500 Stone Arhats of Ruined Changryeongsa Temple, Wonju City

In this post, I gathered several posts I had written about the stone arhats.

Introduction

There was an exhibition at the National Museum in Seoul.
It was 500 arhats exhibition which was excavated in the ruined place of Changryeongsa temple.
I googled relating to the temple Changryeongsa. But there was no record on the temple. So I didn’t know the exact history of the temple when I got there.

It was fantastic when I entered into the exhibition room.
My mom looked so impressed with the stone arhats.

It was said that the arhats were buried in the vicinity of the ruined temple place 'Changryeongsa'. It was unknown why the temple was destroyed. But it was certain someone buried under the ground those stone arhats before the temple had been destroyed.

It was estimated that those stone arhats had been made during Goryeo dynasty. And the temple was believed to be destroyed in the mid of Choson dynasty. Some relics found in the same place were destroyed intentionally.

Facial Expressions of Arhats

In Choson dynasty, nobody tried to destroy the temple except the period of Japanese Invasion 1592 - 1597 AD.

The stone arhats were magnificent works, the size of the arhats was 40-50 cm tall. Here I’d like to show the first one.

One thing great in this exhibition was the abundance of expression of faces.
The material was the granite that was very hard for carving.
So it was impossible to carve the sculptures elaborately like as the marble ones.

With those difficulty, the masonry in Goryeo dynasty’d expressed the face of various emotions, peace, sorrow, joy, sad and happiness.

In this post, I’d like to show some of those expressions. There were tens of arhats in the exhibition. I’d like to share all of them with you.

Joy ?

peace ?

ordinary? hard to read its expression.

Another expression

It seemed that the mason who carved those sculptures tried to show all kinds of feelings in Human. In my guess, the mason must’ve been a one man. All of these hundreds of stone arhats looked slightly different from each other. In this exhibition, it looked like that more than a hundred sculptures were displayed in the room. In my guess, many of them were missing util having been excavated. So relatively well-preserved sculptures seemed to be displayed in this exhibition.

I could not imagine differentiating human face expressions into 5 hundred kinds. Looking at these sculptures, I was curious we human could make such many expressions with our small face.
In my view, every face of arhats was slightly different from each other. To make this slight difference, only one man could classify each other.

The mason tried to express all of the human feelings, in this post I’d like to introduce some of the sculptures among them.

In my guess, the expressions below looked like

a smile, but not an ordinary smile. This arhat loved to joke, maybe.

Did it look like grief ?

a satisfaction with something in his hands ?

This arhat seemed to meditate.

Meaning of Smile

It seems there are lots of kinds of smiles in us.
Up until looking around the exhibition of the 5 hundred stone arhats, I didn’t realize there were so many kinds of expressions in our face.
The expressions made me think the evolution of Human species followed how to make expressions and how to read those expressions.

If we failed the meaning of the expressions of your boss in our job, you could fall into the difficulties.

In this post, I’d like to show smiles of arhats.
It looked the same smiles, but there seemed lots of difference in their smiles.

It seems there are lots of kinds of smiles in us.
Up until looking around the exhibition of the 5 hundred stone arhats, I didn’t realize there were so many kinds of expressions in our face.
The expressions made me think the evolution of Human species followed how to make expressions and how to read those expressions.

If we failed the meaning of the expressions of your boss in our job, you could fall into the difficulties.

In this post, I’d like to show smiles of arhats.
It looked the same smile, but there seemed lots of difference in their smiles.

It was dark in the exhibition room. So it was not easy to focus the camera lens on the arhats.
Besides carrying the tripod was banned in the room. I used the monopod though, focusing was not easy.
Anyway, do you read the subtle differences of Smiles?

Arhats in Cold Weather

The mason carving 500 stone arhats looked like to show the various form in seeking the way to the enlightenment.

In this post, I collected the arhats in the cold weather.
Korea was written in the history book as a very cold country by the influence of the Siberian wind.

I found out lots of arhats putting on a blanket looking like a thing. I supposed the mason tried to show the ceaseless thriving for finding a way to the Nirvana regardless of the hard weather.

If you look at those arhats carefully, you could find out the status in mind of the arhats. Some looked very difficult, some were happy regardless of the cold weather.

Peaceful arhat

Painful arhat with the cold weather

Arhat putting on a blanket thoroughly

Everything you face in the present could be changed by your spiritual attitude. In my thought, that’s the lesson what Buddha really wanted to teach for us. In my guess, the mason wanted to express the various reactions against the cold weather.

