Today, two e-mails from friends in Singapore, and one from somebody who who will be there by mid-April or May, prompted me to publish some photographs taken in June last year. I was on the last leg of a two month pilgrimage to East Asia. You can find photographs and travelogue in the April, May and June entries of this blog. Unfortunately I did not post as many pictures of Malaysia and Singapore as I’d have wanted, after all I was on my last leg(s)!
“How are they”? my friends ask to-day, “Much the same, I’m afraid” is the answer. (I’ve a tendency towards swollen legs.)
Mr. Lee Coo the architect of Kong Meng San temple (Bright Hill Temple), Singapore.
I knew we were going to visit a temple however Cindy, the days driver, and Mr. Coo had conspired to give me a surprise. We were driving towards a residential block not a temple. My mind was going a mile a minute as we entered a lift, “Is this abduction then”? I asked myself all the while knowing in my heart it couldn’t be. Emerging from the lift this is the view we found. “What does it look like”? he asked, “A ship”. The ship of the Dharma, a Buddhist Temple. There is so much to say about Bright Hill Temple and Mr. Coo and his incredible kindness, and Cindy’s too, however that will have to be another day. I’ll pause just a moment to mention that there are four floors, one for each of the Four Noble Truths. And what happens on each floor corresponds to each Truth.
Lee and I on the forth floor of Kong Meng San Temple (Bright Hill Temple).
This picture is for Jessie to thank her for her personal support and for all those who made my stay in Singapore possible. I hope we will meet again.
Thanks so much – this is a beautiful temple, and the picture of you both before the seated buddha is perfect. It’s interesting how you can translate tradition into modern idiom and lose nothing, indeed, probably add more. In some of the temples around Higashiyama in Kyoto, under repair and reconstruction, there were tower cranes, steel re-inforcements, concrete pumping trucks, all the tools of the 21st Century, yet it seemed fine. Same here. The skill is in the translation of the past, not its reproduction.
With bows
Walter