Anti-lost, accessible by elevator
pedestrian island
Newspaperman Liu Yadong A
Every morning, the people who wake up the people in the Yamei Resort in Lusaka, the capital of Zambia, are not roosters or alarm clocks, but the shouts from the nearby Shaolin Temple.
Inside the yellow fence, more than two dozen black men with shaved heads and wearing monk's robes practiced Shaolin Kung Fu while shouting beats in Mandarin: "One, two, three, four." ”
For the locals who live in the surrounding area, this slogan from the East is full of mystery.
Perhaps even Shakyamuni himself could not have imagined that Buddhism, which was born in Lumbini, would continue to spread to the African continent after entering China and take root there.
The Shaolin Temple Cultural Center in Zambia is a sprout of Chinese Buddhism on the African continent.
As a modern African monk, he pays attention to both culture and martial arts. They moved all the lessons they had learned while studying at the Shaolin Temple in Songshan, China, to Zambia.
After a routine set of Shaolin punches in the morning class every day, the group of black monks had to enter the classroom to Chinese study. According to their Chinese proficiency, they are assigned to classrooms of different levels, such as some are still learning pinyin, and some are already able to recite Li Bai's poems.
Being able to read through the Diamond Sutra and the Lengyan Sutra is their primary goal in learning Chinese.
As early as April 4, 1998, the ambassadors of 28 African countries to China visited the Shaolin Temple for exchanges and unanimously expressed the hope that Shaolin culture could enter Africa and benefit the local people in Africa.
Since then, the Shaolin Temple has held the "Shaolin Kung Fu African Student Class" every year, and black students from Africa have stayed in the Shaolin Temple for a three-month study and practice life. Their studies include Shaolin Kung Fu, Meditation, Chinese, Calligraphy, Zen Medicine, etc.
After returning to China, the trainees brought the Shaolin Kung Fu dream back to the African continent and continued to spread it.
Jiang Qingde, a funder of the Shaolin Temple in Zambia, said in an interview that he plans to build six temples in Africa, and five have been built so far. "The merit of propagating the Fa is greater than the merit of building a temple, and the important thing is to see how to propagate the Fa."
These functioning temples are slowly integrating into the local area and becoming a new force in the local religious culture.
Like the Shaolin Temple, Beijing's Longquan Temple has also founded two temples in Botswana and Tanzania, Bohua Temple and Tanhua Temple, respectively, to promote the Dharma, and synchronize the daily events to domestic self-media channels.
Tanhua Temple's morning and evening classes were attended by a young African monk, with tambourines and a bell. This little friend from the orphanage was called Nengding, and under the careful tutelage of his master, Master Xianxi, he already had a look.
"In addition to relying on the careful teaching of the sage master, it is also because the children themselves are gentle and good at learning, and one of the very important reasons is that Africans do have a talent in music rhythm and instrument learning, and they have mastered it in a much shorter period of time than our normal study, which is really admirable at this point."
In the public account of Tanhua Temple, his master's expectations are written: "I hope that in the near future, more African small Yue figures like Nengding can emerge." ”
In addition to the religious function of the main hall, the most popular thing in the temple is the screening of the Buddhist hall.
For various reasons, the temple's Buddhist hall is used to play movies. Sometimes it is the need for study and cultivation, sometimes it is the need to hold festival activities, and sometimes it is to enrich everyone's amateur life in this way.
For example, during the International Day of African Children on June 16, held at the monastery, the abbot played the film "Kung Fu Panda" to the children in the orphanage.
"In the propagation of the Dharma in Africa, life is still relatively hard and monotonous. In order to let everyone live better, it is also a good way to arrange to watch a good movie together after studying. ”
They also organized a viewing of "Green Book" and introduced: "This is a film about the problem of black racial discrimination in American society." It is of good reference value for our propagation of the Dharma in Africa. ”
Sometimes the temple becomes a temple Chinese classroom, where teachers screen Chinese movies, and African students can easily lie on futons and watch them.
"The film that aired last week was 'Spring in the Cattle Herding Class.' This is a French film about a country substitute teacher who improves a group of children through love and music. After the film, several local volunteers stayed behind to share their afterthoughts. ”
It can be seen that the film spiritual life of African temples is still quite rich.
Usually, in addition to their share of the temple, the monks of the two temples often do charity and visit children in the local orphanage.
Tanhua Temple also recruits volunteers on a long basis, in addition to volunteers who do manual work, they also recruit people who understand the Internet, as well as translators who are fluent in Swahili and English.
The road to propagation is still long, and most people in Tanzania have only seen monks in movies, believing that all Chinese monks come from the Shaolin Temple and know kung fu. They understand it more by analogy from their own world of experience, treating monasteries as churches and monks as priests.
The monks of Tanhua Temple are still trying to change the local people's impression of Buddhism. In 2018, Master Xianhong of Tanhua Temple, with buddhist compassion, held an undead transcendence festival for the victims of a serious shipwreck accident on Lake Victoria.
The family members folded their hands and reverently followed the master in silent prayer for the victims, chanting "Nam no Amitabha Buddha" in unison. This is the first time that Chinese have expressed their love for the Tanzanian people in a Chinese religious way.
Located in South Africa, the southernmost point of the African continent, there is the largest Buddhist temple in Africa, Nanhua Temple.
Built in 1992 and officially opened to the public in 2005, Nanhua Temple is currently the most deeply rooted of any Chinese temple in Africa. In addition to normal worship, local black believers can learn Chinese, accounting, and even computer programming at Nanhua Temple.
A black monk who had studied computer Chinese at the Nanhua Temple Buddhist College for 3 years went to charities elsewhere in Africa to continue his education work after graduation, using The Chicheva reading method to help tribal children quickly grasp the learning methods of Chinese characters.
In the future, the children of those tribes will seize the opportunity to understand Chinese, continue to study in temples, or go directly to society to shine. Every time he told such a story, the abbot of Nanhua Temple couldn't help but smile.
Buddhism talks about cause and effect, planting good karma to get good results, the seeds have been buried in the soil, all it takes is time.
The article is from the Institute of Discord, and the author is Fortune King Kong