• Staged ceremonies for welfare of state
• Invited laymen to participate in large vegetarian feasts
• Conducted collective mortuary and memorial rites for soldiers
• Provided lodgings to people traveling with state sponsorship
• Many turned provision of rooms into business
• Many became retreats where officials or other elite took temporary refuge
• Journeys into mountains to stay at temples became standard theme of Tang poetry
• Monasteries differed little from other landlords in many ways