A Research On Wutai Mountain Temples’ Sport Culture

Wutai Mountain incorporates a unique natural human landscape andthe outstanding Buddhist culture. It gathers a few well-known templeswhich have a history of over one thousand years and has stored up itsdeep historical and cultural innersecret. Therefore, to make a study onmonastic sports culture is, to some extent, a joyous destiny. This study isaimed at discovering sports culture in monasteries, cleaning up thosecultural resources of sports and making an effort to contribute to thereorganization and protection for immaterial cultural heritage. And it alsopays close attention to the monastic nourishment of life, cares forpeople’s health, carries forward the sports culture of Wutai Mountain, anddisplays the attraction of this kind of culture, adding brilliance to thepresent splendor of correctly solving the relationship between Buddhismand sports as well as promoting beneficial development of the sportscause in Wutai Mountain district.This paper applies documentary material method, field examinationmethod, contrastive analysis method, logic analysis method, etc. in theattention to understand the Wutai Mountain monastic culture from everydimension, having acquired comparatively complete and systematictheoretic knowledge. As to other aspects, it records all kinds of objective,detailed monastic sports activities, and does an all-dimension comparisonas well as a rigorous, verifiable inference. The related study consists ofthe following five sections:1.Origination of Wutai Mountain monastic sports culture. Asindicated by study, the fountainhead was based on three respects, i.e. thenecessary requirement of exercising to cultivate Buddhist doctrines, thenatural dependence upon music and dance activities owned by human anddivine amusement, and the favorable influence on body movements bycultural exchange.2.Essence of Wutai Mountain monastic sports culture. This papertries to interpret and expose it from the three aspects, nature, function and succession. Using body exercise as the basic means to promote Buddhistdisciples’ cultivation toward the Buddha, to get the pursued immortalstate, to enhance their practice quality and speed, is then the nature ofreligious sports. The four functions of monastic sports are respectivelybody-building function, educational function, entertainment function andeconomic function. In discussing the question of succession, this papermakes a separate analysis upon the succession basis, succession patternand succession law, one by one.3.Study on Wutai Mountain monastic sports activities. Theseactivities are divided into six categories: static, manual operation,religious service, walking about, mountain-climbing and dancing. All thesix categories include seventeen specific activities, thus this paper takes asyllogism upon each single activity, i.e. expression form and organizationmode, Buddhist doctrine and motion requirement, activity effect andactivity feature. And the concluded clear-cut features of monasticactivities are the high repetition, high continuity, strong adaptation,obvious medical and health function, as well as the suitability for thelarge number of guests and high-land residents to do body-buildingexercises.4.Characteristics of Wutai Mountain sports culture. Eight characteristicsare summed up: succession stability, strained interpretation of recitation,combination of containers, religious contents, mysterious expression,public participation, doctrinal bossiness and concealed worth.5.Prospects for Wutai Mountain sports culture. Seeing from the twoseparate and contrastive perspectives,“public culture” and “monasticculture”, this paper puts forward two pointviews, that is to say, theinfiltration from “public culture” to “monastic culture” and the transitionfrom “monastic culture” to “public culture”.