10/8/2009

Today we went to Marble Mountain, which is a series of five huge marble mountains that come up rather suddenly in Da Nang. Da Nang is the port town that was built to replace Hoi An. We hiked to the top of Marble Mountain which is about 170 steps so not that tall. It actually reminded my a lot of Rifle, Colorado, with all the limestone, just a bit more jungle. On the top of marble mountain is a great view of the ocean, but it was cloudy so we couldn't see very well, but there are also all these great little temples and these huge naturally forming caves. In side the caves are various Buddhist statues that have been carved I the limestone. The most interesting statue is the statue of Lady Buddha. Lady Buddha is a unique icon only known in Vietnamese Buddhism although some Chinese Buddhism has a similar figure, but a very different story as to why she is worshiped. She is worshiped for her kindness and mercy, but her story is kind of tragic. After the caves we walked around a bit more and then went down to a museum that was full of statues from various ruins all over Vietnam. There were a lot of statues here from My Son which was really cool because we had already seen the ruins. After looking at the statues and some of the original pictures of My Son I had an even better mental picture of what My Son looked like before.

The Story of Lady Buddha
She was married to this man and one night she was trying to cut a hair on his chin (odd) while he was sleeping (more odd) and he woke up and saw her with scissors on her hand and though that she was trying to kill him (logical conclusion). So he banned her from his home and so she became a Buddhist monk, but monks had to be men so she disguised herself as a man and began worshiping. Then one day a woman fell in love with a monk, but he couldn't be with her so she tried to seduce him and somehow ended up pregnant (wonder how that happened). She was convinced it was his baby, but he denied it. Once the baby was born she left it at the monastery and the woman who was pretending to be a man at the monastery ended up taking care of the baby and once it was old enough she gave it back to the girls family. After the baby was safe she burned herself alive and as she was burning the other monks realized she was a woman. After she was dead they learned her story and named her a most holly person and began to worship her for her kindness and mercy.