A Buddhist Pilgrimage to the Mountain in the Sea — Part 2
Crossroads and Spirits (City God Temple, Shanghai)
Since ancient times, crossroads have been regarded as places of spiritual power. The intersection of roads is also an intersection of worlds: a place that belongs to neither, and both. It is its own little “bubble universe”, where the normal rules of time and space are suspended, and everything is possible.
It is an undeniable fact that Shanghai is a crossroads, only on a larger scale. It lies suspended between history and the future, a meeting place of cultures, which is apparent in its unique and eclectic architecture — a mixture of Asian and European.
Its old harbour, the Bund, has a name that comes from old Persian through Hindustani, and its art deco buildings would easily be at home in New York or Chicago. The name Shanghai literally means “On the Sea” (上 Shang = “Above”, 海 Hai = “Sea”) further highlighting its dual nature, existing on the boundaries of two elements.
Not long after arriving in Shanghai, still slightly disoriented from the jet lag, and by the sights and sounds which felt both foreign and familiar, we made our way to centre of the crossroads: the temple of the City God.
We are brought up with a view that the world is a dead place: forests are only trees to be used as building materials, mountains have value as long as its ores can be mined, fields are properties to be owned, where our livestock can be fed. Nature only exists to be conquered, bent to the will of human beings. It is a commodity that can be bought and sold, even its plants and animals, which are often denied even the philosophical possibility of sentience.
For the Buddhist, it is the opposite. For us, the world is alive, even the parts which are normally considered inanimate. Perhaps the most profound insight of the Buddhist tradition is the realisation that things don’t exist in and of themselves: rather, they gain existence and meaning through other things. If you hold an apple in your hands, what you actually hold is the manifestation of years of rain, wind, sunshine, and the nurturing of the earth, and the people who attended to it, and harvested it. All this becomes a part of you, when you bite into it: you are forever connected, continuous with the world around you. There is no real boundary between you and others, living and non-living. There is also no real boundary between our ordinary mind, and the awakened mind of a Buddha.
The Heart Sutra, one of the Buddhist scriptures that is associated with Guanyin, expresses this idea with the poetic term emptiness. Although it is a word that is easily misunderstood in the West, it is still a beautiful expression of the deep life-changing effects the true realisation of its meaning holds:
The Bodhisattva of Compassion
cultivating wisdom to perfection,
transcended all unhappiness
through the great realisation:
that all things, in all their aspects,
are empty, without exception.
— Heart Sutra
The great master of mindfulness, Thich Nhat Hanh uses a word word that is perhaps better to describe the idea behind the Buddha’s insight: interbeing. In the Buddhist tradition there is an ancient metaphor which captures the idea beautifully:
Far away in the heavenly abode of the great god Indra, there is a wonderful net which has been hung by some cunning artificer in such a manner that it stretches out infinitely in all directions. In accordance with the extravagant tastes of deities, the artificer has hung a single glittering jewel in each “eye” of the net, and since the net itself is infinite in dimension, the jewels are infinite in number. There hang the jewels, glittering “like” stars in the first magnitude, a wonderful sight to behold. If we now arbitrarily select one of these jewels for inspection and look closely at it, we will discover that in its polished surface there are reflected all the other jewels in the net, infinite in number. Not only that, but each of the jewels reflected in this one jewel is also reflecting all the other jewels, so that there is an infinite reflecting process occurring.
— Francis H. Cook: Hua-Yen Buddhism: The Jewel Net of Indra
What does this have to do with our journey? On our travels we try to remain mindful and respectful of the places we visit, and one way to do that is by greeting the spirits of the place, wherever we go. We say thanks to the rivers that give life to our cities, we express admiration to the mountains and the forests that nourish our minds with their mere presence. It is without question that the traditional Western mindset did a lot of damage to our world already — change starts with a different attitude, a mind of compassion, respect, and connectedness. Luckily, there are a lot of signs in our world that make us hopeful about a better direction.
萬木の開花は，
法身の色相なり。
千鳥の囀枝は，
真佛の說法なり。
The flowers that bloom on every tree are
manifestations of the Buddha’s body;
The chirping of all the birds is the sound
of the true teachings of the Buddha.
— Fujukeimōshū by Kankū
The City God temple is located at the heart of Shanghai, in the area that used to be the ancient walled city, from which it grew into its current form. The district has been extensively renovated, to the point of a not-so-subtle air of inauthenticity: it feels as if the streets and the buildings try to recreate a historical era that never was. There are modern, Western brands housed in Chinese buildings, that feel at once old and too new. My wife aptly likened the experience to Disneyland (even though she has never been), and I couldn’t agree more.
Perhaps the City God Temple can be seen as an odd place to set off on a Buddhist pilgrimage, after all, this sanctuary is a Daoist one. While Buddhist sutras make a lot of references to local gods (even the Buddha himself is shown talking to tree spirits, for example), and Buddhists show respect to them, they do not worship them.
The City God temple was originally an edifice of the Chinese folk religion — an organic system of belief that has elements of Daoism, Confucianism, Buddhism, and local spiritualities. Today it is run by a Daoist organisation, as all temples in China must be affiliated with a state-recognised religious tradition. Of course, the history of these religions can not be understood without each other: there is a rich culture of cross-fertilisation, common spiritual places and ideas.
