He is adored as the Master of Wisdom and Knowledge and is
more commonly seen to be seated in meditation on a golden-
maned lion which is also called the Lion rone. Sometimes the
golden-maned lion is replaced by a green lion which symbolises
the wild mind which can only be transformed by meditation.
e practice of meditation is therefore mandatory for all who are
keen to have a calm and subdued mind, and Wen-shu P’usa is
the Deity who can help them to overcome all their obstacles of
Dharma practice.Wen-shu P’usa’s abode at the Wu-tai Mountain in Northern
China is the most important place of pilgrimage for his followers
and for all other energetic Buddhists as it is believed to be where
many Bodhisattvas gather. e Chinese people also address
him as the ‘Enlightener of the world’ as his task is known to be
to drive away falsehood and ignorance from the minds of men.
Although the ascent to the Wu-tai Shan is steep and difficult, yet
countless devotees have reached its top. e lure of making this
difficult pilgrimage is mainly due to devotion and also to asertain
the claims made by those who have been there that upon reach-
ing the mountain top temple of Wen-shu, one ‘feels a great sense
of tranquillity of the mind which cannot be described in words’.
ere have also been frequent claims by the more fortunate ones
that they had witnessed a strange and spectacular sight, that of
an unbelievable display of heavenly lights that appeared at cer-
tain nights like ‘rows of well lit lanterns floating across the vast
sky...’. Disbelievers may take this claim lightly and treat it as a
kind of hallucination suffered by the devotees’ minds as a result of
the strenous climb, the height of the mountain, or even the deep