Buddhism During The Tang Dynasty

Although Buddhism lost majority of its support when the Tang dynasty tried restoring a Confucianism system of belief to assure loyalty to Emperor Wu, beforehand Buddhism was practice by almost everyone in china during the period that fallowed the Hans fall because the fall of the Hans brought a lot of sorrow to the Chinese people making them look for a new belief that could free them from all the sorrow they were experiencing in their everyday life as evidenced by emperor Wu changing the religion to Confucianism to make sure that the Chinese people are loyal to the government and are productive members of society, Chinese people in need a of religion that could free them from the suffering in the world ,and scholars who change their point

In 350 C.E. a scholar by the name of Zhi Dun wrote to the Chinese people to tell them that all the sorrow they were enduring could all be gone if they start believing in Buddhism. This made liked by the Chinese people because he was telling them how they could stop feeling all this sorrow. At that time period the government had no really power, as a result the Scholars started being in favor of the people because they were the one holding all the power. So the Chinese scholars started supporting Buddhism to stay in favor of the Chinese people, even if they disagreed with Buddhism. Secondly, in 500 C.E. an anonymous Chinese scholar started compering the belief of Confucianism and Buddhism. In 500 C.E. china was still in chaos and some scholars saw that the best way to be in favor of the people was to turn into a complete supporter of Buddhism. And to prove to Chinese people that Buddhism is the most superior they started saying that Confucianism was nothing compared to Buddhism making the Chinese Scholars be in favor of the Chinese people. Lastly, in the early ninth century C.E. a Buddhist scholar by the name of Zong Mi wrote an essay in which he was saying that Confucius and Buddha were both perfect sages. At the beginning of the ninth century the Tang dynasty had restored the central government and they Tang dynasty saw Buddhism has an excuse to not do work. So many scholars who used to be in favor Buddhism now saw that the people had no more power and that if they wanted to stay in power they would have to agree with the emperor. This was shown by Zong Mi who was a scholar who supported Buddhism but when the Tang dynasty took control he started calling Confucianism equal to Buddhism to make sure that he would stay in favor of the emperor. In conclusion, Scholars don’t