High
above a lush hillside in the New Territories town of Sha Tin, Hong Kong is the
Monastery of Ten Thousand Buddhas. It is not an actual monastery as there are
no resident monks - instead, it is crowed with more than 13,000 statues of
Buddhas of all shapes and sizes. To reach the monastery one must first climb
over 400 steps up the hillside, the path lined with life-size statues of
Buddhas.
“The
entire path upwards was lined with Buddha statues, statues different from any
Buddha I'd seen at a previous temple,” writes blogger Andy Carvin. “In fact,
each statue was probably unique. There were thin Buddhas, chubby Buddhas, bald
Buddhas, hairy Buddhas, Buddhas with walking sticks, Buddhas with dogs and
dragons and frogs, macho Buddhas, androgynous Buddhas.”
Once
inside the monastery, you are accosted by more statues – Buddhas in the garden,
Buddhas in the pavilion, Buddhas in the tower. The walls inside the temple is
lined with thousands upon thousands of miniature Buddhas.
The
Ten Thousand Buddhas Monastery was founded in 1951 by Yuet Kai, a monk who
preached Buddhism in a local monastery. Construction of the monastery began in
1949. Despite his old age, Yuet Kai carried the buildings materials personally
from the foot of the mountain together with his disciples to build the
monastery. It took eight years to complete all the buildings and another ten
years to finish the 12,800 Buddha statues. Today, his preserved body is
presented in the main hall of the monastery in a glass case, often the main
attraction of the temple.
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