The Wisdom Path

After skim reading the Heart Sutra - The Path to Wisdom I quickly surmised the meaning of life. It means to care about nothing, so any change is viewed as insignificant. Thanks for that Buddha... what I did really need to know was that me camera Date Stamp was set to "on" and my ability to lord screen savers taken by my own had was severely hampered!

Luckily my Kudak has the "Panoram", not to be confused with "Panorama" function, that cannot handle the Date Stamp function - so I did some clean shots as above.

The Big Buddha is ridiculously huge and a must see for any tourist to Honkers. Even better - take the cable car there and you can see Buddha perched on top of a mountain ala Monkey Magic "coming out of the mist".

Up close it is a huge bronze monolith, with an eerie amount of dragon flys wisping around the steps to the top. Overly ornate butterfly's limp around, stymied by there garish wings - so much so I thought the first one was a bat. Inside there are numerous wooden placards saved only through time by Chinese Monks pre-westernisation, and only recently returned to Lantau Island, Hong Kong. It's well worth a visit inside to see the myriad of blood painted scriptures, and we think Van Gogh was tough?

My favourite moment of the trip was clearly the "Lucky Pan". If you ever go, ignore the Big Buddha, The Path to Wisdom, the Pin Lin Monestry and head straight to the dirty, and poorly furnished Tea Room Restaurant.

Outside the owners gives passer-bye's a chance to prove they are lucky - rub the pan handles and wait to hear the pan "sing" and froth bubbles froth like fire! Time after time i was proven unlucky while locals sauntered up for immediate success.

Life has told me to make my own luck so I asked the owner what the trick was... one glance at my pale, and pristinely clean hands and he chuckled. Grabbing an oily brown towel (see towel underneath bowl in the picture below) he chastised my hands like Jamie Lee Curtis from Trading Places. A shameful moment for me - but in return immediate success as my oily festy hands set the Lucky Pan into Song!!!

I am lucky, me!
Make sure you avoid the cheap, bland and regrettable vegetarian meal in the Monastery; but most of all Buddha World. It is a shameful treatment of a worldwide Buddhist landmark that has stood the test of time since 1992.