Pulau Penang, Malaysia - June 2004
James P. Davis, Ph.D.
3. Penang - Pulau Penang is an island farther to the north, near the border with Thailand, and also boasts a melting pot of regional culture, cuisine and architecture. Here, you can find Thai and Burmese influences, in addition to Malay, Chinese, and British.
Wat Chaiyamangalaran Buddhist Temple
Theravada Buddhist temple in the Thai tradition.
A reclining Buddha, the third largest.
A young Thai woman posing for photos being taken by her male companion, kneeling in front of an altar to the Bodhisattva of Compassion (named Avalokitetsvara in the original Pali, but known as Kwan Yin to the Chinese, and as Kannon Bosatsu to the Japanese). I caught her from the side, in profile along with the statues on the altar.
Me posing with a friend. I am not knowledgeable in the different mudra positions (postures of the hands), since Japanese Buddhism (particularly Zen) uses the hand position of one hand cupping the other, with the thumbs touching (see the Japanese Buddha). Yet each of the images of the Buddha along this back wall of the temple were arrayed in differing positions.
Note the alcoves in the wall behind the Buddha images; these contain ashes of the faithful departed, stored in urns, along with pictures and small personal affects. Not unlike the practice carried out by some large Christian churches in the U.S.
Burmese Buddhist Temple - Georgetown, Pulau Penang
The Burmese Buddhist temple in Georgetown.
A large standing statue of the Buddha, from different angles. You can get a sense of the different styles of interpretation of the Buddha's personage if you compare this large image of a Burmese/Myanmar Buddha with the Daibutsu image of the seated Buddha located in Kamakura, Japan (see my Kamakura Daibutsu picture page).
Note the scale of the Buddha to that of the supplicants kneeling before it. It is about the same size of the Kannon Bodhisattva statue located at Chokoku-ji in Aoyama (Tokyo), Japan (see images from Chokoku-ji page).
Lotus feet...reminds me of a song by guitarist John McLaughlin and the Mahavishnu Orchestra, or maybe it's one he did with Carlos Santana on the album "Love, Devotion, Surrender" back in the 70's. I can't remember which.
Kek Lok Si (Pure Land) Buddhist Temple
Kek Lok Si Buddhist temple (Pure Land Buddhism). I first visited this temple in 1985. They have continued to build up the hillside. The large statue of Kwan Yin is impressive.
Through the traditional Chinese doorway, you look out across the valley towards the city of Georgetown and back to the mainland.
Late afternoon prayers and chanting. As in all Buddhist temples, you remove your shoes before entering the temple area. Unlike the Japanese temples--which lay the flooring with tatami mats (see Chokoku-ji temple in Tokyo)--Chinese temples have stone floors. On this particular day, I was not wearing socks, which likely caused me to catch a foot fungus....or maybe I caught a case of "jungle rot" while at Cameron Highlands during my romping around the couple of days following this one. Fortunately, I was carrying a tube of Absorbine Jr. for this purpose.
The colossal statue of Kwan Yin (or Guan Yin), the Goddess of Mercy and Bodhisattva of Compassion. I was told by a woman at the temple that the statue is bronze with a large diamond in the center of the forehead. We were a bit incredulous at this statement about the diamond, as it would be bigger than the Hope diamond (the largest diamond in the world, to my knowledge), and someone would surely steal it if it were so....
Kwan Yin from another angle, showing the colossal size, with the late afternoon sun behind the statue. The diamond in the center of the forehead--representing the third eye of awareness in Buddhist thought. This whole complex surrounding the statue had been recently built, and they were constructing two additional large temple structures adjacent to the statue. Some serious money is coming in from the "faithful", as only the best building materials--namely granite and marble--are being used. We also found out that the sculpturing of the stone work around the statue is being done by artisans in China. Incredible workmanship, a pleasure to behold.
Another statue--bust--of Kwan Yin, and the city of Georgetown and the bay beyond. It's interesting to me how a good idea spans cultures that seemingly had no contact with one another--namely Catholicism (and its veneration of the Virgin Mother) and Chinese culture, and its morphing of the Bodhisattva of Compassion into the Goddess of Mercy. Well, I'm not an anthropologist nor a historian, but I suspect there is an element of the "mother goddess worship" racial memory of Neolithic times at work here, where our hunter-gatherer human ancestors presumably worshipped nature (Gaia) and "bountiful fertility" (a good thing if our species was to survive) in the form of a woman, before agrarian societies set in and became predominantly Patriarchal.
The large five-tiered Pagoda on the hilltop at Kek Lok Si (the Chinese character for "Si" is the same for "Ji" in Japanese, which means "temple"; I just noticed this as I was looking at the Chinese name of the temple). Each level of the Pagoda was built in a different style by a different builder. I can make out Chinese style (2 tiers near the bottom), Burmese (the few tiers above those two), and Thai (at the top). From this angle, I can't spot the other two styles, and I can't remember which they are.... When I was here in 1985, we proceeded up the stairs to each level of the Pagoda (where each level represents the 5 elements of the Buddhist world view), and at each level there were massive assemblages of images of the Buddha, presumably donated or paid for by the faithful.
Next: Cameron Highlands ->