Guangxiao Temple (Guangzhou)
Guangxiao Temple is one of the oldest Buddhist temples in Guangzhou, the capital of China's Guangdong Province. As the special geographical position, Guangxiao Temple often acted as a stopover point for Asian missionary monks in the past. It also played a central role in propagating various elements of Buddhism, including precepts school, Chan (Zen), esoteric (Shingon) Buddhism, and Pure Land. Particularly, Huineng, the sixth Chinese patriarch of Chan Buddhism, made his first public Chan lecture and was tonsured in Guangxiao Temple; Esoteric Buddhist master Amoghavajra’s first teaching of esoteric Buddhism is thought to have been in Guangxiao Temple. It was also a translation center in Southern China, where Buddhist scriptures were translated by Yijing and the Shurangama-sūtra was translated by Paramitiin--these texts served to promote the establishment of Mahāyāna Buddhism as the mainstream philosophy of Chinese (even Asia-Pacific) Buddhism. With the development of globalization, Guangxiao Temple is now exerting even more positive effects on the propagation of Buddhism via international communications and Buddhist tourism.[2]
Guangxiao originated from the residence of Zhao Jiande, the king of Nanyue whose usurpation prompted Emperor Wu of the Han to invade and annex the area. During the Three Kingdoms, the Wu officer and scholar Yu Fan () was banished to live at the residence. After Yu Fan died in 233, his family donated the estate, whose grounds were organized as the Zhizhi Temple. It was repeatedly renamed: the Wangyuanchaoyan Temple, the Wangyuan Temple, the Qianmingfaxing Temple, the Chongningwanshou Temple, and the Baoenguangxiaochan Temple.
In 1482, the Chenghua Emperor of the Ming renamed it Guangxiao Temple and personally recorded the new name on a stele. Since then, the temple has kept the name “Guangxiao”.
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