Religion

To do no evil;

To cultivate good;

To purify one's mind:

This is the teaching of the Buddhas.

--The Dhammapada

One of the main religions of the Tang Dynasty was Buddhism. Buddhism is a religion based on the teachings of Siddhartha Gautama. It began in India, and spread to the rest of Asia. It's different from other religions because it's not about the relationship between a person and god. It's about the need to get rid of suffering, and finding the path to enlightenment. Nirvana is an important concept of Buddhism; it’s about reaching the most blissful, enlightened, suffer-free state that one can achieve. Gaozu, the man who had created the dynasty and was the first emperor, did not support Buddhism, and made Confucianism and Daoism the official religions. But years later, other emperors began to support it, and it grew, reaching its high point in 700 CE. There were thousands of monasteries built, and a lot of people went to them. Bu after a while, people began to attack the religion and complained, saying that Buddhism was influencing Chinese culture and was conflicting with Confucianism. In 840, the emperor Wuzong started to attack the Buddhists also. He was mentally unstable, and had 4,600 monasteries, 40,000 shrines destroyed. He also made 260,000 monks and nuns stop their practices. Although the person who was next in line stopped the attacks and the religion lasted, it wasn’t as much of an influence on Chinese Culture as it had been before.