Longshan Temple, Taipei

In 1738, settlers from Fujian, China constructed a temple in Wanhua, Taipei on the site where a man left an amulet of Guanyin  (Goddess of Mercy) hanging from a tree. Legend has it that the amulet gave off a bright light, even in the darkness and so, a temple was built. That temple is the Longshan temple.

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In East Asian Buddism, Guanyin is depicted as a female diety. Her origins however are from the Buddha of Compassion, known in Sanskrit as Avolokitesvara, who takes the male form. The Tibetan name for the Buddha of Compassion is Chenrezig, and Tibetan Buddhists look to the Dalai Lama as a reincarnation of Chenrezig. While I won’t go into any more detail about Guanyin, I will mention an interesting aside. In Japanese, Guanyin is pronounced Kannon and this is where the name for the Canon company first came from, although the spelling was changed a few years after the company was formed. So to those who shoot with Canon equipment, you’re shooting with a Buddha.

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Over the course of a couple of centuries, Taipei’s Longshan temple has been destroyed either in full or in part on numerous earthquakes and fires and in the spring of 1945 was even bombed by the US who claimed the Japanese were using the temple as an arms storage facility. As a result, the temple has been rebuilt and restored numerous times.

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Okay, the photos are what you come here for so here they are. As always, you can click on each photo for a larger version, but be warned that if your screen resolution is lower than 1024 vertically, you may have to scroll to see the larger version. Horizontal photos should fit okay.

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This entry was posted on Sunday, December 16th, 2007 at 11:03. It is filed under Documentary, Travel and tagged with Buddhism, Longshan Temple, Photoessay, Photos, Taiwan. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.