Chapter 23 7. Monk PK Taoist

During the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, Taoism became a religion serving the ruling class. Taoism was originally a folk belief, and it was mostly used to treat people.Ordinary people look down on diseases, and Taoist priests treat them, draw something on a piece of yellow paper, burn it with fire, drink the ashes of the paper with lime, and cure all diseases.Maybe sometimes the illness is a psychological suggestion, and I think it’s good enough, and sometimes it really cures all diseases, because drinking to death.The Yellow Turban Uprising also relied on Taoism, the five buckets of rice.This traditional Chinese folk religion was transformed by Ge Hongyi at this time to serve the ruling class.Originally, there were many famous mountain monks in the world. It is said that there are hundreds of millions of Buddhists in China today, but only about 600,000 Taoists.These clear rules and precepts of Taoism are all taught from Buddhism, including its immortal system.Buddhism is a religion, while Taoism is a little more primitive. There is a reason why it can't compete with Buddhism.Buddhism preaches that people have three lives, past life, present life, and future life. If you practice well in this life, you will be reborn in bliss in the next life and get rid of the six circles of reincarnation.And it's easy to learn, it doesn't matter if you don't know a single word, as long as you recite the Buddha's name devoutly, if you recite Amitabha Buddha 100,000 times a day, you will surely be reborn in bliss.Its teachings are very simple, and everyone can understand it. If you don’t understand anything, you don’t understand culture, and you don’t understand what Buddhism is. It’s okay, you don’t need to understand it, just read it!A sincere heart leads to a spirit, devout thoughts, and a bright future.

Taoism believes that I can become a fairy in this life, become a fairy in the flesh, and ascend in the daytime.It generally cultivates the physical body through alchemy, the elixir of immortality outside, and the essence of human body inside.The outer elixir is made of Chinese herbal medicine and mercury. If you eat the elixir, you will be poisoned by mercury oxidation. Refining the inner elixir is already half starved to death on a hunger strike. If you add a mercury ball, of course you can ascend to heaven. How many emperors died of eating elixir!Qin Shihuang, Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, and Yongzheng were all eaten to death.Besides, ordinary people can't afford alchemy, where can they play with mercury, and how can they spend so much money to waste precious Chinese herbal medicines.Emperor Jiajing of the Ming Dynasty made alchemy, and the alchemy fuel alone cost more than 200,000 taels of silver a year. Do ordinary people have this courage?Only nobles can afford it.The audience is too small, so Taoism cannot do Buddhism.

Especially during the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, Buddhism found a way of spiritual liberation for the common people.You have suffered so much in this life because you committed crimes in your previous life!So you have to practice in this life. Only by practicing can you eliminate karma and get rid of the six circles of reincarnation.The Buddha is the highest level. Under the Buddha are the Bodhisattvas, and under the Bodhisattvas are the Arhats. The Arhats are divided into two types—the Yuanjue Arhats and the Shravakas.You can become an arhat if you feel an arhat by fate.A shravaka arhat is an arhat who has the opportunity to become an arhat only after listening to the Buddha's teachings.But it does not matter whether it is a sound hearer or a predestined enlightenment, anyway, if you become an arhat, you can get rid of the six reincarnations and enter Nirvana.Buddhism believes that there is a state of neither birth nor death, which is Nirvana, which is different from the state that we think that people are dead except for living.

Some people say that natural science is the smallest thing, and there are too many things it cannot solve.And the most terrifying thing now is that he doesn't believe anything that can't be solved.Although natural science understands things in the universe, how much can it understand?Human telescopes can see how far the farthest planet is from the earth, and the universe is relatively infinite.As long as he doesn't believe what he hasn't seen, he calls it pseudoscience, which is a bit too absolute.It is only a few hundred years since the birth of natural science, how long has it been since Newton and Copernicus, how did the human beings live in the era before them?Rely on religion.

The six realms of reincarnation refer to heaven, humans, asuras, animals, evil spirits, and hell.The Jade Emperor belongs to the way of heaven, but the sky also has a lifespan, 84,000 years, 100,000 years, or 2 million years. Once this age is reached, he still has to enter reincarnation. The sky is like this, and people can't escape reincarnation even more.After heaven and man is Asura, that is, Yaksha, the Yaksha holding the steel fork in Nezha, the three ways of heaven, man, and Asura are not bad.Then go to beasts, ghosts, hell, it will be miserable, especially if you fall into hell, you will be finished, and you will never recover, and you will never want to endorse the brand to take commercials.

The purpose of believing in Buddhism is said to be to repay the fourfold kindness and to relieve the three-way suffering.The fourfold kindness refers to the kindness of parents, the kindness of the land, the kindness of all living beings, and the kindness of the Three Treasures.The three paths of suffering are the realm of animals, the realm of hungry ghosts and the realm of hell, which guides you to be careful not to fall into it.So as soon as Buddhism spread this to the common people, the common people suddenly realized that my suffering in this life turned out to be due to my sins in my previous life.Yes, let me tell you, you were a king in your previous life and killed too many people, so this life is bitter and you have become a slave!Practice hard, you will still be a king in the next life, so don't kill people.

