Monks Praying at the Hall of Heavenly Kings in the Beijing Lama Temple 雍和宫
With no other way but forward, I followed the crowd of faithful inside the Hall of Heavenly Kings which was the first hall of the Yonghe Temple in Beijing. How important the temple was to the people became very apparent to me when the whole hall was crowded with people. It was no wonder that most of the people would pray with the joss sticks outside the temple to avoid the crowd inside. There were people praying inside as well but you would probably lose focus with the large group of people together with you.
Statues of Two of the Four Heavenly Kings in the Beijing Lama Temple 雍和宫
However, the flow of people inside the temple was quite orderly since there were ushers inside the hall instructing people where to go – in this case the instruction would only be to keep moving. This was probably the busiest Buddhist temple I have seen in a long, long time. Perhaps it was a special day but I didn’t know. As I was struggling with the flow of people inside. I managed to get a few snaps of the inside of the hall. Actually, there wasn’t anything special with the hall but what do I know?
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