Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Temple Valley

I have to admit that I have passed by the Valley of the Temples in Kahalu'u a bazillion times in my life but have never gone in to see it. So Ryan and I decided to take the kids in and check it out. Within the Valley of the Temples is The Byodo-In Temple that was built in the 1960's to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the arrival of the first Japanese immigrant workers in Hawaii who came to work in the sugar plantation fields. It is a replica of the 950-year-old Byodoin Temple located in Uji, Japan on the southern outskirts of Kyoto. Inside the temple is a huge golden Lotus Buddha. It is stained in a black lacquer and decorated in gold leaf, and is the largest wooden Buddha carved in over 900 years... Who knew?!

As is customarily done before entering the temple, the kids rang the peace bell. This ringing of the bell is done to purify the mind of evil spirits and temptation. It is also said that ringing the bell will bring you happiness, blessings, and a long life... I rang it twice just to make sure!

2 comments:

taytum said...

Talk about a cool heritage that your kids have! And so fun that they will have all these memories! My kids will always probably only know St. Johns. Your kids get the best of two worlds! So so so cool.

Honey Girl said...

One day my friends and I went to Temple Valley...it was cool. Aren't there big koi(fish)? Is that how you spell it? Sounds like you guys had a great summer. I really appreciate what a nice kid Nicholas is. He treats Chase like gold. Kellie
PS I'm linking to you on my blog...I hope that's OK.