Suosalang and the Search for a New Model of Civilization | “Xuemo in Dialogue with International Scholars” (Episode 3)

Suosalang and the Search for a New Model of Civilization | “Xuemo in Dialogue with International Scholars” (Episode 3)

On March 15, 2026, scholars from China, Germany, Norway, Canada, the United Kingdom and Iran gathered online to discuss an old philosophical question made more urgent by artificial intelligence: What forms of knowledge help people live, rather than simply give them greater power over the world?

The two-hour forum, organized by the World Literature Union and the Xuemo Foundation, was the third international dialogue devoted to Suosalang, Xuemo’s eight-volume epic. Participants examined the work’s philosophical foundations and Xuemo’s idea of Xin-xing Civilization (心性文明), a form of civilization grounded in the cultivation of the heart-mind and human nature.

The meeting took place one day after the death of Jürgen Habermas, the German philosopher whose work on communicative reason, democracy and the public sphere shaped postwar intellectual life. Yanjin Chen, author of The Xuemo Code and moderator of the forum, opened with a remembrance of Habermas and a question prompted by his concerns about philosophy’s future: What role remains for philosophy in a world increasingly governed by technological rationality?

Xuemo and Professor Hanyi Bao, Chair of the Department of German at Shandong University, approached that question through Suosalang, placing the epic within a wider debate about technology, moral judgment and the direction of modern civilization.

What Philosophy Can Still Ask

Chen began by asking whether Suosalang represented an attempt to formulate a new philosophical system at a time when technical power was expanding while questions of value and meaning were receding from public life.

Xuemo answered by reflecting on his travels. Human beings possess vast stores of knowledge and technologies of extraordinary reach, he said, but much of what they pursue has little bearing on the basic experience of being alive. Institutions, intellectual systems and political conflicts may appear all-important in public life, yet lose their urgency when a person turns inward and considers what is essential.

Suffering, he argued, often begins with attachment to things that are not necessary for life itself.

Xuemo described modern Western civilization as being shaped by an impulse toward outward conquest, an impulse he believes has reached a crisis amid continuing wars and social fragmentation. Suosalang, he said, was his attempt to imagine another possibility.

That alternative does not reject knowledge or technology. It asks, instead, what must be cultivated within human beings if knowledge and technology are to serve humanity responsibly. Xuemo calls this inward orientation Xin-xing Civilization.

The Chinese term xin-xing brings together two closely related ideas: xin 心, referring to the inner realm of the heart-mind or psyche, and xing 性, meaning inherent nature. In Xuemo’s usage, Xin-xing Civilization measures progress not by material achievement but by the cultivation of concentration, discernment, compassion, and moral character.

Through its interwoven narratives, Suosalang seeks to lead readers away from distraction and toward what Xuemo regards as the essentials of life. The epic asks whether an inner clarity, as immediate as breathing, might provide a basis for both individual freedom and collective life.

The Five Warriors

During the forum, Xuemo publicly explained the symbolic structure of five central figures in Suosalang, known collectively as the “Five Warriors.” Each represents one aspect of personal realization and its expression in the world.

Huanxi, perfection of mind: Huanxi represents the spiritual condition reached when ordinary mental limitations have been transcended.

Miji, perfection of body: Miji represents altruistic conduct guided by a cultivated mind.

Huanhua, perfection of speech: Huanhua represents the use of language to communicate ethical values and challenge wrong assumptions, including the glorification of violence.

Shengle, perfection of merit: Shengle represents tangible contributions to the lives of others. A philosophy that produces no beneficial consequences, Xuemo cautioned, can itself become harmful.

Weide, perfection of enlightened activity: Weide represents the wider influence of spiritual realization. A civilization can shape the world, Xuemo said, only when its principles become part of everyday life.

Together, the five figures connect spiritual cultivation with action. Inner change, in this account, remains incomplete unless it affects how a person speaks, acts and contributes to society.

Xuemo said that when these five dimensions are brought together, they make possible a new “Suosalang,” not simply as a place within the epic but as an imagined spiritual homeland.

Writing Beyond the Limited Self

Professor Bao asked why Xuemo had chosen the epic form and what kind of creative state had produced a work of such length.

Xuemo said the epic gave him the scale needed to hold what he perceived as a single, interconnected whole. He also believed that its form could carry philosophical ideas without separating them from narrative, character and experience.

He described his method as “egoless writing.” Through literary discipline and spiritual practice, he said, a writer can loosen their attachment to the limited self and gain access to a larger field of awareness. He compared that field to an infinite “corpus of wisdom.”

The metaphor is quite contemporary, but the underlying idea is very old: the principle of “Man and Nature in One” (天人合一), in which the writer does not create through personal will but becomes receptive to something larger than himself, the Dao or the universe.

In this model, the text becomes a conduit for the writer’s inner realization. Readers who approach the text seriously may enter the imaginative and spiritual world of the work and find their own perceptions transformed by it.

Literature After Artificial Intelligence

The discussion then turned to whether literature retains its value when artificial intelligence can produce fluent prose almost instantly.

AI can imitate language, Xuemo said, but it cannot substitute for the transformation of consciousness from which major literature arises. Literary value, in his account, depends not only on verbal skill but also on the writer’s moral character, experience and degree of inner development.

Yet Xuemo did not treat AI solely as an adversary. He argued that it could weaken barriers created by concentrated wealth and restricted access to knowledge, allowing philosophical and spiritual ideas to circulate more widely.

The distinction, as he presented it, lies between using technology as an tool and allowing technological systems to determine the purposes of human life.

Xuemo also recommended reading Suosalang aloud rather than reading it silently. He believes that vocal rhythm, repeated language, and textual meaning can work together to affect the reader. This claim reflects his understanding of literature as an embodied practice rather than a purely intellectual exercise.

Can an Epic Travel Across Cultures?

The international circulation of Suosalang raised another set of questions. Xuemo argued that contemporary societies shaped by Western institutions could benefit from closer engagement with Eastern wisdom traditions.

The biggest challenge, he said, is not that the content is difficult to digest. Rather, it is our loss of sustained attention in a world driven by commercial pressures and fragmented information. As a result, people may find it almost impossible to finish lengthy works or remain connected with their inner selves.

Xuemo proposed that education, animation and immersive digital media could help bring these ideas into contemporary settings. Such adaptations, he suggested, might allow inherited forms of wisdom to enter the habits and media of a new generation.

Near the close of the forum, he discussed “Niguma Khyenno,” an invocation repeated throughout the epic. Xuemo described it as a “code of the mind” through which a practitioner seeks a connection with a higher form of wisdom.

He also drew an analogy with quantum entanglement. The comparison was presented as a philosophical metaphor rather than a scientific demonstration. According to Xuemo, the invocation’s effect depends on the practitioner’s confidence, receptivity and sustained practice.

An Argument About Progress

The forum did not establish Xin-xing Civilization as a finished philosophical system, nor did it resolve the tension between technological development and inner cultivation. It did, however, clarify the argument at the center of Suosalang.

Material and technical progress, Xuemo contends, cannot by themselves answer questions about how people should live, what they should value or how power should be used. Those questions require another form of development, one concerned with the quality of attention, the formation of character and the relationship between inner inquiry and public service.

The scholars’ questions placed these claims under examination and opened several lines of inquiry for future work on the epic. Among them is a question that extends beyond Suosalang: Can a civilization increase its command of the external world without losing the capacity to understand the human beings who inhabit it?