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Two Immortal’s Pavilion, it is associated with two Taoist immortals, Lu Chunyang and Chen Tuan, they once played Chinese chess here. The pavilion is made of stone, its roof was nicely carved from one single piece of stone in the early Qing Dynasty. Inside there are two stone tablets showing their portraits.
The four big characters in red is “Tiger Hill’s Sword Pond”, this great handwriting was originally written by Yan Zhenqin, a noted calligrapher in the Tang Dynasty (618907). After the time went by, two characters “Tiger Hill” fell down, and then was rewritten by Zhang Zhongyu in Qing Dynasty. So here is a saying that: real Sword Pond, pseudo Tiger Hill.
Situated east of the White Lotus Pond are 53 steps, which are a neat flight of granite stone steps leading up to the main hall of CloudRock Temple. These steps can be found in the Buddhist saying:” Climb53 steps to pay tribute to Buddha.” According to Buddhism, the Boy of Treasures worshipped 53 bodhisattvas as his teacher. So 53 steps can be seen sometimes near Buddhist temples in hilly area.
Now we arrived at the CloudRock Temple. During the culture revolution, the temple was
damaged, all statues inside were destroyed, the present three statues restored later. In the middle is a statue of Sakyamuni. He was a prince of a small kingdom beside Nepal. When he saw the citizens suffering from birth and death, sickness and aging, he gave up his luxurious life and went to forest to think deeply. After 6 years meditation, he was suddenly enlightened, and then became the Buddha and the Patriarch.
On the both sides in front of statue are two disciples. The younger one named Ana was his cousin. He had followed Sakyamuni for over 20 years and he had good memories. He had kept all the teachings and all instructions from Sakyamuni in his mind, recited them and copied them on the bodhi leaves after Sakyamuni passed away, which are the Buddhist sutras we can see today. The elder one was Jiashe, once presided over a gathering in Linjiu Mountain, attended by 500 Indian monks after Sakyamuni died.
There are 18 portraits of 18 arhats hang on wall.
The shape of the pond below looks like a sword, so named The Sword Pond. According to the historical record, the King He Lu liked to collect the sharp swords very much. It is said, when he was buried, 3000 sharp swords were buried together with his tomb. Since then, many people in the different period of history came to this hill, tried to find his tomb to get these valuables. In 220 BC, when Qingshihuang, the First Emperor of the Qing Dynasty, unified China, he sent a lot of soldiers here to dig in the tomb, but failed. Because water gushed out from underground.
In 1956, when the pagoda was getting repaired, our local government tried to open to see this tomb. After dredging and digging, they found the entrance to the tomb at the tip of the pond. Entered 10 meters, one had to turn to the left, there the workers found 4 huge piece stone plates. One was lying underground as its base, the other three piled up, like a Chinese character Pin. That a new entrance to the tomb, but they happend to be under the pagoda. They couldn’t be moved away, if they are moved away, the foundation of the pagoda will be affected. For the protection of the pagoda, the excavation couldn’t be continued. The tomb now is till a mystery.
The Tiger Hill pagoda octagonal with 7 floors, it is meters in height, built of bricks, not a single piece of wood. Because of its foundation, the pagoda stated to learn onto the north side in the Yuan Dynasty. The tip of the pagoda is meters away from its central line, forming a learning angle of degree. During repairing in 1956, many valuable objects were found behind a wall on its third floor. They are a Buddhist scripture box, bronze Buddhas, bronze mirrors, etc. An inscription with the date of construction of the pagoda was found from the bottom of the scripture box and supplied the answer to the exact date of the pletion of the pagoda .It was built in 961 without controversy. In the 1980s, exactly from 1982 to 1986, the pagoda was reinforced because there were a lot of cracks appeared in the foundation of pagoda. Now the pagoda stop leaning.
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