Samye Ling

Rob asked for some photies of Samye Ling, so here's some I took when we visited. There are better ones on the Samye Ling website. Samye Ling is a Tibetan Buddhist centre near Eskdalemuir in the Galloway uplands, set in meadows and woodland.

1. The Temple from outside: this doesn't do it justice. Couldn't photograph inside, but the ceiling is beautifully painted with dragons and birds, hung with silks and paintings, lined with a thousand gilded Buddhas of all sizes. Sitting at the back in the tourist seats, the room was redolent with incense and the sound of monks and nuns chanting in counterpoint.

2. Motorised prayer wheels turning incessantly. Is this cheating? Probably not.

3. Liberation Gate. Lots of animal symbolism, which I wished I could read.

4. Green Tara statue, near the herbal garden. Pictorial stories around the base, including a car, a cityscape and a demon being unleashed. We stood back from this admiring it while a nun walked clockwise around, not wishing to disturb her observations. The nun widened her orbit and kindly included us within her circuit.

5. Nagarjuna statue in the lilypond lake. The wee wan tells me that the cobra protecting him is a spectacled cobra, and I think there's a legend that the spots are the Buddha's fingerprints.

6. Damselfly at lakeside. You have to look close for this, but they were darting all over the surface of the lake and the lilypads.

7. Prayer tree hung with ribbons.

Unfortunately I didn't photograph the beautifully kept food and herb gardens, which have a blue-headed statue of (I think) the medicine Buddha, nor the Peace Island with its altar lined with keepsakes (including expired credit cards, a dead sparrow, dogtags, badges).