Chapter 60 The evil of the white lotus, the sin lies in its heart
The clerks of Lidong Grain Store buried He Jian's body. In line with the principle of death, Fan Zhongyan did not make his only daughter an official slave, but sent someone to send her to a relative's home.
At this time, Lidong Grain Store had become the granary of Suzhou City, from which a large amount of grain was distributed, and a steady stream of grain was transported from Tokyo City. In only half a month, Suzhou's food crisis was resolved, but
There are more and more victims.
The people near the state capital heard about what happened in Suzhou City, and naturally they came to flee. The White Lotus Society has also developed from the Empress Temple in the south of the city to outside the city.
Ye An was not idle during this period. His research and judgment on the White Lotus Society was sufficient. The so-called moral master was called Master Dade, and his lay name was Dai Dekun. His ancestral home was Luzhou. He was the only one in his family and had no relatives or friends.
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In his early years, he practiced Buddhism with Master Jingjue, an eminent monk of the Tiantai Sect. Later, for some unknown reason, he joined the White Lotus Society and turned the religious community that was originally a meditation practice into the ferocious cult it is today.
Ye An has already sent people to infiltrate the White Lotus Society in order to find out what the White Lotus Society's true thoughts are. The so-called welcoming Maitreya into the world is just a pretense. What he really wants to do must be to destabilize the country, but why does Dai Dekun want to
Do this?
Did he want to carry out a peasant uprising, or was he simply dissatisfied with society or Buddhism?
Ye An believes that by changing the White Lotus Society to such a radical level, this moral teacher must have his own ambitions. Even a madman will have a certain purpose and cannot simply kill people and cause chaos.
The undercover agent sent out came back and told Ye An that the essence of the White Lotus Society was to overthrow Buddhism. Now he finally knew that there must be a gap or even a big feud between Dai Dekun and Buddhism.
Opposing the imperial court was just to cater to the people's dissatisfaction and anger against the imperial system and to recruit more believers. Its main purpose was to subvert the status of Buddhism, thus destroying temples and killing monks and nuns.
The act of burning Buddhist statues makes sense.
Fan Zhongyan deeply detested this kind of behavior. In his opinion, the Song Dynasty valued literature over martial arts, governed the world with Confucianism and Taoism, and promoted the strategy of focusing on Confucianism and giving equal emphasis to Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism. To a certain extent, Buddhism was also maintaining the stability of the country.
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The White Lotus Society's actions against Buddhism are opposing national policies and undermining social stability!
Ye An was dismissive of Lao Fan's rhetoric. In his opinion, Buddhism is one of the factors causing instability in this society. Religion is not wrong in the first place. Who can have no faith? But Buddhism is
The Song Dynasty was already at its peak, and people from all three religions and streams were mixed into it. In a sense, Buddhism in the Song Dynasty had become a place where filth and evil spread.
Starting from the first year of Jianlong when the Song Dynasty was founded, Song Taizu once granted special favor to 8,000 monks. In the seventh year of Taiping Xingguo and the fourth year of Yongxi reign, Song Dazong granted special permission to children twice; in the second year of Dazhong Xiangfu and Tianxi
Three years later, Emperor Zhenzong even issued an edict to grant special favors to monks all over the world.
Monks did not engage in production and did not pay taxes. The speed of accumulating wealth was astonishing. Buddhist temples in the Song Dynasty became extremely wealthy. Nowadays, temples in the Song Dynasty not only occupy a large amount of land, but also own a large amount of real estate. The longevity treasury in Tokyo City was hit by Ye An, but
The longevity treasury in other places during the Song Dynasty did not have any impact, and lending has almost become a standard money-raising operation for large-scale temples.
Not only do they lend money to the poor, but they also lobby the rich, and even lend money in a deceptive way. Finally, they delay it for various reasons, causing the interest rate to rise higher and higher. The government generally does not care about this kind of behavior, and ultimately the rich households
Families will also be devastated by such high beheading interest rates, and their families will be destroyed.
