Shangfeng Temple

Shangfeng Temple

Shangfeng temple, above Gaotai temple, is ten kilometers away from Nanyue temple. It is one of the earliest ancient temples in Nanyue. Before the Sui Dynasty, it was called Guangtian temple and was honored as the 22nd blessed place by Taoism. It was the later Shangfeng temple.

Historical evolution

Shangfeng temple, located under the forehead of zhurong peak, the first peak of Nanyue in Hengyang City, Hunan Province, is one of the key Buddhist temples of the Han nationality in China. It has a history of more than 1300 years since the temple was built in the Daye period of Sui Dynasty (605-618). upper

FengSi was a Taoist temple in the Eastern Han Dynasty, known as "Guangtian Taoist temple". It was the 22nd blessed place of Taoism in the early Sui Dynasty. During Daye's reign, Emperor Yang of the Sui Dynasty made a tour to the South and decided to change it into a temple, named Shangfeng temple. However, according to the article "Guangtian Guan" in zongshengji written by Chen Tianfu of Song Dynasty, Guangtian Guan should have a different foundation. Chen Tianfu, a Taoist of the Song Dynasty, lives in laopu nunnery of Jiuzhen cave in Nanyue. He has traveled between 72 peaks for more than 30 years, and his book is based on textual research. The cited materials are biographies of eighteen eminent monks of Hengyue in the early Middle Tang Dynasty. The biography was written near the time when the temple was built in the Sui Dynasty, so it should be reliable.

The origin of the temple's name

Shangfeng temple is located on the side of zhurong peak, the highest peak of Nanyue. Before Sui Dynasty, it was called Guangtian temple. There was a temple of King Si Tian Huo. Taoism called it "the 22nd blessed place of Guangtian Temple". It is a Taoist temple. According to the biography of the eighteen eminent monks of Nanyue, in the early days of Chen Guang's reign, monk Huisi led his disciples to build a pavilion here to serve as a place for real disciples to practice and listen to the Dharma. It is also recorded in the annals of good fortune: the Sui Daye period (605-618). It was converted into a temple. It was named "Shangfeng" because it was "Chijian".

The imperial edict of Song Dynasty is still "Shangfeng Temple", which is inherited from today. At the end of the Tang Dynasty, the poet monk Qi had lived in this temple. At the end of the Northern Song Dynasty, the famous monks, the Buddhist heart and the good fruit, successively presided over the Shangfeng temple. The scale of the temple gradually expanded, and the incense gradually flourished.

Related allusions

Until about the middle of Ming Dynasty, iron smelting got great development, and there began to be foundry. The scale and technology of casting had significant changes and improvements, and the believers were likely to donate iron tiles. So Shangfeng temple and zhurong hall became iron tile and stone walls, standing at the top of the peak, giving people a sense of indestructibility. In the middle of Jiajing period of Ming Dynasty (1522-1566), the temple of heavenly kings was built in Shangfeng temple. The believer Luo Zhen specially donated money to cast four iron statues of heavenly kings for worship. The four iron casting heavenly kings stand in front of the two walls on the side of the hall. They are magnificent, vivid, resplendent and dignified. Unfortunately, the four colossus were destroyed in a fire at the end of 1949.

Reconstruction period

From Kangxi to now, there are some records about the rise and fall of Shangfeng temple. According to the newly compiled annals of Nanyue, "during the reign of Emperor Kangxi of the Qing Dynasty (1662-1722), Zhou Zhaonan, the governor of Hunan Province, invited Yimu, an eminent monk, to be abbot of the temple, overhauled the temple and built a big Buddhist temple with four entrances and two corridors." This is about one of the heyday in the history of Shangfeng temple. According to the investigation of 29 of the 163 monasteries in Nanyue in 1735, there are 448.1 mu of land in Shangfeng temple, and its economic strength ranks first among the five jungles in Nanyue.

During the reign of Tongzhi in the Qing Dynasty (1862-1874), Zeng Guoquan, a native of Xiangxiang who once granted the title of Prince Shaobao, donated more than 20000 liang of silver to rebuild the Shangfeng temple. The temple was renovated. Zeng Guoquan also carved a tablet to record this "merit".

During the period of the Republic of China, due to the strong wind and snow in the mountains, Shangfeng Temple gradually declined. In addition, after the failure of the 1927 revolution, suchan, the abbot of Shangfeng temple, was killed by the local authorities of the Kuomintang. The monks scattered, the temple was deserted, the temple property was mostly invaded by the powerful, and the Temple Court was even more lonely. Until the year of the Republic of China, He Jian, then chairman of the Hunan provincial government, hired Baosheng, an eminent monk, to be the abbot of Shangfeng temple.

main hall

After three years of temple property clearance and ten party fundraising, Baosheng overhauled Tianwang hall and Daxiong hall, rebuilt ancestral hall and Zen hall, added Qitang and Liaofang, and built a new pilgrim Hostel; he recalled monks, restored the jungle system, built a stone road from Shangfeng temple to zhurongfeng, rebuilt the stone Jian of taiyangquan water diversion, and personally wrote two banners of "Huang Li Shi Hou" and "Zhen Cui Yun Yun", engraved on the Both ends of the shelter.

After Baosheng's rectification and construction, the temple has a brand-new appearance, stone walls and iron tiles, solemn Buddha statues, solemn palace, and splendid scenery. Tourists are like clouds, and He Jian himself has donated money for the reconstruction of Shangfeng temple, including 40 sets of upper and middle quilts, 100 sets of ordinary quilts, 40 pieces of cold clothes, and 80 pieces of sedan chair cotton vests, which are specially used for tourists' mountaineering accommodation and keeping out the cold when they are touring He made a contribution.