This thing is great!It turns out that I was a king in my previous life. I think how beautiful I was in my previous life and how beautiful I will be in my next life. I will recognize it in this life.A good example is India, where the gap between rich and poor is worse than in China, but people have never seen trash cans smashed, manhole covers stolen, or park guardrails removed, all because of religious belief.Although Indians do not believe in Buddhism, they believe in Hinduism, but many Buddhist teachings are absorbed from it.So more publicity about this is beneficial to a harmonious society.If they are all atheists, you can rest assured that there is no hell. Don’t believe that. If you look up and there is nothing, then I will be corrupt if I should be corrupt. It doesn’t matter. There is no heaven and hell anyway. If you are not greedy, you will not go to heaven, and if you are greedy, you will not go to hell. It's over.

So religious beliefs teach people to do good deeds, like the five precepts: killing, stealing, sexual misconduct, lying, drinking, no killing, no stealing, no sexual misconduct, no lying, and no drinking. How good is society? Wouldn’t it be harmonious?If everyone believed in it, even the law would be useless.Except that the township-run enterprises are unhappy and the wine cannot be sold, everyone else is fine.So as soon as the religion is propagated, the common people get a way of liberation.The ruler is happier. Religion teaches the people to be patient, which is good and easy to manage.As long as the ruler is happy, the religion can be widely spread, and it has spread to "four hundred and eighty temples in the Southern Dynasties, how many buildings are in the mist and rain".

But you can't do anything too much, and once you pass it, things will turn against each other.The prevalence of Buddhism has brought certain harm.First of all, wasting money and spending too much money. There are more than 400 emperors in Chinese history, only seven emperors lived past 70 years old, and four of these seven emperors lived past 80 years old.The first one is Emperor Wu of Liang, the emperor of the Liang Dynasty in the 480 Temple of the Southern Dynasty, known as the Bodhisattva Emperor.He is a vegetarian and does not eat meat, so since Emperor Wu of Liang, Chinese monks have stopped eating meat.In the past, monks were allowed to eat meat, even the Buddha Sakyamuni, who would eat whatever was given to him when he was offering alms.And people think that giving meat is the highest grade, and it is good to give meat.So Theravada Buddhism, that is, the monks of Theravada Buddhism in Southeast Asia eat meat, and the Tibetan monks eat meat even more. It’s nothing else if they don’t eat meat.Japanese monks also eat and marry after eating. They can marry a wife.Only the Chinese monks of Han Buddhism do not eat meat.Emperor Wu of Liang was a Bodhisattva emperor who sacrificed his life in Tongtai Temple three times and became a monk.As soon as the minister went to court, he saw that the emperor had already gone to the temple. How can this thing be fixed? Please come back!It is easy to invite the Buddha, but it is not easy to invite the Emperor Buddha. You have to give alms to Tongtai Temple. To put it bluntly, it is a donation.The emperor wanted to donate money to build the temple, but the emperor had no money, so he sold himself, which is what he meant by sacrificing his life in Tongtai Temple.Then let everyone take money to redeem, 100 million for the first time, 200 million for the second time, and 300 million for the third time.The emperor sacrificed his life in Tongtai Temple three times, and Tongtai Temple got 600 million yuan.Where does this money come from?on the common people.

Secondly, becoming a monk will also affect the development of the country. To become a monk is to be homeless, and to be homeless is to have no wives, and cannot bear children.In ancient times, it was necessary to "open the fields and increase the household registration". In theory, the household registration was to be increased, but becoming a monk led to a decrease in the household registration.No one to fight, no one to work, and most importantly, no one to pay taxes.If you become a monk, you don't have to pay taxes. Many farmers simply become monks because they avoid paying taxes.In this way, the government was dumbfounded, so don't worry about it!Look at the Tubo Empire, as I will talk about later, the Tang Dynasty had a population of six million at its peak, and later Buddhism prevailed, and everyone became a monk. In 1950, there were only one million people, and there were 120,000 lamas. They all did this, and the country was honored. If there is a territory but no available population, who will the court eat? "Everyone abandons his beloved, and every family loses his heirs." In this case, the country will not be able to develop. Not only will the country not be able to develop, but the human race will be extinct.