Ye An has always looked down on Buddhism. In the prosperous times, incense flourished, but in troubled times, the gates of the mountain were closed. It was a proper egoism. Even if there is an allusion about the Eighteen-stick Monk saving the Tang Dynasty, it is just a fabrication in history. If such a thing really happened,
It will not be mentioned vaguely in official documents. The Tang Dynasty's compliance with Buddhism has already been recorded in history books with great fanfare.
What can really be seen is Buddhism's greed for wealth, plunder of the world, and indulgence of desires.
Of course, it is not that there are no eminent monks in this era, but the number of eminent monks is too small. In the prosperous Song Dynasty, more monks have been secularized. For them, it is important for them to expand temple wealth and land, eat delicacies from the mountains and seas, and enjoy beautiful girls.
Their purpose. Yes, there were not a few monks in the Song Dynasty who ate meat and drank wine, and it also happened that they raped women in the name of practicing Buddhism.
This can no longer be described as wealthy, but can only be described as luxurious. In order to avoid being remonstrated by the courtiers, Zhao Zhen did not even dare to repair his family temple at will. He only dared to pay tribute to his ancestors when there was a great victory on the battlefield.
In the name of repairing the family temple.
Fan Zhongyan's anger was quickly extinguished by Ye An with a basin of water: "Fan Gong only saw Buddhism being beaten, but he didn't look like he was full of fat! My clerk from Puhui Company came back from Huangzhou to purchase goods and said: Qi'an
The Yongxing Temple in Mount Emei spent 70,000 taels of gold to rebuild the temple at one time! Another guy said that the expansion of the Samantabhadra statue in Mount Emei cost 3,000 taels of gold at a time! How can a temple that spends all day chanting sutras and worshiping Buddha be so prosperous?
This amount of money is probably comparable to the summer taxes of a state or a government, right?!"
Fan Zhongyan looked at Ye An in shock and said, "Is this happening?!"
Ye An sneered and said: "What Changsheng said is only one in ten million. There are more things that need to be investigated by Mr. Fan himself. At present, the White Lotus Society is strengthening itself in the name of killing monks and destroying Buddhas.
Do you know how many families have been forced to have their families destroyed by Buddhist immortality money and longevity money?!"
Fan Zhongyan nodded slightly. He had heard a lot about this matter, but he didn't expect it to be so serious. It would even be involved in the growth of the White Lotus Society, which would have an impact on the stability of the country.
The ancients of this era did not form the multi-dimensional analysis of later generations, because of the limitations of knowledge and knowledge, systematic analysis, and statistics had not been produced, which made it difficult to connect two seemingly unrelated things in many cases.
For example, why does the White Lotus Society currently propose the theory of killing monks and destroying Buddhas? Why do so many people support it?
These are all multi-faceted, but when Dai Dekun promoted the White Lotus Society, he used the simplest and most direct method. Whatever harm the common people suffered, they were the enemies of the White Lotus Society.
At present, the effect of suppressing the White Lotus Society is very bad. Liu Zhao led more than 200 Baojing troops to suppress the White Lotus Society in Suzhou City. They have no intention of confronting the government now and broke it into pieces after receiving the news.
Go out of the city.
When Liu Zhao wanted to arrest the so-called "guru" of the White Lotus Society, they didn't even see him, but they found nothing. They found out that the name of the White Lotus Saint was Fang Linyue...
As expected, the White Lotus Saint appeared in Suzhou City. Ye An knew from the beginning that she would definitely come to Suzhou. It seemed that under the turmoil of the Jianghuai disaster, all sorts of monsters and monsters appeared.
Fan Zhongyan sighed slightly: "A drought and locust disaster has disturbed the peace in the Jianghuai River. Tomorrow we will go to Tongzhou to investigate the situation."
Ye An nodded in agreement, and it was time to continue heading south. The disaster situation in the entire Jianghuai River had now been clearly controlled. The only thing that made him uneasy was the Bailian Society. Tongzhou was the Nantong of later generations, and it could be said to be the important town of the Jianghuai generation.
Stabilizing the disaster situation first, and then destroying the White Lotus Society was the best plan the two of them came up with.