is a tolerated Uncle whose centralized dictates belongto, by his own measure, the 30 percent of his mistakes, but his dialectics alignswith the 70 percent that was right. It definedthe conflict then prevailing between elite and worker, urban and rural, learnedand the hoi polloi, though hardlyfits in the current harmonizing and collaborative thrust of the "reformand opening up" era. The contradiction metaphor got the Chinese mind around thereality of differing perspectives, and Mao would have been regarded an undisputedstatesman had he allowed his "a thousand flowers bloom" evolve into vive le difference rather than thedivisive and humiliating confrontational deterioration of the CulturalRevolution. Ironically, Mao represents recognition of the virtue ofindividual genius before it is straight jacketed into the commune. The assertive selfhood he exhibited is dubbedas a personality cult by the west, gobbled up by prejudiced contra Sino, butrevered from a distance as his name is invoked, though without bothering withthe details. The halls of academia quicklydiscard the mention of his name. Which brings us to the Buddha. If Jesus belongs to the Ptolemaic cosmologyof pre-Nikolaj Kopernik, and Mao brought down the elitist pretensions of the illuminati of academy into realisticlevels, ushered into Sino-consciousness Marx's dialectic and socialism withChinese characteristics, its contradiction understood from a deeply communalview and cooperative perspective before it is the social conflict to resolvelayered social stratification, the saffron Buddha saunters with a Mona Lisaenigmatic smile. Buddhists skew Christiantheistic escapism and Mao's dichotomy between decadent and progressive forces,favors a psychology of a mind-full self. Buddhists meditate not to escape from any situation, or thechallenges of any given location, but to engage in the depths of the bottomlessabyss of understanding one's consciousness. This lends itself to the Sino orientationof rootedness in space rather than the Euro-journey in time. The Buddhists, however, tend to be abstract intheir mindfulness against the practical activism that is a demand of cognition. Pope Francis willingness to dialogue with China's officiallysanctioned Christian Church might be at the root of the recent pronouncementthat Beijing will not shy away from creating its own Christianity with its own "Chinesecharacteristics", similar to its socialist economics and communal politicsof reform and opening up. Kung Fu Tzu (Confucius) is not being dismissed. His ethos will be around awhile but making a comebackkid out of Jesus, Mao Zedong, or the Buddha is a backward step as eachtradition inadequately encompasses China's broiling spiritual hunger. Since 1968, we minded exploited and battered mother earth, cognizantof her gracious support of the human specie. We segued into a secular spirituality without the hocus-pocus of theismthough not a surrendered devotion to "all there is". It was rather a decision to be free, to makechoices, and own up to one's decisions. Wetook to the ancient art of mindfulness and plumbed the depths of engagement inhuman affairs, like the recent Peoples Climate Change March, allowing motherearth's wellbeing a fighting chance. In the care of Mother Earth will China finds its soul. j'aime la vie pinoypanda2031@aol.com yesterday, appreciate; tomorrow, anticipate; today. participate. In all, celebrate!