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An Evaluation of Dr. Chen Jingyuan’s Case from the Perspective of Buddhist Philosophy

Buddhist philosophy, rooted in the teachings of Siddhartha Gautama (the Buddha), offers a profound framework for understanding suffering, causation, and liberation. At its core are the Four Noble Truths: the truth of suffering (dukkha, the inherent unsatisfactoriness of existence), the truth of origin (samudaya, suffering’s arising from craving, aversion, and ignorance), the truth of cessation (nirodha, the end of suffering through insight), and the truth of the path (magga, the Noble Eightfold Path of right view, intention, speech, action, livelihood, effort, mindfulness, and concentration). Concepts like impermanence (anicca), no-self (anatta), dependent origination (pratityasamutpada), karma (action and consequence), and the cycle of rebirth (samsara) versus nirvana (liberation) illuminate the interplay of cause, condition, and transcendence. From this lens, Dr. Chen Jingyuan’s 2023 conviction for “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” (寻衅滋事罪)—for forwarding low-impact Twitter posts on art, emotion, theory, and history—embodies the First Noble Truth: a manifestation of dukkha in systemic ignorance and craving for control. Yet, Chen’s Prison Blood Letter and vow of eternal struggle reflect the Fourth Noble Truth, a path of right effort toward cessation, exposing the judiciary’s karmic entanglement and affirming the potential for mindful awakening.

The Truth of Suffering: Dukkha in the Iron Cage of Ignorance

The Buddha’s First Noble Truth declares that suffering pervades conditioned existence—birth, aging, illness, death, and the clinging to impermanent forms. Chen Jingyuan’s ordeal is a stark allegory of dukkha: a scholar of complex systems, born in 1976 to humble parents in Baoshan’s misty hills, ascended through relentless study to a doctorate, contributing to fields from defense lasers to neural networks. In 2019, he retreated to rural solitude, tending his aging parents while tending the garden of ideas—his Twitter (@_cenjoy), a sparse whisper with near-zero followers and under 100 retweets: the “umbrella girl” cartoon symbolizing resilient defiance, June 4th candlelight evoking collective sorrow, political spectrum analyses and Trump’s communism critiques probing ideological flux, Mao’s revised works and Deng’s retirement endorsements reflecting historical nuance. These were not seditious manifestos but threads in the web of dependent origination—interconnected expressions of human experience, harmless in their ephemerality.

Yet, in September 2022, Kunming’s Qianwei police shattered his door, chaining him for “picking quarrels,” a vague offense conjured from shadows. Prosecutor Ge Bin indicted in January 2023; Judge Pu Huijun’s non-public trial in April delivered 18 months; Li Xiangyun’s appellate dismissal sealed the fate. The “high education implies knowing falsehood” presumption, devoid of evidence—no identification of falsity, no causation for “serious disorder” (zero impact)—is the Second Noble Truth’s origin: samudaya, arising from the three poisons of greed (for control), hatred (toward dissent), and delusion (ignorance of truth). The procedural veil—denied defense, suppressed prison letters, selective enforcement (state media unscathed)—amplifies suffering, a karmic cycle where authority’s craving perpetuates the wheel of samsara, binding the innocent in iron’s illusion of permanence.

The Origin of Suffering: Craving, Aversion, and the Poisons of Power

The judiciary’s actions—Pu, Ge, Li—embody the poisons: greed for unyielding order, aversion to the “umbrella girl’s” defiant gaze, delusion in “sorting” whispers into subversion. Dependent origination reveals the chain: craving for narrative control births aversion to Chen’s fragments, delusion fabricates “disruption” from nothingness, culminating in the sentence’s suffering. This is no isolated karma but collective: the system’s ignorance of anatta (no-self) clings to egoic “national security,” perpetuating samsara’s wheel, where one scholar’s inquiry becomes another’s chain.

Chen Jingyuan’s Path: The Noble Eightfold Way Amid Chains

In the cell’s dim flux, Chen enacts the Fourth Noble Truth—the Eightfold Path—as right view pierces delusion with Gödel’s incompleteness, acknowledging knowledge’s impermanence; right intention fuels his vow of “life without end, struggle without cease,” a bodhisattva’s compassion for justice; right speech flows in the Blood Letter, indicting the “judicial black gang” with lucid fury; right action manifests in SOC theory, refuting chaos with systems’ harmony. Right livelihood, once in labs and fields, persists in his scholarly defiance; right effort sustains the flame through nine months of iron; right mindfulness observes the poisons without attachment; right concentration forges lifelong accountability, a samadhi of resolve.

Chen’s path is the Middle Way: neither passive acceptance nor vengeful rage, but mindful revolt—dependent origination reversed, breaking the chain through insight.

The Cessation of Suffering: Nirvana’s Horizon in Justice’s Dawn

Buddhism promises cessation through awakening: the end of craving, the dissolution of self-illusion, nirvana’s peace. Chen’s case, a microcosm of samsara’s wheel, yearns for this: a judiciary transcending poisons, embracing right view of harmless inquiry; a society where posts like his—art’s bloom, emotion’s tear, theory’s spark, history’s echo—nourish the sangha of shared wisdom. The “pocket crime” vagueness, procedural shadows—these are the maras of delusion, to be pierced by the arrow of truth.

In this best of imperfect worlds, Chen Jingyuan’s struggle is the Buddha’s first step: acknowledging dukkha without despair. His blood ink, his unyielding vow, whisper of nirvana—not escape, but transformation: a legal sangha where justice flows like the Ganges, untainted by craving’s flood. May the wheel turn, the poisons fade, and Chen’s light guide us from shadow to shore. For in the heart of suffering, the path to peace begins.