Later, this famous ancient temple was stopped by a high wall to sell tickets, and it became a common thing to go to the theater to watch performances. Although the mountain temple is still the same as in the past, I always feel that something is missing.
Not long ago, I went to the Thousand Buddha Cliff in Jiajiang. This is my second visit. The first time I went there was more than ten years ago, and I had a good impression. Walking through an ancient street, it feels like walking on Qingzi Street at the foot of Lingyun Mountain when I was a child. It is very intimate and tight. Ancient streets are arranged along Qingyi River, and there are mountain gates at the street corner. Dan Cliff is close at hand, and still goes up the Qingyi River. In addition to tourists, there are more villagers living nearby and pedestrians crossing the river to the other side. They carried laundry baskets and drove pigs and sheep, under the gaze of many stone carvings and Buddha statues. When you meet a stone road on a mountain road, the cyclist carries his bike on his shoulder. It smells like fireworks all the way.
The mountain road is just below the cliff, with clear river water on one side and a cliff with a knife on the other. The cliff is full of red sandstone, covered with large or small, square or long caves, in which there are different types of Buddha statues carved with red sandstone. Over the years, we can still see the painted backgrounds left by many Buddha statues long ago.
It is said that most of the stone carvings of the Thousand Buddha Cliffs in Jiajiang come from Sui and Tang Dynasties, and the farthest one has a history of 1400 years.
The history of Buddhism in China was introduced into China from India in the Han Dynasty. The statues of bodhisattvas unearthed from Han tombs in Leshan and Pengshan, Sichuan, have supported many articles on Buddhist history. It shows that Leshan, Sichuan was a relatively advanced Buddhist temple when Buddhism was introduced into the mainland.
Many years ago, I read an oral history of a Buddhist master, saying that there were three routes for Han people to enter Tibet since ancient times. One was by sea. The second is Chuankangzang Avenue; The third is to enter Tibet from Qinghai. These three roads are also the ways for Buddhism to spread from India to the mainland through Tibet. The Mogao Grottoes in Dunhuang, which we are talking about today, is the result of the third way to pass on scriptures. The second route is the Sichuan-Tibet route, in which Jiajiang Thousand Buddha Cliff is an important node for Buddhism to enter the mainland.
Anyone who has seen the Mogao Grottoes in Dunhuang and the statues of the Thousand Buddha Cliffs in Jiajiang will find that they have many similarities. First of all, these various Buddha statues are carved spontaneously by the people. The Buddha statues are arranged at will, ranging from one Buddha cave to dozens of statues in a cave, with different sizes. I noticed that the two grottoes arranged up and down were carved with avalokitesvara. Obviously, this was demanded by two families 1000 years ago, so ingenious masons carved the same avalokitesvara on the upper and lower rocks, which were funded by the two families respectively.
Jiajiang Thousand Buddha Cliff is located on the Sichuan-Tibet Ancient Road, and Gujingkou Ferry is the road leading to Jiajiang Mucheng, Hongya and then to Kangding, Ya 'an. During the Republic of China, Kagyu sent Gongga Living Buddha to the mainland to spread Buddhism, which was the ancient road. 1937, Han Xing went to three monasteries in Lhasa to study Buddhism. Seven years later, he became the first Han Chinese to receive the highest degree in Tibetan Buddhism-Rambagsi, in the same way. I once thought in an article entitled "Salt Tea Classics Walking through the Wooden City" that the ancient post road from Jiajiang Thousand Buddha Cliffs to Hongya was once full of Buddha flags and full of Zen.
This is the most important way for Indian Buddhism to be introduced into Chinese mainland.
This is an important cultural corridor with the same historical value as Dunhuang in Gansu.
The Buddha statues of all beings on the Thousand Buddha Cliff in Jiajiang are telling the glory of the past every day. Perhaps, the ancestors of the villagers living at one end of the Thousand Buddha Cliff today are the craftsmen who carved the Buddha statues of all beings. At that time, besides monks from west to east, there were more merchants selling tea and salt, and the ferry at the ancient entrance of Qingyi River was splashed with wooden paddles from morning till night?
The scenery here is very unique. This section of the Thousand-Buddha Cliff in Qingyi River is not only full of Buddhist culture, but also her landscape paintings show different beauty all year round. Yu Shi, the girl who accompanied us to climb the Thousand Buddha Cliff, is from Jiajiang. She said that her understanding of the Thousand Buddha Cliffs came from the Mid-Autumn Festival, when she was studying in Jiajiang Middle School. Several students choose to go boating on Qingyi River on the moonlit night of Mid-Autumn Festival. That night, the moon was in the water, and Yan Dan Cliff stood tall. This situation is just like Su Dongpo's Red Cliff Fu, a high school text in the Song Dynasty. Miss Yu casually said:
"In the autumn of prevention, I hope that in July, perilla will go boating with guests under the red cliff. The breeze blows gently and the water can't reach the surface. Raise a glass to propose a toast to one's companions, recite articles related to the moon, and sing praises to chapters. Xiaoyan, the moon comes out of Dongshan and lingers in the bullfighting room. " After leaving school for more than ten years, Teacher Yu said that she had forgotten everything except this scene and this article.
This is the inheritance of culture. We often see such words in various poems and articles, hometown and country. At first, she was inadvertently attributed to her hometown. After the storm, the hometown is good and the country is good. Not necessarily tangible land, not necessarily a section of city wall, not necessarily an old tree that has lived for hundreds of years. Hometown is a culture. It continues to exist and will not die. Just like a stone wall at the foot of the mountain, a lamp in the dark night will always be reflected in our hearts.
After visiting the Thousand Buddha Cliff, we climbed the rock, where there is a temple called Thousand Buddha Temple. Speaking of the present temple, Master Deneng, who lives in the temple, is very emotional. He said that the temple in front of him is a Feilai Temple, which was moved from Jiajiang County, a few kilometers away. It was in the early 1980s that the county demolished the Confucian Temple to build a new school. At that time, the leader who presided over the demolition work thought that the wooden components of Dacheng Hall of the Confucian Temple were precious golden nanmu, but it was a pity that they were destroyed, so they were moved to the former site of Qianfo Temple one by one and still repaired. Master Denon said it out loud. He said that China's culture is Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism, and the transformation of Confucius Temple into a temple is not in conflict at all. The best sermon is that human Buddhism goes deep into the lives of ordinary people.
"For example, the Thousand Buddha Cliff in front of us used to be an ancient post road with a ferry. Every day, people come and go, chickens crow and dogs crow. Now, she is surrounded, the ferry has stopped, and the locals can't go in and out at will, so they lose their vitality and fireworks. "
Hearing this, I suddenly felt very sad. The humanistic natural landscape that has existed for hundreds and thousands of years is closely integrated with the lives of local people. It has always been naked and can be visited for free, but it has become a masterpiece in our generation.
I have been to many places over the years and feel the same way. Some places with profound cultural heritage were once turned into cultural relics and historic sites, which were named by UNESCO. This place was immediately denied by the six relatives, and the relationship with the local people became more and more unfamiliar, and then gradually drifted away. This way of monopoly and isolation in the name of protection is really unknown to the inheritance and development of culture in the future.
I like the Thousand Buddha Cliffs in the past.