There are examples of trying to make sense of one’s teaching by the other: people say that the Daoist holy man Laozi left China for India, only to become known as the Buddha over there. There are examples of downright rivalry: there are countless Daoist scriptures from the middle ages, that are hastily rewritten versions of Buddhist sutras, capitalising on their popularity. And there are common organic developments: even today, Chinese Buddhist liturgy is full of elements, sounds, tunes, movements that are shared with the other “faiths”, and that can be traced back to the earliest times of Chinese spirituality. In Taiwan and Hong Kong, where religions are less controlled, I also came across many temples where folk deities and Buddhist Bodhisattvas are worshipped side-by-side — for many people they are simply powerful entities that they can turn to in their troubles.
Since the Han and the Jin dynasties, Daoism and Buddhism have both been actively propagated in the world, Buddhism has been somewhat more popular than Daoism. (…) The emperor has (…) pronounced that the “loving-
kindness” (cí 慈) of the Buddhists is just like the “benevolence” (rén 仁) of us Confucians. The [Buddhist idea of] “ferrying people across out of compassion” is not different from our teaching of “generously providing to and assisting others.”— Qiu Gazetteer (1695–1705)
It is a peculiar feature of the Shanghai City God temple, that it houses not one, but three different city gods, who rose to prominence in different historical periods, at different stages of the city’s development. The most ancient one of them is in the main shrine — he was originally the patron deity of a smaller area of Shanghai, called Jinshan (金山, literally “Golden Mountain”).
After we paid our proper respect towards the City Gods, we turned our attention to the other smaller shrines inside the temple, housing popular deities. The group of 60 Taisui (太歲), or “Year star gods” for example are said to rule over different years, depending on people’s Chinese birth signs. People often pray to them around New Year’s.
The Daoist god of Chinese Medicine shares his name with a Buddhist Bodhisattva, leading people to sometimes identify them with each other. Yao Wang’s name (藥王) literally means “King of the Medicinal Herbs”.
Chinese traditional beliefs place an emphasis not only on gods, but also on the spirits of the ancestors (which are actually, often the same, as most gods are rooted in some historical figure). Ancestor veneration is an important manifestation of the Chinese value of filial piety — the respect and obedience children are expected to give to their parents. In the City God temple for example, there was a small shrine for the spirits of all the priests of the temple in the past. Instead of an image, on such altars so-called spirit tablets are used — usually wooden boards, with a spiritual inscription on them.
To us, of course, the highlight of the temple was the different manifestations of Guanyin. That’s right: Guanyin is such an important figure in the Chinese spiritual life, that She is even adopted by the Daoists (although, often behind different names). Most often, she is called Cihang Da Shi (慈航大士), a name that can be translated as Master of the Boat of Loving-kindness. The symbol of the boat of course is a clear reference to the Buddhist icon of salvation, that we described in detail in the introduction, the two first characters even feature in a popular Buddhist saying often seen on temples: The Boat of Loving-kindness Saves All (慈航普渡). In the City God temple, there is a complete shrine to the right of the main sanctuary, called “The Shrine of the Boat of Loving-kindness”, which houses Guanyin’s different Daoist manifestations.
Inside the shrine we found three figures. First, Cihang herself, looking exactly like Guanyin in one of her most popular forms, that young couples often pray to: the Child-giving Guanyin. Even the Buddha figure on her forehead, and the child by her side — her acolyte, Longnü (龍女), or Dragon Girl — are typical characteristics of Guanyin’s images.
Then there was Mazu (媽祖), literally “Mother-ancestor”, who is a Mother Goddess figure widely venerated in southern China. According to her story, she was once a young human girl from a fisherman’s family, who through spiritual cultivation reached a high level of magical power, which she used to help sailors in trouble on the sea. According to a popular folk-religious “sutra”, the girl was in fact an avatar, or human rebirth of Guanyin herself. Mazu is also often called Tianhou (天后), meaning Heavenly Queen. In Hong Kong her temples feature these characters, only they are pronounced as Tin Hau in the local dialect.
The third figure was a lesser known Daoist goddess, known as Yanmu (眼母), or Eye-mother, holding an “eye-jewel” in her hands. People pray to her to heal their eyes, both in the medical, and the spiritual sense.
Finally, we also found a smaller shrine dedicated to Guanyin (although, surrounded by two Daoist gods), which felt more like a temporary installation.
After expressing our gratitude to Guanyin at Her altars for bringing us here on this journey, we continued the day with some sightseeing in the local area. We visited the Yu Garden (literally: “Pleasure Garden”) next to the City God Temple.
The garden was built in the Ming Dynasty, around 500 years ago. It’s a prime example of traditional Chinese landscaping, and proved to be a welcome island of peace after the bustle of the City God Temple and the neighbouring shopping area. Besides churches and temples, parks and botanical gardens are always on the top of our list to visit, whenever we travel. The Japanese coined the term forest bathing as a way of maintaining good physical and mental health, but in our experience park bathing can also be a good alternative if we can’t make it outside the city.
After a busy day we headed back to our hotel, getting ready for further adventures ahead. Our next stop is the Jade Buddha Temple, one of the largest Buddhist temples in Shanghai, with a special connection to Putuo Mountain.
To be continued.
