Every few steps bring another temple into view. There are dozens here, at least fifty, all residences of buddhas and bodhisattvas, but especially Manjusri. This is his home. Pagodas, temples, stupas, strewn as flung down from the skies by the bodhisattva of wisdom and his reputed ten thousand family members. The mountain with its five famous “terraced peaks” (hence the Chinese, wutai, five terraces or platforms) has been a Buddhist site for centuries.
The oldest wooden temple in China dates from 782 CE during the Tang dynasty. Five steps lead up to an open stone platform in front of the main Buddha hall. A small boy runs up and down and corn is drying.
In summertime, in Taipei, cicadas rattle like pebbles in a can shaken vigorously in the stilted air. Through exhaust fumes from noisy scooters and plumes of incense smoke, the temple of Longshan appears. It is to this mountain (shan) that a dragon (long) descends and cannot be expunged. I cough incessantly, but don’t care. The chanting, the heavy scent of sandalwood, the bowing, hands held together in admiration of the Buddha are enough to make me light-hearted. Old men sit smoking in the main courtyard, chatting like schoolboys about everything and nothing. Longshan temple glistens in the rain.
Just before you reach the ancient wooden features of Baoguo temple, fifteen kilometers north of Ningbo city in Zhejiang province, you will meet a dragon. His large head rises from a pool bearing his name. He looks at you placidly, his horns, ears, and beard flushed backward as if he were flying. His body stretches deep down into the pool. Is he in any way related to Wang Wei’s “poison dragons?”
Temples have peripheries and that is where I want to be, at least for the moment. I hear banging, what sounds like hammers being struck into wood. I start off in the general direction of the banging when without warning I see him: He is divine, a Buddhist saint of sorts, a luohan, or arhat, and he is either yawning or yelling.
As you reach the end of your patience, and all fortitude evaporates, walking as one must through this overworked, hot city of Ningbo on Zhejiang province’s coast, you will gratefully arrive at the entrance to Qita temple. A monk stands in his brown robe sweeping the courtyard. Soon he runs off and reappears moments later in rich regalia, orange draped over yellow and brown. A family pays cash for the temple to perform a transference-of-merit ritual. There are dead family members to be cared for. They don’t know how or when to bow but the monks guide them. Bells jingle; thwocks resonate on wood and chanting goes on undisturbed. Soon it is all over and the courtyard will be swept again.
At Sera temple, on the outskirts of Lhasa, Tibetans line up outside and wait to share a moment inside sacrality. Plain clothed policemen will follow you as you walk into this beautiful Buddhist space. Once home to thousands of monks, the monastery now has a few hundred. In 1419 Sakya Yeshe built colleges and temples here. Whitewashed walls fortify the knowledge and wisdom within. Arhats wait silently, protective, all-seeing. Wrathful deities rest on rock faces and bare their teeth and swords. A blue buddha with a mudra hand gazes from a red boulder. I look up through a small window to see crags and prayer flags. A daughter holds her father’s hand leading him across the temple square. He clutches his walking cane, she her hat, and together they face the moment in the altitudinal sunlight. A towering heap of firewood sits behind them, and beyond that, grey-blue mountains.
Of all the temples in Beijing none is as old as Fayuan. A pagoda-shaped brass censer blocks my path. Two-tiered roofs cover bell and drum towers shaded by gingko trees are on either side of me. The bell and drum produce sounds that awake one to the truth of the Dharma, the cosmic law of buddhas. Budai sits inside the first hall. He is round and smiling with the attributes of contentment and a Chinese corporeal aesthetic. Stories are told of the monk Chizi (also, Budai) in Zhejiang province who would walk the town with his hemp bag playing games and giving gifts to children. He could predict the weather and should you see him sleeping under a bridge you know it will rain. He is also known as the ‘laughing Buddha’ and one see him in restaurants today, and in temples all over China. His true identity is the future Buddha, Maitreya, currently a bodhisattva and Buddha-in-waiting.
A waxing moon floats in the pale blue dawn just above a horizon of rolling green hills that mark the edges of a wide valley. At first, just a murmur in the earth, barely perceptible, a shudder that wrinkles then quickly becomes thunderous. Three dots swell larger and suddenly they are upon me, towering creatures with hair to the ground. In an instant it is over.
Horses and yaks prepare once again to race down the corridor between the hills, flanked by delirious onlookers who will joyfully roar. Four flags – green, red, yellow, and pink – flap gently as they mark the entrance to a large white tent with dark blue borders. Scores more are covered in propitious shapes and patterns, most noticeable of which are bats, considered cunning and extraordinary in China for more than a thousand years.
When I climb up one of the bordering hills and look down into the valley it seems an ancient army has encamped. Dozens of tents are in symmetry with each other; horses and riders with their arrows and bows at the ready congregate on one side of the camp, while those to be conquered – the hearts of spectators – on the other. The next race is soon to begin and the excitement is palpable. Thousands of Tibetans have gathered to watch.
Upward toward the main hall the scenery begins to change. Against a lurid sky orange flames leap and trill in fierce combat. Heaps of incense are consumed in a fiery pit. It is a day of festivities when so much incense is being lit that I half expect fire trucks to show at any minute.
