Leaving Your Mark
No, this isn’t some fancy Photoshop trick, these are real human footprints ingrained in a hardwood floor.
70 year-old Buddhist monk Hua Chi has been praying in the same spot at his temple in Tongren, China for over 20 years. His footprints, which are up to 1.2 inches deep in some areas, are the result of performing his prayers up to 3000 times a day. Now that he is 70, he says that he has greatly reduced his quantity of prayers to 1,000 times each day.
The footprints have become a source of inspiration to younger monks at the temple. “Every day I come here and every day I look at the piece of wood, and it has inspired me to continue to make the footprints myself,” Genden Darji, a 29 year-old monk in the monastery, notes.
Photos from Reuters.
3000 times a day and all he got was a lousy t-shirt.
Stupid dick.
watch your mouth you disrespecting curr. how dare you! if you had half the dedication he has to his life right now, you would be dead
I would not like to be forced to sniff those footprints. must be minging!
3000 times a day? that works out to about once every 30 seconds… I’m not doubting that the guy prays all day, but that number isn’t feasible.
“Curr” rofl…who the fuck uses “curr” anymore. Kill yourself.
beautiful!
Sad
Way to waste a life, dick.
3000 times a day? I have serious doubts about that. 30 times at the outside would be my guess.
Does he also change positions from standing to prostrate 3000 times a day?
Even if he did prostrate himself 3000 times a day, the wood floor would not wear that way.
I suspect the floor was carved in order to boost tourism, or reputation.
Cheers,
Rick
perhaps his way of praying only takes 10 seconds, so if 3000 times a day means he has 30 seconds to do each one then going by the theory of 10 seconds, he still has 2/3s of the day to himself to do what he wants…
still, i have better things to do with my life than to worship a god who doesn’t exist… but i still respect his right to believe in something that doesn’t exist and to do what he wants with his life!
wonder how he liked the new Babylon AD movie….
1) You’re forgetting to calculate in time to sleep, as well as eat.
2) You’re forgetting to add in the time to get to his “spot”
Just with these two additions, it is completely impossible to pray 3000 times a day unless he does nothing but pray for 10 seconds, stand up, and repeat all day.
Waste of brain.
So if you follow this guy you get to touch wood all day? No thanks.
The wood is not an issue…his dedication, belief, commitment to a higher consciousness, lack of ego, lack of attachment to the superficial, simplicity & clarity of life, happiness & compassion with our fellow human beings is the point here. We must respect & honour our Monks & Nuns (Sangha) to them success in life has a different perspective to us. Choose not to judge & be happy
He can do whatever he so chooses with HIS life. If he’s happy with it, it’s not wasted.
People with a vocabulary larger than “f**-d***-f***” still use “curr”… Vapid philistines.
Super fake. Maybe he should have prayed for god to intervene with the occupation of his government in Tibet. Fail.
Just a note.
Buddhism doesn’t have a god or gods. It’s about personal ethics.
All that time to leave one deep footprint in one place, when he could have left an immeasurable number all over the world. Imagine if everyone in the world followed this path…
@ Vajrayogini: thank you ….. i was gonna have to say it if no one else did.
Shopped.
Prayer, the best way to do nothing while thinking you’re doing something.
Curr and Vapid philistine, very cool!
Nice to hear someone with a vocabulary for a change, don’t mind the assholes, they’re not worth the trouble.
evidence that even monks need pedicures from time to time
How much of a vocabulary can you have if you can’t spell the three-letter word “cur”?
What a waste of a life, that monk’s. He could have done some real good in his life with that kind of dedication. Being a doctor or a researcher leaps to mind. Instead he wasted 70 years talking to himself, which is all prayer is. There’s no god. Again, what a waste.
Some people scam others their whole lives, some holy men preach foul words or touch children or use the money of the congregation for ill purposes. Some teach, some sing, some paint, some blog, and some pray. What’s wrong with praying for your whole life? Everyone has their purpose here.
It’d be cool if it were true. As many others have said so far, those numbers are impossible, and who’s counting? What counts as each pray (I go to the homeless shelter for a few hours a day – how do I count that? “I volunteer 3000 times a day!”)?
Did he mark the exact spot and line his feet up to the mark with the intent of ingraining his feetprints there?
Nothing of this story makes sense, and that’s too bad.
Actually, that’s not too bad. That monk could have been doing something that betters the world – volunteering, researching, science, medical anything – but he didn’t do any of that – instead he stood there and did nothing for anyone else, nothing of worth to the world.
