The Beauty of Buddha’s Light – Venerable Huei Yan Photography World Travelling Exhibition Opening Ceremony

“The Beauty of Buddha’s Light – Venerable Huei Yan Photography World Travelling Exhibition” opening ceremony was held at Fo Guang Yuan Art Gallery 1 on 24th April. It was attended by Curator Venerable Abbess Manshin, Venerable Huei Yan, NZ Police Inspector Rakesh Naidoo, BLIA North Island Head Advisor Dolly Tsai, BLIA North Island President Stephen Xu, BLIA North Island Advisor Peter Yong, Sub-chapter 2 Chair Lily Bernadoes, Vice-president Sally Wong, Vice President Huang Bocheng and over a hundred audiences.

This exhibition shows cases Venerable Huei Yan’s photographic pieces that were collected for over 15 years. The Venerable’s artistry and opportunity to hold this exhibition was all due to the nurturing and encouragement of Venerable Master Hsing Yun. With the main title of “The Beauty of Buddha’s Light”, Venerable Huei Yan’s works were categories into groups that were called: “Venerable Master Hsing Yun”, “Buddha Memorial Centre”, “Fo Guang Shan Head quarter”, “Show casing fireworks”, “Activities” and “The Triple Gem”, in total over 60 pieces.

After ribbon cutting the Abbess introduced Venerable Huei Yan and described the exhibition’s intent of showing everyone historical moments of Fo Guang Shan’s Dharma propagation efforts. She also reminded everyone that this art gallery is a stage for all artists around the world to share their work.

This was followed by a speech from Inspector Rakesh where he praised Venerable Huei Yan’s work to be as precious as Maori green jades, where they have the ability to help everyone to realised a more beautiful and pure world. Then Head Advisor Dolly Tsai expressed that each photo has recorded a historical moment that can help people to understand the real meaning of Humanistic Buddhism.

Finally Venerable Huei Yan ascended the stage to talk. He described as only ever wanted to become a Venerable and not a photographer. But under the tutelage of Venerable Master Hsing Yun he had the opportunity to perfect the craft of photography, which has continued for him for over 15 years. Now it has became a very value skill that can spread the joy of Buddhism through the media to share with the masses. All photographs managed to record many precious moments of the construction of Buddha Memorial Centre, various BLIA and FGS activities, Venerable Master Hsing Yun instructing and visiting his students and devotees.

“I am Fo Guang Shan’s least dignified Venerable” is how Venerable Huei Yan describes himself. Because for the sake of capturing the best shot from the best angle, he must often lie on the ground, climb onto ladders, running around and stay in many awkward positions. But the compassionate and forbearing sentence of “This is how a photographer suppose to be” by Venerable Master Hsing Yun has settled his worries. To this the audiences were also touched by the sentiment and returned their praise with applause.

After this short 2 hours opening ceremony, stories of all the photographs were not able to be fully described by Venerable Huei Yan, but it was enough for everyone to grasp that only under the leadership of Venerable Master Hsing Yn and the hard work of all disciples and devotees, these recorded achievements were made possible.