CHUNG TAI CHAN MONASTERY

A couple of points as I continue my reports on the trip to visit Taiwan.  First of all, let me clarify that the entire cost of the trip for me, including spending cash, was due to the generosity of some very wonderful people. It did not cost me a penny (or other units of currency). Even though the trip was physically hard on me, as well as emotionally difficult to some extent on both June on me, the amount of learning for me (and, I like to think, some little contributions I was able to make) definitely made it worth it.

Second, one purpose of the trip included visiting with local Christians, some of them converts from Buddhism, which--as in most parts of the world that declares itself to be ever-so-tolerant--can bear a painful price tag. We made some great contacts, but for the most part I will not discuss those visits.

Third, if you're waiting for stories on what we did for fun, you apparently never took my regular world religions class (before my energy started to give out), and so you aren't aware of the fact there is nothing more fun for me than visiting temples (. . . well, and playing music and watching auto races and doing web sites . . . ). Anyway, we spent an enormous amount of time just traveling back and forth, and I used a lot of that time for zombying out. We did not go surfing or rock climbing.

A number of the local highways led through tunnels.  These conveniences of transportation have, however, raised some serious opposition from citizens in a traditional Chinese mode of thinking.  You see, a mountain represents a dragon, and a tunnel that goes right through it would break the backbone of the dragon, which is a bad idea, both for the dragon himself and for the larger world whose balance is being upset by the loss of dragons.

Bodhidharma

Now, then, our next temple was the huge Chung Tai temple.  It fit the pattern of most of the places we visited: it was built recently under the guidance of a contemporary leader.  In this case, it was a man named Wei Chueh, in the direct succession of Zen masters, going back to the remarkable Bodidharma who brough Zen (Chan) to China and whose spiritual genealogy can be traced back to Mahakasyapa, the Buddha's first successor and presumably also the first patriarch of Zen.  Wei Chueh founded a separate monastery in 1987 and this place in 2001.  As you can see by the pictures, they are doing quite well.  Over the last twenty years, more than 15,000 monks and nuns have received full ordination from him.  These are roughly the same figures we heard in the context of other new Buddhist orders in Taiwan.  

Our guide was a nun who went by the name of "Simplicity," who turned out to be originally from Hanover, Germany.  She took us up all thirty-two floors of the temple; fortunately most of the stages were accessible by elevator.  Regular visitors and worshipers were only allowed on the first floor, which contained most of the normal statues, some of which I'll come back to shortly.  It included the representation of the earthly Buddha (Sakyamuni) depicted below. Then on the second floor there was a statue of the Buddha's spiritual body, much larger and more impressive.  Occupying stories nine through fifteen was the Buddha's Dharma body, a huge all-white statue that leaves you breathless, even if you take the elevator and not the stairs.  Going further up, there is a pagoda dedicated to the Medicine Buddha.  It would be a large building just if it were standing by itself outside; here it is a large building occupying the top floors of a huge building. It is constructed entirely of wood without any nails.

The globe on the very top is dedicated to all Bodhisattvas.  As an interesting by-product of the spherical construction, if you stand in the very center of the room and speak, you can hear your voice as it would be heard by other people.  There is no particular religious significance to this phenomenon, and if you don't like the sound of your own voice, it's an annoyance.  

Let me come back to the statues on the bottom level.  Many depictions of the various Buddhas have them accompanied by two Bodhisattvas.  In the case of Sakyamuni (Siddhartha Gautama, the "regular" Buddha), these are often two of his first disciples, Mahakasyapa and Ananda.  We already mentioned the former, who assumed leadership after the Buddha's death and is considered the first patriarch of Zen.  According to the tradition, Ananda had not yet found enlightenment by the time of Buddha's death because he was too hung up on intellectual questions.  He was supposed to have had a tape-recorder-like memory. Mahakasyapa finally brought him to the point of realization, and Ananda eventually became the second patriarch.  Ananda is credited with being the source of much of the enormous collection of the Buddha's teachings, called the "Three Baskets." This brings us to the so-called Pali canon, of which I can tell you next time because it was, in fact, an unplanned destination on one of our excursions.  

The temple looks like it would be very beautiful on the inside. Thanks for these great blog articles!

Tim,
I wish we could take the entire ISCA membership on a trip like this, both for the beauty, etc., and to get a grasp of the need for informed apologetics concerning Buddhism.