One place that Buddhist believers in Chongqing are bound to go to must be the "Dazu Stone Carved Thousand Hands Guanyin Statue", which is not an exaggeration to describe the Buddha statue built during the Southern Song Dynasty as ingenious. However, many tourists who have visited in recent years do not know that it was actually restored once in 2011, and in this restoration, an 800-year-old organ was found, and what was found from it surprised Chinese experts.
Dazu stone carved Senju Kannon statue
As we all know, Buddhism originated in India and was first introduced to China during the Two Han Dynasties, and since then, it has begun to have a large number of loyal followers in China. Looking at all the Buddhist figures, Guanyin Bodhisattva must be the most believed, she is the embodiment of great compassion in people's hearts, and even legend has it that when encountering difficulties, as long as she recites her Dharma number, she can turn the danger into a disaster.
However, even the boundless mana of Guanyin Bodhisattva could not illuminate every believer in the world, so she became a bodhisattva of forty-two great compassions, and although she was later combined by Master Wuwei Buddha, she left 42 hands with eyes, which is what we call a thousand hands Guanyin.
In India, there are also corresponding folk tales about the origin of senju Kannon, the most popular of which is the story of Princess Myosun.
Stills from "Guanyin"
At that time, there was a king in India named King Myozhuang, who had three beautiful and lovely daughters under his knees, but his favorite was the third daughter, Princess Myosun. Princess Myozen, as her name suggests, has been a very kind little girl since she was a child, not only never killing, but even very interested in Buddhism.
When she grew up, King Myojo wanted to find the best man in the country for this precious daughter to be a donkey, but what he did not expect was that Princess Myosun had no idea about the affairs of men and women, and even told him that she wanted to convert to Buddhism.
This made king Miaozhuang, who loved his daughter, how could he agree, and in order to cut off his daughter's thoughts, he directly burned down all the temples in the country, even the monks, because in his eyes, it was these monks who chanted the sutra every day who seduced Princess Myosun.
Originally thought that after doing all this, Princess Miaoshan would be able to die, but she did not expect that before her daughter changed her mind, King Miaozhuang himself was seriously ill, and no matter how the doctor treated her, she did not get better.
At this moment of crisis, a high-ranking man came to the palace and said to him: "There is only one way to cure this disease, and that is to eat one eye and one arm of his flesh and bones." ”
When King Miaozhuang told his three daughters about this life-saving method, he originally thought that all three daughters would be willing to save themselves, but the eldest daughter and the second daughter were silent and looked reluctant. At this moment, Princess Myosun stood up and said that she was willing to give her hands and eyes.
In the end, King Myojo slowly healed, and Princess Myosun's filial piety also touched Shakyamuni, so he gave her a thousand hands and a thousand eyes. Princess Myozen, who originally had buddhahood and huigen, has since devoted herself to cultivation and has become the later Senju Kannon.
No matter what kind of legend it is, the image of Senju Kannon is compassionate, and she has also become the spiritual sustenance of people in difficult situations. Especially in ancient times, when people's thinking was still relatively feudal and closed, they believed in this legend of gods and Buddhas even more, which is why in the entire feudal dynasty, many Buddhist cultural relics such as "Dazu Stone Carved Thousand Hands Guanyin Statue" were left.
Many people who have seen this statue of the Thousand Hands Guanyin will find that both the craftsmanship and the difficulty of production are very high, even in modern times with such a high degree of technology, it is also a very difficult project. So in ancient times eight hundred years ago, which skilled craftsman completed this "masterpiece"?
If you let everyone guess, it will definitely be the imperial court or large temples to find a special technician to do, but in fact, its creator is a monk named Zhao Zhifeng.
Zhao Zhifeng
In ancient times, there were many wandering monks who had no place to live and traveled all over the world for the sake of preaching, but there were also some monks who stayed and settled when they encountered the land of reiki. Zhao Zhifeng was attracted to It when he came to Baoding Mountain in Chongqing and had the intention of building a dojo.
People who have been to the temple know that there are hundreds of Buddha statues inside, some are mighty, some have kind eyebrows, and the postures and expressions are not the same, so Zhao Zhifeng's idea of "building a dojo" sounds simple, but it is quite difficult to put it into action.
Fortunately, he was a monk with great wisdom and great perseverance, and after making up his mind, Zhao Zhifeng began to do the same thing day after day - building Buddha statues. In the decades since, Zhao Zhifeng has created thousands of Large and Small Buddha statues, making it a famous temple.
