11/17/2005 11:58:00 PM|||The Zen Master|||
This afternoon I decided to head out to the opposite side of the lake and up a hill to a string of temples called by the name of the small winding street on which they're located--Tianzhu Road, which I later learned is actually the archaic Chinese name for India, which makes sense since Buddhism first came to China over the Himalayas. I called the monastery on my cell phone so the taxi driver could get more specific directions than just the name of the street and the street number, which never seems to be enough information to satisfy cabbies in Beijing either.
Finally I arrived at the gates of the topmost temple, where one of the women who always sit outside temple entrances selling incense convinced me (without having to try too hard, certainly) to buy some pink sticks to burn inside. The people working at the temple were really friendly--they all wanted to know whether I was in Hangzhou to visit or to work, and were excited when I lit the incense and knew what to do with it. There were only two or three other visitors to the temple (which seemed to be a monastery from all the monks walking around but which I had read was actually a nunnery), and they passed me as I walked down the hill on the side of the road toward the next of the three temples.
I was content to take my time and revel in the calm greenery that surrounded me. A stream ran alongside me, and dogs ran from tree to tree next to it. I said hello to all the dogs, but they were all kind of scared of me. I was only scared of the chickens I passed crossing the road and wandering around outside the houses. It brought real clarity to my vision of the impossibility of what the Chinese government proposed yesterday--to vaccinate all the 4-5billion chickens in the country against bird flu--after the first three confirmed cases of human bird flu in China were announced.
The next two temples were a bit larger but still beautiful and interesting, which is much more than could be said of my final stop of the day, the (supposedly) famous Lingyin Temple. The book I bought described it as one of ten temples of the Chan (Zen) Buddhist sect in China, but it was possibly the least zen place I've ever been. Gigantic tour groups with guides herding them with instructions shouted into blaring loudspeakers are not exactly my idea of tranquil. It was a disappointing end to a day of reflection and insight. Still, it was probably equally enlightening.|||113224659697296478|||An enlightening day
