Zhu Yuanzhang's earliest contact with religion should be Buddhism, at that time in the last years of the Yuan Dynasty, the people of the world had no food and clothing, Zhu Yuanzhang's family was no exception, and it was more difficult than the general family, because Zhu Yuanzhang's parents and eldest brother died successively, when Zhu Yuanzhang's family was poor and could not even afford to buy a coffin, the most of them only used a few old clothes as coffins...
The living always have to live, and Zhu Yuanzhang, who was forced by life, finally had no choice but to blend into the temple, hoping to eat under the protection of the Buddha, but he soon found that there was no surplus grain in the temple, so he left the temple and began to become a beggar.
This experience made Zhu Yuanzhang realize that there is no savior in this world, and if you want to live, the only thing you can rely on in the end is yourself. However, although he did not serve as a monk for a few days, he found that Buddhism, as a kind of faith sustenance, would still attract some people, and the indoctrination role of Buddhism did have a certain effect on the grass-roots people.
Therefore, after Zhu Yuanzhang became emperor, he still attached great importance to Buddhism, and in order to make Buddhism better appease the people who had just experienced the war, he vigorously supported Buddhism:
First of all, he built a wide range of temples and summoned high monks from all over the world to Nanjing, with the purpose of annotating Buddhist scriptures such as the Diamond Sutra and rebuilding the glory of Buddhism.
Secondly, the former dynasty needed to charge for the people to enter the sand gate, but Zhu Yuanzhang lowered the threshold for these people who had expectations, and he directly cancelled this "entrance fee".
In addition, he also asked the "virtuous" monks to help the king of the clan learn Buddhism, and it was in this context that Yao Guangxiao, the black-robed prime minister, became the "Zhuge Liang" of Zhu Di, the king of Yan.
In this way, the status of Buddhism was soon improved, and the number of buddhist believers was also increasing, because the concept advocated by Buddhism was to cultivate the afterlife after suffering in this life, so the people who were traumatized by the war soon received spiritual comfort and began to "quiet".
If you look at the above content alone, it seems that Zhu Yuanzhang's love for Buddhism is from the bottom of his heart, and some people may even say that this is zhu Yuanzhang's early years as a monk, so he did not forget his roots when he became emperor.
But in fact, Zhu Yuanzhang's "love" for Buddhism is actually very short-lived.
After Buddhism completed the task of appeasing the people, Zhu Yuanzhang began to tighten the control of Buddhism, and he once had people set up a special Buddhist management agency to be responsible for managing the Buddhist affairs of the world, that is to say, Zhu Yuanzhang had used administrative means to control the religious affairs of Buddhism in the later period.
According to the "History of Ming" and other materials, Zhu Yuanzhang, in addition to setting up a special institution to exercise macroscopic control over Buddhism, also improved a lot of management details, for example, he once asked the temples in various places to reduce the number of scales, and strict restrictions should be imposed on the people to become monks, those who did not reach a certain age were not allowed to become monks, those who did not meet certain requirements could not become monks, and even at that time, if the people wanted to become monks, they had to pass specific examinations.
So why did Zhu Yuanzhang tighten his grip on Buddhism?
Friends who are familiar with the history of the Ming Dynasty know that Zhu Yuanzhang not only personally did it when he was fighting the world, that is, after becoming an emperor, he was never lazy about government affairs, and later after he canceled the establishment of the prime minister, he was even more tired enough to choke himself, and even some people said that in ancient times, there were two emperors who were exhausted by government affairs, one of which was Zhu Yuanzhang.
But what is unexpected is that Zhu Yuanzhang was actually busy, and personally commented on the Taoist god "Tao Te Ching", to know that Zhu Yuanzhang had "deeply loved" Buddhism before, but he had not commented on a Buddhist scripture, so why did he want to annotate the Tao Te Ching? Is it he "empathizing"? Was Buddhism "abandoned" by him for this reason?
Let's first look at why Zhu Yuanzhang wanted to annotate the Tao Te Ching, according to zhu Yuanzhang's preface to the commentary on the Tao Te Ching, there are two main reasons for his annotation of the Tao Te Ching:
First, after Zhu Yuanzhang became emperor, he wanted to seek the "elixir" to govern the world, but he asked someone around and did not get the answer he wanted, and once when he read the Tao Te Ching, he found that the book was very well written, which can be called:"The root of all things, the master of the king, the supreme treasure of the subjects." ”。
Second, Zhu Yuanzhang, as a wise man, knew that reading a book could not only read one book, but should be examined from many aspects, so he looked at different annotated versions of the Tao Te Ching, but in the process, he found that there were many people who annotated the Tao Te Ching, but everyone's focus was different, and even many of the annotations deviated from the "original meaning" of the book, so he wanted to annotate it himself.
So what does Zhu Yuanzhang think is the original intention of the Tao Te Ching?
According to records, there was a Taoist monk who seemed to value Taoism because he looked at Zhu Yuanzhang, so he went to Nanjing to present a Taoist book to Zhu Yuanzhang, and as a result, after Zhu Yuanzhang read it, he not only did not praise it, but criticized the people, saying that the book offered by the Daoist priest was pure about how to cultivate oneself and refine medicines in order to seek immortality, and as the king of a country, he did not need this kind of thing, what he needed was the "way of the sages."
The Taoist Longhushan Zhang Zhenren faction was known as the "Heavenly Master" because it was highly respected by the former dynasty, but after Zhu Yuanzhang became emperor, he not only did not "unite the Heavenly Master", but said that the old Zhang family could not afford the word "Heaven", so he gave the "Heavenly Master" of others and changed the "Heavenly Master Seal" that Longhu Mountain was proud of to change to the "True Human Seal".
These two small things seem to have little to do with each other, but if you put them together and think about them, you will find that Zhu Yuanzhang does not seem to have "true love" for Taoism.
Then Zhu Yuanzhang is not "true love" Taoism, why did he personally annotate the Tao Te Ching?
In 1372 AD, during Zhu Yuanzhang's second Northern Expedition, someone presented a pair of tigua to Zhu Yuanzhang, saying that the people had inadvertently discovered this "Xiangrui", but after Zhu Yuanzhang saw this "Xiangrui", he categorically said that this small "Xiangrui" was just for the people who planted him, and for Tianzi, this small "Xiangrui" had no meaning, and the people of the world were well clothed and fed, and it was the "Xiangrui" of the Tianzi level.
And after the preface we quoted earlier, there are actually a few words" (The Tao Te Ching) non-Jindan Zhiye" (Tao Te Ching).
That is to say, the reason why Zhu Yuanzhang thinks that the "Tao Te Ching" is good is not because this Taoist collection talks about the secret art of immortality, but that the book is simple and easy to understand, and it can be used to understand a lot of truths (publicize many theories), so Zhu Yuanzhang's purpose of annotating it is to "correct the chaos" and prevent people who read this book from "going astray". The second is to publicize the governing philosophy that he wants to publicize through the annotation of this classic.
After explaining this question, we can also understand that Zhu Yuanzhang is no different from Taoism for Buddhism, and he does not care much about the theology of religion itself, and these two religions are just a tool for him to govern the country.
Among Zhu Yuanzhang's descendants, there was once a person who also annotated a religious collection, do you know who he is? Why would he do that? Let's continue tomorrow.