She also personally welcomed another high monk who had returned from overseas. Wu Zetian's connection with Buddhism meant that her legitimacy was gradually increasing. Chinese Buddhism also entered a period of comprehensive prosperity, and its peak was during Wu Zetian's Wu Zhou Dynasty.
The prosperity of Buddhism at that time was manifested in three ways: the first was that a large number of Buddhist scriptures were translated.
During the reign of Empress Wu Zetian, one of the most important Buddhist scriptures, the Avatamsaka Sutra, was translated. At that time, Her Majesty felt that the sixty chapters of the Avatamsaka Sutra translated during the Jin Dynasty were lacking too many parts, and she felt very sorry about it, so she sent a special envoy to India to ask for a complete copy of the sutra.
A Buddhist monk from Khotan happened to have this book, so she invited him to China. This monk was Śikṣānanda. After inviting him, she asked him to translate the Avatamsaka Sutra.
When Master Śikṣānanda came, the Avatamsaka Sutra he brought was not complete. But it had 9,000 more verses than the Jin translation, a total of 45,000 verses, and the teachings of the great sutra could already be seen. The scale of the translation was very large at that time, and Wu Zetian often went there to participate. After the translation was completed, she even wrote the preface and the opening of the Avatamsaka Sutra herself.
This is the famous opening stanza: "The sublime Dharma is profound and subtle, and is hard to encounter in a hundred thousand aeons. I now see and hear it and am able to uphold it. I wish to understand the true meaning of the Tathagata."
The Avatamsaka Sutra advocates the coexistence and prosperity of all things in the world, and is a very powerful classic. There were dozens of masters in the Tang Dynasty who were famous for translating Buddhist scriptures, and there were fifteen masters who lived in the Wu Zhou era.
Secondly, Wu Zetian also made important contributions to the construction of temples. She built a Dayun Temple in every state in the country. According to historical records, there were 38 famous temples in the Tang Dynasty, of which more than 30% were built during the Wu Zhou period. Where there are Buddhist temples, there must be monks. Xue Huaiyi became the abbot of the White Horse Temple. There were originally more than 300 monks in the White Horse Temple, but during the Wu Zhou period, the abbot Xue Huaiyi had more than 1,000 attendants.
The third contribution is statue making. Among all the statue making arts in the Tang Dynasty, the Wu Zetian era was the most brilliant, and the promotion of Buddhism also reached its peak. Wu Zetian's affinity with Buddhism played a great role in Buddhism. Both Wu Zetian and Buddhism reached their peak.
Since Wu Ze respected Buddhism so much, it is no surprise that she arranged so many Buddha statues to be buried with her!
PS: I would like to thank "Love Burial in the Dead Sea" for the reward of 300 and "Watching the Stars on the Roof" for the reward of 200.
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