The path towards west side of the mountain was shorter by the numbers, but even steeper than the eastern trail, and harder switchbacks moreso. The trails were mostly made up of stone ladders and unfortunately, these are not the exact things I wanted for my knees, thus, a bit of a challenge for me right there. At that point in time, I already ran out of water, which was not a good thing either. The intensely steep stair-trail down continued and the Big Buddha (Ngong Ping; 昂平) seemed to be within reach.
Not
long after, the Wisdom Path (心經簡林) known to be the
largest outdoor wood carving in the world, an installation of 38 steles which
forms a lemniscate (the infinity sign) that represents verses from the Heart
Sutra which is a Confucianism thing I believe, finally presented itself from
afar.
There
is actually a mind-blowing tale about the Wisdom Path imposing a 2D calligraphy
in a 3D architecture. The columns were apparently arranged in such a manner
that corresponds to the topography of the landscape, that when you extend the line
segments across these timbers, these actually points to specific points with
significance to the mountain. The column at the highest part of the hill is
also left blank to signify Sunyata or the concept of emptiness which is a key
theme in Heart Sutra (心經). Mad respects to those people who did such work putting Geometry, Art, and Faith into
a perfect combo.
A
little over an hour more and we reached the level ground which marked the end
of the Lantau Trail Section 3, based on the signages I took photos of. We then
had to walk a rough 30 minutes more to get to the Big Buddha and the Po Lin
Monastery. Climbing a little less than 270 steps from where we were, then the
Big Bronze Buddha, the second largest of its kind in the world, was
closer to me more than ever before.
