On the up: The spiritual power places of China
On the down: The limits of a poncey digital camera

There are waaaaay too many photos of China to post up here, so I've loaded most of the best ones online.

Click here for Beijing pix
and
Wu Tai Shan pix
and
Kumbum pix.

And that isn't the whole lot! We have well over 1500 photos from the trip and if I were to upload them all, I wouldn't be able to do anything else for a week.

So heck, what do you know? After all that destruction from the Cultural Revolution, there are still so many treasures there... which made us all super sad to think of how much more there could have been.

For all their hating of the Dalai Lama, and religion and anything remotely good for your spiritual path, there sure are plenty of totally amazing, amazing, amazing power places there. You just can't believe how big the Tibetan Buddhist influence was there - all the most beautiful antique Buddha statues of Tsongkhapa, Tara, Yamantaka, everyone and everyone and everyone, the super ancient temples, and the monks and nuns which still pursue their spiritual practice in quiet pockets around the country.

The Buddhas have their own little secret holiday getaway up in the hills of China!

We went to three main places (though there are still plenty to be discovered): Beijing, where we visited temples that were frequented by Emperors and the royal families; Wu Tai Shan, a cluster of five mountains that are known to be the abode of Manjushri, Wisdom Buddha; and Kumbum Monastery, the birthplace of Buddha Je Tsongkhapa, whose lineage (Gelugpa) we follow back at home.

And pictures say a thousand words blah blah, so I've picked some of my best best best favourite photos ever to sum up the trip:


Big, lovely, golden Lama Tsongkhapa in Yung He Gung temple, the largest Tibetan Buddhist monastery in Beijing, which was the place of worship of Emperor Qian Long, during the Qing dynasty (yah okay, that didn't mean anything to me either when I first went. Qian Long? Who?). Apparently, when this statue was first made, he looked really stern and unhappy, so they called in some really really really really ancient old crafstman dude, 80+ years, crippled, old and could barely or something. He climbs all the way up on a ladder with a hammer, and bangs two dents into the sides of Tsongkhapa's mouth and now he's happy again!


I can't remember what this was, but I like it anyway because it was a very quiet moment and place in a very crowded temple. And well - with that giant incense holder and giant prayer wheel, it just makes you feel all spiritual cosy!



I was fascinated by staircases and doors the whole trip and half my pictures are arty farty ones of doors and windows and staircases from all sorts of angles. There's something so quintessentially Chinese about red doors!

You wouldn't really believe that in the middle of all those millions of pesky bicycles and rude, loud, spitting Chinese people, there is this beautiful quiet temple (Miaoying Temple) with a very precious stupa/pagoda tucked off in the back. We were the only people visiting that temple day so got a full run of the place. It was like being waaaaaaaaay back then, and you could almost forget you were in smelly Beijing.

And in that temple, was this bighugeenormous room FILLED TO THE BRIM with antique Buddhas - big ones, small ones, peaceful ones, warthful ones, female ones, male ones, fat ones, thin ones. They wouldn't let us take photos and there were these two gnomes guarding the hall and shouting at me everytime I took my camera out, but I SNUCK A SHOT anyway. so meh!

Yes okay, so even we got a bit pagoda'd out after a bit but this one was especially lovely because it was set in a little island in the middle of one of Beijing's biggest parks.

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Wu Tai Shan

Really, really, I freak out when I see nuns. They are all just so neat! And I swear I've never seen an ugly nun. This was at the largest temple in Wu Tai Shan, where heaps of different monks and nuns and pilgrims from all traditions go to do prayers and prostrations. I ran around sneaking photos of all the Sangha doing their prayers. I'm sure they don't mind. It's like you could point a big fat lens in their face while they're reciting mantras and they don't bat an eyelid.

See, I like, really really really like red doors.

Okay, so I have this big fascination with the Sangha at the moment. Even seeing their robes hanging out to dry makes me get all bubbly and want to cry all over the place like a faucet. I think it's the idea that it's so "normal" for them to be hanging their robes out to dry, but it's this casualness that makes it so wonderful - that they are so humble about their monastic living, and how dedicating their whole lives to the benefit of other beings is just so everday and "normal" for them.
Monks' shoes made me freak out too. In the Buddhist tradition, the presence of a monk's shoes, especially the shoes of your own spiritual teacher, signifiy the presence of your teacher. When Lamas pass away, people put a pair of his shoes on his teaching throne, to signify that he will reincarnate again to teach.


There were 1500+ steps to climb to get up to a very sacred cave, associated with Buddha Vajrayogini. We panted, and huffed and puffed and sweated and screamed and almost wanted to push each other off the edge of the stairs because it was so damn tough. And then we saw this monk prostrating his way to the top. We shut up real fast.


Tibet, recreated on a Chinese mountain. Look look! It was so neat how everything was really Tibetan but also really Chinese at the same time - the way the prayer hall is arranged, the monks' prayer robes and the pujas. LOVES! Most of the temples are quite quiet and small now (there are often restrictions on how many monks a monastery can have.... some weird Chinese thing lah, go figure!) so it's really nice to see something dynamic like a puja session, where Dharma comes alive again.

We found this really old, beat-up looking monastery away from the madding crowd; it was probably the only place in Wu Tai Shan without a million tourists. It was so old you wouldn't believe but definitely one of our favourites because of its age. It was literally all crumbling and falling apart but it had a really comfortable, happy energy, a kind of simpleness to living.

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Kumbum Monastery

Kumbum really felt like a little Tibetan version of old, old institutions like Cambridge and Oxford. It's been around for about 600 years now, and you can really feel it in the air! There's only about 600 monks now (compared to what used to be 3000) so it's a bit sad that there's such a lid on spiritual practice but there's a kind of lovely busy energy there anyway. The oldness of everything really reminds you that this region of China actually used to be Tibet where spirituality flourished, and that Buddha Je Tsongkhapa (often known as the second Buddha) really was here.

The devotion of people there was probably what was most overwhelming. People travel for months and months just to go there to do prostrations and pray at the temples. There's so much ardent faith in a very quiet but powerful way. It's also very personal and deep, and part of the fun of being there is wondering what every individual's personal spiritual story is.

Debate sessions! Debating is an integral part of learning in the Gelugpa schoolf of Tibetan Buddhism, and monasteries always have that as part of their curriculum. They only have debate sessions twice a week in Kumbum but we managed to catch a session. They all flew into the debate courtyard with their monks' hats and robes and it was SOOO Hogwarts, for real!

The nicest thing about being in all these places is just seeing random monks dotted about everywhere, like it's just totally normal for them to be sitting on a ledge just thinking about stuff. It makes me sooo almost want to go shave my head, don some robes and be a holy schmoly lovely nun for awhile................................

.......................but when I told Rinpoche this, he told me no way. I'm not going to be a nun in this lifetime, it's not my path, and even if I want to be a nun I won't be allowed to. In his words, "You have to have a fabulous life this lifetime. That's where your work is."

Ho hum, well I ain't complaining.

I still freak out radiogoogoo radiogaga nuts when I see Sangha tho!