The Shaolin Temple - 100 Years Later: A Comparison in Photos

How wonderful is it when you stumble upon old photos of your grandparents or your hometown, and you can recognise details in them to connect them to your experiences and memories? The same thing happened in 1991 when Abbot Shi Yongxin of the Shaolin Temple paid a visit to Dharma Temple in Japan and discovered photos of the temple and the surrounding area taken in 1920!

The Shaolin Temple was built in the year 495 by the Buddhist Emperor Xiaowen. He gave it over to a monk he especially respected called Batuo, who became the first abbot. The temple has had a tumultuous history, and was destroyed three times, most recently in 1928 when much of the temple was burnt to the ground by the warlord Shi Yousan under orders from a Christian general to destroy Buddhist temples. Luckily, however, monks from Hōrin-ji Temple  (Dharma Temple) in Kyoto had visited Shaolin in 1920, and had taken photos of it eight years before its destruction. On his visit, Abbot Shi Yongxin was able to view the 48 photos for the first time. 

It really is fascinating to see these photos, now exactly 100 years old, together with photos of the area as it currently is, (as taken by Cultural Keys during our most recent Warriors' Way Bootcamp at the temple in 2019.)

The name of the most important gate in a Buddhist temple is shanmen 山门, meaning mountain gate. It may be called this because Buddhist temples were usually built in remote mountainous areas to enable monks to focus on monastic life, or possibly because of the similarity between the form of the doors and the character 山. 

The gate has a large archway in the middle and two small ones on either side, symbolising the 'three liberations' in Buddhism: emptiness, signlessness and desirelessness. The three characters over the central doorway say 'Shaolin Temple' 少林寺 and were written by Emperor Kangxi in 1704. 

The path leading from the Shanmen to the first hall is flanked on either side by stele, large stone tablets recording main events or important visitors to the temple over the centuries. 

This is the main hall of the temple, where three Buddhas are enshrined: Sakyamuni, the Buddha of Medicine and the Buddha of Infinite Wisdom. 

Located on Wuru Peak to the north-west of the temple, this is the cave where Bodhidharma, the founder of Chan (Zen) Buddhism, is said to have meditated for 9 years. 

At the foot of Wuru Peak, this convent, where a few nuns still live, is named after the 'first patriarch' of Chan Buddhism (Bodhidharma). 

Between the temple and the foot of Wuru Peak, the pagoda forest is where the cremated remains of former abbots and eminent monks were buried under pagodas. The oldest pagoda here dates from the Northern Wei Dynasty (386-535), during which the temple was founded. 

Giving its name to the temple ('Shaolin' means 'the forest at the foot of Shaoshi Peak'), this distinctive flat-topped mountain dominates the landscape of the area. 

This nunnery is located on the side of Shaoshi Peak, and has been completely rebuilt over the last few years. No nuns currently live there. It's named after the 'second patriarch' of Chan Buddhism, Bodhidharma's disciple, Huike. Legend tells how he cut off his own arm to achieve enlightenment and was later healed on a rock platform near the nunnery. 

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