A Journey to the West
16 October 2006
The
journey to the west is once again under the
way.
Several
thousand people saw off a group of 40
pilgrims in the ancient Chinese capital Xi’an
this weekend, who are to follow the footsteps
of the celebrated Tang monk Tripitaka (Xuan
Zang 玄奘)
taking a journey west to India.
Unlike
Magic Monkey, Pigsy, Sandy and their eminent
master of the Tang Dynasty, the contemporary
pilgrims will not walk to their destination,
but sit to their destination. It is not
because they have to meditate day and night
which leaves no time to walk. The truth is
more secular than that: They have four-wheels
to take them there. And that is why this
journey only takes 40 days, instead of 10
years. To be fair, the pilgrims have already
been very, very and very down to earth,
literary, considering most people would just
fly to India.
Earlier,
a Buddhist ritual to bless the journey was
taken place at the Temple of Great Mercy (大慈恩寺)
where a similar ritual was held about 1300
years ago. Nearly a thousand monks and
Buddhist followers chanted sutra before the
alter on which Tripitaka’s bone relics (舍利) was
placed.
Monks
pay tribute to Tripitaka's relics
The
holly relics were originally divided into
three parts and kept in temples in Beijing,
Nanjing and Japan. Later further
distributions were made, and now there are
nine temples housing the relics, including
India’s Nalantuo Temple (那烂陀寺)
where Tripitaka used to studied and lived as
the very first overseas student from China.
The
contemporary Tripitakas brought with them a
Buddhist sutra The Sutra of Forty-Two
Chapters, the first book translated into
Chinese, and a Daoist book The Book of
Change, the first book translated into
Indian.
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