Chapter 11 Chapter Four Religious Sculpture

The Chinese believe in animism and have practiced polytheism since primitive society.Moreover, ancestor worship has always been the most important sacrificial activity for rulers of all generations after entering a civilized society.This kind of cultural environment cannot produce a certain religion that dominates the world or the unity of politics and religion.Especially since the Qin and Han Dynasties, a centralized state centered on the emperor has been formed.What maintains this country is the system centered on "filial piety" that evolved from ancestor worship.A member of society must take the three cardinal principles and five constant principles as the code of conduct; at the same time, the popular idea of ​​immortality in society strongly expresses nostalgia for human life and the pursuit of joy in life.It can be said that after the Qin and Han Dynasties, the consciousness that people are real people is very clear.When Buddhism entered China, it faced exactly such a living environment.Buddhism is world-weary and despises etiquette. It requires believers to escape into Buddhism and practice hard in order to get good rewards in the next life.These ideas are incompatible with the reality of Chinese society.In order to gain a foothold, Buddhism had to give up many of its own rules, wandering between life and death.The resulting Buddhist art also embodies this contradiction.These have determined that Buddhism can only survive in this country as an accessory.In the Han Dynasty, Buddhas belonged to the category of gods, and in Buddhist sculptures, they were indeed among various gods and had no special status.After the Han Dynasty, although some regimes advocated Buddhism and some regimes opposed Buddhism, there was a general trend that Buddhism was always a sect attached to the regime.Reflected in Buddhist sculptures, the most famous one is the Buddha statue "Ling Ru Di body" made by Emperor Wen of the Northern Wei Dynasty.Another example is that Wu Zetian of Tang Dynasty created public opinion for himself to replace Li Tang, forged the "Da Yun Jing", claiming that he was the reincarnation of Maitreya Buddha, so he built a statue of Maitreya in the Longmen Grottoes.According to the previous format, for the statues of the Buddhas of the third age, Sakyamuni is the present Buddha in the center, the Lantern Buddha is the past Buddha on the left, and Maitreya Buddha is the future Buddha on the right.But because of Wu Zetian, Maitreya Buddha is in the middle.After Wu Zetian's death, the old system was restored, with Sakyamuni in the middle and Maitreya in the side.This change in one side can be regarded as an anecdote, but it also provides a basis for us to judge the production age of the Buddha statue.The most famous Dalushena Buddha in Longmen Grottoes was excavated by Wu Zetian's donation. According to research, the Buddha statue was made in the image of Wu Zetian himself.This image has a heroic spirit in its beauty, which is really a bit like Wu Zetian. (Picture 20) In 1987, a batch of rare treasures of Buddhist art in the Tang Dynasty were unearthed from the underground palace of Famen Temple in Fufeng County, Shaanxi Province. Among them is a gold-plated "Bodhisattva worshiping the real body", which was specially made for Tang Yizong's birthday.This kind of bodhisattva reflects the idea of ​​the emperor's reincarnation, which in itself illustrates the status of Buddhism in China.Another example is when Emperor Taizong of Song Dynasty went to Daxiangguo Temple in Kaifeng to burn incense, he asked whether he should worship Buddha.The eminent monk Zan Ning replied: "The present Buddha does not worship the past Buddha." There are examples of this kind of praising the emperor and treating the emperor as the present Buddha in all dynasties.In the Qing Dynasty, Emperor Qianlong was directly portrayed as one of the 500 arhats, and Empress Dowager Cixi was called Lafayette, all of which were extreme manifestations of this behavior.Serving the emperor or the supreme ruler directly is only one aspect of Buddhism's subsidiary nature, and another important aspect is serving the ritual system centered on filial piety.After Sakyamuni became a Buddha, he accepted his parents as followers, and his parents had to kneel down to worship their teacher.This is the basis for monks not to worship their parents.But this form completely deviates from the filial piety in traditional Chinese culture and is not tolerated by Chinese culture.As early as in the Eastern Jin Dynasty, the eminent monk Huiyuan wrote "Buddha and Confucianism Combined Ming Theory" to promote respect for the king and filial piety to parents.Buddhism was the most prosperous in the Tang Dynasty, but the law clearly stipulated that monks and nuns must bow down when seeing their parents.Under the strict attitude of the government, Buddhism had no choice but to give up some of its own teachings and rules and obey the government's management.Fashen, an eminent monk of the Luzong School, said: "Speaking to a son depends on filial piety"; Huineng, the sixth patriarch of Zen Buddhism, said: "Be kind and take care of your parents with filial piety", both of which are manifestations of respect for Chinese ethics.The two poems in Yao He's "Sending Monk Silently": "Before becoming a monk to serve your mother, you must be filial and master Zen", which clearly illustrates the relationship between becoming a monk and being filial.The most typical artistic image of filial piety is the stone carving of Dafo Bay in Baoding, Dazu, Sichuan. A very eye-catching picture of Sakyamuni carrying the coffin for his father's funeral was carved on the cliff to show filial piety. "Buddha's Great Convenient Repaying Grace Sutra" describes the Buddhist thought of emphasizing filial piety.On the side of Sakyamuni's coffin, there is a group of stone carvings showing the kindness of his parents.Among them, there are artistic images of pregnancy, childbirth, breastfeeding, pushing dry and wet, parting parents, etc. From the beginning of pregnancy to growing up to maturity, the specific content of a person's great kindness and virtue obtained from his parents is clearly engraved.The positions of these stone carvings are all in the place where the sight is easiest to see, which fully demonstrates the hard work of the engravers to attract attention.