Thirdly, the temple economy developed excessively, occupied fields and houses, robbed the common people, competed with the government for labor force, and increased the burden on farmers.Based on the above three points, some people rose up against Buddha. The question is how to reverse.It cannot be said that your Buddhism is not good, because you compete with the government for labor, so it is boring to say so, and you have to refute you fundamentally.It has to be said that your teachings are not correct, it is a cult. So Fan Zhen's rebellion against Buddhism is actually because Buddhism interferes with the government's administration, but I won't say the reason, I only refute you from the doctrine.Fan Zhen pointed out that the human spirit and body are unified in the book "The Destruction of the Gods". He said that the relationship between the body and the spirit is like the relationship between the blade and the sharpness. Without the blade, there is no sharpness. Therefore, without the body, there is no spirit. .No matter how sharp you are, if you don't have a blade, try cutting a cake.What he meant was that without the six realms of reincarnation, there would be nothing.Because the emperor of the Southern Dynasty believed in Buddhism, a bunch of eminent monks argued with him, but they couldn't argue with him.Xiao Ziliang, king of Jingling in the Qi Dynasty, also argued with him: You don’t believe in the cause and effect of the third life and the cycle of reincarnation, why was I born a prince and you were born a common man? Isn’t this predestined in previous lives?I must have accumulated blessings in my previous life, so I am an emperor, and you committed evil in your previous life, so you are a commoner, it must be like this. Fan Zhen pointed to a pear tree in the courtyard, full of pear blossoms, fragrant and fragrant, and said, have you seen that tree?Did you see that flower?When a gust of wind came out, all the flowers fell, and some floated into the master's bedroom. The master picked them up and put them in a container filled with clean water, so that they could continue to emit fragrance. This is you, my lord; This is me, Fan Zhen.Which flower goes into the bedroom, and which flower goes into the latrine, is this predestined in the previous life, is there such a thing?No!A flower on a tree is destined to be destined, it is purely coincidental, if the wind comes from this side, I will enter the latrine, if it comes from that side, you will enter.There is no predestination in this life, and there is no retribution in the past life.Those who are angry with King Jingling compare themselves to a latrine, what can you do with others.So Fan Zhen is a powerful guy, he has developed materialism. Then, Emperor Taiwu of the Northern Wei Dynasty and Emperor Wu of the Northern Zhou Dynasty exterminated Buddhism. These two emperors supported the extermination of Buddhism in order to maintain their own rule.In the history of Chinese Buddhism, there was the disaster of "three martial arts and one sect", and "three martial arts and one sect" refers to the emperor who exterminated Buddha. The "Three Wus" are Emperor Taiwu of the Northern Wei Dynasty, Emperor Wu of the Northern Zhou Dynasty, Emperor Wuzong of the Tang Dynasty, and one is Emperor Shizong of the Later Zhou Dynasty. The reason why "Three Wu and One School" destroyed Buddhism was because the development of Buddhism affected his rule. Why did Emperor Wu of Zhou exterminate Buddhism? "Ask for soldiers among the monks, and take land under the pagoda temple." 2 million monks will return to secular life for me. How much will this increase in fighting power?Can arable land be used to build a house?So I demolished your pagoda and temple, won't there be arable land after demolition?After Emperor Wu of Zhou destroyed Qi, Buddhism in Qi was banned. "The ready-made temple will give you 40,000 yuan, and it will be given to the prince as a mansion." Sell the temple, and sell it to you for 40,000 yuan.Buddhist temples are all seven halls, and once you enter the Tianwang Hall, the Daxiong Hall, the Sutra Pavilion, and the east and west halls, isn’t it just a palace?Give it to the prince as a villa. "The five members of the Shimen will be reduced by three million, and they will all be rehabilitated as soldiers, and they will be returned to the registered households." "Infuse and expand Buddha statues, burn scriptures and teachings, three treasures, blessings and wealth, enter the book into officials, reward them immediately, and disperse them all." All the things in the temple were divided, and the Buddha statues were melted. The gold ones can be used as weapons, and the gold ones are even better.Generally, ancient Chinese Buddha statues are bronze statues, and the bronze statues just happened to be smashed to make copper coins, so he summed up the results of the extermination of Buddhas and said: "Since the abolition, civil service has been a little less, rent adjustments have increased every year, military divisions have become more prosperous, and Dongping Qiguo has become more prosperous. Wouldn’t it be beneficial to set the demon army in the west, make the country safe and the people happy?” The advantage of abolishing the Buddha is that the civilian labor will be less, the rent will increase every year, and the number of soldiers will increase day by day, so I want to destroy the Buddha.Today, even eminent monks and great virtues in the Buddhist world believe that the "three martial arts and one sect" is right to destroy Buddhism. At that time, Buddhism was indeed a bit over the top.To become a monk should practice spiritually, and should not engage in economic activities, such as buying and selling the emperor for five or six million.Look at today's temple especially, come in and burn incense!Just burn the incense and pay!We can swipe the card if we don't bring any money.How does this look like a place of cleansing?Others were caught, and if you said to pay one hundred yuan, it would be regarded as a protection fee.But the fake monk who grabbed you said, good man, judging by your face, your family must be a happy family, rich in money and wealth, and your husband has a successful career and your son is successful in school. Generally, according to this kind of good family, you should donate at least three hundred. How much you go out is directly proportional to how much you gain.The implication is: I will not force you, you can donate one hundred.But your husband’s career will be discounted by 30% or 30%, the son’s discount will also be discounted, and the harmony of the family will also be discounted.When you hear it, damn it, donate for the sake of family harmony.As a result, as soon as I went out and walked two steps, there was another temple, and I was pulled in again, five hundred!This is not the original intention of the Buddha. The intention of donating money is originally free from the heart, and no one can force it.These fake monks, after you donate them, use them to buy new mobile phones.The way to deal with them is to kneel down in front of the Buddha, and tell the Buddha while worshiping, someone is using your reputation to cheat money, which is not good for your image, so take him away as soon as possible.