Nowadays, many people confuse "temple" and "temple", obviously go to Guanyin Temple, but they are used to saying that it is Guanyin Temple! Actually, a temple is not the same as a temple. The temple is a place to worship the ghosts and gods of heaven and earth in ancient China. The emperor has a temple, and the people have a land temple, a dragon king temple and so on. And the temple was an administrative unit in ancient times. For example, Dali Temple is in charge of assessing officials. Honglu Temple is in charge of foreign affairs. In the tenth year of Yongping, Emperor Ming of the Han Dynasty sent a special envoy to welcome the two monks to China, and the Honglu Temple was responsible for receiving them at the beginning. Later, because Buddhism was generally welcomed by the government and the opposition, the two monks were left in China and a new temple was set up, called the White Horse Temple. This was the first Buddhist temple in China, and it was an administrative body directly under the imperial court at that time. Its purpose is to translate the scriptures, and the other is to guide the masses to practice together.

Historically, Buddhist temples were the equivalent of today's universities, and their purpose was to popularize education. There is a scripture building inside the Buddhist temple, which plays the role of a public library today. There are collections of not only Buddhist classics, but also Confucian and Taoist classics. Many scholars, such as Wang Yangming, Zhu Xi, Fan Zhongyan, and other great Confucians, have been studying in the monastery for a long time. In addition, the temple regularly holds lectures on Buddhism, which can be attended by local people, which plays a role in popularizing Buddhism. It is also a place for the common practice of the public.

The monks in the monastery are equivalent to full-time professors in universities today. Choosing to become a monk or a monk to study Buddhism is a difference in the division of labor. Becoming a monk is just choosing to do the work of spreading the Dharma full-time. It's the same thing that some people choose to teach in schools now, and they also do the work of disseminating knowledge full-time. But you don't have to be a monk to learn Buddhism, just like you don't have to be a teacher to learn knowledge. Monks are not necessarily better than lay people, just as being a teacher is not necessarily more knowledgeable than other professions, and this is the same way. You can read the "Biography of the Layman" and "The Biography of the Female Layman", and these achievements in the family are even more than those of the monks.

Buddhism in Chinese mainland has been greatly damaged in the past hundred years, and the public and even Buddhists have a great misunderstanding of traditional Buddhism. The most obvious misconception is that one is to worship Buddha statues, and the other is to donate money to the temple. The Buddha statue is enshrined in the temple, which is equivalent to the Confucius statue in a private school, and it is like the Americans carving the statues of the four presidents on the rock, or collecting them in a wax museum. One of the purposes of the statue is to commemorate the teacher, and the other is to use the image of the teacher to remind yourself of your hard work. It's not that Buddha statues are treated as gods. As for the monastic donation, this is the localization of the Indian Sangha begging system in China. In ancient China, there were two professions that were marked with unknown prices, one was a teacher and the other was a doctor. The teacher teaches the student, or the doctor sees the doctor, and the student and the patient are given as they please, giving more if they have money and less if they don't have money. As mentioned earlier, a Buddhist monastery is equivalent to a community college, and it itself does not have a clear price. Just put a merit box, and everyone will also give it as they like, which is equivalent to raising funds from the public to run a school. Because China is not like India, where there was a custom of bhikshus begging before the advent of Buddhism. However, China's cultural background is different, and the form needs to change according to the environment. Because the money of the monastery is used for education, donating money to the monastery is equivalent to supporting education, which is a great good deed, but it is not a merit. According to the principles of Buddhism, merit comes from concentration, not from doing good deeds. In history, Emperor Wu of Liang built 480 temples, and the Bodhidharma patriarch also said that there was no merit.

Let's talk about monks. Now monk has become a generic noun, referring to family members in general. In fact, in Buddhism, monk is a very noble title. The presiding officer of a monastery, or the speaker of a monastery, is called a monk. Speaking of Heshi, Heshi is a ritual of Buddhism, which represents the restraint of chaotic thoughts. We usually have our ten fingers open, but now we put them together, which means concentration and determination. It must be at the heart of Buddhist practice, so this ritual has a deep meaning. Just as Christians draw a cross, it also has its meaning. Every move of Buddhism has its meaning, but there is no mystery or superstition in it.

