On Huzhou Tiefo Temple

The Way to Protect the Buddha's Position and the World —— A Brief Visit to Xianding Temple in Qixian Mountain, Huzhou

@ Tieshan Qingshi (laughing alone) [Narrator]

Occasionally, people take care of each other after setbacks, and they no longer dare to try. But there are a lot of people tangled together, really weak, and have not worked hard.

-"The Cloud Room of Xianding Temple"

May 16, Xianding Temple, Qixian Mountain, Lushan Village, west of Huzhou City.

I went to Xianding Temple in Qixian Mountain this time because I saw a street sign of "Xianding Temple Scenic Area" on the No.44 bus when I returned to the city from Fanyanghu Village in the west of the city the day before (the intersection of Hezhi Road, Xisaishan Road? )。 Baidu visited that night and learned that Xianding Temple is said to be the editor-in-chief of Selected Works of Zhaoming, and also the place where Prince Zhaoming of Nanliang studied Buddhism. There is an ancient well, an ancient ginkgo tree and an "ancient road of Southern Song Dynasty" in the temple, so I think it is worth seeing.

Before I left, I didn't know the relationship between Xianding Temple in Qixian Mountain and Lushan Village. I still took bus No.44, got off at Yanjiafen Station and found Lushan Village on foot. Only then did I find Lushan Village and found that there were 2 1 bus in Lushan Village. When I arrived at the entrance of Lushan Village, I saw the signpost of "Xianding Temple Scenic Area", one on each side of the road. In this way, I followed the direction indicated by the road sign until I reached the end of the village, and I didn't meet anyone. Then continue to walk towards the foothills, and soon find the "Xianding Temple Ancient Road in Southern Song Dynasty" uphill by the cement road.

The "Southern Song Ancient Road" is paved with blue bricks and gravel, which runs from the end of Lushan Village to the Temple of Wealth and two release ponds in front of the temple (the one next to the cement road seems to be sponsored by enterprises). Compared with Meihuaguanguan Shiban Road (from Wushenmen Village to the foot of Ai Jing Mountain) and Dojo Mountain Road, this ancient road has a unique style, giving people a very obvious "official road" style: most of the blue brick roads are vertical (the sections near Xianding Temple are also tiled), and the effect is like an ancient city wall piled with blue bricks, which is both formal and atmospheric. The blue brick road seen today is estimated to have been restored in modern times, because it has a faint color of the late Qing Dynasty. Apart from being quiet, this ancient road gives me the feeling that it is quite humid and particularly cool, but the feeling of isolation is not strong.

The orange on the outer wall of Xianding Temple is very striking, and the cornice of the gatehouse is very high, which feels quite imposing. I first looked at the situation outside and behind the temple, and then entered the temple through the small iron gate opened on the closed iron gate on the side of the temple. In the meantime, I once saw a young man doing mud work on the roadside in front of the temple, and two middle-aged women came out of the temple carrying things and loaded them on the electric car in front of the temple. I didn't notice what it was.

After entering the temple, my first feeling was that this Xianding Temple, whether in scale, layout or building itself, really can't be compared with manjuji, the first venue in Huzhou. However, after a visit, I think Xianding Temple still has certain characteristics, especially in the remains of "old things".

First of all, it is an ancient well called "Taifei Well" with a history of 1500 years. Legend has it that Prince Zhaoming once buried a crown princess who died before him in Qixian Mountain, and built the Niangniang Temple and planted ginkgo trees to protect it. One year after the death of Prince Zhaoming, Er Quan appeared on the mainland of Niangniang Temple. Everyone thought it was "Crying for Prince Zhaoming", so it was called "Taifei Well". This is a two-eyed spring, but now I can only see one well. I don't know why.

Followed by an ancient ginkgo tree about 1500 years old. Legend has it that Prince Zhaoming planted 32 ginkgo trees, leaving only this ancient ginkgo tree, which is the "480 Hall of Southern Dynasties".

