For Rebuilding the Northern Shaolin Temple: Part 10, click here.
Back in Beijing the moon flickered through its phases with the speed of hummingbird wings and suddenly it was time to return to Pan Mountain (Panshan), seeking an ancient cave monastery at the foot of this holy mountain I’d visited some five years ago. I vaguely recognized a turn-off from the small village road onto a rough-hewn stone road, but wasn’t sure if this was it. So we asked a young woman in a small village store at the fork if she knew of the cave monastery. She immediately said yes and graciously volunteered to guide us there.
“The sound of the valley stream; Just this is the teaching of the Buddha; The form of the mountains; Can this be other than the pure body?” —Su Dongpo (1036–1101)
Who, I have always wondered, were the Shaolin monks of North Shaolin? A few things I know: they were men, monks, and martial artists; some would have specialized in medicine, others in farming, some in Sutras, and others again in simple meditation. But all lived in Buddhist communities on Panshan.
China now is in so many ways still rediscovering its past as so much was lost in the violent end of the Qing Dynasty and other karmic reshufflings leading up to the economic and other liberalizations of Deng Xiaopeng. This rediscovery process is a bit like a telescoping of time. Buddhism, Chan and Shaolin have gone through several cycles of death and rebirth in China. Its influence has waxed and waned like a Ying Yang symbol on a pinwheel, sometimes white, sometimes black, sometimes merged into oneness, but always with a dot of remembrance.
The Master said, “The common person sees light and darkness as two, but the wise person comprehends that their nature is non-dual. The non-dual nature is the real nature. The real nature does not decrease in common people nor increase in worthy sages. In afflictions it is not confused and in Dhyana concentration it is not still. It is neither cut off nor permanent. It does not come or go. It is not inside, outside, or in the middle. It is not produced or destroyed. The nature and mark is ‘thus, thus.’ It permanently dwells and does not change. It is called the ‘Way.’” —p. 374 of The Sixth Patriarch’s Dharma Jewel Platform Sutra, Buddhist Text Translation Society.
So too, Vinaya, the discipline/rule systems of Buddhist monasteries has gone through its own cycles in Shaolin. At some times in history Shaolin rigidly followed these rules, at others Shaolin masters and monks followed a divine order intrinsic to Chan and the universe/non-universe, but not so easily defined.
“When not a single dharma (Buddhist teaching) is established in the mind, then the ten thousand Dharmas can be established there. To understand this principle is to achieve the Buddha’s body which is also called Bodhi, Nirvana, and the liberation of knowledge and vision as well. Those who see their own nature can establish Dharmas in their minds or not establish them as they choose. They come and go freely, without impediments or obstacles. They function correctly and speak appropriately, seeing all transformation bodies as integral with the self-nature. That is precisely the way they obtain independence, spiritual powers, and the Samadhi of playfulness. This is what is called ‘seeing the nature.’” —p. 349 of The Sixth Patriarch’s Dharma Jewel Platform Sutra
But all through the revolutions of rebirth, Shaolin remained connected to this world via a series of relationships with surrounding communities via its monks, prayers and other good works. Panshan has been a holy Buddhist mountain since time immemorial, possibly as far back as the Han Dynasty almost 2,000 years ago, though North Shaolin Monastery did not become part of the Shaolin family until the Yuan Dynasty (1215–1294) under soon-to-be-emperor Kublai Khan (who reigned 1260–1294).
Buddhist monasteries are in some ways like people in that they have an intrinsic wholeness greater than the sum of its parts; individual histories, stories and spirits live after them and few are truly forgotten. Just so, North Shaolin was a member of a large community of 72 monasteries on Panshan; so logically I wanted to know the neighbors, the fabric of the living/breathing community in which it lived, and given its current rebirth, will live again.
In Part VIII of this series I described the remains of Zheng Fa Si (Law Monastery), usually called Zhong Fa Si, meaning Middle Law Temple (because it’s midway up the mountain), located just a kilometer up the mountain from North Shaolin Monastery. It was the training monastery that supplied monks for most of the other 71 monasteries on Panshan. In Part 10, we looked at “Yun Zhao Si” at the peak of this holy mountain, and Shangfang Temple just below it (as well as some background regarding the three huge bronze Buddhas expected to arrive at North Shaolin Monastery in early 2015).
