DAN CRUICKSHANK: This is a journey to discover paradise on Earth
in a Russian winter wilderness,
on a Chinese holy mountain,
a Christian vision of the new Jerusalem,
and a Hindu celebration of creation.
This is Egypt's Sinai Desert.
According to the Bible,
this is where God revealed himself to Moses
in the burning bush,
the bush that burned and was not consumed.
Moses led his people through this desert to the promised land,
the land of milk and honey.
And it was here that God gave Moses the Ten Commandments.
It's been a Christian place of worship since the 3rd century.
And here, Justinian, ruler of the vast Byzantine Empire,
was to make his mark in this holy land.
Deep in the desert wilderness, in the heart of a Muslim world,
stands the oldest continuously occupied Christian monastery in the world.
It's a place where people have come for 1,700 years
to find solitude, to contemplate God, to experience paradise on Earth.
Saint Catherine's monastery, as we see it today,
was constructed in 527,
and it seems the Bible was used as a guide.
The Book of Revelation describes the new Jerusalem
coming down from God in the form of a great cube or square,
each side measuring 144 cubits, or about 78 metres.
That's roughly the shape and dimensions of Saint Catherine's monastery.
So this was the new Jerusalem, a vision of God's kingdom to come.
Very solid.
Ah.
Excellent.
-Hello. -Hello.
I've come to see you and your monastery.
-I hope you were expecting me. -Yes.
Oh!
Now... Ah, there is the monastery, isn't it?
Yes.
And, um... And, of course, Moses.
-Above these are the patron saints. -CRUICKSHANK: I see.
The prophet Moses on the left, Saint Catherine on the right.
And the Virgin Mary at the burning bush.
-Yes. -So we have the three dedications.
It's an amazing entry. It's all rather fortified, isn't it?
-The... Numbers of doors... -This dates from the 6th century.
Sixth? Yes. Oh, yes.
This paradise is now inhabited by monks belonging to the Greek Orthodox church.
My guide is Father Justin, who hails from America
and has lived here for 11 years.
At the heart of the monks' spiritual life is the basilica
that dates from the mid-6th century.
It's dedicated to Saint Catherine,
who's supposed to have been buried by angels on Mount Sinai.
(RECITING IN GREEK)
Hundreds of pilgrims come here to venerate her relics,
Saint Catherine's skull and hand.
Saint Catherine was revered for her wisdom and her learning,
and she is the patron saint for students and for universities.
And, of course, a lot of pilgrims came here in the Middle Ages
to see the body because it healed, didn't it?
-Wax oil came from the bones. -It was frequent. It's still frequent.
These are the Russian pilgrims,
the new pilgrims, come to venerate Saint Catherine.
Can I see Saint Catherine?
(RECITING IN GREEK)
The details of this basilica are fascinating.
On the ceiling beams and on the door are images of paradise.
Plants and animals cavorting. Absolutely lovely.
And above the altar at the east end, behind the big icon screen,
are two mosaics.
Up there, one sees Moses climbing to the top of Mount Sinai
to receive the Ten Commandments.
And over there, Moses taking off his shoes to approach the burning bush.
I'm at the eastern end of the basilica,
and this is one of the most extraordinary sites
in the Christian world because since the 2nd or 3rd century AD,
it's been agreed that this is the site of the burning bush.
The bush grew here.
Now an altar has been constructed above where it flourished.
And as God said to Moses, "This is holy ground."
Saint Catherine's is not just a place of worship.
It also provides the needs of a living, breathing community.
The monks survive with the help of nomadic Bedouin.
Each week, the Christian monks and Muslim Bedouin
come together to make bread.
How many loaves get made? It seems an awful lot of...
-Well, a lot. -A lot, yes.
-And we usually make it on Thursdays. -Yes.
And Thursday night, and Friday and Saturday, the bread is wonderful,
and then it begins to get dry because it's a very dry climate.
So by next Thursday, you're ready for fresh bread again.
Right.
JUSTIN: And Nassir is the baker.
And he's been doing this since he was about 10 years old.
I asked him once, "How do you know when it's ready?"
And he said, "Oh, I just know."
