A “heart” and “diamond” façade
After completing the initial drafts of the design, Yao had another inspiration: putting sutras on an open fretwork façade so that the light passing through would illuminate the text. He told Master Sheng Yen that this would be the “light of the Buddha,” that the light passing through the words would enhance the moon-water, sky-flower illusion.
Yao added a Heart Sutra façade to the west side of the main hall so that the changing light shining through it into the interior would cast images of the text onto the other three walls, creating a sense of impermanence to contrast with the building’s physical solidity.
Construction of the center began in May 2010 and was completed in December 2012. The finished complex highlights the impermanence of both the real world and of illusion, showing people that the “real” and the illusory are as ephemeral as flowers in the sky and the moon in water, and that there is no point in clinging to either. Unfortunately, the Venerable Master passed away in February 2009 and was unable to see his vision come to fruition.
Yao built a new entrance to the monastery complex as well. On entering the site from Guandu’s Dadu Road, visitors see the 80-meter-long, 40-meter-wide Water-Moon Pool, the columned main hall itself, and then Mt. Datun rising behind it. This three-step progression from foreground to background, from near to far and from low to high gives visual form to Master Sheng Yen’s “landscape hall.”
An L-shaped structure containing the complex’s Chan and Dharma Halls links to the back of the main hall. The building’s exterior façade incorporates the Diamond Sutra to echo the main building’s Heart Sutra façade and guide visitors to a better understanding of Chan Buddhism.
The juxtaposition of the new buildings with the original monastery building, the “Way to Compassion” gateway, and the surrounding grounds gives rise to what Yao describes as “orderless order,” “appealing chaos,” and “poetic language.”
“The original Nung Chan Monastery was simply a tiny house and a plot of farmland,” says Yao. “The Water-Moon Dharma Center retains and integrates these elements.”
Architecture can transcend the limitations of space in ways that enable it to contain the universe within itself. The moon in the water is both the moon and not the moon. Flowers in the sky are both flowers and not flowers. With the Water-Moon Dharma Center, Yao has achieved an architectural version of spiritual enlightenment and fulfilled the mission that Venerable Master Sheng Yen entrusted to him.