Nanhua Birthday Temple Fair

114.Nanhua Birthday Temple Fair

Nominating Unit: City of Shaoguan

Nanhua Temple is located 6km southeast of Shaoguan,Guangdong Province (in the northern part of Guangdong Province) in Maba Town of Qujiang District. Nanhua Birthday Temple Fair is a folk activity held annually in memory of the Sixth Patriarch, Master Huineng, who is the founder of the “Sudden Enlightenment” Southern Chan. Ever since the second year during the reign of Emperor Xuanzong in the Tang Dynasty (714), temple fairs have been held for more than 1290 years on Feb. 8th and Aug. 3rd of the lunar calendar every year.

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Masters and cults gather in the Daxiong Palace for consecration the night before the temple fair initiates, holding memorial ceremonies for Master Huineng. The morning worship of the temple fair starts at 3:30am, with cults filling in at about 8:00am. At around the noon, vegetarian hosts and lay people pray for blessing and peace, inviting cults for a meal in order to practice charity and have connections with more people. The cults have their meals in the abstinence hall while all the masters gather in the main temple hall for the meal offering. When the meal is finished, masters come to the Daxiong Palace to stage the releasing ceremony. After that, a lantern will be passed from one person to another. When the lantern is passed to the last person, the light which is the symbol of wisdom will be put out at the end of the temple fair.

Nanhua Birthday Temple Fair has formed its unique characteristic and scale after years of development ever since the Tang Dynasty. Nowadays ,it has gradually become an important festival of “Sudden Enlightenment” Southern Chan of Chinese Buddhism. Although the temple fair was at first held to commemorate the Sixth Patriarch, it has gradually become an activity for publicizing the thought of the Chinese the Buddhism, which is a great contribution to the Buddhism of China and the whole world. Moreover, the temple fair has offered a stage for various folk arts, making it possible for them to survive and develop.

Nanhua Birthday Temple Fair is a ceremonial and commemorative Buddhism activity with powerful influence, which enables Buddhism with Chinese characteristics to be acknowledged and identified by cults of the whole world. It is an eloquent manifestation of the extensiveness and profoundness, which is of great historical and cultural value.

However, Nanhua Temple was severely damaged out of some historic reasons. The temple fair has also been affected and turned out to be smaller in scale and less in influence than before. Therefore, effective measures should be taken to improve the protection of it.