This morning we hired a car and driver and went to Fo Guang Shan, a large monastery and Buddhist site outside Kaohsiung and home of the world’s largest seated Buddha, as well as (it turned out) a menagerie of animatronic animals including a mooing stegosaurus. The place itself is immense, set on a hillside overlooking a river, valley and a very long elevated expressway. We were dropped off at the ‘museum’ part of the complex, with an immense entrance that felt like a hotel or or casino, with a Starbucks and several gift shops, and a great deal of smiling and suggestions we visit one of the multiple vegetarian restaurants for lunch or tea. Passing through the entrance we came out into a vast plaza, lined by pagodas on either side, and in the distance, a structure that looked a bit like a Vegas recreation of an Aztec pyramid, and behind it an immense seated Buddha. And large monkeys that turned their heads and chittered as we passed, pandas that turned their heads and squeaked, giraffes that turned their heads and neighed, and of course the stegosaur that turned its head and mooed. Outside the pagodas were some pretty gardens, dotted with animatronic animals and lined by walls with frescos depicting koans and we walked most of the way through here. One of the pagodas also had a bronze plaque describing the foundation of the complex, only 9 years ago, and its greatest treasure: a tooth of the Buddha that seemed to have been brought from India by means that, as described rather smacked of antique smuggling.
Each of the pagodas had something on the ground floor – a book shop, a conference room, a little display of calligraphy by the master of the order. The pyramid housed a number of museum displays, some rather halfhearted, such as a room about the Buddha’s life which had projected images of the various episodes of his life, plus a couple of interactive features: a red patch on the floor where, if one stood still, a cartoon Buddha delivered a wise saying; another patch of light on the floor where, if one stood, an animated calligraphy scroll unrolled on a projector screen with a wise saying. Another room was an underground palace containing a few treasures including a little bowl of small white objects and a plaque stating that the Buddha’s tooth had multiplied. I might have misunderstood it, or perhaps the translation was not good, but it did rather make me wonder about sacred 3D printing. Everywhere were signs that every 100 years, another such room would be opened, so I suppose it was intended as a sort of opened time capsule.
We climbed up the hillside towards the monastery, where the cartoonishness certainly diminished, but it was fiercely hot so we only made it to the Sutra Hall where a friendly nun accosted us, gave us sweets, suggested we have tea at the tea house, and allowed us to select a card with a wise saying and a booklet about the order. I chose an account by the order’s founder, titled Paving My Way to International Status – Hear Me Out: Messages from a Humble Monk. This title was matched only by one of the chapter titles: ‘Simplicity, Tax Exemption – Our Starting Points in America’.
I did wonder how this immense complex, not to mention all the sister complexes around the world, were paid for. Humbleness and simplicity did not seem distinguishing characteristics, and the booklet doth, as they say, protest too much.
Our final stop was a return to the pyramid to the shrine of the tooth (which had previously been closed for lunch), and I’m glad we went there as it was the most genuinely spiritual place outside the monastery itself. It was a small room, in a basement and accessible through a narrow corridor, and there were lovely wooden bas relief scenes on the walls, and on either side of the shrine with the tooth were jade panels of a sort of pure land scene, inhabited by current day people. The tooth itself was in a blue receptcle and very high up so one could not see it, and it made me think of being in the presence of a sacred object compared to a sort of darshan, of laying eyes on it.
On our return to Tainan, we went straight for coffee and then onwards to the city gods temple again where the GF did his annual i ching reading and I sat and looked at the paintings and statues. Then back, very hot and tired. I went to our downstairs bakery to collect our chocolate biscuits and we finished the day by watching Akira. I had not seen it before and I was spellbound.