Buddhism and Mountains

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June 10th 2010

Published: June 18th 2010

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Swannie

Into the Temple We Go

6/10/10

This morning we rode a bus outside of the city to the Western Hills, where we visited a Buddhist temple. That was where we met Sam, who was much to our surprise the program director’s husband. He is a middle-aged American who speaks in slow, drawn out words with a slight Southern accent. He was our lecturer that morning on Daoism and its influence in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). He made a point that at a lot of temples in China there are areas to worship Buddhism and Daoism in the same temple because the Chinese do not really care about excluding religions from one another. This is obviously different from other religions like Christianity where churches are dedicated exclusively to one religion.

Unfortunately, I was not allowed to take pictures inside the temple, so I burned incense and gave thanks to the Buddhas inside and looked around. Inside the main temple building were three altars dedicated to Buddha and all around the walls were statues called “louhan.” The “louhan” were all figures from Buddhist stories and there were at least a hundred if not more of them sitting and poking out from the walls inside

Pond

My friends with baby turtles were thinking of releasing them here when they have to go home.

the temple. Some of them had animals, some had arms that stretched to the ceiling, and every single one was unique. I did not know who any of them were, but I wished I knew at least a few of their stories. In the back of the temple, also surrounded by “louhan,” was the Bodhissatva Guanyin. She was made from gold plating and I gave a lot of thanks to her as well. Unfortunately the temple was not very peaceful because there was construction going on and Sam was upset because of the construction and because the door facing opposite Guanyin was blocked. He said that it was a travesty because it messed up the feng shui of temples which usually have two entrances to every building that connect the temple buildings to each other in a harmonizing circuit. The blocked door also obscured Guanyin in darkness.

After exploring around the temple we visited various places where herbs used in TCM were being grown. We were given packets containing information about them and the herbal pharmacist there told us about all the herbs. Since Peter had a cough that he contracted while in Beijing, which he said was

Cute Turtle in the Pond

most likely because of the pollution, the pharmacist let him take home some honeysuckles which help with coughs if boiled in tea. There were some herbs that were potent to take if they were not dried first, one of which apparently helped kill certain types of cancer cells while leaving normal cells alone.

We had a vegetarian lunch at the temple and then went further up into Western Hills which turned out to be more like mountains than hills. We climbed one of them all the way to the top, which was no easy task considering how high we were and how thin the oxygen level was. At one point a few of us felt like we could jump off and fly all the way down, which we fortunately did not try. When we started getting closer to the top, we all realized how fit Mr. Bi was when he jogged up the steps past us while we were panting for our breaths. He had started climbing later than all of us and reached the top before any of us did. I am sure that he is at least 35 years old, most likely older, so the rest

Temple Entrance

You're not allowed to burn incense in the temple buildings because they're likely to catch fire.

of us simply gawked in admiration. I have a fear of heights, so it hit me really hard when we reached the top. The view was breathtaking, maybe literally since we were up so high, but it helped me forget my fear for at least a little while.

We were all exhausted from climbing, so there was no shopping or exploring that evening.

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