“He who has left the household [a monk] is a lodger beyond the earthly world, and his ways are cut off from those of other beings.”

 

--from Huiyuan, a prominent Chinese Buddhist monk (334-417). From his tract entitled “A Monk Does not Bow Down before a King.”

“With the armed might of a [universal king], we spread the ideals of the ultimately enlightened one [Buddha].  With a hundred victories in a hundred battles, we promote the practice of the ten Buddhist virtues.  Therefore, we regard the weapons of war as having become like the offerings of incense and flowers presented to Buddha, and the fields of this world as becoming forever identical with the Buddhaland.”

 

--from the founder of the Sui Dynasty, China , 589-617 C.E.

“Your servant begs to leave to say that Buddhism is no more than a cult of the barbarian peoples which spread to China in the time of the Latter Han [25-220 C.E.] . . . Now Buddha was a man of the barbarians who did not speak the language of China and wore clothes of a different fashion.  His sayings did not concern the ways of our ancient kings, nor did his manner of dress conform to their laws.  He understood neither the duties that bind sovereign and subject, nor the affections of father and son . . . How then, when he has long been dead, could his rotten bones, the foul and unlucky remains of his body, be rightly admitted to the palace?”

 

--Han Yu, Confucian scholar (768-824 C.E.) living in the Tang Dynasty.