Smoky Hopes for a Prosperous New Year

Fresh off a relaxing and contemplative journey through Old Town and Yu Yuan, I decided today to take a quick trip to the famous Jade Buddha Temple. One normally associates peace and tranquility with Buddhism, yet these were not the emotions I experienced. This temple is active, and it is particularly busy during the New Year festivities, as supplicants come to pray to one of many deified manifestations of Buddha. (Of course, the historical Buddha never claimed to be a deity, and worship of him as a god developed much later. There is also a diversity of mythologies surrounding the worship of Buddha, and in China alone there are at least two major classifications of this form of Buddhism, with various sects in each.) I travelled by taxi from the more affluent portion of Shanghai to a rather poor, older portion of the city. Riding in a taxi in Shanghai is quite an exciting experience. There really is no such thing as pedestrian right of way, even if they have a green arrow to walk, so taxis veer into pedestrian crowds and force their way through. (However, in the downtown area, there are official crossing guards who maintain the flow of pedestrian and vehicular traffic quite well.) Taxis weave in and out of traffic more notoriously than they do in NY, they make hair-raising left turns into on-coming traffic (forcing the passenger to hope the breaks in the oncoming trucks and cars are in good working order), and they bully around obstinately slow bicycles and scooters that share the roads.

In the middle of a busy, crowded section of town, the temple stands out in bold contrast, surrounded by high yellow walls. However, these walls do not seem to contain a sanctuary of peace so much as demark a bastion of tourism. If you can tune out the blatant tourist aspects, you can indeed enjoy the architectural and artistic splendor of the temple. The pavilion architecture and altar designs are stunning. Many Buddhist (and non-Buddhist) visitors and tourists use the various altars in the two main halls, burning large incense sticks and offering up what appear to be earnestly frantic prayers in the hope that maybe one of the mythical Buddhas will grant their wishes for the upcoming year. The altars and large idols are highly ornate, almost garish, seemingly striving to satisfy a deep spiritual longing with excessive material expression. I wondered, can the physical or the material ever really address, let alone satisfy, the spiritual? And, if the spiritual longing is innately personal, can the woodenly impersonal ever satisfy? It left me much to contemplate, indeed. The truly beautiful highlights of the temple are the two jade Buddha statues, each carved from an individual piece of white Burmese jade. The sitting Buddha (of which pictures are not allowed) is about six feet tall, and the reclining Buddha is about three feet long. These statues were brought to Shanghai in 1881, and in themselves they are amazing feats of artistry and beauty.

Click to see pics of the Jade Buddha Temple. Scroll down to “Jade Buddha Temple Main Pavilion.”