Wat Neramit Wipatsana

December 17, 2019

An Extraordinary Temple in Dan Sai

Besides exploring the perfect little Thai town of Dan Sai we also wanted to ride our bikes up to the large temple on top of the steep hill just outside of town that we saw on the way in yesterday. Coming down the hill fast I happened to glance to my right and saw an unusual shaped chedi and I thought we should check that temple out.

We didn’t know anything about Wat Neramit Wipatsana beforehand. It was a steep climb on our bikes but it was through beautiful lush forest. There are also stairs going all the way up to the temple which, I imagine would get a person’s sweat running as much as it did for us.

At the top and finally seeing the temple in its entirety we realized it was a fairly new temple. However, it is quite unique since it was entirely constructed of laterite stone. Laterite, in Thai - si la lang - is a porous stone riddled with holes. It is actually a hard pressed clay that has had extensive leaching of all the softer material out of it leaving mostly iron and aluminum. So, even though it looks like it wouldn’t be that strong with all the holes it is strong with all that metal. It’s always rust colored due to the iron content. We saw a lot of old laterite in all the temples at Sukhothai and Si Satchanalai and it still looked pretty strong. But this temple is new and I believe the only new temple in Thailand made entirely of laterite.

Wat Neramit Wipatsana. The building on the left is the shrine room dedicated to the deceased founder of the temple and where his body lies.

Wat Neramit Wipatsana is a beautiful and very large temple. It has a separate building, also made of laterite, the ordination hall, which is the largest ordination hall in Thailand.

The temple is a tribute to the forest monk meditation tradition. There are ceramic sculptures of wandering forest monks near a large Dhamma Wheel. The large shutters on all the many windows have exquisite gold lacquer reliefs depicting jungle scenes. They change color depending where you view them from and the way sunlight is hitting them. Amazingly beautiful but really hard to photograph.

Outside the front entrance to the temple is one of the largest gongs I’ve ever seen. We took turns hitting it with the heavy mallet and it was so large that after hitting it the middle of the gong vibrated visibly moving an inch or more. The vibrations went right through us!

Inside the main viharn the walls are entirely covered with painted scenes from the Buddha’s life. They are beautifully drawn and painted and I read that the townspeople of Dan Sai did all the painting which took them 8.5 years. At the rear is a large Buddha image, a replica of a famous Buddha image in Phitsanulok. Even the black background and the black and gold pillars are replicas of that Phitsanulok temple.

We didn't go to Phitsanulok to see the temple which this one is copying but the black background is stunning.

Don't ask me about the iconography of this one. It's odd. It's not completely from the Ramayana but has elements taken from it. Certainly not that cannon though.

When Buddha laid down on his side he was about to die and enter nirvana.

There is a bit of deification of the former king by bringing his portrait into the temple and placing it very near to the main Buddha image.

The entire compound was beautiful and peaceful. Beautifully landscaped and with many nicely cared for potted plants, the grounds are pleasant to walk around or to sit in all day. I highly recommend a visit to this temple for anyone passing through Dan Sai. It’s amazing that the citizens of a town the size of Dan Sai can come together to create such a gorgeous place. I normally do not like new temples but this one is different.

There is a separate small but also exquisite building, the Phrakhru Phawna Wisutthiyan Mondop, also made of laterite just to the left and rear of the viharn. It is a shrine to the temple founder and meditation forest monk, Luang Pho Maha Phan Sila Wisuttho. Inside is a shockingly realistic wax figure of him sitting meditating. When we first entered the building we seriously didn’t know if he was alive or not, kind of eery. Maybe we were sensing something else along with the uncanny likeness; the fact that the monks body is inside a log right behind the wax figure. Supposedly his body never decayed and is perfectly preserved, (a sign he attained enlightenment? Who knows.). We couldn’t see into the log to confirm this. The two ends of the log are painted scenes of birds in trees with black and gold lacquer.

The log in which the monk's body lies. No, that is not the wax statue of him. It is him but it's made of gold or something. I couldn't take a photo of the wax one because it would have freaked you out.

The other end of the log. I decided that if no one burns my body when I'm dead, a log would be a nice place to be. But throw it out into the forest. I'm sure I'll decay just fine.

That building was as interesting as the main temple. Inside a glass case were all the monk’s worldly belongings before he died. He lived in the forest and was found there dead and preserved, kind of blackened, mummified. There was a photo of him when they found him. He was obviously quite a revered monk for them to build such a beautiful building to honor him. The ceiling was painted with all sorts of celestial beings floating in the clouds.

One of the most interesting plants on the grounds were trees with many root-like stalks coming right from the main tree trunks and they had large, very hard, brown balls attached. I’ve never seen fruit such as these. The flowers also were intriguing. They were asymmetrical which is quite odd in the flowering world. I have no idea what tree this is. Since I have never seen such a tree I imagine they are not all that common and I wonder if they are even native to Thailand.

These things were rock hard. I've never seen anything so strange on a tree.

lovebruce

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