Ancient China
About China's religions

The Buddha
Description: The Buddha
Image copyright: http://buddhismdigest.files.wordpress.com/2008/08/buddha_padamya2.jpg

Question 1: What are the major beliefs of each religion?


Answer: Daoism: It’s view Toward Nature is important not to interfere with nature in any way because this could upset the natural order of things.


Buddhism: The major beliefs of Buddhism were centered around the idea that allow misfortunes and suffering results from our sense of attachment to worldly gifts and desires and the only way to achieve salvation is to lead a life of peace and solemness in contemptation and meditation.


Confucianism: The main beliefs of Confucianism are humanness and benevolence. Confucianism is characterized by highly optimistic view of human nature.

Question 2:How did the religions develop and spread throughout ancient China?


Answer: Buddhism
It spread by Silk Roads and through the IOTN (Indian Ocean Trade Network) mainly.
It developed in China.
Buddhism entered China a few centuries after the passing away of the Buddha. In the early phases of its entry Buddhism did not find many adherents in China. But by the 2nd Century AD, aided to some extent by the simplicity of its approach and some similarities with Daoism, it managed to gain a firm foothold and a sizeable following.


Daoism:
Daoism also developed in China.It developed by...

The Daoist adept was concerned to achieve 'immortality', seen as transmuted earthly existence. This led to the development of alchemy and to methods of meditation aimed at reaching material immortality. As time passed Daoism found itself in direct competition with the foreign teachings of Buddhism. It borrowed Buddhist practices and also drew on folk religious traditions to create its own religious form and ethos. It secured an essential place in popular religious life, but in this form it has ceased to bear much resemblance to the philosophical precepts of the early teachers. The earlier, more philosophical Daoism has continued to inspire Chinese painters and poets through the ages and its teachings appealed to many a scholar official who adhered to a strictly Confucian ethic in public life.

How Daoism spread:
Daoism spread by its followers.



Confucianism:
It developed in China to by...

...Confucius spent most of his life traveling throughout China, teaching about the importance of duty, ritual, and virtue. He taught that a ruler must set an example to inspire people to strive for a moral life. Years after he died, students assembled his teachings into a book, the Analects, and a new school of thought developed—Confucianism. This philosophy deeply influenced China throughout most of its history.

How it spread...
"Confucius was a man of letters who worried about the troubled times in which he lived. He went from place to place trying to spread his political ideas and influence to the many kings contending for supremacy in China. In the Eastern Zhou Dynasty (772-221 BCE), successive kings of the Zhou gradually became mere figureheads. In this power vacuum, the rulers of small states began to vie with one another for military and political dominance. Deeply persuaded of the need for his mission ("If right principles prevailed through the empire, there would be no need for me to change its state"; (Analects XVIII, 6), Confucius tirelessly promoted the virtues of ancient illustrious sages such as the Duke of Zhou. Confucius tried to amass sufficient political power to found a new dynasty, as when he planned to accept an invitation from a rebel to "make a Zhou dynasty in the East" (Analects XV, 5). As the common saying that Confucius was a "king without a crown" indicates, however, he never gained the opportunity to apply his ideas. He was expelled from states many times and eventually returned to his homeland to spend the last part of his life teaching. The Analects of Confucius, the closest primary source we have for his thoughts, relates his sayings and discussions with rulers and disciples in short passages. There is considerable debate over how to interpret the Analects.

To judge from what has remained, Confucius did not rely on deductive reasoning to convince his listeners. Instead, he used figures of rhetoric such as analogy and aphorism to explain his ideas. Because his sayings draw heavily on a specific cultural milieu, distant in place and time, European and American readers might find his philosophy muddled or unclear. However, Confucius claimed that he sought "a unity all-pervading" (Analects XV, 3) and that there was "one single thread binding my way together" (IV, 15). The first real Confucian system may have been created by his disciples, or by their disciples. During the philosophically fertile period of the Hundred Schools of Thought, great early figures of Confucianism such as Mencius and Xun Zi (not to be confused with Sun Zi) developed Confucianism into an ethical and political doctrine. Both had to fight contemporary ideas and gain the ruler's confidence through argumentation and reasoning. Mencius enriched Confucianism with a fuller explanation of human nature, of what is needed for good government, and of what morality is. He founded his idealist doctrine on the claim that human nature is essentially good. Xun Zi opposed many ideas of Mencius, and built a structured system upon the idea that human nature is essentially bad, and therefore needed to be educated and exposed to the rites. Some of Xun Zi's disciples, such as Han Feizi and Li Si, became Legalists (advocates of a kind of law-based extreme statism, quite distant from virtue-based Confucianism); they conceived the state system that allowed Qin Shi Huang to unify China through strong state control of every human activity. The culmination of the Confucian dream of unification and peace in China can therefore be argued to have come from Legalism-a school of thought almost diametrically opposed to his reliance on rites and virtue.

Confucianism as passed down to the 19th and 20th centuries derives primarily from the school of the Neo-Confucians, led by Zhu Xi, who gave Confucianism renewed vigor in the Song and later dynasties. Neo-Confucianism combined Taoist and Buddhist ideas with existing Confucian ideas to create a more complete system of metaphysics. At the same time, many forms of Confucianism have historically declared themselves opposed to the Buddhist and Taoist belief systems. Confucianism was chosen by Han Wudi (141-86 BCE) for use as a political system to govern the Chinese state. Despite its loss of influence during the Tang Dynasty, Confucian doctrine remained a mainstream Chinese orthodoxy for two millennia until the 20th century. It was still dominant in most parts of China until radical Chinese thinkers attacked it as the vanguard of a pre-modern system and an obstacle to China's modernization, eventually culminating in its repression during China's Cultural Revolution. Since the end of the Cultural Revolution, Confucianism has been revived in China itself, and both interest in and debate about Confucianism have surged."

Question 3: How are the religions similar and different to each other?

Answer: Confucianism,Buddhism,and Daoism Differences:
The overall goal of Confucian is different than Buddhism and Taoism because the overall goal of the Confucius is to find their peaceful and harmonious place in life, while the two others have no overall goal.

Answer : Confucianism, Buddhism, Taoism Similarities:
The basic beliefs and concepts of Confucianism are similar to Taoism in the sense that they want peace and good behavior. The Buddhists, on the other hand, strictly have the purpose to reach Nirvana and follow the four noble truths.

Answer : Taoism and Buddhism's Similarities:
Buddhism and Taoism are similar to each other because they really don't have any overall goal. The only religion that has has an overall goal is Confucianism.
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