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After its arrival in China, many people defended and supported Buddhism. Chi Dun, a Chinese scholar, says that Buddhism was a path to nirvana and stop suffering. As a high class scholar who probably didn’t feel threatened by invading nomads, he never really reflected on how the lower class people felt and if they felt any danger towards them. Over some period, other scholars started writing text about Buddhism and some of these text were a way to defend it from people who question it and uses logic to support why the “cause of suspicion” is illogical.
However since the author is an unknown scholar, he might not hare how other people felt Just as Chi Dun had. Both students precisely reflected one of Buddha teaching that by “eliminating craving”, you would be able to “stop sorrow’. In order to better support Buddhism, we would need to hear the reflection of a non-scholar lower class person to compare how an average person felt about Buddhism. After some authority came to place, many people questioned Buddhism and its teachings.
Many of the responses to Buddhism were very negative and showed a lot of hostility. Han You cited Confucius referring Buddhist as, “No more than a cult of barbarian people. The fact that Han You was in an imperial court shows how his ideas were being used to influence the empire. But in order to know if his ideas actually influenced others, we would need to see other texts that state why he is right or how this will improve the empire. Emperor Www also stated that Buddhism is the cause for numerous problems in Chinese Society.
Emperor Www believes that “this evil should be eradicated” based on the facts that people will go hungry and die if the farmers don’t farm and someone will get cold and die if the women don’t tend there silkworms. Since, Emperor Www is saying this, he is most likely worried that Buddhism ill overrule him and take away his power. As more years pass by, defending Buddhism becomes more complicated by the minute. You have many people believing that Buddhism should be eradicated and you have others that think of Buddhism as a way to be in eternal happiness and can stop sorrow.
Chi Dun gave praise on Buddhism and its promises, but didn’t use any other religion to compare the two. By the time period 500 C. E. There have been so many reflections and critiques on Buddhism that an anonymous scholar went upon his time and created a how to guide to Dispose of Confucian fears upon a Buddhist empire. Gong Mi tried to improvise with all three religions without causing any conflict. He defended Buddhism by calling each founder “a perfect sage”, without any carbonization against anyone.