Third, an "ancient road of Southern Song Dynasty" (commonly known as "Seven Sages Ancient Road", and the signpost is also called "Dharma Ancient Road"). Although there is no historical document, it is generally believed that it was built in the early Southern Song Dynasty, just like Xianding Temple. According to the Records of Huzhou Prefecture of Tongzhi in Qing Dynasty, "Xianding Temple is located in Qixian Village, 20 miles west of the city, and was first built in Shaoxing in the Song Dynasty."

The fourth is the stone tablet of Taihu Lake, which is nearly two meters high-the stone tablet of Fang Yun in Xianding Temple. The inscription is "Gui 'an Li Yanrui" 1899, written by Pinlian, the elder of Xianding Temple. Because many words on the tablet are illegible, I only saw two or three places with clear handwriting when browsing. That night, I was lucky enough to catch the full text of the inscription "Fang Yun Ji of Xianding Temple" published by the netizen Huzhou Xianding Temple on Sina blog nine years ago (a comparison between complexity and simplicity). It is very useful to read through carefully and read some paragraphs repeatedly, so as to understand the brief history of Xianding Temple and the details of robbery and reconstruction in the late Qing Dynasty.

The fifth is a stone tablet about one meter high. The inscription was written by Wang Liren Luan on 1822. The inscription means that there is a pavilion on the "Seven Sages Ancient Road" (that is, "Temple Road") from the end of Lushan Village to the front of Xianding Temple, and there is a "Pavilion Crane" monument in the pavilion, aiming at "protecting the cranes in the town forever". However, due to years of disrepair, "the pavilion is really abandoned, in name only, and it is broken." I don't know if the location of "Meet the Fairy Pavilion" is the former site of this pavilion.

It is worth noting that in addition to the legend about Prince Zhaoming, Xianding Temple also has a legend about the founder of Dharma, the early ancestor of Zen in China. It is said that a cave on the Seven Immortals Mountain was the first place where Dharma founder meditated after he entered the eastern soil. The top of Qixian Mountain is also called Xianrending. In ancient times, there was a Dharma Pavilion standing on it.

"Huzhou Qixian Mountain, also known as Xiqu, is twenty-two miles west of the county seat. There are six or seven miles from the foot of the mountain to the top of the mountain, which is called the wonderful peak. There is a stone room two miles below the peak. According to legend, some people live here and become immortals, because of its name Xianrending. The hills are flat and spacious, surrounded by mountains, and the springs are filled with stones. They don't dry up and overflow, they cover the natural scenery. " This is the beginning of the inscription. In view of the fact that there are few records about Xianding Temple in Huzhou local literature, I think it is necessary to quote the inscription of Xianding Temple here.

According to the inscription, Xianding Temple was built in the early Southern Song Dynasty. Originally named fame and fortune, it was renamed Xiandingding Temple in Yuan Dynasty. There was no monk after being destroyed by soldiers in the early Ming Dynasty, and it was rebuilt in the middle and late Ming Dynasty and later renamed. Xianfeng burned it at Yuekou in the late Qing Dynasty (only the main hall was accidentally left alone). After clear lake in the early years of Tongzhi, the three elders who returned to Qixian Mountain spent five days "collecting firewood, eating vegetables and chanting scriptures", and it was not until the end of Tongzhi that they were able to "revive the old site".

In the meantime, after describing the details of the stolen reconstruction of Xianding Temple in the late Qing Dynasty and the early Republic of China, the author of the inscription also made some emotional comments, feeling "full of positive energy" and quite inspirational. Special excerpts are as follows:

"Gu (elder and husband)' s arduous journey is often enough to touch people's hearts. The world has experienced setbacks occasionally and never dares to try again, but there are many people intertwined. Is it true that they are not strong enough and have never worked hard? "

"This husband is an angel, and people are also; Use it to raise things, and you have money. There must be laws in financial management, but the code of conduct in life still depends on people. The ancient law is to eat less and use it comfortably to recuperate. Pinlian is a mobile figure, so his career ends here. What can a scholar-bureaucrat do if he manages his family diligently in the country? Although a scholar-bureaucrat wants to make a law, his fellow travelers either scratch or keep it. Those who fail are better than others! After decades of independent management, his disciples learned speed and sympathy for each other, which was based on success. It is said that the benefit of one heart is broken, and it must be promoted without love. Therefore, this is the rule to protect the world. "

