Dengfeng Yongtai Temple

Dengfeng City, Henan Province

15 yuan

 & nbsp; Yongtai Temple is located at the western foot of Mount Song Taishi Mountain, about 11 kilometers northwest of Dengfeng City. It faces the world's largest temple, Shaolin Temple, and is backed by the majestic Mount Song Wangdu Peak (named after the ancient capital of Luoyang). To the north, it faces the beautiful and diverse Zijin Peak (named after the residence and cultivation of Prince Ling of Zhou, Prince Jin). To the south, there are thousands of cliffs and valleys of Shaoshi Mountain and the rippling Shaolin Lake, covering an area of 6600 square meters. It is the first royal nunnery Buddhist temple built after the introduction of Zen Buddhism to China. Yongtai Temple, formerly known as the Transport Temple, was a place where Princess Transport, the daughter of Emperor Wencheng of Northern Wei, diligently practiced. During the Southern Dynasties, Princess Minglian, the daughter of Emperor Wu of Liang, was influenced by her father and deeply understood the Buddha nature. Later, she became a disciple of Bodhidharma, the founder of the Chan sect in Shaolin Temple, and became one of the four disciples of Bodhidharma. As Princess Minglian was a female monk, it was inconvenient for her to practice with other monks in the temple. Therefore, Emperor Wu of Liang built a sizable nunnery called Minglian Temple next to the transfer temple, where his daughter Princess Minglian, also known as the nun, could practice Buddhism. In the second year of the Zhengguang reign of Northern Wei (521 AD), Princess Yongtai, the sister of Emperor Xiaoming, was extremely dissatisfied with her mother, Empress Dowager Hu, for her debauchery, abuse of power, and arbitrary behavior. She resolutely gave up her position as a princess and came to Minglian Temple to shave her hair and become a nun, devoting herself to Buddhist practice. Due to her generosity, she often provided the money and food provided by the court to the suffering people around her, and was deeply respected and loved by the majority of monks and laypeople. In the second year of the Shenlong reign of Emperor Zhongzong of Tang Dynasty (706 AD), in commemoration of the merits of Princess Yongtai, the monks of Songyue Temple petitioned the emperor to renovate Minglian Temple, worship Princess Yongtai, and rename it Yongtai Temple. After Yongtai Temple, there is an ancient pagoda with a typical Tang Dynasty architectural style - Yongsi Taisi Pagoda. The tower is a single-layer dense eave brick tower, with a square plan and a height of 24 meters. It is made of yellow mud bricks, and the interior of the tower is still square. The upper part is in the shape of an empty cylinder leading directly to the top of the tower. There are 11 layers of dense eaves on top of the tower, and the contour lines outside the eaves are in a clear parabolic shape, soft, beautiful, and graceful. The top of the tower is a treasure temple composed of lotus and five layered wheels. Its exquisite shape can be said to be one of the few outstanding Tang Dynasty pagoda temples in China