The real meaning of Shaolin?

I haven’t made it to the Shaolin Temple yet; I still hope to visit some day. I have a personal connection of sorts, in that Xiaoyan, my teacher in Beijing, studied at Shaolin for twenty years, but it’s not as if I can claim any real expertise on the topic.

I was reminded of Shaolin the other day, though, when I saw something on the Kwan Yin Chan Lin Zen Centre website.

I’ve seen many, many explanations of the temple’s name, 少林寺 or, in hanyu pinyin, Shàolínsì.

少 – “Shào” can mean ‘few’, ‘less’, or ‘young’.

林 – “lín” means ‘forest’.

The most frequent translation I’ve seen is along the lines of ‘temple in the small forest”. However, the wikipedia entry says that it actually means “monastery of the woods near Shaoshi peak”. No doubt that’s the case.

Metaphorically, however, it could be taken as something else. The ‘Lin’ in ‘Kwan Yin Chan Lin’ is the same Chinese character as used in ‘Shaolin’, and here’s what they say:

“‘Lin’ means many tree. The many trees that make up a forest give it strength, and cannot be blow away by strong wind.”

In other words, the ‘Lin’ refers not to an actual, literal, forest of trees, but to the community of believers who support one another in their learning and belief. Using this interpretation, Shàolínsì, could mean ‘the temple of the small group of fellow-believers‘ – or maybe, as was said in a different context, ‘We few, we happy few, we band of brothers’. Doesn’t that make sense?

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