Songshan Mountain Picture

Songshan Mountain is reputed as the Central Sacred Mountain among China's five sacred mountains. Songshan Mountain stretches more than 60 km from east to west. It consists of two mountains named Taishi and Shaoshi with the highest peak 1440 meter. Songshan got its fame from being the place where the Indian monk Batuo founded the Shaolin temple in 495 A.D. Few years later in 527 A.D. another Indian monk, Damo (or Bodhidharma) moved to the temple to teach the Chan sect of Buddhism, best known as Zen Buddhism (Zen is the way Japanese read the Chinese ideogram for Chan). Buddhism was been already introduced in China during the first century B.C., but the cultural differences between India and China made the strict Hinayana sect to be not well accepted. The Chan version was instead more adapt to the Chinese culture and became rapidly the most influential Buddhist sect in China…