As for the history of Xianding Temple after the end of the Qing Dynasty, there are official data of Huzhou Buddhist Association, which can be roughly summarized as follows: in the early and middle 1930s, there were more than 0/00 monks in Xianding Temple and more than 0/00 mu in Sitian/Kloc. After War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression, temples gradually declined. By the 1960s and 1970s, only the old ginkgo tree with a tree age of about 1500 years was left, and the crumbling wall base in the bamboo forest in the northwest of the temple was littered with a stone pagoda in Taihu Lake (the wall base is outside the temple, so I have never seen it, I don't think so). Of course, there is also the "Seven Sages Ancient Road" paved with blue bricks and gravel.

When I visited the temple, I met three monks, namely a boy, an old man and a young man. This makes me feel very cordial, because several Taoist temples I have been to before are either closed (the ancient Meihua Temple and Tiefo Temple in Jin Gai Mountain) or "nobody goes to work" (Ciyun Temple in Pishan Mountain and manjuji in Dojo Mountain). The boy came out of the Hall of the Great Hero and seemed to be chanting. I gave the boy a gesture of putting his hands together, and he quickly returned the gift to me. The old man went to weed the roots of the building. After saluting him, I asked him what was left in the ancient temple. He said that there is an ancient well, an ancient tree and an ancestral grave on the mountain behind. At the same time, he also told me that it would be better to come in August of the lunar calendar. The young man has been busy in the vegetable fields near the temple. There are many pigeons in front of the Tianwang Hall in the temple, and there are also some pigeons in front of the Dizang Hall. When I was overlooking the whole temple on the edge of the Hall of Great Heroes, I found a pigeon beside me, and I felt that these pigeons seemed not too afraid of strangers.

The legend that Prince Zhaoming studied Buddhism in Qixian Mountain (including the burial of the crown prince's concubine in Qixian Mountain) should not be recorded. On the Internet, I saw many posts referring to the "Reading Office for Prince Liang Zhaoming and Shen Shangshu" in Wuzhen, Tongxiang, and the story that Prince Zhaoming went to Wuzhen to study with Shen Yue, the founding hero and literary master of Nanliang. However, since Xianding Temple has this legend, I didn't mean to fabricate it out of thin air. There must be historical reasons. According to the Biography of Prince Zhaoming in Liang Shu, Prince Zhaoming once persuaded Xing Wu citizens to participate in "Ditching Taihu Lake" because of "repeated floods in Xing Wu County", which had a certain fate with Wu Xing.

After visiting Xianding Temple, I didn't take the "Seven Sages Ancient Road", but took the cement road that also leads to the end of Lushan Village. The slope of the cement road is a bit steep. I found that the road just down the mountain was the "Seven Sages Ancient Road". At the same time, I also found many beautifully built graves hidden by the roadside. Looking at several places, I began to feel a little gloomy. I quickly watched the road go down the hill intently, thinking that it was still afternoon and there was sun in the sky.

When I arrived in the village, I met a little old man riding an electric tricycle. I greeted him, and he asked me to go to the mountain, and I agreed; He said just one person, and I said yes; He said his wife and children didn't come, and I said I didn't have a wife and children. So he actually got off the bus and said to me, I don't believe you don't have a wife and children. Seeing that you look passable (to this effect), I say you really don't. He said you must have been married, and I said yes; He said, then why don't you have children? Did she run away? I said no, but I didn't want children then. Then he said, then find another wife. I didn't know how to answer, so I said, oh; He said he had to find one. Oh, I promised, and I bowed to him to say goodbye. He watched me walk ten meters before getting on the bus.

When I got back to the highway, I saw two young people standing on the side of the road talking. I asked one of them where the bus stop sign was, and he told me to keep walking along the road. Later, I felt that there was no way out, and I turned back. I asked one of the young women who were chatting in front of a small supermarket on the roadside, and got clear instructions from my two sisters. I learned that the last bus arrived at 4: 30, with 12 minutes left. In this way, I got on the 2 1 bus and returned to the city. By the way, in fact, this Lushan Village is just behind high-speed railway station in Huzhou.

(Dating back to May 28th to 30th, 2020)