Brief introduction of Guiyuan Temple
Guiyuan Temple is located in Guiyuan Temple Road, Hanyang District, Wuhan City, Hubei Province. It was built by Bai Guangda Division in Shunzhi of Qing Dynasty in 65438+06 (AD 65438+0659).
The so-called return to the yuan is the meaning of returning to the truth, to the source, to birth and death, to the truth and to silence. The current abbot is Master Long Yin. The outer gate of Guiyuan Temple is a new gate with antique design. It looks like the gate of an ancient city, towering and solemn, symbolizing endless Buddhism. The door of the outer mountain gate is an antique vermilion hall door, with three doors, a big arch in the middle and small arches on the left and right.
Guiyuan Temple is compact and reasonable. The temple faces east from west. The temple is divided into front area and back area. The front area (old area) is composed of three courtyards with their own characteristics, namely, the North Courtyard, the Middle Courtyard and the South Courtyard. It has three main groups of buildings, namely the Sutra Pavilion, Mahayana Hall and Luohan Hall. In the front area (next to the three temples in the old district), there is also a library belonging to Yuan Zhengzang.
Buddhist scripture depository
The main building of the North Yard is the Tibetan Scripture Building. The Sutra Pavilion was built from 1920 to 1922. It is a pavilion-like building with two floors and five openings. It is about 25 meters high, with a big ridge on the animal's head, claws on the fish horn and cornices on the bucket arch. Simple and exquisite, with four pillars in the sky, two phoenix in the morning, and five dragons playing with pearls. The whole building, doors and windows, carved with red lacquer, is exquisite, spectacular and resplendent. It is the only ancient brick-wood building in Wuhan. There are many Buddhist relics here, besides Tibetan scriptures, there are Buddha statues, implements, stone carvings, woodcuts, calligraphy and painting inscriptions and foreign classics.
Luohantang
The main building of the south courtyard of Guiyuan Temple is the Lohan Hall, in which there are 500 statues of Lohan. Luohantang was built in Daoguang period of Qing Dynasty. Xianfeng was destroyed by a military disaster in the second year (1852) and rebuilt in the 21st year of Guangxu (1895, 1902), which has a history of 200 years.
There is a folk saying that there is Baoguang (Chengdu) in the upper part, Xiyuan (Suzhou) in the lower part, Biyun (Beijing) in the north and Guiyuan (Wuhan) in the middle. In other words, the 500 Lohan Hall in these four temples is the most representative and can be called the essence of Buddhist Lohan statues.
The Luohan Hall in Guiyuan Temple is arranged in a field. The four small patios provide good ventilation and lighting conditions for the huge and deep hall. Although there are 500 arhats in the temple.
The statue of 500 arhats is made of bodiless paint and plastic, which is characterized by moisture-proof, moth-proof and durability. In the past two hundred years, Luohantang suffered several floods, but after the flood receded, Luohantang remained intact.
Sakyamuni temple
The Hall of the Great Hero is the main hall of the temple, or the main hall, and it is also the place where monks in the temple have classes in the morning and evening. Feng Jiahao, a great calligrapher in Qing Dynasty, wrote the four characters "Hall of Great Heroes". Siddhattha gotama is enshrined on the high platform in the center of the main hall, and in the niche on the back of the Buddha statue is the colorful clay sculpture of the most distinctive Buddha statue "Island Guanyin" in Guiyuan Temple.
This group of large-scale assembled plastics is 6 meters high, 4 meters wide and has an inclination of 30 degrees. It does not need steel bars or cement at all, and is made of silk, brown hemp and other raw materials. Although there are many people, they are well organized and brightly colored, and they have not been destroyed after the war.
The walls on both sides of the hall are stone carvings of eighteen arhats. In most temples, eighteen arhats are in the form of statues. However, when Master Long Yin, the current abbot of Guiyuan Temple, repaired the Daxiong Hall, considering that the statue occupied a large area and affected tourists' sightseeing, he adopted the arhats carved by Master Zhu Chan, a monk in the Qing Dynasty.
Guiyuan Zhengcang Library
Guiyuan Zhengzang Library is the first modern Buddhist theme library in China, which is completely initiated by temples, built by believers, with relatively complete supporting facilities and open to the outside world. The building area is nearly10.4 million square meters, and it is a six-story Huizhou building. The main functional buildings include Guiyuan Zhengzang Library and Guiyuan Dajue Guest House, which are the largest Buddhist giving platform in Central China.
Due to various karma, the majority of Buddhists and domestic sages responded to the news one after another, and the project took only two years to complete the opening and spread Buddhism.
Guiyuan Temple Library is open to the public free of charge. In the early stage, Buddhist books were mainly used, and other books were gradually added, eventually reaching 200,000 books, of which Buddhist books accounted for 40% and other books accounted for 60%.