The Sacred Buddhist Temples Of Anhui Jiu Hua Mountains 安徽九華山
Posted On Thursday, November 5, 2015 at at 10:30 PM by Alvin
Welcome to Jiu hua Mountains (九華山), one of the four sacred Buddhist mountains of China - a site which had been the practice and prayer grounds for the Buddhist disciple Dizang (地藏). Jiu Hua Mountains had been the destination for worshippers since the Tang Dynasty (circa 600 A.D.) and still today attracted dedicated followers in the thousands; while we were stationed here, we came across hordes of Buddhist practitioners donned in their grey gowns and practised chanting Buddhist mantra as others listened and debated Buddhist scriptures and learnings with the leading monks. One word of warning to any would-be visitors, you would be pleasantly stunned with the enormous size of the tens of temples here as well as the giant statues housed inside these shady dwellings; to name just a few of the famous ones, we visited 東崖禪寺、回香閣、地藏禪寺、肉身殿、天台寺、上禪堂、百歲宮、甘露寺、化城寺、祇園寺、旃檀林、慧居寺. One of the statues of Dizang stood at a whopping height of 99 metres, that's about the height of your average suburban high-rise buildings of 30 storeys ! All these temples were dotted all around the picturesque mountains and we walked amongst the red, golden and verdant Autumn leaves to visit these temples in turn, it was tiring but well-worth the effort as we were rewarded with the delightful vista of the design and construction of these gigantic temples. We attained a sense of peacefulness and felt energised and refreshed after visiting these holy mountains for the past four days.
