Places & destinations
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The Shaolin Temple
The monastery where Chan Buddhism was born, and where the monks took up fighting.
On the mapHenan
Founded in 495 at the foot of Mount Song, Shaolin received in the sixth century the Indian monk Bodhidharma, credited by tradition with introducing Chan, ancestor of Japanese Zen, and physical exercises meant to sustain long meditation. Warrior monks appear in sources as early as the Tang, when thirteen of them came to the aid of the future emperor Taizong. The monastery burned several times, including in 1928, and was emptied during the Cultural Revolution; it owes its revival to the success of the 1982 film Shaolin Temple. The neighbouring pagoda forest holds two hundred and forty funerary stupas.
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