Po Lin Monastery [????- ]

Submitted by philk on Mon, 10/27/2008 - 14:25
Current condition
Unknown

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Phil, well spotted! I must admit I didn't know what a moon gate was, so didn't know what I should have been looking for. A quick visit to Wikipedia gave me this description:

 A moon gate is a circular opening in a garden wall that acts as a pedestrian passageway, and a traditional architectural element in Chinese gardens.

Hi there,

All I could recall concerning the Moon Gate in the Po Lin Monastery that I've known was that it was (and is still is) the back door, and it has three Chinese characters  on the arch facing the outside:  不二法  The characters were written from right to left, thus it would read   法二不 on-site.   This phrase came from [不二法門].  They skipped the [門 / door or gate] as the phrase was ON the door/gate literally.   不二法門﹐ if translated into English, roughly means [The only way].  It's sort of hysterical, if you think of it, being going through the back door was the only way to get things done......   :-P

T

I was at the monastery a couple of months back and the area behind the main temple is now a building site.

T - is there where the moongate was? If so I am not sure if it will have survived the mess. Any ideas?

Hi there,

Unfortunately the last time I walked through that moon gate was over two decades ago.   I could not visualize the surroundings of location anymore.  All I could recall was that my route then was more or less the same as Booth's.  I'm pretty sure the stone buildings shown in the photo are mostly still there.

T