It should be said that the largest amount of engineering is this "Dazu Stone Carved Thousand Hands Guanyin Statue". Unlike the Thousand Hands Kannon that we see in our daily lives, which has thirty or forty-two hands, this Thousand Hands Kannon really has more than a thousand hands.
You know, at that time, this statue of a thousand hands Guanyin was carved on the rock wall, leaving aside safety issues, just without advanced machinery and equipment, it was already difficult to carve by hand. What's more, none of these thousand lifelike hands were exactly the same.
For the number of hands, it was not until the Qing government repaired it that the exact number was obtained - 1007 only. Although this may seem like a simple "counting" job, it will only be discovered in practice that it is really more than just a mathematical problem.
Because the overall layout of these hands is crisscrossed, just by looking at the eyes, there is no way to calculate how many of them there are, so when the Qing Dynasty was repaired, there was a monk who was specially responsible for pasting gold leaf, and every time he completed the work of one hand, he counted a bamboo stick, and after completing it, he calculated the number of bamboo sticks, and finally came to 1007, and this number was used until 2009.
Although this statue of the Thousand Hands Kannon has been repaired irregularly in various dynasties, it has slowly shown signs of decay after entering the new century, and its restoration work has become urgent. So in July 2008, a team of government-funded experts was established to begin scientific restoration of the already damaged Statue of senju Kannon.
Before actually getting started, the expert team first inspected the Guanyin statue for nearly two years, because in addition to seeing the external situation clearly, the internal damage should also be found. Because of the lessons of the Terracotta Warriors, in order to maximize the protection of the Guanyin statue, experts must try to avoid rapid oxidation inside, and the understanding of the real situation is also convenient for developing the best restoration plan.
During the inspection, the experts also completed the demonstration of how many hands the Guanyin statue had, because contemporary technology was much more advanced than in ancient times, so the experts did not take a strong calculation method, but after numbering each hand, they obtained the corresponding data by dividing the plane.
In the end, the experts combed through all the data and came up with a final value of 830 hands, breaking the previous record of 1007 hands.
In April 2011, all the inspection work was completed, and the project, which was named "No. 1" conservation project, was finally officially launched, but just as everyone was following the steps in the restoration plan, an organ was accidentally triggered on the body of the Guanyin statue.
At that time, a worker accidentally touched a stone brick on the abdomen of the Guanyin statue during the construction process, and before he could remove his hand, he heard a soft noise, and at the same time a dark grid was revealed. The sudden discovery startled the workers, who hurriedly stopped what they were doing and called for experts to see what it was.
Only to see everyone around this dark grid to look and see, that is, no one dared to reach out, afraid that there were some important cultural relics inside. To be on the safe side, everyone scanned the interior with X-rays and found that there were indeed some things inside.
This discovery made the team of experts who had just been nervous become excited, and if any historical artifacts could be found from it, it would really be a major discovery in the archaeological and historical circles. So they carefully took out the dark things little by little with their tools.
Sure enough, these are some cultural relics with high research value, but the most surprising thing in these cultural relics is a "stone brick".
Of course, this "stone brick" is not an ordinary brick, a total of 94 characters are engraved on it, and the person who carved these words is a person who restored the Guanyin statue during the Qianlong period, as for the content, this person is only to tell posterity that he once restored the Guanyin statue.
The discovery of "stone brick inscriptions" and other cultural relics has given us some real knowledge of ancient societies and customs, while also adding some ink to the history of the Qianlong period. In addition, everyone also learned the mysteries of the ancient mechanism, after all, an organ that has gone through 800 years can still be used normally, which is really quite powerful.
In the end, after the workers repaired day after day, the Statue of Guanyin finally changed from the initial dilapidation to the "golden cloak", from the broken finger to the restoration, all of which were inseparable from the painstaking efforts of all the people in the project team.
On June 13, 2015, the thousand-handed Guanyin statue with the tripod removed welcomed the first batch of tourists with a new look, and when everyone looked at the sacred and solemn Guanyin Bodhisattva in front of them, the uneasiness and anxiety in their hearts seemed to gradually disappear.
Many people who believe in materialism often regard Buddhism as superstition, but in fact, no matter what kind of belief, as long as it can lead people to goodness, it is good, as long as the soul has sustenance, it can ignite hope for life in times of difficulty.