Speaking of Bodhidharma, let's talk about Buddhism by the way.

Buddhism was introduced to China during the Yongping period of the Eastern Han Dynasty, and was established in Luoyang, the capital of the Han Dynasty, and the White Horse Temple was built to preach the world, and was recommended by the emperor at that time to become the state religion. However, the Eastern Han Dynasty was not the dynasty with the deepest superstition in Buddhism, and the deepest was Xiao Yan, the Emperor of Liang Guowu during the Northern and Southern Dynasties.

"There are four hundred and eighty temples in the Southern Dynasty, and how many buildings are in the smoke and rain. "Du Mu's Jiangnan Spring is a realistic portrait of Buddhism during the period of Emperor Wu of Liang. Emperor Wu of Liang, Xiao Yan, is a unique talent, a perceptual poet, and the poems he created in Jiangnan Lane were included in the Yuefu poetry collection.

Emperor Wu of Liang lived to be 86 years old, which was a miracle in the age when the average age was in his twenties, and later generations believed that he could live a long life because he believed in Buddhism. He said that he was sorry for the Buddha when he left the temple and had to redeem himself, but it cost him more than 400 million yuan to redeem his body, and the treasury was spent.

His influence on Buddhism was the greatest and most successful in history. If it weren't for the minister's persuasion to go abroad, it was also his efforts that made the people of the whole country worship Buddha and believe in Buddhism at that time, and the rapid popularization of Buddhism reached a new height.

The second thing is the division of Buddhism.

Originally, Buddhism did not have any rules and precepts, but only a kind of faith, a way of practice, think about it, the founder of Buddhism was a prince of ancient India, how could he be pure and have little desire to make so many pure rules and precepts to abuse himself? He needs only the faith and worship of the masses.

Ancient India was not India, but present-day Nepal.

The Buddha's surname is Qu Tan, also known as Gautama, which belongs to the ancient Indian Shakyamuni family, so it is called Shakyamuni.

Buddhists set up monasteries to practice, but meat is eaten as usual, women sleep as usual, and there are no taboos, like the lamas of Tibetan Tantra are authentic Buddhism. Buddhists in the world are only so hard in China, and Chinese like to go to extremes as soon as they believe in something.

Emperor Wu of Liang liked to study Buddhist scriptures when he was idle and did not engage in creation, and one day he suddenly had an inspiration, so he wrote a treatise, saying that Buddhists do not kill, how can they still eat meat without killing? Isn't eating meat killing living beings? This is contradictory, but the Buddha is not wrong, and the fault must be those of us who understand the Buddha, so we should avoid meat.

And Emperor Wu of Liang doesn't know why he doesn't like women very much, his record is that he hasn't slept with a beautiful girl for more than 40 years, which he also wrote in his paper. Because he was the emperor, the paper soon spread all over the world. After this paper was studied by orthodox Buddhist practitioners, two schools of thought emerged, one school of thought it was nonsense, and the other school thought that it made sense.

So Chinese Buddhism is divided into two factions, one is Zen Buddhism, represented by the first ancestor of Bodhidharma and Master Huineng, pay attention to epiphany at will, there is Buddha everywhere in the heart, eat a meat, sleep a girl, nothing to smash the Buddha statue in the Buddha hall and make a fire or something. It turns out that the Buddha statues are all made of wood.

The other faction is the Pure Land Sect, which originated from Emperor Wu of Liang and was carried forward by Huiyuan, a native of Shanxi during the Eastern Jin Dynasty. He preached in the Jiujiang Donglin Temple, ran the White Lotus Society, and summarized a bunch of articles and precepts, believing that only by taking the precepts and practicing penance can he see the true Buddha nature. Huiyuan's influence is very great, and he is respected as the first ancestor of the Pure Land Sect, and even Japanese Buddhism is divided because of him, and some Japanese monks respect Jiujiang Donglin Temple as their ancestral garden.

Thus, the miserable life of the monk began.

To this day, basically there is no Zen Buddhism anymore, domestic Buddhism is monopolized by the Pure Land Sect, and the scriptures studied are also written by Huineng and his descendants, and it is no longer a thing that has been introduced, so Chinese Buddhism and foreign Buddhism have nothing to do with it at all, and they still worship Sakyamuni every day, and they don't know what Sakyamuni feels like in their hearts.

Huiyuan's influence on history was not limited to Buddhism, he pioneered ink landscape painting, as well as qigong. That's right, there is no qigong in the world, but since there is Huiyuan, there is qigong. Moreover, this qigong theory is still a pirated Taoist theory.

Buddhism in China is a synthesis of Emperor Wu of Liang's theory plus Confucianism plus Taoism plus Yin-Yang school.

So, how did Guangxiao Temple, as the territory of the first ancestor of Zen Buddhism, become attached to the Pure Land Sect? This is also a question about Zen Buddhism in the whole country, you must know that in history, Zen Buddhism is orthodox.

For this matter, we have to look at several dynasties in Chinese history, which are two minority dynasties, the Yuan and the Qing.

