The Taipei City Government announced yesterday that traffic controls would be imposed on several major thoroughfares today due to the arrival of a finger relic believed to have belonged to Sakyamuni Buddha -- the historic Buddha.
As the relic will be sent directly from the Chiang Kai-shek International Airport to National Taiwan University's domed stadium for a three-day exhibition, the Taipei City Police Headquarters said traffic controls would be imposed on major streets along its route, including Hsinsheng S. Road, Jenai Road and Hsinhai Road.
The controls will remain in place from 3pm through 5pm, a police official said, adding that drivers are advised to detour during the time period to avoid possible traffic jams as throngs of local Buddhist followers are expected to turn out to greet the relic.
Buddhist Master Hsin Yun, founder of the Fokuangshan Monastery in Kaohsiung County, led a 300-member delegation to China Thursday to escort the relic to Taiwan for exhibition in Taipei and other places around Taiwan for 40 days.
Prior to his departure, Hsin Yun said he was convinced that the exhibition of the Buddhist treasure in Taiwan will help "purify human hearts, cleanse social morals and bring peace to the Taiwan Strait."
Noting that the relic is an invaluable symbol of Buddhism and a spiritual asset, Hsin Yun said its arrival will mark a new milestone in cross-strait religious exchanges.
Hsin Yun further said he hopes local people will welcome the arrival of the relic with calm and reason. The Buddhist master, who recently expressed his distaste for the island's prevailing lottery mania, said he would not like to see local people become "wild" over the relic.
Hundreds of monks chanted scriptures and rang bells yesterday as the finger was taken from a temple in central China and flown to Taiwan in a container decorated with jewels.
The relic, which is kept at the Famen Temple in Xian, in the northern Chinese province of Shaanxi, will arrive today escorted by a large number of Buddhist faithful from both sides of the Taiwan Strait.
On Thursday, Taiwanese cable news stations covered the elaborate ceremony of removing the finger from the temple. About 300 Taiwanese monks and several more from China wore bright yellow and orange robes as they chanted before followers who filled up the temple's courtyard.
"This is a big religious event. It will help foster closer ties" between Taiwan and China, Taiwanese monk Hsin Yun told Eastern TV in Xian.
According to religious documents, after the Buddha's cremation in 485BC, some historians and Buddhists believe his bones were saved by Indian monks as souvenirs and that a few pieces were brought to China some 200 years later, as monks went there to preach Buddhism.
The finger was sealed in a basement of the Famen Temple's pagoda in 874AD by order of an emperor from the ancient Tang Dynasty. It has not been seen in public since 1986, when the Shaanxi provincial government cleared the rubble of the temple's pagoda, which collapsed in 1981 amid torrential rains.
In 1998 the Fokuanshan Monastery brought back from Thailand a tooth believed to be one of only three Buddha teeth preserved in the world. The tooth had been held in India since being smuggled out of Tibet during China's 1966-76 Cultural Revolution.
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