sight, much less a pilgrim. In fact, my driver and I were the only visitors. Apparently, no one liked to go out when it was so cold.
The temple, though, was still intact, and the caretaker took us on a tour, which began with two gnarled cedars. They were planted, he said, 2,000 years earlier in the Han dynasty before someone built a Buddhist temple there. Just past the cedar on the right were three springs. I had read somewhere that Lingyen Temple was the origin of the tea ceremony that eventually found its way to Japan and that these three springs were the source of the water. But the caretaker didn’t know anything about the tea ceremony or the story. He led us instead into the Hall of a Thousand Buddhas.
The walls were lined with a thousand small statues of Shakyamuni, and in the center of the hall were three huge buddhas. The one in the middle was the only buddha made of rattan that I had ever seen. And it was 900 years old. The other two were made of bronze – 5,000 kilos of bronze, according to the caretaker. And along the base of the walls was a collection of one-meter-high statues made of clay. Other temples had statues of the sixteen or eighteen or even the 500 arhats, arhats being paragons of Indian Buddhism who had little, if any, connection with real people. But this group was restricted to historical figures and was equally divided between Indian and Chinese monks. There were forty of them, with Bodhidharma, the Indian monk who brought Zen to China, sitting in the place of honor.
Walking back outside, the caretaker led us to a huge stupa on the other side of the shrine hall. It was over fifty meters high, and there was even a staircase inside that went to the top. But the caretaker said it was too dangerous, and he led us instead to what he claimed was the second biggest Buddhist cemetery in China, second only to that of Shaolin. It included more than 150 rocket ships, all made of stone. It was such a surprising day. I saw so many stone buddhas and stone stupas but not a single living monk or nun. Omitofo.
TAISHAN
From Lingyen’s forest of stupas, we returned to the main highway and continued south to T’ai-an. T’ai-an was the name of the town that had grown up around the temple where emperors came to pay their respects to Taishan. Mountains played an important role in Chinese culture. They were like acupuncture points on the body of the earth and home to powerful forces. And Taishan was their soul. It was where the recently departed spirits of the dead came for assignment to the afterlife. It was the earthly conduit to the netherworld, and the mountain was the single biggest center of pilgrimage in China. Emperors, too, came there to make peace, not only with the hereafter, but also with the forces of the present, whose assistance they needed in this life. I arrived too late in the day to follow them up the trail to the summit and contented myself with going to bed early. But the next morning I was ready to join the pilgrims. After checking out and storing my bag at the train station, I took a local bus to the temple at the foot of the mountain and stopped just outside the main gate at the pavilion where emperors dismounted to perform a simple ceremony announcing their arrival in the land of spirits. I followed them through the main gate and past five huge cedars planted by Emperor Wu in 110 BC and entered the huge shrine hall where emperors performed the main ceremony.
The Diamond Sutra carved into a rock face
In ancient times, imperial visitors conducted their ceremonies to the mountain at three temples: one at the foot of Taishan; one halfway up; and a third at the summit. Of the three, only the one at the foot of the mountain had survived. It was one of the biggest shrine halls in China: forty-eight meters wide, twenty meters deep, and twenty-two meters high. Only the Confucian Temple in nearby Chufu and the Imperial Palace in the Forbidden City were bigger.
The hall was built in 1009 at the beginning of the Sung dynasty, or nearly fifty years before William the Conqueror invaded Britain. And it was still there nearly a thousand years later. Its walls were national treasures. They were covered with thousand-year-old murals depicting an imperial visit complete with officials, attendants, ancestors and a pantheon of heavenly deities. The murals were among the great treasures of Chinese art, on a par with those of Michelangelo, only they were painted 500 years earlier than Michelangelo’s. I tried to consider the enormity of the work: three and a half meters high, sixty-two meters long, a thousand years old. Taishan definitely received its share of respect.
According to Chinese mythology, the world was created by a creature named P’an-ku, who spent 18,000 years chiseling out the space between Heaven and Earth where humans have been living ever since. When he was done, P’an-ku lay down and died, and his feet became the Western Sacred Mountain of Huashan, his belly became the Central Sacred Mountain of Sungshan, his arms became the Northern and Southern mountains of Hengshan and Hengshan (same sound, different characters), and his head became the Eastern Sacred Mountain of Taishan. Thus, Taishan had been venerated as one of China’s five sacred mountains since pre-historic times. But 2,000 years ago, just as humans revere their heads more than their hands and feet, Taishan was elevated above the other sacred mountains. This happened in the Han dynasty.
The Han was one of the most glorious dynasties of Chinese history, and the reign of Emperor Wu was the dynasty’s most glorious period. In addition to his military and political accomplishments, Emperor Wu was known for his devotion to Taoist regimens that promised immortality. Acting on the instructions of his Taoist advisers, Emperor Wu conducted the most splendid and important religious ceremony of his entire reign at the foot of Taishan for the purpose of establishing harmony among the various spiritual forces whose assistance he required.
A thousand years later, during the Sung dynasty, the emperor who built the shrine hall that still stood at the foot of the mountain and whose visit was depicted on its walls raised the mountain’s status to that of a divinity on a par with the emperor himself. It was about that time that the story began to circulate that Taishan’s wife also lived on the mountain. Her name was Pihsia Yuanchun, the Primordial Princess of Rainbow Clouds. Over the past thousand years, Taishan and his rainbow-hued cloud bride had become two of the most venerated figures in the entire Taoist pantheon, and shrine halls in their honor could be found in cities throughout China. They were also said to appear from time to time on the trail to the summit, which began just behind the temple where Emperor Wu once drained his treasury to honor their mountain abode.
Leaving the shrine hall, I proceeded up the same path emperors also followed on their way up the mountain. After a few hundred meters, I passed through a great stone archway, and the road turned into a trail of stone steps paid for by emperors and worn smooth by countless pilgrims. People didn’t climb Taishan to get away from others. On an average day a thousand pilgrims hiked to the summit.
Not long after I began my own climb, I passed a stone slab proclaiming Taishan as China’s No. 1 Mountain. Beside it was another, smaller archway. Carved across the top were the words: “K’ung-tzu-teng-lin-chih-ch’u: Confucius climbed here.” Confucius lived seventy kilometers away, and he came there on a number of occasions to pay his respects to the mountain and to seek inspiration in its solitude – but obviously, not near the main trail. Mencius, the most famous among his later disciples, wrote: “Climbing the Eastern Sacred Mountain, Confucius found the surrounding state of Lu tiny. Reaching Taishan’s peak, the Great Sage found the Middle Kingdom small.” Mountains put the rest of the world into perspective. Walking through the archway, I didn’t pause. The peak was still five hours away.
Just beyond the archway announcing Confucius’ visit to Taishan 2,500 years earlier, there was an incinerator where pilgrims sent paper money drawn on the Bank of Hell to their loved ones. In addition to paper money, hawkers sold incense, and the trail was lined with wayside shrines from which clouds of smoke poured forth. I stepped into one such shrine to watch a new deity being fashioned out of straw and mud. The Taoist priest in charge said he hoped to have it ready in time for the pilgrimage season, which began in early April.
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