About Buddhism
Today, I saw that some readers who love Buddhism were dissatisfied with the plot about Buddhism in the novel these days. I want to say sorry. The plot of the novel requires it. I have no prejudice against Buddhism in reality. However, I want to say that the Buddhism in the Shepherd's Record has been beautified by me.
In history, Buddhism originated in ancient India and Nepal. It originated from ancient witchcraft and underworld religions, Vedic religion, and Brahmanism. Before it was localized in China and before the unification of New China, Buddhism actually had a dark history.
Tantric Buddhism is the most important sect of ancient Buddhism, focusing on personal practice, also known as Hinayana. How to practice? In addition to Buddhist scriptures, you also need magic weapons. Magic weapons are a very common word in novels, but many people don’t know the basic definition of magic weapons. The basic definition of magic weapons is a treasure with scriptures written on it or Buddha images painted on it.
Tantric thangkas are made of peeled human skin with scriptures or Buddha images written on it. They were very popular before liberation. Human skulls were used to make wheels. In the Shepherd's Record, there is a magic tool that is a big skull with bone spurs on it, and a small skull on the bone spurs. It is not the author's imagination, but actually describes a magic weapon of Tantric Buddhism. In addition, there are also drums made of little girls' skin and bones. It is said that the soul of the little girl must be sealed in the drum so that the sound can awaken the Buddha nature of the caster. The so-called initiation looks very impressive, but it is actually disgusting. It is better not to talk about it. If you are interested, you can check it out.
There is a song called Ajie Drum, which tells the story of a little girl's sister who was turned into a drum by a monk. Whenever she heard the sound of drums in the temple, she would think of her sister. If you are interested, you can search for it on Baidu and learn about the historical origins of the song.
Zhaizhu beautified it in The Records of the Shepherd God. He did not say that this was Buddhism, but gave it the name of the Golden Palace of Loulan and used the word "wu" instead, in order to avoid disputes among Buddhists.
To be honest, some of the Buddhist teachings are okay, but we cannot just look at what they say but also what they do. In the history of Buddhism, both the Huayan School and the Pure Land School have experienced dark periods.
During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, many temples in Jiangsu and Zhejiang had flesh-and-blood Buddhas, with more than a dozen flesh-and-blood Buddhas appearing every year. When an old monk became a flesh-and-blood Buddha, the temple would report it to the authorities, saying that the old monk had become a Buddha in the flesh and that a golden body should be made. Later, a county magistrate thought there was something wrong, so he conducted an open and secret investigation and discovered the secret.
In order to cheat the government of money for making golden bodies and the believers' incense money, the monks of these temples placed many living old monks in jars, fed them only fragrant oil to drink, and emptied their intestines of feces and urine. They sealed the old monks in the jars along with many spices while they were still alive. Because the fragrant oil was soaked into the meat and the spices, their bodies did not decay.
After swindling money from the government and believers, the monks squandered it. The county magistrate was very angry and arrested a large number of monks and killed them. This is documented in historical records.
Many of the flesh-and-blood Buddha statues enshrined in many temples in the Jiangsu and Zhejiang areas today are from that period.
This story was turned into a story of tampering with a stone statue into a Buddha statue in The Shepherd's Records, which is already quite mild.
As for giving the strange animals anesthetics to make them look like they have Buddha nature, the actual source is the Tiger Temple in Thailand. If you are interested, you can search on Baidu and you will find out. It was news from the past two years.
As for women, I don’t want to say much. Those who know the history of the Tang and Song dynasties know that many monks had lovers or lovers of powerful people.
Many stories in The Shepherd's Diary have real-life origins. They are not made up by Zhaizi, nor are they written just to criticize for the sake of criticizing. The novel reflects reality.
Buddhism has both good and bad sides. After the founding of New China, the state discarded the bad parts of Buddhism and only kept the good ones. Many people do not understand them, but that does not mean they do not exist. To be honest, Buddhism after the founding of New China has become what Buddhism should be like. Monks are more like monks, which is much better than in ancient times. Ancient times were the Dharma Ending Age. Monks nowadays do not seem to have as strict discipline as before, but no major evil has occurred.