The Guoqing Lecture Temple in Tiantai Mountain was built in the 18th year of Emperor Kai of Sui Dynasty. Its name means “If the temple is completed, the country will be clear”. It has a history of more than 1,400 years. It is the ancestral home of Tiantai Sect of Buddhism in China, and also the ancestral home of Tiantai Sect of Buddhism in Korea and Japan. The temple was honored as one of the “Four Famous Temples” because of the wise master of “East Earth and Sakyamuni” who was stationed in Wuxi and his ancestors came forth in generations, and was listed as one of the “Ten Temples in the South of the Yangtze River” in the Southern Song Dynasty.
In recent years, Guoqing Lecture Temple has fully tapped the advantages of Tiantai Sect’s ancestral home, built a practice sample of China Buddhism around the aspects of simple teaching, digging up teachings, paying attention to protection and foreign exchange, and became a Buddhist cultural shrine with international reputation. It has been identified as a national key temple of Han Buddhism, a national key cultural relic protection unit and a national patriotic education base for religious circles. In 2022, it won the title of the first national religious advanced collective and provincial religious China place.
Guoqing Jiangsi adheres to the principle of simplicity in teaching, deeply embeds the awareness of Tiantai Sect’s cultural inheritance in the ritual activities and daily life of the temple, and deeply integrates into the traditional customs of China, such as stopping observing and practicing, paying equal attention to farming and Zen, and keeping the temple pure and true. Internally, adhering to the spirit of “saving education”, the monks are self-reliant, basically self-sufficient in food and vegetables, and vegetarianism, forming a unique legal system and learning system in Tiantai Mountain. Externally, adhering to the concept of serving all beings, cancel the free opening of tickets for 5A-level Guoqing Scenic Area; Open a “blind teahouse”, provide tea for the public free of charge, and provide a place for rest and recuperation; Su Zhai insisted on low prices for decades, and won the title of China on the Tip of the Tongue, which was widely recognized by the society.
Tiantai Sect is one of the earliest sects founded by Buddhism in China, which began in Guoqing Temple. In order to better inherit the Tiantai Sect culture of Buddhism, Guoqing Lecture Temple actively explores the core ideas and humanistic spirit that fully reflect the excellent Chinese traditional culture and socialist core values in the ancestral temple culture, and retranslates, reinterprets and selects them in easy-to-understand language to build a cultural inheritance temple. He has successively compiled documents such as The Three Major Departments of Tiantai, The Hundred Records of the National Qing Dynasty, filmed special documentaries such as Asking kokuseiji, and participated in the editing of a series of religious and cultural books such as Ten Thousand Years’ Bell and Entering the Harmonious Garden, further promoting the contemporary value of ancestral culture.
The Guoqing Lecture Temple was built according to the style painted by Zhi Yi, the founder of Tiantai Sect. The existing building was built in the twelfth year of Qing Yongzheng. Over the years, we have paid attention to the general situation of ancestral home, which is “clear, strange, ancient and secluded”, adhered to the style of “repairing the old as before”, invited the cultural relics management department to guide the renovation and restoration of the building on the premise that the component style, material texture and technological process remain unchanged, and at the same time, we adopted traditional Song-style cylinder tiles, made our own exterior wall coatings, and selected local Chinese fir construction materials to realize the integration of architecture and landscape. There are many cultural relics in the temple, and one plant of Gu Mei planted by Guan Ding, the first abbot of the temple in the Sui Dynasty, is still preserved. The Sui Tower, the Hanshi Pavilion and the “Ancient Temple of the Sui Dynasty” were built according to the trend, and the meaning of natural harmony is vividly displayed..With the continuous spread of Tiantai Sect culture, Guoqing Lecture Temple has become the golden link of international friendly exchanges of Buddhism among China, Korea and Japan, with far-reaching cultural influence. Over the years, we have insisted on “going out and inviting in”, organized various exchange and mutual learning activities, participated in activities in Buddhist Tiantai temples in Korea, Japan and other countries, received high-frequency Buddhist delegations from the United States, Nigeria and Hong Kong and Taiwan, held “cross-strait and three-place” Buddhist Tiantai communication conference, “commemorating the 1420th anniversary of the establishment of Tiantai ancestral temple” and other activities. Under the leadership of abbot Yun Guan, we have successively