CRUICKSHANK: Of course!
Mmm.
And there's another key to Saint Catherine's survival.
The high walls of the monastery protected it from attack
when, in its early days,
Saint Catherine's was a frontier fortress
of the Byzantine Empire.
But deep below the protective wall is a narrow passage,
leading to gardens that help sustain life within the monastery.
Oh, yes, very fine tunnels. A sort of postern through the walls.
This dates from the time when this was a fortress,
and it was part of the defence mechanism.
So from the rather enclosed world of the monastery,
one comes out into the garden into this sort of little paradise
with cypress trees and olive trees. Incredible.
JUSTIN: This is not like England, where you have everything green.
This is the harsh desert,
so it's even more significant and astonishing to find a garden like this.
CRUICKSHANK: Yes. Looks like spinach. Is it?
We have onions and salad greens.
This is amazing for December. Look how fresh and lush the spinach is.
Astonishing, and...
We have olive trees here, and some of them are very old.
How old? I mean, 400 or 500 years?
No, I've been told that some of them go back perhaps a thousand years.
Good heavens.
JUSTIN: Here we have honey hives. CRUICKSHANK: Lovely.
He seems very courageous. He's got no protective gear on.
-He is. -He must get stung.
I would never do that.
He's very familiar with the bees.
He smokes the hive, and then the bees go inside to protect the honey,
and that way he can safely open the hive without being stung.
How much honey do these five hives produce?
From each hive, last year, he extracted 10 kilos,
which is quite a lot of honey.
CRUICKSHANK: They're very productive bees. They like it here.
They've got him. He's just got stung.
JUSTIN: Yes.
CRUICKSHANK: And there are goats, indeed.
-And do you milk the goats? -A little bit.
So you do have milk and honey!
JUSTIN: Yes. CRUICKSHANK: Oh, yes.
The monastery holds one last surprise.
Just to the east of the chapel of the burning bush
is the burning bush.
The monks here believe that the roots of the burning bush are still alive
below the altar over there.
The bush now flourishes outside in God's light.
In the Book of Revelation, it's said the new Jerusalem contains the Tree of Life.
And the leaves from that Tree of Life are for the healing of nations.
If this is the new Jerusalem, then this tree, this leaf,
are very important indeed.
This is paradise on Earth.
This is Shanxi province, in the heart of China.
Once a rural backwater,
it's now a bustling part of a modern industrial nation.
This is a city in flux. Demolition, rebuilding, renewal.
But all life here, all the industry, is fuelled by coal.
I can smell it. I can taste it, this pollution.
And yet Shanxi province contains some of the most sacred sites in China.
The very land here has spiritual qualities.
Away from the commotion of the city,
I'm travelling deep into Shanxi's history,
into the land of the gods.
This landscape is one of the holiest places for Taoism,
the ancient religion of China.
For Taoists, these mountains are sacred.
They're the home of immortal beings,
gods who guide believers toward eternal life.
Tao means "the way".
It means living in harmony with the way of nature.
We human beings should take nature as our model,
go with the flow of nature,
not fight against it, not strive against it.
So nature is revered by Taoists.
And mountains, these great symbols of inner stillness and balance,
are particularly sacred.
Mountains represent the yin and yang of the Taoist universe.
They have a shady yin side and a sunny yang side,
opposites existing in harmony with one defining the other.
And I've come to a shrine that seems to grow from the mountain face itself,
the Hanging Temple.
The sheer audacity of this structure has shocked visitors for centuries.
It's more like the work of the gods than of man.
Temple and mountain are one,
the temple's embraced by nature, like a child in the womb.
And that, of course, is just the point.
This is a paradise, a paradise inspired by the power, the beauty of nature.
The Hanging Temple was first built around 1,500 years ago.
But most of its structure dates from the 16th century.
Throughout its long history, the essence of the building has remained the same.
It's a place where believers can become one with the mountains and the gods.
This is a portal to a strange and magic world,
a place where monks commune with the immortals,
the gods who walk among the stars.
It's extraordinary, this temple sort of slithers along the cliff face,
forever ascending higher and higher towards the heavens.