UP TO 3000 time a day. Not always 3000 times a day. Semantically speaking, that means he only had to pray 3000 times once, not an impossible feat at all.
what is he praying to? a statue of stone or a peice of wood. Waste of life
Ok, for those who are baffled by the whole “pray 3000 times a day” thing. It would have been more accurate to say “prostrates himself 3000 times a day” which means to go from standing to prone (flat on his front). Notice the pads for his hands to slide on. People actually make pilgrimages this way, one body length at a time. Does this actually make it anything more than superstition? Not really. And to say Buddhism ‘is’ a system of personal ethics is really off base. There are many sects and variations of Buddhism, and Tibetan Buddhism is sort of like the Roman Catholic church of Buddhism, large and terribly dogmatic. Certainly some ideas in Buddhism are worth exploring, but so many people succumb to the everything is true or everything is false fallacy that pretty much all attempts at organizing a belief system fail miserably. Learn to think critically and you’ll be much better off. Buddha wasn’t a Buddhist.
Dedication, Persistence, Faith, Piety….things most people today do not know well and have no right to slander someone who is old enough to be most of yours grand or great grand parents. Yes he could have been a researcher but I am sure there is his equal in all fields already or have been. Just because you do not believe in anything besides what you see do not mock someone else’s faith.
Just because I see doesn’t mean I believe it. Just like I saw a picture of Santa Clause. He’s not real either.
I say no way is this one true.
Tim
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1155980/Is-miracle-Monk-prays-left-footprints-ingrained-FLOOR.html
It’s over 9000 times a day
theres 86,400 seconds in a day so that would make him have to pray 28.8 seconds or less like forgive me booda or something of the sort
unless im mistaken then my bad
Hello!
First, I don’t think Tongren is in Tibet; neither is Hua Chi a Tibetan name — it’s Han.
To the person who said he could have spent his time better as a researcher or physician: it’s possible he figured it was better to press his head to a wooden floor 3,000 times a day than to become a doctor and risk saving the life of some shrill, smug asshole who spends his time online, badmouthing others’ devotion.
Here’s another, less pissed-off retort: doctors help people postpone death, which is noble; yet a monk like this helps people purge their FEAR of death, which is a miracle, for lack of a better word.
You curs!
With Enormous Love
Waste of his life? What is this shit all about?
He wasted his life being happy? Instead of having a cellphone, a job, and all the worries and fears of living in the western world with no enlightenment or true selse of self?
I mean really.
Be happy for a change.
If you believe God does not exist, then it is a wasted life.
If you believe God does exist, then he listened the first time and it is a wasted life.
besides, who paid for him to have the privilege of not supporting himself while others need support………wasted life
Darla, I’m sorry, but it is custom in Chinese monasteries to have farms attached, so that they can support themselves. I’m sure, since you examine the lives of monks for waste so closely, that you examine yourself equally closely, so I will not ask the obvious question of whether you are wasting time you could have been spending on charity.
“Prayer” isn’t a great word or what he is doing, by the way. He is practicing humility, so that it comes to replace a habit of pride. So, in that sense, I guess it would be kind of silly if he came to be proud of his footprints!
I wonder, how many of the “wasted life” commenters are Americans…?
Interesting how people can doubt that this guy’s feet could produce the imprint. Think about it: a sander (for example) works by vibrating over the same spot very quickly, right? So is it not actually feasible that a person’s feet – while not as rough as sandpaper – could achieve the same effect by doing essentially the same thing over a longer time period.
Note: time for sleeping/eating in this man’s day would be far less than in yours!
Can you say OCD!
Must have a lot of anxiety to pray so much. Shoulda just tried xanax. Its a good sub for religion/meditation.
Why should one’s life be spent in service of the world? Why is it so bad a thing to just experience life? And why does that experience have to be physical? This man, for all of his staid physicality, was experiencing a journey of self, of something less tangible to the body and more to the mind, or more pointedly, the spirit. Some of us see that as a waste and so travel the world looking to better other’s experience and that is no less noble. But to cut down a man who has chosen to experience life in a way different from others is an expression of hypocrisy and naivete. It’s all a matter of perception.
I’m pretty sure that if you’re able to get up and down 500 times a day, and you do this for 10 years, that you will eventually be able to do it 3000 times or more. As for sleeping and eating, aren’t these guys somewhat known for neglecting those needs as a way of getting rid of the physical? I don’t see why every one is bitching about it when it’s not THAT unbelievable. I mean there’s are people that have done some far more incredible stuff.
Note: incredible here is to be taken as “difficult to believe”
and what the hell is a cur?
What a way to waste your entire life away.
Those footprints look raised, not ingrained. If they were ingrained, the deepest parts would be darkest instead of lightest.
What a crock of complete bollocks. If it is true he is a dick. Get a life nob brain.
you people are all morons and need to be lined up and shot.
Wastedest life – ever.