Traditional Culture Encyclopedia - Traditional festivals - Do the Chinese speak of the netherworld from Buddhism

Do the Chinese speak of the netherworld from Buddhism

In China, a large number of ancient myths and Taoist texts have records of the netherworld. The Chinese divide everything in the world into two poles, which is the Chinese doctrine of yin and yang, an important part of ancient Chinese philosophy. The Chinese divide the space where human beings live into the sky (yang) and the earth (yin); people are divided into male (yang) and female (yin); the time of day is white (yang) and the day (yin); the sky is divided into the sun (yang) and the moon (yin); and the space of human existence is divided into the heaven (yang) and the earth (yin); and the human soul and seven spirits are considered to have a soul at least before the Zhou Dynasty. China, there are three realms, namely, heaven, earth and hell; it is believed that human beings have souls, and each human being has three souls and seven pranas; at least before the Zhou Dynasty, it was believed that human beings were divided into souls and pranas, and that souls as yang qi and pranas as yin shapes were combined to form human beings, and that, after the death of human beings, the divine souls and auras returned to heaven, while the essence of prana and forms and skeletons returned to the earth; it is the souls, qi and forms and pranas that are used to explain the evolution of the human beings' past, present and future lives, and it is believed that the elfin world is divided into three realms: earthly and divides the world of spirits into three realms: the earthly, the heavenly for the gods in the sky, and the underground for the spirits in the earth. The Yellow Springs may be the earliest concept of the underworld of hell to appear in Chinese religious beliefs. Later, in the Han Dynasty, there appeared the netherworld in Taoism, and after the introduction of Buddhism, it was influenced by it to develop a systematic system of hell, the eighteen layers of hell, on the basis of the original evil Cao hell in Taoism. The concept of hell is greater than hell, and the concept of the underworld is greater than hell. The netherworld refers to the space where the souls of the dead are located, so it is not limited to hell, and may even overlap with the earthly world in space and people can not perceive it; hell refers to the place where the souls of the dead are imprisoned and punished for the sins they committed during their lifetime, and can be said to be the prison and torture chamber of the netherworld; and the general public may still be able to laugh in the nine springs after their deaths in the netherworld, just like in the earthly world, and the best of the best may even be immortalized into a god and be honored to enter into the paradise after their deaths. Fengdu Da Di (Fengdu Beiyin Da Di) and the other four ghost emperors in the Five Ghost Emperors, Yan Wang (King of Yanluo) or the ten separate Yanluo halls, etc. are the masters of the underworld, and the God of the Earth (the Emperor of the Earth and the Goddess of the Earth)[4], the God of Taishan, the King of Tianqi (the Great Emperor of the East), the King of the Earth, the King of the Earth, and the City God, etc., are also the gods in charge of the lives and deaths of the human beings. The "three realms" here refers to the three realms of Taoism, although Buddhism has expanded the three realms into six paths, but it is still incomplete, because our traditional culture also has grass and trees into the essence of the saying "vine spirit tree monster", this reason is also out of the Taoist Yang Shen can be This is also due to the fact that the Taoist Yang Shen can be "gathered to form, scattered to zero". Even can become essence, including stone, have the spirit of any object can be changed into shape. It is not bound to the six paths. But always included in the theory of yin and yang.