Shaolin Temple

Hi,
This is Suki. I'm looking forwrd to visiting Shaolin Temple. It is historically significant. Check out the utube link at the end of my essay. I attempted to add pictures, but I couldn't do it. I included an excerp from Wikipedia because I thought it was interesting, but didn't want to pretend I had my own words for it.


Shaolin Temple 少林寺

少林寺,Shaolinsi, “monastery of the woods near Shaoshi Peak.”

The Shaolin Temple is a Chan/Zen 禅 Buddhist monastery. Legend has this place as the origin of all martial arts/Gungfu.

An Indian dhyana master, Batuo, traveled to the ancient capital of Luoyang to teach Buddhism around 495 CE, during the Northern Wei Dynasty (386-534), and won favor with the Emperor Xiao Wen. This Emperor built Shaolin Temple for Batuo and his followers, in the Songshan Mountains.

The monk, Damo/Bodhidharma, came to Shaolin from India, in 517/527 CE. He is the creator of Chinese Zen. He is said to have meditated in a near by cave, on Song Mountain, for nine years; it is now called Damo Cave. There, he taught himself self-defense. He later taught these skills to the disciples at Shaolin.

It is not decisive that Damo is the absolute beginning of the practice of martial arts, but that’s all we have to work with right now.

During the Tang Dynasty (618-907), Shaolin monks saved the life of an Emperor, Li Simin, and had then been allowed to have soldier-monks. The Temple housed over a thousand soldier-monks at their apex during the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644).

“Kangxi (1654-1722), the second Qing emperor, was a supporter of the Shaolin temple in Henan and he wrote the calligraphic inscription that, to this day, hangs over the main temple gate,” (wikipedia).

The Qing government, in 1732, hammered the Temple, the monks, and the practice of martial arts for supposed anti-Qing activities. Legend has it that Shaolin martial arts spread with fugitive monks upset by the Qing crack down.

The Temple has survived a few bad fires, the worst in 1928, by the warlord, Shi Yousan.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Llqup1Uir6k







"In 1928, the warlord Shi Yousan set fire to the monastery, destroying many priceless manuscripts of the temple library, some of its halls, and damaging the aforementioned Stele.
The Cultural Revolution purged all monks and Buddhist materials from within its walls, leaving the temple barren for years. During most of the second half of the 20th century, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) used Shao-lin for training bogus monks- actually Red Guard or Red Army soldiers/agents. The temple and grounds, including the cemetery of past priests known as Ta-lin (Big Forest) and the Pool of the Nine Dragons, was used as an artillery target by the CCP army for decades.
The target practice extended to Omei (Emei) Mountain Temple, a place that once housed the Shao-lin sister nuns. Shao-lin was subsequently rebuilt, repopulated and designated an official tourist site by the Chinese government after the overwhelming success of the Jet Li movie Shaolin Temple in 1982.
Martial arts groups from all over the world have made donations for the upkeep of the temple and grounds, and are subsequently honored with carved stones near the entrance of the temple.
In the past, many people have tried to capitalize on the Shaolin Monastery by building their own schools on Mount Song. However, the Chinese government eventually outlawed this, and so the schools all moved to the nearby towns. The CCP did not wish its monopoly on all things Shaolin to be jeopardized, nor did it wish to lose the lucrative franchise of Shaolin souvenirs.
A Dharma gathering was held between August 19 and 20, 1999, in the Shaolin Monastery, Songshan, China, for Buddhist Master Shi Yong Xin to take office as abbot. He is the thirteenth successor after Buddhist abbot Xue Ting Fu Yu. In March 2006 President Putin of Russia became the first foreign leader to visit the monastery."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaolin_Monastery