But anyway, "he 'abolished Buddhism' and made Daoism the state religion."
The Martial Emperor of the Northern Zhou who reigned from 561 to 578 did exactly the same thing.
The successor of Northern Zhou Martial Emperor, Xuandi,
reigned just for two years—579 to 580— reversed the elimination of Buddhism,
but above all a very very interesting detail is recorded in history about him.
It says: "The images of the Buddha and the Celestial Worthy were restored to their places."
Now, Buddha Okay. Celestial Worthy? What are we talking about?
That's <i>tianzun</i> 天尊 in Chinese.
<i>Tianzun</i> for anybody who knows anything at all about this period
immediately sounds like something Buddhist, <i>shizun</i> 世尊—the world honored one,
which was a standard epithet for Buddha.
And indeed to associate the two is absolutely right. Why?
Because <i>tianzun</i>—the Celestial Worthy—is a deity who is primordial in a series of scriptures
called the Lingbao scriptures that we'll talk more about later,
that were revealed in southern China— in the native dynasties in other words—
around the year 400, around the year 400.
And then precisely under Zhou Wudi these Lingbao scriptures arrive in the north.
They arrive before that of course
but they came to be accepted by Zhou Wudi as central to his definition of power
and he in fact then held debates between the <i>sanjiao</i>, between the three teachings,
classified Daoism as first and then set Daoists to produce an encyclopedia
called the <i>Wushang biyao</i> 無上秘要, "The Secrets of the Supreme than which there is nothing higher."
And in this text, this huge encyclopedia of originally 100 <i>juan</i> 卷 100 chapters
that starts with the <i>dadao</i> 大道—the Great Dao—
and ends after a long long progression through the entire cosmos —Daoist cosmos—
including all of its practices, ritual practices,
ends by the return to <i>jiji</i> 寂寂, back, the return to silence, the silence of the Dao. Okay?
So <i>tianzun</i> had come to be central, not only to practices among the people,
but also to practices on the highest level of the state
and to the definition of Daoism by the time.
So Xuandi (579-580), he sits down with the images of the Buddha
and the Celestial Worthy being restored to their places.
"The Emperor sat together with the two images facing south."
That's what we've already seen is the position of the emperor— <i>nanmian erzuo</i>, sits facing south.
"Grand performances of various kinds were put on,
and the officials and common people alike were invited to watch."
So this becomes a festive display, of what?
A display of <i>sanjiao heyi</i> 三教合一.
So now we can see: we're on the threshold,
580-581, the Sui will conquer all of North China, 589, all of South China.
So we're on the cusp of the reunification of China,
but look what happened before political reunification: ideological reunification.
So now we can talk about <i>sanjiao</i>, now we can talk about the "three teachings."
And we can also see that they are the state-sponsored
and approved definition of legitimate religious and political authority.
So we can imagine that the emperor sat in the middle—
we wouldn't expect him to sit off on the side, would we?
He's sitting in the middle and let's imagine for a moment
that he had Buddha on his right and the Celestial Worthy on his left.
I don't think the text tells us but we can be quite sure that that's the way it was,
because throughout this period, during the debates,
there are texts which emerge and which the Daoists say polemically
that we are the religion of life—the left, the <i>yang</i>—
and Buddhism is the religion of death.
We'll come back to this theme later in a different context. Okay?
Why did they say that? Well, at least
because Buddhism is about <i>mie</i>, that is to say Nirvāṇa.
But Nirvāṇa is conceived of as the elimination of everything
and the return to this emptiness where karma no longer has its hold on people. Okay?
So it's a total <i>jiefang</i>, a total liberation, from the attachments of this world.
So it's associated with <i>mie</i>—with elimination of attachments,
which characterize us as human beings in this world. Okay?
Many other reasons that lead to this association of Buddhism with death including the fact
that they become the primary purveyors of funeral rituals right down to this day,
even when Daoists, Lingbao Daoists, right down to the present date,
do funeral rituals, they're called <i>gongde</i> 功德, just like the Buddhist rituals,
and they're full of Buddhist elements. Okay?
So we can imagine like I say that the Buddha —the image of the Buddha—sat down on his right hand
and the image of the Celestial Worthy—who has now replaced Taishang Laojun, the Most High Lord Lao—sitting on his left.
Be that as it may, this is a festive occasion in which the public participates.