A pagoda and a bronze bell in Gwang Deok Sa Temple : Unexpected Pleasure

The name of temple ‘Gwang Deok is something strange for Buddhist Temple.
Gwang Deok means ‘broadening the virtue’. Here ‘Deok’ means the virtue.
Usually the virtue (Deok) is considering as a Confucian Value.

Confucian scholars usually thought that ‘Deok’ was an one of the most important value.
So what I thought unusual was they named the Buddhist temple with Confucian meaning.

I looked around this area and could find out the reason why they named like that.

Eventhough the Buddhist temple was located in this area, the influence of Confucian was so strong that the Buddhist temple used the Confucian value in naming temple.

The temple seemed to have been built for a long time ago.
About a thousand years ago, this temple had been built first. Actually this temple had been destroyed several times through history.

As passing through the gate, I looked up the ceiling of the gate.

It’s pattern was really beautiful, and in the center of the ceiling I found the honeycomb.

When I entered into the temple, a pagoda attracted my attention.

We could estimate the history of this temple with the pagoda which stood in the temple.
The style of the pagoda was similar to that of Shilla’s.

If this pagoda had not been built in Shilla, we could estimate that the first time it was built seems to be early in the Koryeo period. Some corner of the pagoda was damaged, the pagoda was very well preserved in general.

There was a standing board explaining the history of the temple and the pagoda. There was written that the stone lions stood in front of main building. I tried to find that lion statues, but this statues made me laugh. It’s appearance was quite different from the lions. I thought it as a dog.

The board explained that these states were built in middle of Choson Dynasty, or 17-8 century.

Another attracted my attention was the Bell.
Precisely what attracted my attention was the marking sign of ‘no entry’

The marking sign was so impressive, it was a representative Buddhist style of no entry.

It was written ‘the place your feet turn around’

It was very poetic expression and made me smile.

The bell was also impressive, it was well made bell.

It is said that the Buddhist bell is very difficult to make. It is a hand made bell.

The patterns and the relief was excellent.

I couldn’t have looked at this kinds of the bell which was made in nowadays.

I could not find out who made this bell, but in my view he did his best job in making bell.

This bronze bell made me happy. In somewhere there are people who do their best.

When I dropped by this temple, I didn’t expect the special things.
But here I could get special impressions than any other place.