Chongyuan Temple

Chongyuan Temple 重元寺

Originally named Chong Xuan Temple, Chongyuan Temple was built in the second year of Emperor Wu of Liang (503 AD), and was a fellow contemporary of Hanshan Temple, Lingyan Temple, and Baosheng Temple. In the Qing Dynasty, the name was changed from “Xuan” to “Yuan” to avoid the taboo of the usage of Emperor Kangxi Xuan Ye’s name, and the name of Chongyuan Temple has been used since then. In November 2003, it was restored and rebuilt by the people’s government of Jiangsu Province, with monk Qiu Shuang of Hanshan Temple as its abbot.

Field Trip Information

RELIG 302 Religious and Philosophical Thought on the Environment: This trip helped students to further study two religious or philosophical thought systems on a similar ecosystem. Both Yuefeng Island and Chongyuan Temple are located on Yangcheng Lake, so they offered a comparative perspective to different environmental philosophies on the same body of water. The tour of temple with a focus on environmental philosophy provided a further avenue for spiritual connection to take place with these philosophies on the trip as a direct physical experience students had first-hand. As the focus of this field trip was human-nature relationship, it was an amazing opportunity chance to have met monks in the Buddhist academy and lay people in the lay group to learn about their concepts of human nature relationships beyond the tourist oriented experience.