The Gate to Paradise
Floating in the Air
Anyangmun Gate at Buseoksa Temple in Yeongju
Gwon Jung-seo | Culturologist
There are no actual doors to close on Anyangmun, a gate at Buseoksa Temple in Yeongju. This means anyone can enter the Buddhist paradise. There are also no conditions to enter Anyangmun, such as having to believe in this or that, being Buddhist, or buying a ticket.
The Bell Pavilion at Buseoksa has a name plaque declaring it to be “Buseoksa Temple on Mt. Bonghwangsan.” Its ancient pillars line up to guide visitors toward Anyangmun. The more you look at the gate, the more it feels like the entrance to the Buddhist paradise floating in the air. Poets of olden times bestowed an attractive name on Anyangnu Pavilion: “the wind balustrade.”
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| Buseoksa’s Anyangmun Gate feels like it could transport one to paradise at any minute |
Looking at the heavenly pavilion, seeming to tremble in the wind, I walk toward Anyangmun. The path is not straight, but angled at 45 degrees. Our ancestors did not care for uniformity. Koreans feel that the realities of life are better expressed in a road that twists and turns rather than a straight one.
As the gate is viewed a little from the side, it has a distinctly three dimensional effect. When I look at the Muryangsujeon (Hall of Infinite Life), Anyangmun, and the half-hipped roof of Anyangnu Pavilion by viewing them from a 45-degree angle, I am certain the palace of the Buddhist paradise must look like this.
The closer I approach, the more differently Anyangmun and Anyangnu appear. Perhaps to accentuate its beauty to the fullest, the path to it deliberately meanders. All visitors have to do is just follow the path to be intoxicated by its beauty.
As I climb the steep steps, the solemnity of the stone retaining walls moves me. With large and small rocks relying on each other to stay erect and present a solid front, they symbolize a world of realm upon realm, one contained within the other. The large rocks do not look down upon the smaller ones for being weak as the small rocks too have endured 1,300 years alongside the large rocks out of mutual dependence. The temple’s founder, Uisang, wrote Beopseongge (Song of Dharma Nature) which says that all lives are precious, those of small creatures as well as buddhas.
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| At Buseoksa, stairs are laid out to ascend above the stone retaining walls that support the mountainside. This allows one to approach the temple after some difficulty, which symbolizes the tumultuous journey on the path to enlightenment. |
All of the ten major Hwaeom (Avataṃsaka) temples in Korea (including Buseoksa, Haeinsa, Bulguksa, Hwaeomsa, and Beomeosa) are located on mountains where stone retaining walls were installed to support the earth that had been cut into and stairs were laid to approach the temple structures. Buseoksa’s Anyangmun is built on top of one of these stone retaining walls. This method of construction in which one can approach a temple after enduring some physical exertion is the embodiment of Sudhana’s tumultuous journey in pursuit of the Dharma where he visited 53 virtuous teachers, a story that appears in the Flower Garland Sutra. The temple’s layout itself is an amazing teaching tool that illustrates how the best way to meet buddhas and attain Buddhahood is to study on one’s own.
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| The way the rocks and timbers interact in concert at Buseoksa represents the way Dharma friends live their lives encouraging each other. |
Before exiting the Bell Pavilion, I enjoy the great sight of Anyangnu and Muryangsujeon framed by the end of the pavilion floor and the top of the stairs. This calculated layout is a remarkable display of our ancestors’ wisdom in expressing the Buddhist ideal of respecting diversity. I am continually impressed by the wisdom of our ancestors.
A poem by Kin Seong-il (1538-1593), composed by matching rhymes with a poem by Ju Se-bung and recorded in Hakbong ilgo, offers a marvelous description of Anyangnu:
After bathing in a mystic fountain in the morning
I climbed to the pavilion on Mt. Bonghwangsan.
The sun and moon rose and set under the eaves of the pavilion,
The pushed open windows reveal heaven and earth.
After ages of great antiquity have disappeared into dust,
Life is leisurely once more upon looking up at the pavilion.
Hermit companions like to stay in pavilions,
Reclining against the balustrade, they won’t return.
The scenery of the distant mountains seen from Anyangnu Pavilion after passing Anyangmun leaves me speechless. I see the beauty of the overlapping mountains in the distance that appear to prostrate themselves to the Buddha enshrined in Muryangsujeon, and I experience “countless eons in a single moment of thought.” Anyangmun is a gate surrounded by a wind balustrade. As a passage in the Thousand Hands Sutra says, “I want to be reborn in the Buddhist paradise and stand before Amitabha Buddha as soon as possible.”
Gwon Jung-seo is an expert member of the Gyeonggi Cultural Alliance and a Dharma instructor of the Jogye Order.
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