Ep. 121: The Great Buddha at Lingshan
How Chinese Buddhism does opulence
Once again we deviate from the Pilgrim Path to bring you this special report!
Ten years ago this month, on a very cold New Year's weekend, Lila and I had a unique opportunity to participate in history.
In the 2007-2008 school year, I had lived in a Buddhist monastery in Yangzhou, Jiangsu. The temple had a Buddhist academy attached, and I supervised a department and taught English to the student monks. One of them, it turns out--a wonderful young man who used to drive me to the bus station on Fridays on his way back to his temple--was destined to become the abbot of Kaiyuan Temple, built inside the Meiyuan ("Plum Garden") in Wuxi.
