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The
Construction of the Soul Retreating Temple (also known as Lingyin
Buddhist Monastery, or simply Lingyin Temple) started in 326 AD. Tugged
away in mountains circling the West Lake, the Buddhist monastery sits
in a valley flanked by North Peak and the Flying-From-Afar Peak where
craggy rocks are thickly covered by verdant woods and a limpid brook
bubbles its zigzagging way through valley.
Magnificent in architectural structure, the ageless temple houses
a great variety of Buddha figures heavenly and exquisite. The Temple
for the Soul's Retreat is famed as the First Mountain in Southeast
China for hundreds of years all over China.
At its best days, the temple was really |
magnificent in size. On its sloping compound
stood nine storied buildings and eighteen pavilions. More than 1,000
dormitories housed over 3,000 monks. During the Emperor Kangxi's reign
in the Qing Dynasty, the Temple of the Soul's Retreat was named as
the Zen Temple of Clouds and Woods. The temple looks what it is today
through a series of construction projects over decades on the basis
built in the evening period of the Qing dynasty.
On the compound's central axial line stand the Front Hall (Heaven
King's Hall), the Great and Magnificent Hall, and the Pharmaceutical
Master Hall. The Buddhas figures inside these three Halls are most
popular with pilgrims and tourists.
The most admired Buddha figures are Buddha and Guanyin, or Goddess
of Mercy, in the Great and Magnificent Hall and Wei Tuo, chief guard
of Buddha and Buddhist doctrines, presumably carved out of the trunk
of a single camphor tree in the south Dynasty, and Buddha's four major
warrior attendants, colored clay sculptures in the Front Hall.
Scattered outside and inside the temple compound are numerous relics
left from ancient times. The leading relic is the Pavilion of Cool
Brook erected in the mid Tang Dynasty over 1000 years ago. From the
pavilion down we have the stone pagoda and the stone storage for Buddhist
scriptures, both built in the Five-Dynasties, the Pavilion of Greens
first built in the South Song Dynasty, the pagoda of Hui Li the Master
that was erected in the Ming Dynasty.
The temple houses various Buddhist literature and treasures including
the scriptures written on pattra leaves, the gold-plating bronze Buddha
statue fabricated in the Eastern Wei Dynasty, the Diamond Sutra copied
by Dong Qichang in the Ming Dynasty, a wood cut edition published
in the Qing Dynasty.
A couplet hung on the grand door of the Heavenly King Palace reads:
Let us wait sitting on the threshold of the temple, for another peak
may fly from afar. Smiles appear welcoming, for the brook is gradually
warming up to the springtime. When tourists admire the couplet, they
can't help but grin. |
| Bus 7 and 507
go to the Temple of the Soul's Retreat. |
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