少林寺 Audio Guide

Welcome to Shaolin Monastery, at the foot of Wuru Peak on Mount Song in Henan. This tour follows the central axis of gates and halls, out to the cemetery of pagodas, and tells the story of monks who meditated and also trained. The temple takes its name from its setting: the grove, or lin, on Mount Shaoshi. Emperor Xiaowen of the Northern Wei founded it in the year 495, to house an Indian monk called Batuo, who had reached China by way of the Silk Road. Batuo became the first abbot and gave the place its early purpose, translating Buddhist scriptures and preaching to hundreds of followers. Under him and his disciples, Shaolin grew into a gathering place for eminent monks. That is the quiet beginning. What came later made the name known across the world.

User:Yaoleilei · CC BY-SA 3.0

The black tablet above the gate carries three golden characters: Shaolin Temple. They are the calligraphy of the Kangxi Emperor himself. In 1704, the forty-third year of his reign, he gifted the tablet to the monastery. It first hung in the Heavenly King Hall, deeper in the compound, and was later moved here to the Mountain Gate. An emperor's handwriting over the front door made the patronage plain to everyone who entered. Qing emperors favored Shaolin, and this tablet is that favor, written large.

kevinmcgill from Den Bosch, Netherlands · CC BY-SA 2.0

This great stele rests on the back of a stone turtle, under its own pavilion. It was erected in 728, and its story reaches back a century earlier. Near the end of the Sui dynasty, bandits threatened the temple's vast lands, so the monks organized to defend their community. In 621, thirteen of them helped Li Shimin in his fight against the warlord Wang Shichong. They captured the warlord's nephew, whose army was camped in the Cypress Valley. Li Shimin, the future Emperor Taizong, sent the temple an official letter of thanks. The stele's front carries his commendation, and his own name is signed on it. The back records the reward: land and a water mill. Later legend added a stranger gift, an imperial license for the monks to eat meat and drink alcohol. The stele says nothing of the kind, and no period document confirms it.

Miguel Discart & Kiri Karma · CC BY-SA 2.0

The Bell Tower rises on its tiers of green-tiled eaves, but it is younger than it looks. In the late 1920s, Shaolin was drawn into the feuds of northern China's warlords. The monks sided with General Fan Zhongxiu, who had trained here as a child, against his rival Shi Yousan. Fan was defeated, and the temple had served as his headquarters. On the fifteenth of March, 1928, Shi Yousan's troops set it alight. Ancient towers and halls burned, among them the Bell Tower, the Drum Tower, and the Heavenly King Hall. Several monks died, and 5,480 volumes of Buddhist scriptures were destroyed. What stands here now is a reconstruction, completed in 1994, on a tower first raised in 1345. Its bell is far older than the building: it was cast in 1204.

Diego Tirira from Quito, Ecuador · CC BY-SA 2.0

One tree in this courtyard carries its own quiet record. Its trunk is pocked with small holes, and temple tradition says the monks used it to train finger-punching strength, driving their fingertips into the wood again and again. The story rests on what the monks here have long reported, rather than on any dated account. Even so, the tree fits everything known about the monastery's daily life, where conditioning the body was part of the discipline. More physical evidence of that practice waits deeper in the compound, in the floor of one of its halls.

Ryan McFarland · CC BY 2.0

Painted in bright armor, with glaring faces and raised weapons, these figures announce that a boundary is being crossed. In Buddhist temples, guardian figures like these mark the passage from the ordinary world into the sacred compound. This is the Hall of the Four Heavenly Kings. A hall first stood here in the Yuan dynasty; the building was raised anew in 1735, burned in 1928, and was rebuilt on the old plan in 1982. Two weapon-wielding guardians flank the doorway, and the Four Heavenly Kings stand within. There is a fitting echo in the imagery. This monastery kept monks who trained in arms, so armored protectors at its threshold feel less like ornament and more like a portrait of its own tradition.

Gary Todd from Xinzheng, China · CC0

This guardian's whole body is wound tight, one arm flung high, muscles and teeth bared. His intensity carries a story about the buildings around him. That raising anew came in the thirteenth year of the Yongzheng Emperor, when the Qing court financed major reconstructions at Shaolin. The work included the gate and the Thousand Buddha Hall. Dynasties kept restoring this temple even through its harder centuries.

Gary Todd from Xinzheng, China · CC0

The Main Hall is where the community gathers before the principal Buddhas, and worship has always been Shaolin's core. A hall stood on this spot by around 1169, in the Song era. The building there now dates from the mid-1980s, raised after the losses of the twentieth century. Its red doors and painted beams are new, but the ground under the stone stairs is not. This is the pattern of the whole monastery, loss and rebuilding, carried out over and over across its long life.

Miguel Discart & Kiri Karma · CC BY-SA 2.0

Inside the Main Hall, a gilded Buddha sits against a blaze of red and gold. The hall enshrines the Three Buddhas of the Three Directions: Shijiamouni, Amituofo, and Yaoshi. Guanyin and the Eighteen Arhats stand here too. Above them hangs a panel of calligraphy in the Kangxi Emperor's hand, four characters reading Jeweled trees and fragrant lotuses. It is a second imperial gift within these walls, an emperor's brush hanging over the daily work of worship.

Diego Tirira from Quito, Ecuador · CC BY-SA 2.0

Red walls and tiers of green-tiled roof rise one behind another here, hall after hall up the valley. Shaolin is not one great building but a sequence of courtyards, each gate leading deeper into the mountain. Much of what surrounds those courtyards is younger than it looks. When the monastery came to be rebuilt in the 1980s and 1990s, all of its own paperwork had been lost. The government's plan called for nine halls to be raised again. Ten more were to be restored, and eight entirely new ones added. The architects knew the type of building well, so they interviewed elders who remembered the monastery before 1928, and worked from their memories. The Pavilion of Buddhist Texts went up again in 1993. The Snow Pavilion, ahead in the next courtyard, was reconstructed in 1983. Its full name is the Pavilion of He Who Stands in Snow, and it is also called the Hall of Damo. There the story of how Chan passed from master to disciple is kept.

Petter Griffin · CC0