Wednesday, November 13, 2013
Fate of Trees Planted by Tao-hsuan
Bill Porter, Road to Heaven: Encounters with Chinese Hermits (Berkeley: Counterpoint, 1993), p. 101:
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Halfway up, I stopped at Chingyeh Temple. Over the temple's main door I saw the words that greeted me the first time I came here: "Use the Dharma to protect the Dharma." The temple dog barked. One of the monks came out and led me inside. He told me the dog was making up for one rainy night several months earlier when he had slept while someone sneaked in over the walls. The intruder had stripped the bark from two tu-chung trees (Eucommia ulmoides) to sell for its medicinal value. The trees were now dead. They had been planted in the temple's small courtyard more than thirteen hundred years ago by Tao-hsuan.Hat tip: Tommy Richey.
Labels: arboricide
