Praying Place for The Dead in Keumsan-sa Temple, Korea

in #travel6 years ago (edited)

It looks like same when you look at the temple in first time.
But when you pay attention carefully each temples, you can find out the differences among those temple.
The role and meaning is same in the buildings in temple, but sometimes the name, ornaments and decorations are different in many points.

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In this temple of Keumsan-sa. I saw the unique building for the dead.
Jijang-Jeon is the building for the dead in common temples. But Keumsan-sa temple was different. The name of the building was slightly different. It was Daejang-Jeon. It means the Big Jijang-Jeon.

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Why did they put Big to the name of Jijang-Jeon ?
In my guess, they must’ve tried to give more importance to the building for the dead.
If not, they seemed to try to highlight the meaning of the death and the salvation.

The arrangement of the buildings of Daejang-Jeon and Mireuk-Jeon was very meaningful.
Those buildings were deployed to look at each other.
Below is the scene through the hole of the stone lantern standing in front of the Deajang-Jeon.

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As I posted before, Mireuk-Jeon is the place for the Future Buddha of salvation.
In Buddhism, Mireuk, Maitreya, seems as same as the Messiah.

And the Jijang Jeon was the prying place for the dead.

In my thought, this deployment has a specific meaning. My interpretation is that “ Even though we die, we need to wait for the salvation.”

Along with the arrangement, the sculpture in Daejang-Jeon was quite different to other temples.
There were no other statues of the Heaven Kings presiding over the world of the afterlife.
The architect of this building seemed to highlight solely the Jijang Bodhisattva.

Unlike other Jijang-Jeon, Jijang Bodhisattva statue in Keumsan-sa was made with splendid.
It looked like Buddha not a Bodhisattva.
Why did they remove the Heaven Kings ? There must be several explanations and interpretations.
In my guess, the architect wanted to focus on the dead not the inferno or the hell.
Or, the architect'd ve connected the death directly to the salvation in the future not to the judge in the hell.

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Aha, I can read these characters.

How interesting is this temple of Keumsan-sa @slowwalker, and its sculpture is very striking, I'm curious about these places of prayer, good photos, thanks for sharing.

@slowwalker,
I like your interpretation of the architecture and the statues inside of the Daejang-Jeon building! Ancient artists tried to give a meaning and lesson through their artworks!
In Sri Lanka we have slightly different believes about the after life! Coz in Theravada Buddhism it interpret in little different way! But after all we both are waiting to see Maitryee Buddha in our next life!
Great journey and great findings! Thank you very much for the effort you put on these series of articles!

Cheers~

Quite an unusual story. I not did understand everything, but I agree with your interpretation, that "Even though we die, we need to wait for the salvation."
Support for you and resteem 🙂

This visit is perfect for explorers who need to find out about the historical backdrop of North and South Korea and the Demilitarized Zone. Travel with a guide while visiting locales, benefitting as much as possible from your adventure by finding out about the vital segment of land that isolates North and South Korea. In addition, you can decide on an evening spent visiting the shops and exhibitions of Insadong Street.

Beautiful temple and very nice photography ,
Blog so @slowwalker thanks for sharing...!

I love your blog. Great job.

Very Good post 👌

Wow. That is a beautiful temple filled with all the details.
Thank you for sharing @slowwalker.
Have a lovely weekend.

The style of the chair where the Buddha is sitting is unusual.

The style of the chair
Where the Buddha is sitting
Is unusual.

                 - sonki999


I'm a bot. I detect haiku.

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