The Wise Man of Mount Wutai
Belief has long been foundational in China. Folk spirits, the teachings of Confucius and Mencius, Daoism, Buddhism, and often a combination thereof were worshiped and venerated. The Chinese people believed. They practiced. They lived closely with a connection to something beyond themselves. Many hundreds of millions still do.
Prominent within this belief ecosystem is Buddhism and, more particularly, Manjusri, the Bodhisattva of Wisdom. Throughout much of Buddhism’s almost 2,000-year history in China, this spiritual sage has been deeply embedded in Chinese consciousness. He, and his mountain home, are iconic.
Who is Manjusri and what is his story in China?
Bodhisattva of Wisdom
Bodhisattvas are enlightened beings who choose to remain on earth to help others along the path to enlightenment. The two most significant virtues on this journey are wisdom and compassion. In Mahayana Buddhism, Manjusri represents wisdom. Avalokitesvara (the Indian he who is the female Guanyin in China) represents compassion.
Manjusri is depicted with items that symbolize the power of wisdom to clear away illusion and ignorance, to help us see truth. These can include a sutra scroll for learning, a ruyi scepter for intellect and authority, and a double-edge sword, sometimes flaming, to slice through the clutter clouding our minds. Since the early eighth century, Manjusri has also often been shown astride a lion, a noble and strong beast that is fearless in the pursuit of clarity and wisdom.
Manifestations of Manjusri possess “extraordinary divine power” such that “whoever hears the name of Manjusri and sees, meditates, and worships his image could receive bountiful benefits and wisdom that would assist the pious in treading the path.”1 Manjusri beckons brightly to those searching for nourishment of the soul.
Arrival and Settling Down in China
Though hard to envision now in Buddhist-suffused China, the religion is not indigenous to this land. Buddhism first spread east from India shortly after the time of Jesus and in only a few centuries became firmly rooted. It flourished. The Chinese people gravitated to it. Many Imperial leaders who governed what Ian Johnson calls China’s “political-religious state” did as well. The focus on the current lifetime in this belief system was comforting and relatable.
Buddhism arrived in a culture that reveres mountains as lofty, natural points where the human realm touches the celestial. Mountains breathe spirituality and divinity and were then already important in both folk culture and Daoism. Buddhism quickly adapted to mountain worship.
Around the sixth century CE, the five mountains at Mount Wutai (Wutaishan) in North China became Manjusri’s base and the first sacred Buddhist mountain site in China. This eventuality is said to have been foretold in the Flower Garden Sutra, an epic sutra created in India in the 1st-2nd century CE (give or take a century either way) and translated into Chinese in the early 5th century CE:
“There is a place in the northeast called the Clear and Cool Mountains, where many bodhisattvas from ancient times have lived. Nowadays there is a certain Bodhisattva by the name of Manjusri, who dwells there together with a retinue of ten thousand bodhisattvas and preaches the Dharma.”
The five peaks of Wutaishan were identified as the Clear and Cool Mountains. In the ensuing centuries as Buddhism Sinicized and grew, many monasteries were built here. Auspicious signs abounded. Spiritual encounters were recorded. Pilgrimage exploded. The worship cult of Manjusri went viral.
Transmission Across China
News of Wutaishan’s glory spread. In 824 CE, the Tibetan king sent envoys to the Emperor of Tang Dynasty China requesting a “picture of Mount Wutai.” This image apparently made its way 1,000 miles west to the Buddhist Mogao Caves site outside Dunhuang then controlled by Tibet. Though the original is lost, there are seven paintings of Mount Wutai in various Mogao caves and more than seventy Mount Wutai-related documents preserved from the Library Cave. The most awesome of the paintings is in Cave 61.
Cave 61 was commissioned in the mid-10th century CE when the region was independent. The west wall of the cave behind the raised, central altar is painted with a monumental mural of Wutaishan. Five mountain peaks, ten monasteries, gateways, pilgrims, way stations, shrines, celestials, and more adorn the rocky surface stretching forty-four feet long by eleven feet high.
This Manjusri Hall was intended to be much more than a simple homage to its namesake. It was designed as a mini-monastery to bring the divine presence of Manjusri to this far away land. The cave was sacred in its own right. A pilgrimage to and meditation in Cave 61 enabled believers to visit Mount Wutai, to connect with Manjusri, to receive his divine blessing, to continue forward on the path toward enlightenment.
In an ironic, evolving role switch 500-900 years later, Wutaishan itself was transformed into a Tibetan Buddhist center with Imperial flourish beginning in the Yuan Dynasty and culminating with panache during the Qing Dynasty. It is now the case that if one wants to know what Mount Wutai looked like high-level during the Tang Dynasty before it later became Tibetan, one needs to head out to China’s far west to the Mogao Caves to view the image of the former that was commissioned by the Tibetans.
Buddhism’s China Cycle
Circling back to Ian Johnson’s political-religious state, China’s rulers have often been supporters of Buddhism. Imperial endorsement of Buddhism may have been because of personal belief of the Emperors and Court, but it was definitely a way to publicly demonstrate the ruler’s legitimacy and role as indispensable bridge between earth and heaven.
Support, however, was not a given. There have been several cycles of severe oppression (5th, 6th, 9th, 10th, 20th centuries) when Buddhism fell out of favor; monasteries, shrines, and relics were destroyed; and practitioners persecuted. And yet, the architecture and spiritual infrastructure of Buddhism were rebuilt after each bad period as support returned.
Through it all, Imperial support of religion in China came and comes with strings:
In the early decades of the Tang Dynasty (618-907 CE), Emperor Taizong, who favored Daoists, promulgated “Regulations for Daoist and Buddhist Clerics.” These regulations were enacted as part of the Tang legal code in response to the power, wealth, and clout of different religions. The intent was to “bring clergy under the official system of secular laws [and] Buddhist communities into the state’s legal jurisdiction.”2 Preserving the absolute power of the Imperial Court was preeminent.
The current constitution of the People’s Republic of China (adopted 1982) authorizes freedom of religion [for five recognized religions], while also stating that “No one shall use religion to engage in activities that disrupt public order, impair the health of citizens or interfere with the state’s education system.” In practice, this leads to ultimate governmental control of religious practice. Preserving the absolute power of the Communist Party of China is preeminent.
Belief is and always has been vibrant in China, even today in the officially atheistic P.R.C. A final anecdote in our story (published by Wikileaks): A childhood friend and later neighbor of Chinese President Xi Jinping told a U.S. diplomat that when he visited with Xi in Fujian years prior, his friend “‘displayed a fascination with Buddhist martial arts, qigong, and other mystical powers said to aid health, as well as with Buddhist sacred sites such as Wutaishan.’”3
Notes
1 Wei-cheng Lin, Building a Sacred Mountain: The Buddhist Architecture of China’s Mount Wutai, University of Washington Press, 2014, pp 89-90
2 Id at 102
3 Ian Johnson, The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao, Pantheon Books, 2017, p 224
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