I had the chance to travel to Kunming city in Yunnan province a few weeks ago. The trip began as an excursion to travel throughout southern China, which is about as far away from our frigid Siberian Harbin as you can get without leaving the country.
In our first day, we went to see Yunnan's largest temple, Yuantong Si. Outside the temple were approximately a dozen beggars. They were different from your average beggars, who are dressed in dirty clothes and stand at street corners. Clearly, the temple was a hotspot for collecting alms. The beggars here were truly pitiable because they had every type of physical disability, usually in the form of missing limbs. Thus my first thought on entry to the temple was one of nausea. Another notable observation: we had to pay to enter the temple, and the ticket office gave us two choices: the 16 kuai "tourist" ticket, or the more reasonable 4 kuai regular entry ticket. We chose the latter, being the cheap college kids we are.
Yuantong Si is special in that is also a functional monastery. Buddhist monks survive from the kindness and offerings provided by believers, which means that they are often begging for food or for life's necessities. Here, however, the monks hardly seemed to be struggling; most carried cell phones and wore leather shoes, yet still stopped people walking inside the temple to ask for pittances. Additionally, the signs we passed while going through the first set of gates included such English translations as "Please Do Not Make Confused Noise When Chanting." I began to wonder what kind of a religious experience this could be for worshippers with all the shopkeepers selling overpriced prayer beads, cell phones ringing, and bald guys in yellow robes asking you for money incessantly.
It took me a minute to realize that the Buddhist Chinese religious experience is a little different from the Western idea of a quiet sanctuary and a private conversation between God and a believer. The temple itself acts as a kind of bridge between Earth and heaven, so every space is arranged according to natural balance or feng shui. Most temples are structured similarly, just as almost every church has worshippers enter from the back, an altar at the front, and other structures and orientations that exist because of their religious significance. My familiarity with Buddhist theology is limited, but I've seen that most temples are a series of courtyards separated by large gates. Within each of the gates is contained a different god or goddess or garden; and thus the prayers offered in that area are specific to a certain entity. When we walked in through the main gate, we found a large moat that surrounded a central building. At the far side of the courtyard was a large building that housed enormous statues of Buddhist deities, and directly in front of us were altars where people lit pairs of candles in prayer. The air was sweet from the hundreds of incense sticks whose aroma wafted through the air. This was where people had their religious experiences—and yes, it was amidst the yellow robes and the peddlers and the tourists taking photographs. Moreover, the Buddhist worship also included food offerings. This is so fitting—a concern for both the physical and the spiritual self that simply underscores the importance food plays in Asian culture.
Chinese culture has a deep concern for balance—the feng shui of a room is good or bad depending on if its furniture and negative space are balanced, their characters and subsequent calligraphic art are centered around the idea of balancing space on a page, and most importantly, as this experience at Yuantong Shi was showing, there was a deep concern over balancing both spiritual and physical aspects of worship. There was a balance between the natural and the man-made; the turtles and goldfish in the moat coexisted with the altars and statues and swam beneath the stone bridges. Here at the monastery worshippers fed both their own physical bodies but the "physical" bodies of the statues, and in doing so, fed their spiritual needs. And maybe the fact that this place was bustling and full of peddlers was a system in balance, too—a system that recognizes that Buddhists have not just spiritual selves, but also exist in the midst of a very real world.
Yuantong Si is special in that is also a functional monastery. Buddhist monks survive from the kindness and offerings provided by believers, which means that they are often begging for food or for life's necessities. Here, however, the monks hardly seemed to be struggling; most carried cell phones and wore leather shoes, yet still stopped people walking inside the temple to ask for pittances. Additionally, the signs we passed while going through the first set of gates included such English translations as "Please Do Not Make Confused Noise When Chanting." I began to wonder what kind of a religious experience this could be for worshippers with all the shopkeepers selling overpriced prayer beads, cell phones ringing, and bald guys in yellow robes asking you for money incessantly.
It took me a minute to realize that the Buddhist Chinese religious experience is a little different from the Western idea of a quiet sanctuary and a private conversation between God and a believer. The temple itself acts as a kind of bridge between Earth and heaven, so every space is arranged according to natural balance or feng shui. Most temples are structured similarly, just as almost every church has worshippers enter from the back, an altar at the front, and other structures and orientations that exist because of their religious significance. My familiarity with Buddhist theology is limited, but I've seen that most temples are a series of courtyards separated by large gates. Within each of the gates is contained a different god or goddess or garden; and thus the prayers offered in that area are specific to a certain entity. When we walked in through the main gate, we found a large moat that surrounded a central building. At the far side of the courtyard was a large building that housed enormous statues of Buddhist deities, and directly in front of us were altars where people lit pairs of candles in prayer. The air was sweet from the hundreds of incense sticks whose aroma wafted through the air. This was where people had their religious experiences—and yes, it was amidst the yellow robes and the peddlers and the tourists taking photographs. Moreover, the Buddhist worship also included food offerings. This is so fitting—a concern for both the physical and the spiritual self that simply underscores the importance food plays in Asian culture.
Chinese culture has a deep concern for balance—the feng shui of a room is good or bad depending on if its furniture and negative space are balanced, their characters and subsequent calligraphic art are centered around the idea of balancing space on a page, and most importantly, as this experience at Yuantong Shi was showing, there was a deep concern over balancing both spiritual and physical aspects of worship. There was a balance between the natural and the man-made; the turtles and goldfish in the moat coexisted with the altars and statues and swam beneath the stone bridges. Here at the monastery worshippers fed both their own physical bodies but the "physical" bodies of the statues, and in doing so, fed their spiritual needs. And maybe the fact that this place was bustling and full of peddlers was a system in balance, too—a system that recognizes that Buddhists have not just spiritual selves, but also exist in the midst of a very real world.
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