Our Trip to the Chuang Yen Monastery
in Carmel, New York
by Kristen and Erin

We would like to tell you about the class trip that the fifth grade took on November 24, 1998 to the Chuang Yen Monastery. It was very interesting we saw a lot of things we would like to share with you.

We drove up a long dirt road to reach the Monastery.  The first thing we saw was Woo-Ju Memorial Library as we drove in.  The library is open to the public but we did not go in. It was very quiet as we pulled up in front of the Great Buddha Hall.

First we visited the Great Buddha Hall. It is called The Hall of Ten Thousand Buddhas Encircling Buddha Vairocana or The Great Buddha Hall.  It took 8 years to build this building and the Great Buddha. The Buddha had to be finished first and then the building went up around it. The building is 84 feet tall and can hold 2,000 people.  There we saw a gigantic statue of a Buddha. It is 37 feet tall, the largest Buddha statue in the Western Hemisphere. Our tour guide, one of the monks, told us that Professor C. G. Chen, from China, carved it out of marble.  Our guide told us the professor did it by himself and it took him five years. There were 10,000 little Buddha's on the lotus terrace surrounding the big one! We got a chance to actually walk around and look at the pictures. The weirdest thing was that we had to take our shoes off to show respect!  Professor Chen is still working on some of the paintings.  They will be finished in 1999.  

Next we entered the Kuan-Yin Hall. Again before we got to enter we had to take off our shoes. The Kuan-Yin Hall is where the Nuns and Monks meditate. They walk around fruit and other treats. They invited us to meditate with them it was very interesting. We walked until a stick of incense burned out. It felt like a mile, to us!  The abbot said we walk first to chase away all the distractions and calm down before meditation begins.   There were several statues of Buddha here too.  There was a colored porcelain statue of Kuan-Yin Bodhisattva that is 800 years old.  Another statue of Kuan-Yin was 500 year old.  We also saw a statue of Buddha from Tibet.

We were invited to wait after our tour to watch the people on retreat chant before they had lunch. While they set up the dining hall, we sat playing patently. The Abbot of the monastery stayed with us and talked. Finally we heard singing coming from Kuan-Yin Hall.  The people on retreat walked out and walked down the stairs singing a Buddhist song. We quietly walked into the Dining Hall and listened as they chanted before lunch.  The men were together at two rows of tables. The women sat separately at two other rows of tables and the monks sat together at two more rows of table.