Arhats Putting on the Hats

As I told before, there were various kinds of arhats. In this post, I’d like to show you arhats putting on a cap to escape from the cold weather.

As I wrote in the previous post, Winter weather in Korea was severe. Korea peninsular was directly influenced by the Siberian wind in Winter.
To overcome cold weather, people in Korea often used caps and hats.
So putting on the hat when going outside was said as a manner.
Now everything is changed, putting on the hat is no more a manner.

I was a woman taking a photo of the arhat. She must be a passionate photographer. She'd take a photo for nearly half an hour there.
So I photographed her and arhat with respect to her passion.

In arhats statues, I saw what I saw when I was a kid. It was a cap what arhats put on. In winter, I could not go outside without a cap. Mom and grandma told me ‘put on a cap’ every time in winter.

Seeing arhats with caps, I was reminded of my childhood.

Arhats in the Window

There was another room at the End of the Exhibition Hall.
The room looked very special, it seemed that the curators of this museum's like to combine arhats with music.
The center of the room was displayed with the speakers.

A group of arhats was displayed in the windows.
There were two windows in the room.
Arhats in the window were not perfect ones.
Some lost their body, and some part of arhat’s face was erased.
The curator in this exhibition seemed to try to show those unperfected ones together in the window.

In my opinion, it was a nice idea. Gathered arhats seemed to produce something interesting story.
In this post, I'd like to introduce arhats displayed in the first window.

Agony and Pain

The curator’d show us the attention of the mason who carved those stone arhats. All of our feelings even regarding the pain and the agony must’ve been a part of the process to get into the enlightenment.

The intention of the curator was successful.

As soon as I saw the arhats, I felt some sorrow and pain from my mind in deep.

Let me introduce you the arhats in detail

One arhat bending down his head was stood in the left side. But I could not see his face exactly due to the dark illumination, so l did some photoshop as below.

Below are other close shots.

Those two heads reminded me of 'the decapitation" and "the pain of moment"

What do you feel those arhats?

Hard to Read Their Expressions

There was another group of the arhats next to the arhats in the agony and the pain. One thing obvious was hard to describe exactly their facial expressions. Their expression looked like close to despair. It seemed that they hid their emotions deeply in their minds. Sometimes these kinds of subtle despair made us feel sorrow and sadness.

It is said that when someone falls in the sadness, they can not speak ‘I am sad. Of course, it is a Korean sentiment, in my guess, those kinds of emotion seem common in the world.

Below are the arhats in the expression of hard to read.

What is your opinion on their expression?

In Happiness

There was a group of arhats at the last part of the window.
All of arhats smiled slightly.
Why they displayed this group of arhats at last next to the group of arhats with despair and pain.

In my guess, the curators wanted to show the enlightenment could be attained after the process of the despair and the pain.

Arhats was not laughing loudly but smiled slightly.
In Korean saying, you don’t express your nice feelings loudly to preserve the pleasure as long as possible.

In my guess, the facial expressions of arhats seemed to tell they finally got arrived at the eternal peace and pleasure.

That must be the reason why they displayed those arhats at last.

In the Display Box

The display of the arhats was so amazing. At the last room, they tried to match the arhats with the speakers. It was a kind of metaphor of the meaning of the arhats. Even though the arhats could not speak something to us, the curators seemed to show us the words what the arhats wanted to tell about. So they prepared a room with lots of speakers and put the arhats in the boxes near the speakers.

So this room could be named as the room of the words of the arhats.

It was not easy to photograph due to the dark illumination, the light was banned there in the exhibition, and the tripod was banned.
I barely could photograph the room of the speakers.
Of course, the photos below were adjusted with Photoshop.

I took the photo of the main exhibition room in the room of speakers.

It looked like to be designed to show all kinds of feelings and facial expressions in the boxes of the speaker room.

It is needless to say the arrangement of the arhats.
Let me show you how arhats were displayed.
But arhats sitting in the boxes seemed to make the meaning of the arhats clearer.

The weather where we are, what we do, We all have the possibility to be a Buddha.
It is the last post of the arhats in the museum

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Posted from my blog with SteemPress : http://koreanculture.dothome.co.kr/500-stone-arhats-of-ruined-changryeongsa-temple-wonju-city/

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