In the minds of ordinary people, it is difficult to associate the empress who is high above and enjoys the glory and wealth with the lonely nun who accompanies the green lantern ancient Buddha. However, in the feudal dynasty, there were many noble empresses who came from nunneries in their early years or who escaped into the empty gate in their later years. Moreover, in the middle and late period of the Northern Dynasty, about 100 years, only the 11 emperors of Wei, Qi, and Zhou, there were 17 empresses who went out of the palace to become nuns, which is really rare in the world. This has become an extremely strange phenomenon in the history of Buddhism in China and the history of the development of the Northern Dynasty. So, why is this happening?
Some people analyze it from the Buddhist legends of our country and use the empress Dowager To explain it, believing that this is the result of flattering Buddha and superstitious Buddha.
During the Ming Dynasty of the Eastern Han Dynasty, Buddhism was introduced to China, starting in Luoyang. During the Cao Wei period at the end of the Han Dynasty, it received initial spread in the Henan region, and the Western Jin Dynasty was able to spread and develop rapidly, reaching its peak in the Northern Wei Dynasty.
Buddhism during the Southern and Northern Dynasties, due to the admiration of the Gate Valve clan, was further supported and popularized by the ruling class and was widely disseminated. Coupled with the great temptation of karma and the six reincarnations preached by Buddhism, the rulers of the Southern and Northern Dynasties, including emperors, nobles and clan bureaucrats, all believed in Buddhism, and the Tianzhu (Indian) monks Buddha Tucheng and Kumarosh were successively revered as national teachers by Zhao Shile, Shi Hu and Former Qin Hejian of the Northern Dynasty. Emperor Wu of Liangwu in the Southern Dynasty was a devout Buddhist who had made the number of Buddhas the state religion, and had been ordained as a monk four times before and after, forcing the imperial court and ministers to pay huge sums of money to redeem him. The same was true of the Northern Dynasty, and from the perspective of the Northern Wei Dynasty, all the emperors advocated Buddhism. According to historical records, the 15 emperors of the Northern Wei Dynasty (along with the Western Wei) all advocated Buddhism and greatly promoted the translation of scriptures, the construction of temples, and the carving of statues. Empress Dowager Feng, Empress Xiaoming, Empress Dowager Gong, and Empress Yifo of Western Wei were all ordained as nuns in Chang'an. At that time, there were as many as 3,000 monks in the Western Regions in Luoyang City. The Yongming Temple, ordered by Emperor Xuanwu, once housed more than 3,000 foreign shamens. At that time, most of the literati also advocated Buddhism, which led to the rapid development of monks in the temple. From these materials, it can be seen that it was precisely because of the blind belief in Buddhism that 17 empresses during the Northern Dynasty left the palace as nuns.
However, some others have carefully compared the backgrounds of the 17 empresses of the Northern Dynasty and come to another conclusion, believing that the Buddha is not the real reason for the empress's renunciation, and that the real reasons for these empresses to become nuns include: First, for health reasons, the environment of the temple is conducive to the rehabilitation of the infected empress; Second, some empresses were expelled from the palace as nuns due to their loss of favor in the competition for favor; Third, due to the change of the imperial throne or the change of dynasty, it is a good place to go; The fourth is the loser of the struggle for power between the two houses after the young lord's heir; Fifth, those who enter the monastery and seek political asylum.
Others believe that the special status of the monastic economy at that time should be explored and analyzed as the root cause of so many empresses leaving the palace as nuns. In the middle and late period of the Northern Dynasty, due to the support of the ruling class, the power of the monasteries developed rapidly, and the number of monks and nuns increased sharply. Buddhist temples have spread all over the country, many of which are temples built by these emperors at the expense of the rulers, most of which are magnificent, taking the Yaoguang Temple, which contains the most empresses as nuns, as an example, and this temple also has a large number of palace women for the empress dowager's concubines. These monasteries occupied a considerable amount of land and a large number of laborers, and gradually formed an independent monastic economy and a special class of monks and landlords. The monasteries all had a great deal of wealth in the upper land, did not engage in production, depended on peasants through leasing or conscription, operated commerce, and issued usurious loans. Exploiting the vast number of working people and accumulating a great deal of wealth. Fan Zhen said in the "Theory of Divine Annihilation": People pour out their family wealth to worship the Buddha and ask for monks, but the grain is eaten by the monks who have nothing to do. A lot of money went into the monasteries, the society was full of bad people, but no one stopped it, and people were still praising "Amitabha Buddha". Therefore, it can be seen that these monasteries are actually another palace for the pleasure of the empress, and there is no difference in actual material life from the palace. Therefore, these people believe that at that time, the special status of the temple was the fundamental reason why the empress left the palace as a nun.
All in all, whatever the real reason for these empresses to go out of the palace to become nuns is just to make people sigh when they look back on this period of history.