The Lama Temple

I feel like I'm 5 years old ... without parents. We had ice cream for dinner tonight - continuing the obsession. This was from a gelato place in a mall, but again was more like very smooth, creamy ice cream than real gelato. We had a very late lunch, then were writing and drinking frappachinos (I know, I know), and I think the week's catching up, so our appatites were gone. But hey, you're not the boss of me, I don't have to justify this to you ;-) We also went to a tea store tonight - where they sell loose leaf tea - and I bought a very fragrant oolong. I wanted to find a nice white tea, something unique, but for some reason, they don't really have those here. I've asked in several places.

We ventured out this afternoon on the Beijing subway system, which - as with many of the city features I've found both here and in Hong Kong - works just the way subways work in NYC or Boston. We went north up to a big Buddhist temple (I keep typing Tempe for that word ... odd) called the Lama Temple. I forgot to mention this after the Forbidden City and Ming Tomb tours, and every temple-like building we've gone into ... they build these thresholds on the entrances with lips anywhere from about 6 to 15 inches high that you have to step over; our first tour guide (at the Forbidden City) said that this was to keep evil spirits out (because they don't have knees and can only hop on their toes) ... I kept getting stuck ;-)

The temple itself was my first real experience with Buddhism. The entire facility was as ornate as the Forbidden City, the Summer Palace, the Temple of Heaven, but what surprised me was how blended the religion was with the tourism industry. There were guided tours, tourists with cameras, and maintenance people walking around, talking, doing their own thing while people were burning incense to the buddhas and praying. I saw one woman prostrated in prayer with a tray of incense sticks in front of her, and a custodian (of sorts) came over and cleaned out that tray while she was praying. It just seemed so distracting, I can't imagine trying to pray - or certainly to meditate - with cameras and tourguide lectures and everything going on all around me. It was also much more commercial than I expected - with sourvenir shops everywhere and a 25 yuan charge for entry - and it reminded me of many of my concerns regarding organized religion, and how most of it is a business. It shouldn't be. That's one of the reasons I left the Catholic church (and one of the reasons I like Praxis), but even my complaints about Catholicism don't go this far: I've never been charged entry into even the most ornate or popular cathedrals, and I've never seen a souvenir shop inside a cathedral or church (that doesn't mean they don't exist). I've also never been inside a church/cathedral (even as a tourist) and had the atmosphere be anything other than hushed reverence; here, people were talking at full volume, shouting, tourguides lecturing, etc. Can religions organize - "Where two or more are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them" Matthew 18:20 - without taking this further step into commercialization?

Otherwise, the Lama temple was amazing. The last building - in a series of quite a few - had a buddha carved from a single tree trunk and stood 18 meters high! I couldn't believe, and couldn't have guessed, that it was all one piece of wood. But the most extraordinary was a mandala they had preserved in a glass case: these are sand paintings that are typically done, then blown away into the ocean as a way of commemorating transcience. This sand painting was so ornate and intricate that it looked like an oriental rug; the sand was even piled up in places to give it a 3D texture. It was flawless. Unbelievable. But ... photographs were not allowed to be taken inside the buildings, so I can't show you. I guess you'll have to come to Beijing.