The Lama Temple is number 6...

This place is a winner.  Lama Temple...mmm, pretty.  I realize there is some sick irony in this temple's being called as such in Beijing.  A lama is a Tibetan monk, but Lama means one thing to most of us: the Dalai. Maybe it is because of this irony that it belongs on the top ten list and maybe because of this irony I love this temple even more.  Maybe.
Either way, politics or no,  I love this place.  It is a  refuge in the midst of a seemingly spiritless, concrete sprawl of a city.
The temple is a former imperial palace converted to a Buddhist temple and lamasery in the early 18th c.  Its gorgeous colors burst out and up from the concrete walls which protect this sacred place from the outside world (or maybe the opposite way around).  The architecture exudes ancient China; colorful, dramatic, and imperial.

The Temple sits just off a major subway stop in the city center amongst the busy hutongs.  Upon exiting the subway underground, you smell the incense. You smell it and you hear it because the peddlers line the subway halls and hutong side walks, the stairs and the exits ready and waiting, the alley ways colorful with malas, incense already burning and vendors speedily  Chinese chatting to sell you a bit of spirituality.  

The thousands a day who light the incense as offering to the Buddha also light your spirit with the smoke and sage smell.  Smells like a dream would smell if you added a little hibiscus and fresh spring wind. Light three sticks from the inferno of already burning offerings, say your prayer, prostrate if you desire and there's your offering.  Move through to the numerous  temple halls, Buddha statues and gaze on the 90 foot Maitreya, the future Buddha to come (he is gold and gorgeous).

Oh, the Lama Temple, my sanctuary of multiple halls with lovely names in an otherwise spiritless sprawl of a city: The Hall of Everlasting Protection, the Hall of the Wheel of the Law, the Pavillion of Ten Thousands Happinesses. Don't you want to always be in a place called the Hall of Happinesses? Or maybe you would prefer the Hall of Harmony and Peace?  Here resides many Buddha statues and dozens of Taras, among which is a statue of Avalokitesvara, whom the Dalai Lama is the incarnation.  This Buddha is portrayed with one thousand arms and one thousands eyes.  He is said to be a Buddha of compassion, one who has vowed to put off arriving in Nirvana to aid sentient beings in attaining Buddha hood in this life.  Oh, Lama Temple, you and your Tibetan Buddhism are amazing.


Here we have it: the Lama Temple. It is love and a shining star in a city of dark, smoggy ewwy things.  Go Lama Temple, GO!

oh...maybe I should keep my voice down...That's all for now