Buddha Sleeps Peacefully In Dazu Crescent
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The Dazu Buddha we visited was at Baoding Hill about 9 miles from the town. The journey to the Sleeping Buddha sculpture was through countryside often revealing wonderful views of paddy fields in the valleys.  When we arrived at the plain ground coach park, near the Buddha Crescent, we were immediately greeted by local people of all ages,trying to persuade us to buy their packs of postcards of Buddha pictures or guide brochures and maps. One young boy, of about ten years of age, followed us for almost all the time we were at the site. When we were eventually on the path in front of the Buddha Rock Carvings, I offered to buy a set of postcards from him, on the condition that he would buy them back at half the price. After much consultation with his companions, he agreed to do so, and thus for the first time, I did some trading in China !
Buddha Spirit Creates Peaceful Atmosphere At Dazu
The Buddha Crescent, the niches and small caves, containing thousands of statues of various sizes, were completed in the year 1249. The work took about 70 years to complete and was directed by a Song Dynasty monk named Zhao Zhifeng. Besides the Buddha statue, there are also carvings of mountains, flowers and trees, and of ordinary people. A mother gives birth, and a son gets married. The Buddha site has a spiritual atmosphere rather than a religious one.
The largest stone carving was that of the sleeping Buddha entering the state of Nirvana, but only the upper part of the body was visible, and this was about 100 feet long and 20 feet high, a remarkable piece of workmanship. The sculpture of the Sleeping Buddha, bathed in the warm morning sunlight, dwarfed all the other attending statues.
Buddha Disciples And Common People
 The rock face with its carved scenes of Buddha and Disciples towered up above us, and water dripped from the overhang. The sound of trickling water  was quite distinct in many places, perhaps seeping from the hills behind the grotto, or the gathering of condensation, but there was water issuing out of the mouth of a dragon's head, also carved in the rock. The painted carvings of Buddha Disciples in the upper part of the grotto, which had been afforded some protection from the sunlight by the overhang, were brightly colored, and
showed no sign of fading but even without color the carvings would have still been inspiring. Everyday life was also a feature of the carvings. The Sleeping Buddha carving was attended by ten scenes showing the life of common people, suggesting that Buddhism was not some remote religious belief, but rather a spiritual way of living one's time in this world, in preparation for the next.
On leaving the site and walking back up the steep path, we were again approached by local people, as soon as we came into view. The youngest "salesman" was a boy of about 3 or 4 years old. He had started to learn his trading skills quite early.
Black Dragons On Wall Tops In Shanghai
Buddha Statue In Cave At Longzhou
Vietnamese Woman Sells Mountain Berries In Xui Kou
Homesick Young Boys Returned From Buddhist Temples
A Selection from Robert's Wild Cards
| The start of these personal webpages and the Vietnam pictures, followed a chance meeting with a young man named Hoang in 1979. Hoang was one of the "Boat People" from Vietnam who arrived in the UK. In due course I was given the responsibility of teaching him some English. A few weeks later I met his family and friends, and subsequently their families and friends, and friends and families, of friends and families.... and so it was that the ideas for the personal webpages began. |
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| Browse through the many China pics on the personal webpages and enjoy again a meal of Peking Duck with pancakes at the Qian Men Restaurant in Beijing. See what happens to the floor of a Ming Dynasty Hall after Buddhist Monks have stamped their feet for hundreds of years, as shown in the China pics from the Shaolin temple on the personal webpages of Robert. |
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