—Ancient Thousand Buddha Temple - Qian Xian Si Panshan
And so this month I wanted to visit a cave monastery at the base of Panshan before meeting the North Shaolin monks and exploring the reconstruction news there. Thusly we came back to Mrs. Zhang Ji Dong, the lady from the store who volunteered to show us the way. She climbed in the back seat of the car and off we went, back out to one of the village’s main roads, around a corner or two, then a bit up the mountain, a bit back down some rather rutted dirt roads, and around, and up and down and around, turning right and left and left and right–and of course my GPS said we were driving in some blank spot of nothingness, a true Chan adventure!
After about 20 minutes of this mind-spinning bone-jarring tour we arrived at a large… What? Prehistoric parking lot? There were two fabulous pairs of gigantic stones to one side, and obviously ancient steles (large upright stone slab “signboards” engraved with characters and sculptures of twin dragons at the top) spaced across the front and center of the large flat area. Towards the back at the foot of the mountain there was an ancient picturesque house.
“Inside,” the lady told us, “you can meet the monk.”
As it turned out, the house was some sort of small monastery, and therein we met a friendly unassuming monk named Shi Chang Jie. We greeted him with the appropriate “amitoufo” with the right hand held vertically in front of the heart – a normal greeting with Buddhists. After introductions we found out Qian Xian Si (meaning Thousand Buddha Temple) dated back to the Tang Dynasty, was rebuilt during the time of Emperor Qianlong, but was destroyed during the fall of the Qing Dynasty, though reconstruction is planned to begin next May. He showed us a painting of the monastery before it was destroyed and the design plan for the new monastery. We also learned he was ordained at a Pure Land sect Buddhist monastery on Jiu Hua Mountain in Anhui. Then (with some relief) I found out there was a small prayer hall within a cave here, though I had known since arriving it wasn’t the huge cave monastery I’d discovered five years earlier. No matter! I’d gone in search of a cave monastery at the foot of Panshan and found one. I gave the good monk my name card, and he gave me his. He also told us about plans for the new monastery. The first building, called Tian Men (Heaven Gate), will be built just above the lovely (recently repaired) water reservoir; above that on the mountain will be Tian Wang Hall; above that will be Da Xiong Baodian Hall, and above that will be the Sutra Library called Cangjing Ge. As monasteries go, this will be a small one, true to the size of the one before, and they also plan to follow Tang Dynasty architectural designs.
After brief further pleasantries my translator and I went outside to meet Mrs. Zhang. She then showed us the way to the small cave temple. After a 20-minute walk up forested hills, we were there. Ah! Wonderful peacefulness radiated in, out and around the area while small birds sang amongst the golden autumn leaves.
—Qian Xian Monastery - Monk Shi Chang Jie
Time of course has no meaning in such places, and so by and by we left, at least physically, to have refreshments upon some huge boulders before descending to look for the ruins of the ancient buildings that comprised the physical form of the monastery that was and will be again. Searching amongst the hills to the left of the “parking lot” (ancient assembly area, or possibly the location of a great hall?), we found them, the foundations and partial walls of three small/medium-sized Buddhist halls, one above the other on the mountain. If stones could speak, what stories they would tell! The ruins of what walls remained were about a meter thick – enough to keep out the icy mountain cold of winter and sizzling heat of summer.
I climbed to the top of one broken wall to survey the area and could see the remnants other halls below. What a majestic view, and for an instant the past came alive again, or was it the future?
After taking some pictures Mrs. Zhang showed us a nearby small stone house that had been a communications headquarters for the Red Army, used for coordinating the resistance movement against the Japanese Imperial Army during the war. There was even a modern stele commemorating the location and its historic role in the war. Looking carefully at the stones comprising the small building’s wall, I could see some had been salvaged from the (by then already destroyed) old monastery.
Walking back to the large flat area where we parked, we saw a cheerful-looking older gentleman with his wife packing burlap bags onto the back of his old motorcycle. Mrs. Zhang told us he was an old doctor in the village and knew lots of history of the monastery and Panshan. Ah ha!
I wanted to run over to meet him (ridiculously fearing he might leap on his motorcycle and flee) but instead strode purposely forward in what dignified manner I could muster and introduced myself in my best Mandarin. Fortunately my translator friend showed up in time because he couldn’t understand half of what I was saying due to my barbarous accent. Never mind. We learned his name was Dr. Guo Song Hai. He was from Panshan, as were his parents and grandparents, and the large bags he was putting on his motorcycle were filled with local herbs.
