道元与WRSS
The Origin and Development of Dao Yuan and The World Red Swastika Society
The Divine Origin and Purpose of the Dao Yuan
The Dao Yuan was established by The Most Holy One (至聖先天老祖), who proclaimed the secret that has not been transmitted across vast ages of the world – taking this as its method – and synthesized the profound, quintessence of the true tenets of the Five Religions – taking this as its function.
The teachings revealed that Dao Yuan is not a sectarian doctrine nor is it a new religion. It is the primordial secret that underlies all religion, which has remained sealed through multiple cosmic epochs and is now opened in response to the specific the urgency of the present moment in cosmic history. The Dao Yuan is therefore not an institution set up by humans. It is a divinely commissioned response to a specific cosmic crisis.
Critically, it is not the surface teachings of the five religions that are being synthesized here, but their deepest interior essence – the point at which all five converge because they share a single source. Different streams, one ocean; crystallizing them into the “Great Dao” (大道).
The word “Dao” (道) is explained in the “Shuo Wen” (说文) as “A path pursued constantly by all peoples; it is something which is medium, ordinary and simple and has nothing mysterious”. Confucianism refers to it as “Loyalty and Forbearance”; Buddhism as “Emptiness and Tranquility”; Taoism as “Void and Nothingness”; Christianity as “Father in Heaven”; Mohammedanism as the “Allah”, from each of which “Dao” is to be found. In other words, “Dao” is essentially the Natural Truth – the law of the Universe and is not a mere teaching or doctrine.
The Dao Yuan’s aspiration is to enable all people of the world to cultivate and maintain their original nature of benevolence, goodness, auspiciousness, and harmony – and thereby for the world to arrive at the realm of Great Harmony (大同): a world in which all people live as one family, without discrimination, in peace. This vision directly echoes the highest aspiration of the Confucian tradition, as expressed in the Book of Rites – yet transcends it by grounding it not in human moral effort alone, but in the primordial Dao from which all life arises. The Dao Yuan was founded to save the world and to ferry human beings across.
The Historical Founding
In the early years of the Republic of China, in Bin County, Shandong Province, several senior cultivators received divine inspiration through the planchette altar and were commissioned to establish the Dao Yuan. This is foundational: the Dao Yuan was not founded by human decision or institutional initiative. It was established by divine commission.
In 1921 – the year Xingyou (辛酉年) – it was formally established in Jinan, Shandong. Upon registration with the Ministry of Internal Affairs, it received the formal directive: “Instructions have been sent to the provincial governments to order their civil affairs bureau to inform all subordinate offices to extend protection accordingly.” This response is significant. The government was directed not merely to register the Dao Yuan, but to protect it – a practical necessity and a powerful symbolic validation in the turbulent political landscape of early Republican China.
The Dao Yuan formally announced its establishment on the Day of the Beginning of Spring (立春), 1922 – the year Renxu (壬戌年).
What the Dao Yuan Venerates and Its Dual Mission
The Dao Yuan venerates The Most Holy One (至聖先天老祖) together with the Founding Teachers of the Five Religions – Confucianism, Buddhism, Daoism, Christianity, and Islam (儒、釋、道、耶、回五教教主). The structure of this veneration carries deep cosmological meaning. The Most Holy One occupies the supreme central position; the five religion founders are co-venerated on equal terms. This embodies the principle of five unified into six ( 合五統六) – five streams returning to their single source. All five founding teachers are honoured simultaneously, reflecting the non-sectarian universalism at the heart of the DaoCi tradition.
The Five Religions each differ in their stream, yet in truth they all flow from the one source of the Great Dao. The differences between them are real – they are not dissolved or dismissed – but they are downstream differences, not differences at the source.
Dao Yuan also venerates the Divine Beings and Buddhas of the six internal Yuans – General Administration, the Meditation, the Planchette, the Sacred Text, the Charity, and the Propagation, as well as the Three Venerable Spirits of the Spirit Shrine Room.
Dao Yuan’s dual mission is stated with great clarity: The purpose is self-salvation (自 度) and the salvation of others (度人).
Self-salvation takes meditation and canon chanting as its primary practice — turning inward, holding one’s ground, and diligently removing the dust of worldly entanglement (塵障), so that the heart-nature becomes perfectly luminous (心性圓 明), arriving at the realm of boundless bliss.
