James Baquet

    jamesbaquet@gmail.com

    AFTER a week on the road, I spent two nights at home, then headed off for another 10-day trip, this time to Anhui and a Buddhist mountain called Jiuhua Mountain.

    Each of China’s four Buddhist mountains is dedicated to one of the four major Bodhisattvas. This one is sacred to Dizang (Sanskrit Kshitigarbha), who vowed to save all beings out of the six levels of hell. Thus, he is commonly associated with the chanting at funerals.

    Legend says that he arrived on Jiuhua Mountain in the 8th century in the guise of a Korean named Jin Qiaojue, a monk (some say an aristocrat) whose practice was so pure that at his death, “the mountain roared, birds and monkeys cried, and the earth gave out fire and light.” This is how the locals knew he was Dizang.

    The site of his practice was a place now called Gubaijingtai, the Ancient Sutra-worshipping Terrace. It’s easy enough to get to today; a cablecar arrives only a few hundred meters away.

    One of the most interesting artifacts at Gubaijingtai is a piece of stone with slightly larger-than-life-sized footprints imprinted on it. These are said to have been left by Dizang Bodhisattva, who stood so single-mindedly chanting in one place that his footprints remained in the stone.

    Elsewhere around the terrace are weird stones whose shapes have been given names like Roc (a mythical bird) Listening to a Sutra, and, of course, a stone pillar that resembles the bodhisattva Guanyin. All in all, there are over 100 named sites.

    Next week: Toiling on up to Tiantai Peak.