Unlike Christian church, Buddhist temple was composed of several buildings having specific meanings each.
The main building in the Korean Buddhist temple is ‘Daewung-Jeon’ where is a place for Buddha.
There are several other buildings for Buddha, especially for the future Buddha and the Bodhisattva of Hearing the sound of the world, in Sanskrit Avalokiteshvara. Those buildings seem to have the similar meaning as Daewung-Jeon.
There is a place for the dead souls in Buddhist temple.
The name of that building is Jijang-Jeon.
Jijang is the Bodhisattva to give up being a Buddha until the future Buddha come to this world for the salvation. In Sanskrit, Jijang is Ksitigarbha.
Jijang could be Buddha, but he choose to be a Bodhisattva to save the dead soul in the Hell.
So there is a building for the dead soul in Korean Temple.
As I had posted several times, the ancestors souls were so important in the ancient Korea.
So praying to Jijang Bodhisattva for their ancestors soul is one of the most important thing in the temple, because Jijang Bodhisattva have been taking in charge of judging the dead souls.
And Jijang Bodhisattva makes a decision to send the dead sous to the paradise or to the inferno.
When you look at Jijang Bodhisattva carefully, you can notice Jijang’s eyes look like to penetrate your mind.
His eyes mean that Jijang judges the dead peoples’ sin.
His eye style is same in every temple.
Usually There are 10 kings managing the inferno in the Jijang-Jeon building.
Those 10 kings faces are varied depending on the temples.
Usually the faces of the kings were very strict.
For example, the face of 10 kings in Naeso-sa was expressionless.
But in some case, there are kings' sculptures smiling softly.
The example is the sculptures in Gaewun-sa temple located in Seoul.
At first, let's look at Jijang.
Jijang in Gaewun-sa temple was also serious like as that in Naeso-sa Temple.
But all kings are smiling friendly in Gaewun-sa
They are judging the dead send to the paradise or to the inferno.
If you were Kings in the inferno, do you judge the dead in smile ?
The smile of the Kings in the inferno was a mystery to me, so I have asked the reason of the Kings smile.
But nobody answer to my question.
Do you have any idea about that ?