The original meaning of "temple" is the place where eunuchs and officials work. In the "Classic Commentary", it is said: "The temple is also a servant. Temple people, dying people also. "Dying is a eunuch, and later called a eunuch, so the original meaning of "temple" comes from the meaning of "servant", which is the meaning of eunuch. "Saying" cloud: "Temple, Tingye." "Book of Han" note: "Where the court is located, it is called a temple." For example, the Imperial History Mansion of the Han Dynasty, also known as the Imperial History Dafu Temple, the permanent institutions at the central level have Taichang Temple, Dali Temple, etc. The Qin and Han dynasties established the "Three Princes and Nine Secretaries" system, the official offices of the three princes are called "mansions", and the official offices of the nine princes are called "temples", that is, the so-called "three mansions and nine temples". In the Han Dynasty, there were "pawns" in Jiuqing, and later it was renamed "Da Honglu". The duty of Honglu Qing is to order the Buda Emperor and deal with the guests, and its official office is the "Honglu Temple". In the tenth year of Emperor Yongping of the Ming Dynasty of the Eastern Han Dynasty (67 AD), the Indian monks Se Mo Teng and Zhu Falan followed the envoys sent by the Han Dynasty to the west to find the gods and Buddhas, and came to Luoyang with Buddhist scriptures and Buddha statues on white horses. The two Indian monks were placed to live in the Honglu Monastery, which received kings and foreigners. The following year, Emperor Ming of the Han Dynasty ordered the construction of houses for the two Indian monks in the style of the Tianzhu Sangha Rama (Sanskrit for "garden where the monks lived") to the west of the Yongmen Gate in Luoyang City, which were also called "temples" by the Eastern Han Dynasty according to the custom of the time. Because the scriptures in the temple were carried by white horses, the imperial court named them "White Horse Temple". In this way, the White Horse Temple in Luoyang became the first Buddhist temple in China. After the Sui and Tang dynasties, the title of the temple as an official office became less and less, and gradually evolved into a special term for Chinese Buddhist architecture.

The history of "temple" is longer than "temple" because it is a house for Chinese to worship the ancestral gods, so it is also called "Jongmiao". In the "Rituals and Rituals", it is said: "The Son of Heaven and the Scholars all have temples", "The Son of Heaven has seven temples, the Qing five temples, the doctor has three temples, and the scholar has one temple." In ancient times, the "Taimiao" was the ancestral temple of the emperor, and other people who had officials and lords could also establish a "family temple" according to the system. After the Han Dynasty, the temple gradually became a place to worship the sages and gods of China, such as Confucius Temple, Wuhou Temple, Guandi Temple, Yuewang Temple, Longwang Temple, Mengjiang Nu Temple, Qu Yuan Temple, Mazu Temple, Mountain Temple, Land Temple, Chenghuang Temple, etc. In ancient China, almost every city had a City God Temple, and most of the "corpse owners" built in the temples had names that could be checked, such as the "corpse owner" of the Shanghai City God Temple was Qin Yubo, the "famous man of the East China Sea" at the end of the Yuan Dynasty and the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, and the "corpse owner" of the City God Temple in Kunming (the original site was in the current "May Day Cinema") was Yu Qian, a loyal minister of the Ming Dynasty. In addition, the front hall of the imperial palace is also called a temple, so the imperial court is also called a "temple" and "temple corridor". For example, Fan Zhongyan, a famous writer in the Song Dynasty, has a famous sentence: "If you live in a high temple, you will worry about the people; is far away from the rivers and lakes, and is worried about its king. ”

The "ancestral hall" is an offering house (equivalent to a memorial hall) built to commemorate great people and celebrities. This is somewhat similar to the temple, so the place where the descendants of the same clan worship their ancestors is often called "ancestral hall". The ancestral hall first appeared in the Han Dynasty, according to the "Han Shu Xun Biography" record, "Wen Weng finally Shu, the people for the ancestral hall." Timely (referring to birthdays and deaths) rituals are endless. At the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, there was a rise in the society to build ancestral halls to raise the family lineage, and even living people built "ancestral halls" for themselves. As a result, the number of shrines increased.

"Observation" says in the "Interpretation of the Name": "The viewer should wait and see from above." Guan is the "astronomical observatory" where ancient astronomers observed the stars. The history of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty in Ganquan to create a "longevity concept", after that, the construction of a "view" to welcome the immortals has become a trend. According to legend, the first Taoist priest to live in the royal "view" was Wang Zhongdu of the Han Dynasty. He was introduced to the "Kunming View" in the palace because he cured the stubborn illness of Emperor Yuan of the Han Dynasty. Since then, Taoists have been grateful to the emperor and have called Taoist architecture "Guan".

?“ In ancient times, the "hermitage" was a kind of small thatched house, that is, the so-called "knotted grass for the hermitage". In the old days, the literati's study was also called "hermitage", such as "old school hermitage" and "shadow plum hermitage". After the Han Dynasty, some nunnery halls were built for Buddhist nuns to live in, so "nunnery" became the name of a special building for Buddhist women to become monks and practice Buddhism.