The bond between Li Shimin and Tang Monk (Master Xuanzang) is already known to many people now, but Master Xuanzang and Wu Zetian also had a bond, and not many people may know.
The reason why Wu Zetian was able to connect with Master Xuanzang was because of her "second marriage" husband, Li Zhi of Tang Gaozong. After Li Zhi took over Li Shimin's class, he once walked close to Master Xuanzang, but his control over Master Xuanzang did not relax at all. When Wu Zetian first came into contact with Xuanzang, she should have simply prayed for her own fertility, but later, she had other thoughts.
Of course, this idea was not the relationship between men and women, but Wu Zetian became interested in the political role of Buddhism, but judging from the fact that Master Xuanzang was later snubbed, Master Xuanzang should not have accepted Wu Zetian's olive branch. So what did Wu Zetian want to do with Buddhism?
According to the Old Book of Tang, Wu Zetian once favored a monk named Xue Huaiyi in his later years, and some people's attention to this monk was basically lace news between him and Wu Zetian, in fact, Wu Zetian favored him, in addition to physical reasons, there were also political reasons.
Before going to the Western Heavenly Elysium, this Xue Huaiyi had taken the lead in compiling a "Great Cloud Sutra", which had only one core content in the commentary on the scriptures: women can become emperors, and the current society is very much in need of Wu Zetian to be emperors, and she is Maitreya incarnation!
This kind of thing is clear-eyed and everyone knows that this must have been ordered by Wu Zetian, otherwise he would have been sprayed to death by the ministers without Wu Zetian's hands.
So why did Wu Zetian use Buddhism to pave his way to the throne?
That's a long story.
As we all know, all kinds of scholarship in ancient China, in the early days, have always been "a hundred flowers blooming", although this phenomenon is conducive to the development of scholarship, but it is not conducive to the rule of a dynasty. So after Emperor Wu of Han came to power, he began to "respect Confucianism alone and depose hundreds of families." ”
Some people may ask, why did Emperor Wudi of Han have to respect Confucianism? Why not choose other academic schools?
The answer is actually very simple, the Confucians at that time were very "intimate", it said to Emperor Wu of Han through Dong Zhongshu that the position of the emperor was not beaten by fists, it was given by God, and the future world is the world of the old Liu family, and no one can compete for it (the divine right of the king), secondly, in the world of the old Liu family, no second master is allowed, if anyone dares to show his head, the emperor has the right to "take the place of heaven" (Honoring the King), in short, no one is allowed to covet the imperial power, and the emperor wants to fight whomever he wants.
When Emperor Wudi of the Han Dynasty saw that the Confucians were so powerful, he could not help but express them, and he announced: In the future, don't rectify those useless things, everyone should come to learn Confucianism, and after learning Confucianism, you will know how to play with the emperor more happily (Confucianism), in addition, in order to strengthen the construction of our team, in the future, officials must be trained in strict accordance with Confucian ideas.
That is to say, in the future, when my old Liu family becomes the emperor for a day, you Confucians can always be the boss of the academic circle, and we will become a "community of destiny" from now on. Because of the escort of this intergenerational relationship, the Han Dynasty stood firm for hundreds of years, and although there were some small bumps in the way, it was soon "corrected".
However, by the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, the strength of the old Liu family was really not good, first Dong Zhuo, a non-Confucian descendant, deposed the emperor, and then a group of military generals who liked to ride horses and slash and kill, and then tossed the imperial power for a good time, and finally Cao Wei took a step closer, directly changed the dynasty, and when the Sima family took power, it was even more that the son of the old god was killed in the street, and there was no wang law, and there was no Heavenly Dao, no, it was gone, and the "three views" formed over hundreds of years were completely finished.
After Confucianism was trampled into the mud, various academic religions began to fight for land, but there was no idea that could explain why the emperor needed my respect, and why he could be an emperor, I could not be. Therefore, at that time, the Central Plains Dynasty was in chaos, and everyone directly fought with their fists in order to become emperors.
War can create emperors, but it cannot achieve dynasties, and faith still has to be there, so people who were not emperors at that time advocated force, but after he became emperors, he began to hope that you put down the butcher's knife and talk to him about cause and effect, so Buddhism at that time was very prosperous. The chaos in the Central Plains, in addition to scattering the stalls inside, also allowed the nomadic tribes in the north to see the opportunity, so they began to invade the south, and then took advantage of the chaos to establish various regimes.
By the time Li Tang was established, the bloodline of the northern nomadic tribes had begun to merge with the bloodline of the Central Plains, and the old Li family was no exception, so Li Shimin's Li was not all the genes of the Central Plains. In order to maintain his rule, Li Tang naturally did not want the Central Plains people to feel that they were ruled by foreign tribes, so he found himself a Central Plains ancestor, the Taoist ancestor Li Er, but in the bones of their own people, they understood very well that it was not the truth that it was not the reason, but the strength that fought in the country.
Therefore, although Li Tang also implemented the imperial examination system, the intensity was very perfunctory. When Wu Zetian took advantage of her husband's poor health and seized power step by step, Wu Zetian faced a big problem. Although the "group of martial generals" headed by the old Li family did not mind the weak eating the strong, and the winner was the king, the subjects of the world had never heard that women could still be emperors.
Therefore, Wu Zetian needed to find a "reasonable excuse" for his title of emperor in this "relatively relaxed" era. No, you are seizing power from the descendants of the Taoist ancestors, aren't you dreaming with your eyes open? So is Confucianism okay? If you don't plan to completely transform Confucianism, and you can't go down this road, then what choice is there?
Buddhism, only Buddhism. At that time, Buddhism already had a large market, but Buddhism could not be used directly, but as long as the thinking did not slip, Wu Zetian could not find a solution. So Xue Huaiyi, the monk, began to go online, Wu Zetian did not feed his body we do not really know, after all, her old man is that age.
However, what we can be sure of is that Xue Huaiyi's "Great Cloud Jingshu", like Dong Zhongshu's "Three Strategies for Heaven and Man", solved Wu Zetian's "big problem in his heart", so Wu Zetian successfully ascended the throne after controlling public opinion.
So with the lesson of Wu Zetian, why did those empresses and empresses who had the opportunity to go further in the future fail to go further?
First of all, Buddhism you can take as a faith, but you can't use it to govern the country, so in the end all the dynasties chose Confucianism, and in the Confucian doctrine, women are absolutely not allowed to be emperors, so those women in the later period cut off hope. Secondly, Li Tang's style is to speak with strength, so Wu Zetian, if you have the ability, you can try.
But after Wu Zetian, everyone began to "conservative", and female power could only be more common in the northern nomadic tribes. Therefore, without the background of the times and without the support of "academics", Wu Zetian's record was not broken.