Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
instruments, chairs, and cuisine) added to the fabric of Chinese culture
but did not fundamentally alter it. China was still China after the long
and bitter nightmare of the Period of Division had ended.
Buddhism Comes to China
Buddhism first gained a foothold in China during the Period of
Division. It came in not directly from India but from Central Asian
Buddhist kingdoms that had converted to Buddhism a few centuries
earlier. (Some of these kingdoms had originally been founded by the
generals of Alexander the Great, and later their populations converted
to Buddhism, thus combining Buddhist religion with Greek culture.)
The religion had been known in China since Han times, but it never
flourished during that dynasty. This is probably because the basic mes-
sage of Buddhism, that life is suffering, did not resonate with the Han
Chinese. Life was fairly good in Han China, and the majority of Chi-
nese seem to have had little if any desire to alleviate the pain of life
with a palliative religion.
Buddhism can be summarized in terms of its “Four Noble Truths.”
In India, during the sixth century B.C., the Buddha taught four truths:
1. Life is suffering. In life everyone experiences pain and sorrow. We all get
sick and eventually die.
2. Suffering is caused by desire.
3. Desire can be eliminated.
4. Desire can be eliminated through the Eightfold Path, a set of eight
instructions for minimizing desires and the suffering they create.
Once a person truly succeeds in eliminating all desire, he will have
achieved nirvana, a state difficult to define but which connotes a state
of desireless, and therefore painless, bliss.
One variety of the religion called Mahayana Buddhism taught that
because strictly abiding by the Eightfold Path was an extremely diffi-
cult or even almost impossible thing to do, merciful beings called bod-
dhisatvas who had achieved nirvana themselves had, at the time of
their deaths and on the brink of stepping into eternal nirvana, stepped
back and turned their compassion and attention to the mortal, suffer-
ing world. By having come this close to eternal nirvana and then tem-
porarily backing away from it for the sake of the world, they had
accrued to themselves an inexhaustible fund of merit that could be
imputed to all people who turned to them in faith and supplication.
Mahayana Buddhism was, then, a type of savior religion, and it
appealed deeply to the Chinese of the Period of Division. Life in China