Saving others operates through two complementary modes. In the formed realm (有 形): extending oneself outward to relieve disasters and aid the destitute. In the formless realm (無形): recognizing and living the universal kinship with all people and all things (民胞物與) – so that the aged may rest in peace, the young may be cherished and nurtured, and all living beings may be universally ferried across.
This principle of universal kinship – drawn from Zhang Zai’s ( 張載) Western Inscription (西銘): “Heaven is my father and Earth is my mother; all people are my siblings; all things are my companions” – elevates The World Red Swastika Society’s charitable work far beyond ordinary philanthropy. One does not give to others as strangers. One gives as a member of the same family.
The Founding of the Red Swastika Society and the Significance of the Dates
Following the preparatory conference, the work of establishing and registering The World Red Swastika Society proceeded immediately alongside the Dao Yuan. When all was in readiness, on the 23rd of January 1923 – the seventh day of the twelfth lunar month of the year Renxu (壬戌年) – a divine planchette instruction designated the founding day of the Society as the Day of the Beginning of Spring (立春, Lì Chūn) of the year Renxu. Dao Yuans across the whole country established themselves simultaneously on that day.
Li Chun (立春), the Beginning of Spring, is the first of the twenty-four solar terms: the moment when yang energy begins to rise after winter, when new life stirs in the earth, when the cosmic cycle turns from gathering to releasing. It is the most cosmologically auspicious moment in the Chinese calendar for any new beginning.
When all was in readiness, on the 23rd of January 1923 – the seventh day of the twelfth lunar month of the year Renxu – a divine planchette instruction designated the founding day of the Society as the Day of the Beginning of Spring (立春, Lì Chūn) of the year Renxu. Dao Yuans across the whole country established themselves simultaneously on that day.
Lì Chūn – the Beginning of Spring – is the first of the twenty-four solar terms: the moment when yang energy begins to rise after winter, when new life stirs in the earth, and the cosmic cycle turns from gathering to releasing. It is the most cosmologically auspicious moment in the Chinese calendar for any new beginning.
What makes the founding dates of the Dao Yuan and the Society remarkable as a case to highlight is this: the year Renxu was a leap year in the traditional Chinese lunisolar calendar, producing two Days of the Beginning of Spring within a single named year. This is an extremely rare calendrical phenomenon. The Dao Yuan was founded on the first Lì Chūn of Renxu – the 4th of February 1922. The World Red Swastika Society was founded on the second Lì Chūn of Renxu – the 5th of February 1923. Two institutions, one year apart, yet share the same celestial designation in the
cosmic calendar.
This is not presented as coincidence. It is understood as a statement encoded in time itself – the universe’s own signature on the inseparability of the two:
“Although the Dao Yuan and the World Red Swastika Society differ in their nature, they are fundamentally one body. They may be placed in sequence – earlier and later – yet need not be distinguished as earlier and later. Compassion does not depart from the Dao; the Dao does not separate from Compassion. (慈不遠道，道不離慈)”
慈不遠道，道不離慈. This single line is the crux of the entire Dao Ci principle in its most condensed form. The Dao without Ci becomes empty abstraction. Ci without Dao becomes rootless activism. The shared cosmic timestamp of the two founding dates is the universe’s own affirmation of their inseparability.
The root of DaoCi lies in the three pillars: the Ancestral Altar (宗), the Maternal Dao Yuan (母), and The World Red Swastika Society HQ (總). These represent: ·
- ‘Zong’ (宗): the founding origin for transformation of Dao and Benevolence;
- ‘Mu’ (母): the central axis of Dao propagation;
- ‘Zong’ (總): the foundation of Transformation Charity endeavors.
Together, they reflect the principle of the ‘One generating Two, Two generating Three, and Three giving birth to the myriad things’—ultimately one in origin, inseparable in essence.
Since 1953, following the dissolution of Dao Yuan branches in mainland China, the Dao Yuan branches in Singapore and Hong Kong have shared the responsibility of leading and promoting DaoCi overseas. With the establishment of the central headquarters (Zong Mu Zong) in Hong Kong, it played a pivotal guiding role before the 1990s, especially through the issuance of “instructional scriptures” (壇訓) from the central spiritual authority, which served as operational guidelines for branches everywhere. Even after the 1990s, it continued to maintain this coordinating role.
The Body-Function Unity of the Dao Yuan and the Society
The Dao Yuan and the World Red Swastika Society are a single body with two faces (一體兩面). They are not two institutions that cooperate with each other. They are one living reality – one with an inner expression, one with an outer – structured according to the foundational Chinese philosophical principle of essence and function (體用).
