Inside Sheng-En Temple in Taibao City, Chiayi County, is enshrined a statue of the Bodhisattva Guanyin originally from Mount Putuo in Zhejiang Province. According to tradition, the temple’s management committee, acting under instructions from three bodhisattvas, made three pilgrimages to Mount Putuo between 1989 and 1991 to welcome the bodhisattva back to the temple for its protection and blessings. Devotees of Sheng-En Temple can be found across the globe; Mr. Mori Masumi from Japan and Dr. Kevin Wen-Hsiung Ko from Hawaii, for example, never fail to visit the temple whenever they come to Taiwan.
In 1987, to propagate the Dharma, Sheng-En Temple added the Paramita Lecture Hall on the right side of the main complex. Every plant, every tile—down to the wall decorations and floor motifs—was said to have been conceived under direct inspiration from the bodhisattva. Beginning in 1995, the temple successively renovated the Nine-Grade Lotus Gate courtyard of the Paramita Lecture Hall and erected the Tripitaka Pavilion. The lecture hall was completed in June 1995, and the Tripitaka Pavilion was formally finished in 2000.
Set in serene and solemn surroundings, Sheng-En Temple features a Bagua Gate courtyard, a lotus pond, the Sun-Moon Pavilion, the Paramita Lecture Hall, the Yuan-Tong Pavilion, the North-South Pole Gates, and more. Every corner brims with ingenuity, giving the temple a style quite distinct from ordinary shrines. On the first and fifteenth day of each lunar month, the temple’s Shan-Yuan Association expounds the sutras for devotees, and every 19 September the temple holds the National Protection and Peace Ritual of the Dipper and the Universal Salvation Ceremony.