Mazu, enshrined as the "Goddess of the Sea", is one of the important figures in China's folk beliefs. There are different theories about Mazu's life, but records of the Song Dynasty are widely accepted by believers.
Mazu is a praise for the "goddess of the sea". Mazu's surname is Lin Mingmo. Regarding her life, there are different theories, one is born during the Tang Tianbao period, and the other is said to have been born during the Song Jianlong period, but one thing is certain: Mazu is a human, and is an ordinary fisherman girl.
According to the Song Dynasty records, which have more historical records, Lin Mo was born in Xianliang Port, a beautiful small fishing village on the shore of Meizhou Bay in Putian City, Fujian Province. The Surname Lin is one of the Wang clans in Fujian. Lin Lu, the ancestor of Minlin, crossed the town of Jianye (present-day Nanjing) in the first year of the Jin Dynasty (307) with Sima Rui, the King of Langya, the Yellow Gate Attendant.
Mazu's gaozu Lin Yuan, five generations of Shi Min. Great-grandfather Lin Baoji, Shihou Zhou, Xiande first year (954) as a soldier and horse envoy of the unified army, in view of the chaos in the world, abandoned the official and went into hiding. His grandfather was named Fu ( ) , and he was the governor of Fujian. Mazu's father was named Lin Yuan (一稱惟悫), the song dynasty official was inspected, and his mother, Wang Shi, gave birth to a male (name Hongyi) and six daughters. Mazu is the little daughter of the family.
Mazu was born on March 23, 960, the first year of the Song Dynasty. Before his death, his parents already had five daughters, and they were eager to have another male, so they burned incense and prayed for the early gift of Lin'er, but the final birth was a baby girl, and the parents were disappointed. On the evening when she was about to be born, the neighbors saw the meteor turn into a red light shooting from the northwest sky, crystal dazzling, reflecting the red light of the rocks on the island, and the parents realized that this baby must not be the daughter of idleness, so they cared for it and loved it. Because he did not cry from birth to the middle of the moon, he was named Lin Mo.
Lin Mo was intelligent and intelligent at an early age, better than his sisters, and at the age of eight, he entered the school to read, studied diligently and memorized, and recited it by eye. She was young and dissatisfied with feudal marriage, and was determined not to marry. Since childhood, he has studied the tao of medicine, rejuvenated his magic hands, and taught people to prevent epidemics and eliminate disasters. She has a gentle and enthusiastic disposition, solves difficult problems, does good deeds, and enjoys doing things.
Legend has it that when Lin Mo was twenty-eight years old, she was unfortunately hit in the head by a mast to rescue a ship in distress at sea, fell into the water and died, and later became known as "people do good deeds, and become gods after death", seeing her ascension to heaven as a god, and specially went to the sea to rescue and help people.
After that, Mazu often appeared, and the villagers often saw her next to the mountain rock and water cave, or sitting between the clouds and mist, or flying on the sea in a vermilion dress, often showing dreams and showing holiness, saving people from emergencies, and then, the people in the township built a temple in Meifeng, devoutly worshipped, and posterity came to pilgrimage to worship in an endless stream.
Throughout his life, Mazu ran to the sea, saving the emergency, saving dangers, protecting the country and the people, blessing the masses, and the navigators respected them like gods. After her death, she still took it as her duty to do good deeds to save the murders and deaths, and people eventually worshipped Mazu as a veritable "goddess of the sea".
The mainland and Taiwan share the same roots and ancestors, and have been culturally inherited for more than a thousand years, forming an indestructible national consciousness. Mazu is China's "god", and Mazu's patriotism also determines the patriotism of its followers.
From January to May 6, 1989, more than 200 Taiwan compatriots broke through the ban of the Taiwan authorities and took a boat directly to Meizhou to worship the Mazu Temple; from January to May 1997, the Mazu golden body of Meizhou toured Taiwan for 103 days, stationed 36 palaces and temples, and accepted 10 million pilgrimages from Taiwan's Mazu followers, which introduced a huge response on the island of Taiwan.
On July 25, 2002, Mazu jin's body flew straight to Penghu, and tens of thousands of people worshipped, and the scene made people tear up.
At 8:00 a.m. on October 21, 2004, Meizhou Mazu Jinjin took off from the Mazu Temple on Meizhou Island in Putian City, accompanied by a group of 54 escorts, and flew from Changle International Airport to Macau to participate in the second Macao Mazu Cultural Tourism Festival.
In 2005, Lien Chan and Mr. Song Chuyu wrote inscriptions at the Mazu Temple in Meizhou: "Divine Zhao Hai Table" and "Shengde Matching Heaven".
This is the condensed function of the Mazu faith. Today, Mazu has become a symbol of peace for trade and navigation between the two sides of the strait, and a goddess of peace for reunifying the motherland and communicating cross-strait exchanges. This function in the Mazu faith will continue to function until the complete reunification of the motherland.
The vast universe is vast and boundless, but man is the master of the universe. Although due to differences in region, race, and cultural roots, aesthetics, value orientations, customs and habits are derived, as an instinct of "birth", human nature's cognition of good, evil, beauty and ugliness tends to be the same.
In many ways, the Mazu faith has adapted to human identification with truth, goodness, and beauty, such as helping the needy, curing the sick and saving people, giving people peace and auspiciousness, and so on. This is not only a kind of cultural dissemination, but also a kind of conceptual enlightenment.
"The preacher, the confessor, the word, the reason, the righteousness, the teaching, the preaching. When an idea is accepted by the people, indoctrination takes a back seat, while concepts (identification with truth, goodness, and beauty) take root, blossom, and bear fruit.
For more than a thousand years, when human beings faced droughts and floods, plagues and epidemics, they often begged the gods for the hope of disaster relief, Mazu's quelling of the tsunami, Zhang Tianshi's prayer for the plague, and the Dragon King's Pu descending Ganlin... Human beings are gradually enlightened by the continuous prayers to the gods: all beings are equal, all things are animistic, the Tao is natural.... Protecting the ecological environment and returning to nature has become the voice of the whole world and all mankind.