Soon enough he opened up and started telling us stories. This monastery is actually in Lian He Cun Village, meaning Unified Village – a name given during the War of Resistance against the Japanese (which started in 1937 – long before the U.S. entered what was to become WWII). North Shaolin Monastery is in the adjacent Zhuan Wa Yao village – meaning “Brick Making Village,” though they made grenades there during the war. We also learned that on the back of the mountain is a “dangerous place” that was the bank of the resistance movement. Unified Village (also called Contact Village) was the central communication headquarters for Panshan and surrounding areas. He told us many stories; one went like this: “There was an old woman named Yang Mama” who was a resistance army hero. Once a wounded soldier came to her door and naturally she took him in. Soon enough the Japanese came looking for him. But she had dressed him as a farmer and presented him to them as her son, saving his life. She was so trusted by everyone that she also worked as a courier taking gold and silver back and forth from the hidden “bank” (in a cave) and moved around fairly freely delivering messages. We also found out she liked to smoke a traditional Chinese pipe with local tobacco.
He also told us about the end of the Qing Dynasty (some 30 years before the Japanese invasion), and called it a “starving time.” “The royalty would burn whole families (to death) if they were caught stealing anything, but the people’s homes were destroyed and the crops burned. Starving people looted the old royal buildings anyways, sold whatever they could find, and took apart the old royal palaces on the mountain for shelter.”
He told us about Tian Cheng Si (a monastery somewhere further up the mountain) during the war of resistance, and how it had been burned three times but could not be destroyed (until many years later during the Cultural Revolution).
—A communication HQ for resistance on Panshan
He also told us the story as to how Qian Xian Si came to be called Thousand Buddha Temple.”
“A long time ago – during the Han Dynasty – there was an old blind man. He prayed to Buddha to help him and was answered in a dream telling him to come to the well at this temple (suggesting the monastery may be older than the Tang Dynasty as we were told before – the older of the two steles may also be of Han Dynasty origin, he said) and wash his eyes every day. Time passed, but he kept coming and every day washed his eyes in the well water. One day after washing his eyes, suddenly he could see! Then out from the well came a Buddha who said: ‘Thank you for coming every day to our temple and remembering us. There are hundreds of us here, but we have no place to stay.’ The old man said: ‘You are welcome to stay on our boulders.’ And to this day there are images of 1,000 Buddhas on the spectacular boulders around Qian Xian Si. The monastery itself was destroyed, but the Buddhas on the rocks survived.”
Though I wanted to continue talking with him, the sun wasn’t far from setting and I needed to get to North Shaolin Monastery to take pictures of progress on construction before sundown. So we got Dr. Guo’s phone number, promised to meet him again soon, and off we went to North Shaolin Monastery.
And, were they working? Oh yes they were, specifically putting steel into the base of the monks’ dormitory building (Seng Liao). I was a bit surprised at that, as the other buildings were built of wood and tiles only, following Song Dynasty design and construction perfectly. But this building has steel woven through the foundations, will be two stories tall, and house up to a hundred monks, though the outer design will conform to Song Dynasty style.
Back at their current (rented) apartments a short walk away, we chatted for an hour or so, sharing our adventures of the day, including contact information for Dr. Guo. As Shi Yan Wan and Shi Yan Pei are also collecting histories of Panshan (I’m not the only seeker of the ancient and modern histories, legends and traditions here), they naturally wanted to know all the neighbors in this large holy mountain range.
—Qian Xian Si (new - design plan)
All said and done, it was back to Beijing after another day of beauty, enchantment and enlightenment on Panshan.
Back home, while cooking breakfast the next morning, I watched BBC, CNN and Chinese CCTV simultaneously (I don’t follow the news while eating – that wouldn’t be healthy. Instead I usually memorize Chinese vocabulary words and characters). My goodness! What complicated news! It seems the karmic chains of the material world never change.
“On this occasion he saw that the crowd was full of spies and would-be assassins. ‘Cultivators should not hold thoughts of good or evil,’ he said, ‘What cannot be named by any name is called the self-nature. The self-nature is non-dual; it is also called the real nature, the real mark. Within it all schools and sects are set up. It’s not enough just to talk about it, however. You must understand and immediately give proof to the state of no-mark.’ Hearing these words, the assembly realized that all their thoughts had been bound up in good and evil and they were greatly ashamed. They bowed down before him and said, “From now on we’ll be different. Please, Great Master, be our teacher.” —p. 370 of The Sixth Patriarch’s Dharma Jewel Platform Sutra
And the wheel turns again.
For Rebuilding the Northern Shaolin Temple: Part 12: Fan Yi Hui Chan House – Beijing, click here.