The Dao Yuan takes the cultivation of moral virtue as its essence: deploying compassion through the Dao, and magnifying the Dao through compassion – without distinction of good and evil, without discrimination between the deviant and the upright – following life’s natural unfolding to nourish the original nature, cultivating both inner and outer dimensions, arriving at perfect goodness.
This absence of prior distinction requires careful understanding. It is not moral relativism. It is the expression of the Dao’s all-encompassing receptivity (容) – the great furnace that receives all things without condition. The Dao Yuan’s transforming influence, like rain, falls on all without prior judgment of their worthiness. And the instruction to follow life’s natural unfolding (順) is equally precise: one’s original nature (性) does not need to be constructed or imported from outside. It needs only to be uncovered – by removing what obscures it. This is the Dao Yuan dimension of the teaching: naturalness (自然) as the method, and the original nature as the destination.
The World Red Swastika Society takes the management of charitable works purely as its function. The Society’s founding declaration (宣言) begins with six negations: 無爾 (no you), 無我 (no I), 無界 (no boundary), 無域 (no territory), 無種族 (no race) – before arriving at three affirmations: 弭災患 (ending disaster), 倡和平 (promoting peace), 謀人群物類共生存安樂之幸福 (seeking the happiness of the co-existence and peace of all people and all living things).
This movement from negation to affirmation is itself a meditation instruction applied to institutional purpose: when the self is emptied of its divisions, what remains is universal compassion. The structure of the declaration enacts what it proclaims.
The social charitable works undertaken by The World Red Swastika Society is because of the natural instinct of humanity and love for one’s fellow beings; ie, a man with a kind heart will perform a kind deed. Confucius speaks of it as “Benevolence and Righteousness”; Buddha speaks of it as “Mercy”; Jesus Christ speaks of it as
“Universal Love” Lao Tzu speaks of it as “Deeds without Doing” and Prophet Mohammed speaks of it as “All pervading kindness and charity”. The beneficial effect of “Dao” is to save oneself and to save others, which is the natural duty of mankind. It is based on this principle that The World Red Swastika Society is established “inside” the Dao Yuan.
From the moment of its establishment, branches of The World Red Swastika Societies spread across the whole of China, gradually building a charitable relief network that extended to distant shores overseas.
The Growth of the Network and the Meaning of the Name
By 1928, Dao Yuans had been established in more than two hundred cities across China. Overseas branches of the World Red Swastika Society were successively established in Singapore, Taiwan, Japan, the United States and Canada, Thailand, South Korea, and other nations – with membership numbering in the tens of
thousands.
Members cultivate the Dao to build their own foundation (修道為築己之基) and bear the duty of transforming others (化人之職) – carrying the responsibility of saving the world and saving people, benefiting others and aiding all living things. Dao Yuan and The World Red Swastika Society’s aspiration follow the fourfold progression of the Great Learning ( 大學): self-cultivation, the regulation of one’s family, right engagement with society, and the bringing of peace to all under heaven. Its scope moves from the individual outward to the universal — and every level is held together as one continuous path.
The Meaning of the Red Swastika Symbol
The four dimensions of the symbol – name, sound, form, and movement – together constitute a complete cosmological statement, moving from the primordial through manifestation to dynamic operation: the same movement as the Dao unfolding from undivided unity into ten thousand things, and back again.
Red (红): The colour red carries the meaning of the heart of a pure child (赤子之心) — glowing, radiant, and brilliant. It is the original, uncorrupted sincerity that all human beings possess at birth: the spiritual foundation of all charitable work.
Swastika ( 卍), pronounced wàn: The name carries the meaning of auspiciousness, the fulfilment of all wishes, and the gathering of all virtues – expressed in the classical phrase 大中至正: the great central uprightness that holds
the perfect mean. This is the axis of the cosmos – central, perfectly upright, inclining neither toward yin nor toward yang.
The form of the swastika: The four arms extending in all directions and all eight quarters – reaching everywhere without exception, operating without cease. The spatial universality of compassion made visible.
The rotation of the swastika: Following the counterclockwise revolution by which the celestial bodies of the universe move, the symbol is not static – it participates in the actual movement of the cosmos. At speed, its form approaches a perfect circle, representing 圓滿和諧，周而復始: complete harmony, returning eternally to its own beginning.
The circle it approaches is the Dao itself: formless, without beginning or end, encompassing all.