Dimming the radiance to mingle with dust: Ximing temple as a confluence of historical elements

Abstract

ABSTRACT As a major temple associated with the imperial regime, Ximing Temple played multiple roles that ordinary Buddhist temples did not, but, at the same time, it resembled other temples in being an important node of the Buddhist movement to convert laypeople. Ximing Temple turned out to be more than a place of religious practice; it is a great open platform, an enormous platform on which the scholarly and the monastic, the Buddhist and the non-Buddhist, the bureaucrats and commoners, the sacred and the secular could all take what they wanted. Ximing Temple is the epitome of the once broad-minded and cosmopolitan Tang Empire, and the last vestige of a once cosmopolitan religious tradition. Since the reign of Emperor Xuanzong, the An Lushan Rebellion 安史之亂 (755-763) initially shattered the adolescent dream of Buddhism with its infinite possibilities, and the Huichang Suppression of Buddhism 會昌法難 (841-845) was the inevitable result of the abandonment of cosmopolitanism in the Tang Dynasty, which was slowly moving towards self-enclosure. After that, the commercial characteristics of a world religion slowly faded from Chinese Buddhism.