Let's not talk about the far away, let's start with Tang. Why? The time of the Sui was too short, and everyone knew before the Sui that there was an indescribable historical problem, and the Han people had become two-legged sheep, and there was a fault line in history.

In the Tang Dynasty, Li Yuan was a person who suppressed Buddhism, and he once ordered that only one temple should be allowed in a county, but because he was seized the throne and did not carry it out, Li Shimin came to power. Everyone knows that when Li Shimin was crusading against Wang Renze, there was a scene where he called the eighteen stick monks to save the Tang King, although it was not as magical as in the drama, but this thing did happen.

After Li Shimin came to power, he changed Li Yuan's style, and he was grateful to Buddhism, and he enshrined many eminent monks and built some temples, resulting in the prosperity and development of Buddhism.

Later, there was a female emperor in the Tang Dynasty, and the sisters said that the Buddha Emperor Xu not only repaired the temple, but also began to find someone to give various Buddha statues, and the Buddha statues left in modern times were basically formed in the Tang Dynasty. The most prominent is Guanyin, who has changed from a man before the Tang Dynasty to a beautiful woman, which is self-evident.

But the anti-Buddhism of the Tang Dynasty was of a national nature, Taoism and Confucianism began to tear apart Buddhism, spraying each other in front of the emperor, and also published a lot of good articles, among which Pu Yi is the main representative of Taoism, Han Yue is the main representative of Confucianism, Taoism has "Ten Differences and Nine Myths", Han Yu wrote "The Original Dao", this can be seen.

But because of the interference of Li Shimin and Wu Zetian, the Tang Dynasty's suppression of Buddhism did not succeed, let's count it as a tie, but Buddhism added a number of temples, a large number of virtuous monks, and the success of the statue, in fact, won this game. Maitreya Buddha was also imaged in the Tang Dynasty.

The Song Dynasty had a prosperous business, people believed in ghosts and gods, Buddhism and Taoism went hand in hand, and the two Song and Liaojin fought for decades without stopping, and the government did not have any control over local religions.

The Yuan Dynasty was violent, killing people and killing people, and China never stopped during the period of rule, and the entire dynasty was spent in constant rebellion and suppression. Zhu Chongba, who broke off the rule of the Yuan Dynasty, was a monk, so he knew how miserable the monks were at that time, and the Pure Land Sect, which held the precepts, was good at living a hard life, persevered, and the territory was also bigger.

The Ming Dynasty and the Tang Dynasty were just the opposite, Zhu Chongba was bullied enough in the temple because he had been a monk, and then because he entered the interior, he was a little disgusted by the temple's encroachment on the fields and property, the gathering of property, the extreme desire for luxury, and the scourge of female believers, so from the beginning of the Ming Dynasty to the death of the Ming Dynasty, he has always been lifting the Tao and suppressing the Buddha, liquidating the temple assets many times, and driving the monks to establish Taoism as the state religion.

It's a pity that in the Song Dynasty, because of Zhao Gou's shriveled calf play, Confucianism grew stronger, and the world of scholars and doctors was formed, and the situation developed to the extreme in the Ming Dynasty. Ming was the most depressing era of Buddhism.

In the Ming Dynasty, we have all read this book, called "Journey to the West", which is the roar of Buddhists to the government, a written textbook that suppresses the Tao and promotes the Buddha.

In the Qing Dynasty, Buddhism was once again enshrined as the state religion, and the emperor was also going to become a monk. Although the Qing Dynasty practiced Tantric Lamaism at that time, that is, the Zen road that did not taboo wine and meat and beautiful women, but the Pure Land sect was implemented among the people. This is how the situation of Buddhism today was formed.

As for Guangxiao Temple, when the Qing Dynasty unified the country, the Yangcheng Tribute Courtyard was blown up, and the Guangxiao Temple was changed to the Tribute Temple, and later the Eight Banners Primary School was set up here, and after the Republic of China, the Judge University was set up here, and later it was the High School Attached to Guangdong University. The Japanese took this place as their headquarters, and the Japanese ran here to become a provincial art college and a cradle of artists.

After the liberation, here is the South China People's Academy of Literature and Art, 53 years, here was arranged by the superior to become the South China Song and Dance Troupe station, changed into a miscellaneous courtyard, people work here to settle down and give birth to babies, the little pot friends born here are affectionately called little monks.

It was not until 87 years that it was returned to the Buddhist Association, and the monks who re-settled in the temple restored the sound of the scriptures, and made an education base for 337 years.

Believers in Buddhism often recite sutras.

Chanting is a good thing, it's a process of learning. But you have to understand the scriptures, know its meaning, and understand the truth, not to recite it over and over again and not understand a single word, which is called worshipping the Buddha and seeking the scriptures. In ancient times, the preaching of a great monk was to give people the meaning of preaching the scriptures, explaining word by word, rather than just leading people to read and play like the current monks, in fact, he himself did not understand the meaning of the two words.

Buddha means the enlightened one, the opposite of not knowing, and everything is understood and understood. Knowing that is great enlightenment, that is, Buddha, does not refer to a certain person or thing, but to a realm.

To become a Buddha is to live and understand, to see, and to know. Instead of chanting and shouting Gautama's name every day to play.