Shengan Temple, Yueyang

Shengan Temple, Yueyang

This lovely, stepped temple climbs up a hill on the shores of Donting Lake to a beautiful nine storey pagoda with sweeping views of Yueyang City and the vast watery landscape around it. It’s a Tientai temple – a school founded by the Sixth Century ‘Wise One’ Zhiyi, who established the Lotus Sutra School of Buddhism in China and by extension Japan, Korea and Vietnam. You enter through the mountain gate, an imitation of the Buddhist Incense Pavilion Archway in the Summer Palace which was destroyed by European and American armies in the 19^th Century. Inside is a beautiful golden statue of Guanyin – the Chinese version of Avalokitesvara, the Boddhisattva of Compassion from the Lotus Sutra. She greets visitors, hands held up in the Vitarka mudra – a sacred hand gesture symbolising the unending cycle of teaching and learning upheld by the monastery. Further courtyards and steps lead past a giant golden statue of Shakyamuni Buddha to the magnificent Great Buddha Hall and the Ten Thousand Buddha Pagoda high on the hill.