This compact space is the main temple courtyard.
Here are the prayer rooms,
and above there, the prayer hall.
In front of me, the drum tower.
And here is the bell tower.
Everything you'd expect to find in a big temple is here,
but reorganised and on a tiny scale.
This structure's very impressive. So minimal, so bold.
Most of the weight of the building is carried on horizontal beams.
You can see some above me here.
These are let into sockets cut in the cliff face,
and firmly wedged to stop them working their way loose in the wind.
This is brilliant engineering.
These vertical posts are purely decorative.
You see, they wobble.
Amazing.
The beams work as cantilevers. The more weight that's put on them,
the more firmly they're rooted into the mountainside.
This is very Taoist architecture,
working with nature, drawing strength from the mountain itself.
It's like no temple I've ever been in, this temple in miniature,
floating in space.
I feel like a giant as I wander through it,
flying through the energising air.
I feel like one of the immortals, it's all a dream.
I feel like I've gone to heaven. I'm in paradise.
Ah, here's a monk's bedroom.
And here, a monk's bed. A very large bed.
I suppose, a communal bed.
I guess monks would sleep together to keep warm,
and to make the most of the space in this rather small monastery.
It's a lovely room.
And from here, lying in their bed,
the monks would have a wonderful, splendid view
of the sacred mountain over there.
The majesty of nature, so powerful.
But there's a sadness to the Hanging Temple.
The Taoist monks who lived and worshipped here for centuries
have been evicted.
The monks were here at the time of the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s,
and that's when the heads were broken off all these small images here.
Every single one's been decapitated.
It's shocking, brutal.
The monks were ordered to leave, exiled from paradise.
And it seemed that after nearly 2,500 years,
the Taoist religion was dead in China.
(BELL RINGING)
But the Taoist spirit has not deserted these sacred mountains.
Like the Hanging Temple, this place was vandalised and closed
during the Cultural Revolution.
But the Taoist flame is flickering here once more.
(CHANTING)
Guo Zhidan is the only monk in the Temple of the Ninth Heaven.
He spends his life meditating on the ways of nature.
(SPEAKING CHINESE)
Does living on a mountain make you feel closer to the immortals?
Yes, this does feel like the realm of the gods.
I can quite see why in the past so many monasteries were built up here,
so monks could commune more closely with nature.
Up here, despite all the chaos and pollution in the world below,
up here the laws of nature prevail.
This paradise has not been lost.
Here paradise endures.
Northern Russia in the middle of winter.
I'm about to travel 600 miles through the night
into the remote wastes of the Russian wilderness.
I'm heading to a place that's virtually inaccessible during the winter months.
Indeed, I'm not sure I'm going to make it.
There's a long train journey ahead of me.
I'm going north, and the snow is building up.
I'm on a pilgrimage to a place that I'm told
represents the heart and soul of Russia.
This is Kizhi, a tiny island in northwest Russia
in the middle of a vast frozen lake.
Only a handful of people live here now.
But it was once a thriving place for fishing and farming.
It was here that a Russian vision of paradise was created,
made not of stone, but wood.
What an astonishing silhouette.
The large church on the left looks rather like a sort of pyramid,
like a mighty fir tree.
It marks a sacred site,
a piece of paradise in this harsh, unforgiving landscape.
Kizhi has been holy ground since pagan times,
when people worshipped the goddess of the sun.
And when Christianity came to the island,
the Church appropriated this site
and in the 18th century built these amazing churches.
Around the site's a protecting wall.
All within is blessed, consecrated as a spiritual refuge.
This wall ought to keep prowling evil spirits out,
to keep the old gods at bay.
(BELLS TOLLING)
This consecrated area within the wall, called the pogost,
contains the graves of the Christian dead.
Here they are, protected here,
awaiting resurrection on the Day of Judgement.
This area also contains a bell tower, a church for use in the summer,
and another church for use in the winter.
The buildings within the enclosure are beautifully constructed
out of pine logs. Here we see them.
These logs have been squared and cut using an axe, not a saw.
A saw would damage the grain. An axe closes the grain.
Protects the wood from damp. Stops the timbers from rotting.
