The Buddhist Sound Tribulation of Xuanyin's Enlightenment

During the Xiao and Liang Dynasties of the Southern and Northern Dynasties, King Xie Gaomen of Jiankang occupied Wuyi Lane and used elegant music to control the orthodoxy of Zhou rites, locking the family's right to speak for a hundred years. Emperor Wu of Liang worshiped Buddhism and established Vatican, and wanted to use the sound of Buddhism to surpass elegant music, use Buddhism to unify Confucianism, and take back the authority of rituals. The undercurrent of imperial power and the gentry was surging. The sound of the Buddha captures all thoughts with one sound, and worships the pure land of Brahma. He hopes to use the unified sound of Sanskrit to tame people's hearts, regulate the world, and reshape the orthodoxy of the dynasty. This hides the imperial power's ambition to control the world through Buddha. Yayun inherits the Confucian style of Zhou Dynasty, and is run by the Wang Xie family for generations. It uses laws to determine dignity, music and human relations, and adheres to the thousand-year order of rituals and music. It regards the sound of Buddhism as foreign voices, and the rhyme of Taoism as the undisciplined mountains and fields. It insists on the right to interpret worldly rituals. The court is divided into elegance and Buddhism, and the rivers and lakes generate their own noise. There are insect flutes in the East, iron flutes in the West, bronze drums in the South, Humai in the North, and wild tunes in the Central Plains. Musicians in the market, hidden actors, and secret spies of the Northern Dynasty are lurking among them. They are not bound by etiquette and law. They can disrupt the situation with one tune and win people's hearts with one tune. Tao Hongjing of Qingcheng Mountain left a jade seal score of seventy-two peaks in "Liu Shui", which gave rise to a line of Taoist rhyme. The Taoist approach is natural, using mountains, rivers, wind and thunder as its voice to communicate with all things in the world; it is not limited to court etiquette or Buddhist rules, but hides in the mountains and fields of Qingcheng, away from the chess game, silently guarding the fire of Taoism in troubled times. The four major musical systems are cyclically restrained, the rhythm represents the human heart, and the rhyme represents the political strategy. The disputes over rituals and music in Taichang Temple, the sectarian game in Wuyi Lane, the conspiracy of the Buddha in Tongtai Temple, and the inheritance of Taoism in Qingcheng Mountain all create a chess game in troubled times. The aristocratic family adheres to the old order, the imperial power plots to change the rituals, the Taoist sect quietly observes the changes, and the wild affairs of the rivers and lakes stir up the situation. When all the five notes sound in unison, and the sound of the harp, flute, and drums all turn into killing, the world finally understands: when music changes, etiquette changes, and when etiquette changes, the world changes its rulers.