Sanctuary on a hill

When we first reached the summit of this hill we thought we had entered a
lovely and tranquil resort as there were not a lot of indications of it being a
Buddhist retreat. That was the first impression that the Sasanarakkha
Buddhist Sanctuary Taiping gave us when we visited during the last Labour
Day holidays.

Acting on vague information from my elder brother in Taiping who also has
not been to this place, we proceeded to look for this sanctuary. Passing by
the Hokkien cementery, we stopby a Taoist Temple with the Tiger deity and
ask for more information from the people at the temple. It seems you can
call the sanctuary and they can take you up by their 4-wheel drive or you
can drive up but must be careful ‘cos the road is narrow and steep. We
decided to drive up in our non 4-wheel car and luckily it was only about
6mins drive as the road was certainly steep.

We proceeded to the main office to make known our presence and found
that the people there were friendly and offered us mineral water without
a charge. This was the profound difference that struck you at this
sanctuary as we were so used to going to temples locally or even in
China where everything has to be paid and donations expected. Here
even their Dhamma Workshop and Meditation Retreats are all free of
charge. Annually, there are 2 meditation retreats.

All these are made possible by the joint effort of major Buddhist
organisations in the country and the Taiping Insight Meditation
Society. The objective of this sanctuary is to provide a retreat
centre for the promotion of the spiritual,mental and physical health
of its supporting community and also for Buddhist monks to practice
the Buddha’s teaching.

Walking around this vast sanctuary of about 10acres gives you a serene
feeling as you see many chalet-like houses nestled among the trees which
are places of meditation. With no loud and noisy tourists, this is truly a
calming and peaceful sanctuary well worth a visit.

Sign board turning into the Hokkien Cementery.

A memorial in memory of those who died during the Japanese invasion

The Tiger diety temple

The main office building.

View from up the hill

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