Chapter 7 China 273Buddhist symbols so boldly and successfully was simply one more thing wrong
with Buddhism.
In late Tang times, the state was impoverished by civil war and turned to
the wealth of Buddhist monasteries to replenish the treasury. At the same time,
a more fundamental shift was taking place toward older Chinese values, Con-
fucian ones. As Zurcher writes:
[Buddhism’s] decline was a gradual process—it petered out and slowly lost
its intellectual vitality and creativity, and its social status, in a world in
which the educated elite more and more turned away from it, and in which
the best minds were attracted to the examination hall rather than to the
monastery. (1984:205)
Buddhism continued to function more marginally in Chinese society. The
theme of the messiah, Maitreya, was rich in revolutionary possibility. Secret
sects formed, like the “White Lotus Society,” which played a role in the down-
fall of the Yuan dynasty. Martial monk-heroes, such as the kung-fu monks of the
Shaolin Monastery in Henan, became a theme in popular lore (bequeathed to
modern action films), and came close to toppling the Qing dynasty at the begin-
ning of the nineteenth century. However, even though the People’s Republic of
China has liberalized its policies toward religion, most observers of China today
view the prospects of a strong comeback of Chinese Buddhism as unlikely.Neo-Confucianism
In the eleventh century Zhu Xi wrote in the part of Family Rituals devoted
to funerals:
Do not perform Buddhist services.... If heaven’s palace does not exist, then
that’s that. If it does, then men of virtue will ascend there. If hell does not
exist, then that’s that; if it does, then inferior men will enter it. Contempo-Is this Empress Wu?
The main figure at the
Luoyang caves is said to
have been modeled after the
empress, who devised prophe-
sies about herself as a “sage
Mother come to rule man-
kind” and a reincarnation of
the bodhisattva Maitreya.