Here you see how well cut they are with an axe.
The joints are incredibly tight. Very straight edges.
No wind will get through these two logs.
And here you see logs meeting at this corner,
all lapped together very tightly.
No nails needed. No nails used.
Beautiful quality, this has.
It's sort of honest moral construction. All is revealed.
It has a Christian truth about it.
It's only by climbing the bell tower
that you appreciate the true scale of the two churches.
From here you can see how the spectacular domes are arranged
on the Church of the Intercession of the Virgin
and on the huge Church of the Transfiguration of Christ.
The domes on the buildings within the sacred enclosure
are full of meaning.
On the Church of the Transfiguration,
there are 22 domes, a number that puzzles most people.
But it could refer to the Book of Revelation,
a text held very important by the Orthodoxt church,
a text to do with the end of the world and judgement.
And there are 22 chapters in the Book of Revelation.
In total, within the whole sacred enclosure,
there are 33 domes.
Christ died in his 33rd year.
So perhaps they represent his death. In which case, it's paradise.
It's to do with judgement, to do with death,
to do with the end of the world, the world to come.
In this part of Russia, daylight is treasured,
as the winter nights are painfully long.
But this sacred enclosure provided comfort
by showing that God's energy-giving light is ever-present.
The Transfiguration of Christ, after which this church is named,
is all to do with light.
Christ climbed a mountain and light beamed from him,
like the sun.
This proclaimed divinity
confirmed that he was indeed the son of God.
So light is sacred, light is life.
But here, it seems, the light's been turned off.
These churches suffered much during Soviet times
when they were left to rot.
Only this scaffolding prevents the Transfiguration from collapsing.
But the Intercession, the winter church,
is a beacon of light.
(SINGING IN RUSSIAN)
This church is once again at the heart of Kizhi,
as it was in the 18th century.
A place of worship and a village hall
where people could mix with their neighbours.
Hospitality and a sense of community
are all-important in such a harsh climate.
(WOMAN SPEAKING RUSSIAN)
Come in, come in.
(BOTH SPEAKING RUSSIAN)
Excellent. Oh, how lovely.
Thank you, thank you.
Oh.
Excellent samovar.
Samovar. Very good.
(LAUGHING) Yes, Ruski.
Oh, I say.
This is the 18th century way of drinking tea,
into the saucer. This is absolutely fascinating.
My goodness me, do I have to eat all of that?
Thank you. Spasiba. Oh, right, here we go.
I'm doing something wrong.
I think it's because I should be dipping it in. Yeah.
Then in the mouth.
It's much better like that.
What more could a chap want?
Even in this cold and forbidding land,
people have created a place of spiritual warmth.
The churches of Kizhi shine out in the dark,
catering for the bodies and souls of their congregation.
A light that refuses to be snuffed out.
In the sacred Cauvery River in South India
sits the island of Srirangam.
Here stands the mighty temple of Sri Ranganathaswamy.
These great Hindu temples are not just places of worship,
they're sacred objects of adoration in their own right.
They're the living bodies of the god to whom they are consecrated.
They're the cosmos in miniature.
Diagrams of creation. Heavens on Earth.
This is the biggest Hindu temple in South India,
seven concentric square enclosures,
representing the seven visible worlds of Hindu cosmology.
It's dedicated to the god Vishnu
and has been a major site of worship and pilgrimage
for more than 1,000 years.
The entrances to the enclosures
are marked by ornate pyramid-shaped gates.
The three outer enclosures of the temple are very noisy.
Very worldly. It's where people live and work.
There are shops, booths. Many shops selling things related to the temple,
or they're simply selling food.
In the temple town, everything is sacred,
especially selling flowers.
Here flowers are big business
because flowers are essential for worship, for puja,
to offer them to the gods.
Oh, oh.
Lovely, lovely. Very... Very much my colours.
Let me give you some money for that.
Thank you very much indeed. Beautiful.
Within one of the three worldly outer enclosures
are the homes of the Brahman families
who, for centuries, have served the temple.
-Come, Dan. Come to my kitchen. -Oh, the kitchen.
Can you tell me, how long has your family lived here in Srirangam?
