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Concept
Hanging Temple
Summary
The Hanging Temple, also Hengshan Hanging Temple, Hanging Monastery or Xuankong Temple () is a temple built into a cliff ( above the ground) near Mount Heng in Hunyuan County, Datong City, Shanxi Province, China. The closest city is Datong, to the northwest. Along with the Yungang Grottoes, the Hanging Temple is one of the main tourist attractions and historical sites in the Datong area. Built more than 1,500 years ago, this temple is notable not only for its location on a sheer precipice but also because it is the only existing temple with the combination of three Chinese traditional philosophies or three religions (三教): Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism. The structure is kept in place with oak crossbeams fitted into holes chiseled into the cliffs. The main supportive structure is hidden inside the bedrock. The monastery is located in the small canyon basin, and the body of the building hangs from the middle of the cliff under the prominent summit, protecting the temple from rain erosion and sunlight bake.
According to legend, construction of the temple was started at the end of the Northern Wei dynasty by only one man, a monk named Liaoran (了然) in 491 AD. Over the next 1,400 years, many repairs and extensions have led to its present-day scale.
The entire 40 halls and pavilions are all built on cliffs which are over from the ground. The distance from north to south is longer than from east to west and it becomes higher and higher from the gate in the south to north along the mountain. The temple can be divided into a northern and southern section.
The northern section contains:
Wufo Hall - The Hall of the Five Tathagatas
Guanyin Hall - Hall of the bodhisattva Guanyin
Hall of Three Religions (). The Hall of Three Religions mainly enshrines Buddhist deities as well as both Taoism and Confucianism. The statues of Śakyamuni (middle), Lao-Tze (left) and Confucius (right) are enshrined in the hall. This reflects the prevailing idea of "Three Teaching Harmonious as One" () in the Ming and Qing dynasties (1368–1911).
Official source
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