In the thirty-first year of the Republic of China, the management of Shangfeng temple was not perfect, the monks hung up for a single day, and all kinds of expenses were too large. It was difficult to maintain the original state only by government rent, incense and tourism income, and gradually fell into trouble. Especially after the Japanese invaders occupied Nanyue, the temple also fell into deep water. No one paid attention to the incense of the Buddhist temple, and the temple was gradually in decline.

Temple affairs management

In 1962, Nanyue Management Bureau built a mountain hotel on the site of the temple, named "Shangfeng Temple guest house" for tourists. The name of shangfengsi, an ancient temple in history, was revived, but it was damaged again in the cultural revolution. In 1984, with the implementation of religious policy, Shangfeng temple really recovered from the ruins. Reconstruction began in 1987. Shangfeng temple has not only completely restored the appearance of the temple at its heyday, but also far exceeded the scale of the Qing Dynasty and the Republic of China in terms of the magnificence and modernization of the main buildings and ancillary buildings.

After the establishment of Shangfeng temple, it belonged to Tiantai Sect in the early stage, Zen sect in the later stage, and Huanglong sect in the Song Dynasty. The historical feature of Shangfeng temple is that it has a very long life span, and it always keeps a trace of incense. It is not like Fuyan and Nantai, where the temple is full of ups and downs.

Main building

The main Buddhist buildings of Shangfeng temple include Mountain Gate, Mahavira hall, Tianwang hall, Jifa hall, sutra collection building, Guanyin hall, Mituo hall, etc. among them, the QITANG Hall of the back hall is built in the Qing Dynasty, and there is a couplet on the pillars: "samadhi is followed by samadhi, and ten monks live in ten places." There are eight character stone carvings in the temple, which are "ice breaking in the hall, strange stones through the ages". On the top of the stone is the sun watching platform, and on the top left is the summit of zhurong peak. On the top is the "golden pilgrimage" stone. Under the rock, there are beautiful sceneries such as Luohan cave and Huixian bridge. There are about 500 years old trees around the temple, which are very rare. Because of the high terrain, the wind and the frozen earth, most of the trees are curly, bloated, intertwined, the moss mark on the trunk is green, the crown is thick, and the taste is different.

On the top right of Shangfeng temple is the sun watching platform, and on the top left is zhurong peak. Behind the zhurong hall on the peak is the speechless rock, on which there is a huge rock, just like a giant turtle. Click here to add a picture to explain that it is struggling to climb up, which is called "golden turtle pilgrimage". On the cliff not far below the rock, there are two rocks flying in the air, which are connected with the hanging rock. It looks like it's crumbling. It's called Huixian bridge. Every moonlit night, the sound of silk and bamboo can be heard here. It's said that the immortals drink and play music on the bridge. There is an ancient forest from Shangfeng temple. The trees are strange in shape. Because the terrain is high and cold, there is ice and snow from early winter to late spring, and the tender branches of the trees are broken. In order to adapt to the survival, most of the trees here are curly and bulky. It covers an area of about one mu. You can see the spectacular sunrise and sunset from the sun watching platform.

At the beginning of the Five Dynasties, Qi, a famous poet monk, had closed the two temples in Fuyan and Shangfeng for a period of time. He once wrote a poem about Shangfeng Temple: "when you go to xiawai temple in the Moon Palace, white clouds accompany two or three monks.". But from Sui, Tang to five dynasties, there is no other information about the appearance of the temple. In the Song Dynasty, the temple was granted a new amount of money, and there was a domed forest Pavilion in the temple, which had a slightly large scale. At that time, the Song Dynasty went to the south, "the five mountains are still the rest of the mountain, looking north at heaven and earth, with tears falling down.".

Related allusions

”When a group of officials and intellectuals from the South came to the only "Shouyue" to visit, climb high and look far away, and recall the Central Plains in the north, the feeling of thorns and coppers was bound to be like that of the celebrities in the Eastern Jin Dynasty. They cried bitterly in the new pavilion and were impassioned, so as to write many Patriotic Poems and express their concern for the country and the people. From the occasional revelation between the lines of some poems, we can see that the porches of Shangfeng temple at that time, that is, the board houses, had a certain scale, and there was also a lingering domed forest Pavilion in the temple. In his "preface to the tour of Nanyue and the singing of reward", Zhang Bi describes that all the temples have been built with board houses from Fangguang, Gaotai to Shangfeng.

Board house is a brick and wood building with wooden board nailing instead of ceramic tile. Its advantage is that it won't be cracked by ice and snow like tile, and the wood board is not easy to conduct heat, and it can keep warm. This kind of architecture continued in Yuan Dynasty. For example, JieXi Si, a writer of the Yuan Dynasty who has studied the history of Jin, Liao and Song Dynasties, said in his poem "ascending zhurong peak to present to the people on the star:" the new wind rises day and night, the valley is old, the cliff is firm, and the pines and cypresses are bald. Since ancient times, iron tiles have been flying, and there are still wooden houses in the mountains. " It can be seen that iron tiles were once used in Shangfeng temple in the late Song Dynasty and early Yuan Dynasty.

In the past hundred years, the most important feature of Shangfeng temple is from birth to accession, from the cultivation of the young to the universalization of the great.

Temple host

Shangfeng temple was appointed master of Chu Ming Dynasty. In 1983, he became a monk in Hengyang, Hunan Province. He graduated from Nanjing Buddhist Academy, and also served as executive director of Nanyue Buddhist Association of Hunan Province and member of Nanyue District CPPCC.

Master huaiquan, the abbot of Shangfeng temple, is commonly known as Zhang Quanming. Born in Taoyuan County, Hunan Province in January 1965, master huaiquan was influenced by Buddhism since childhood. At the age of 23, he joined Buddhism after graduating from university and practiced Buddhism in Nanyue Nantai temple

Chinese PinYin : Shang Feng Si