They have been here for 200 years.
And maybe more, I don't know, but I'm sure about 200 years.
-And in this house, mostly? -Same.
-Same house. -The house is at least 200 years old.
Yes.
The kitchen is a rather sacred space within the house, isn't it?
It is because we offer food cooked in the kitchen to the Lord.
The Lord has always to be offered cooked food.
-Yes. -That is one of the musts.
And because of that, the kitchen is always next to the puja room.
Always next to the puja room.
-Would you like to see the puja room? -Yes, please.
Oh, you come to our puja room.
-Remember to stoop, to bow. -Once again, learn some humility.
-Yes. -Oh, you have to bend down here.
This is our puja room.
(BELL RINGING)
Here we are in our god's room.
CRUICKSHANK: So really, the puja, this worship is the family
giving thanks for all the benefits that the god has bestowed upon the family.
-It's respect and love, isn't it? -Yes.
It's respect, of course, but then more than respect.
It's love.
It's a passionate love for the Lord that we have.
He has been in the house for such a long time,
this particular image of the Lord.
And he is like a member of the family.
We don't like to lock the door and go out.
We're always, "Oh, he'll be alone!" So we always have somebody in the house.
I'm now leaving the temple's outer enclosures
to enter the sacred world of the god.
The inner area is home to the temple's sacred elephant
who dispenses blessings to worshipers.
Most of the architecture here was built from the 13th to the 17th century
by devout Hindu kings.
And all buildings here are rich in meaning and symbolism.
This is a thousand-column hall.
A stupendous place.
The number 1,000 is auspicious for Hindus.
A thousand names of Vishnu.
And there's 1,000 Tamil hymns that are sung in this temple.
It's now eerily quiet, deserted.
But originally it was built for mass public worship.
It would have been full of life, vitality.
This is where the temple maidens danced.
Dance would bring harmony and order to the world.
They danced for the god, for Vishnu, and for the priests.
Thank you.
The inner enclosures are full of pilgrims
who have come from across India to see the god Vishnu.
Some people will have travelled many days to have reached this sacred site.
I'm now within the third enclosure from the centre of the temple.
And from here on, the enclosures get more sacred, more exclusive.
Indeed, as a non-Hindu, I can't penetrate beyond this point.
However, I can get a glimpse of the sanctum. There it is.
Dark and mysterious.
Historically, low caste Hindus, untouchable dalits,
couldn't penetrate beyond here, either.
Really, this is the realm of the high-caste, of the Brahmans.
In there is the image of Ranganatha, Vishnu.
I can't see him now, but I will be able to see him tomorrow.
At dawn the next day, hundreds of people have gathered in anticipation.
They're here for a festival
that's one of the greatest days in the temple's year.
The deity's being carried out from the inner sanctum
to greet the masses
during a ceremonial procession within one of the outer enclosures.
Well, it's about 6:30 in the morning,
and the image of the deity is already on the cart.
In a moment I'll get a glimpse of him because the procession's about to start.
The atmosphere is quite... Quite charged.
People are gathering, there's almost an air of not quite hysteria,
but suppressed emotion,
because when the deity comes out, it's a great moment.
All men together. Heave.
Without breaking.
Right, well, I think we've got it going now.
We're running quite smoothly.
We have a pace to it now...
(INDISTINCT)
I'll get out now and take a longer view of the procession, I think.
Heaving the cart, the juggernaut,
is a great, wonderful communal effort that brings everyone together.
All the different Hindu castes, Hindus and non-Hindus,
men and women.
It is amazing. It makes sense of the plan for the temple,
these great avenues along which the cart can rumble.
It brings the whole place to life. It's fantastic.
And all around me are people staring at the image with love and adoration.
And I, for the first time, can now see the god myself.
It's really exhilarating to be among the people
as they greet, as they adore, as they transport their god.
The architecture and plan of the temple
are ornamental and symbolic but also very functional,
because together they create the perfect theatre
for the rituals enacted within them.
I must say, standing here, one really does feel
the temple to be the living, pulsating body of the god.
A vision of the divine cosmos, a vision of paradise.