The Fo Guang Shan St. Louis Buddhist Center is the Fo Guang Shan Buddhist movement’s St. Louis branch. Like many Buddhist movements, the epicenter of Fo Guang Shan American temples is California, however, the St. Louis center is one of three Fo Guang Shan centers in the Midwest (the other two being located in the suburbs of Chicago and Kansas City). Although the Chicago center was founded first, in 1999, the St. Louis Center was founded soon after and hosted events out of an office space in Maryland Heights, Missouri (a suburb of St. Louis). In 2006 the center bought its current location, an old church on five acres of land in Bridgetown, Missouri (a different, nearby, suburb of St. Louis). After five years of refurbishment, the temple was inaugurated by the Venerable Xin Ding and opened in 2011 with a large main Buddha shrine, a smaller memorial side hall, and administrative offices. The St. Louis Center is currently run by the Venerable nuns Jue Huang and Rugong. Jue Huang is the center’s current director. As of 2022, Jue Huang has served in St Louis for seven years and in America for nearly twenty years. In addition to being part of the international Fo Guang Shan Association, the center is an active participant in the Buddha’s Light International Association, the Fo Guang Shan’s social activism branch.
Fo Guang Shan Buddhism
Fo Guang Shan (“Buddha’s Light Mountain”) Buddhism is a form of Mahayana Chinese Buddhism which follows the Linji/Rinzai School. Linji Buddhism, a form of Zen Buddhism, believes awakening is both inexpressible and unteachable. Instead, awakening occurs via epiphanous moments of transmission from master to student. However, in order to encourage enlightenment, Linji masters nonetheless try to express what they believe words cannot do justice. Specifically, Koans, paradoxical seeming riddles, produce great doubt in the mind of students and encourage the students to wrestle with the critical phrases of the Koan. Students who reach an understanding of those Koans add a capping phrase or an answer to the Koan and get closer to enlightenment and understanding their own Buddha-nature.
Fo Guang Shan Buddhism was founded by the Venerable Master Hsing Yun in 1967 to promote a “Humanistic Buddhism.” Fo Guang Shan is an attempt to modernize Chinese Buddhism and is famous for its use of modern technology and social activism. Fo Guang Shan is also deeply committed to fostering intellectual exploration of Buddhism and both inter-religious and intra-religious dialogue through symposia, conferences and services. At over 360 acres, the Fo Guang Shan Monastery is the largest Buddhist monastery in Taiwan. Fo Guang Shan is also one of the largest charitable organizations in the country. It is generally regarded by Taiwanese Buddhists as one of the Four Great Mountains, meaning one of the four major pillars of Taiwanese Buddhism. Fo Guang Shan Buddhism has over one million adherents, two hundred temples, and fifteen hundred monasteries.
Hsing Yun was born in 1927 during the midst of the Chinese Civil war, and grew up during the second world war. When his father went missing at a young age, Hsing Yun’s mother placed him in the care of the Qixia monastery in Nanjing to protect him. In 1949, Hsing Yun, now a full Buddhist monk, would travel to Taiwan as a part of a medical aid mission. In 1964 he founded Shou Shan Temple and Buddhist College before establishing the Fo Guang Shan Monastery and movement in 1967.
When Hsing Yun founded the Fo Guang Shan monastery, he was inspired by the Buddha’s loving kindness and desire to end others’ suffering. Thus, like other forms of Mahayana Buddhism, for Hsing Yun and the Fo Guang Shan order, it is not enough for a person to achieve enlightenment. Instead, they should promise themselves to the greater path, to becoming a Bodhisattva and helping others also become enlightened. They furthermore believe the best way to do so is through community building and aiding the poor, through programs like direct aid and education.
Fo Guang Shan Buddhism was founded on four principles: “To propagate Buddhist teachings through cultural activities. To nurture talents through education. To benefit societies through charitable programs. To purify human hearts and minds through Buddhist practices.” Paralleling these four principles are the four mottos of Fo Guang Shan Buddhism: “Offer others faith. Offer others joy. Offer others hope. Offer others convenience.” The focus on others and building community underscore the unique humanistic focus of Fo Guang Shan Buddhism. Because of this humanistic focus, in 1992 Fo Guang Shan founded Buddha’s Light International Association as the lay branch of the Fo Guang Shan movement. Buddha’s Light International Association mobilized social action as Fo Guang Shan spread to all six continents and helped Hsing Yun promote “equality, respect for others, and social progress” by supporting “communities to make a difference and encourage collective action to scale solutions to benefit our environment and future generations.” Combining active lay and monastic charitable outreach and taking advantage of modern technology has been a large part of Fo Guang Shan’s success.
Membership Demographics
The Fo Guang Shan St. Louis Buddhist Center does not advertise the number of families associated with it. Unlike some religious organizations which utilize a system of members and dues, this center relies on donations, which can also be given online via PayPal. If interested in donating, more information is available on the center’s website and at https://www.paypal.com/us/fundraiser/charity/2450970.
However, an estimate of membership and demographics can be undertaken by looking at the pictures and other information on the center’s website. A picture of a 2018 Vesak Day Celebration service appears to have a crowd of around 100 people. A picture of a 2017 choir concert seems to have 30 people. A picture of a 2017 outing with the Kansas City Fo Guang Shan Center had about 40 people from the St. Louis Center. From these numbers, it seems reasonable to estimate that the center has a membership of approximately between 50 and 100 families. The majority of these individuals are of Asian descent, likely from Taiwan or mainland China, given the Fo Guang Shan movement’s association with Taiwan. However, the availability of English service options alludes to outreach and welcoming of St Louis’ non-Asian communities.
Activities
Due to the covid-19 pandemic, the Fo Guang Shan St. Louis Buddhist Center has not yet fully resumed in-person activities as of this report being written (December 2022). However, some in-person activities are offered. Special visits to the center can be scheduled and individuals can book 30-minute slots online for when the center is open to the public on Sunday afternoons. On the center’s Facebook and YouTube pages, weekly Sunday services are live-streamed in Chinese from approximately 9 to 11 am. While there used to also be a live-streamed monthly English dharma service, these generally appear to have stopped. The center’s website advertised a pre-recorded English option, however, these also appear not to have been posted recently on social media, or at least not services recorded by the St. Louis center. The center’s Facebook page points practitioners to general Fo Guang Shan resources including English services and sutras available from the Fo Guang Shan English Dharma Services Youtube channel. The center used to host Friday meditation practice, which included “two silent sitting meditation sessions, walking meditation and a short Dharma talk” led by the center’s director, Jue Huang. These meditation sessions are also in hiatus due to the covid-19 pandemic.
In addition to services and meditation, the Fo Guang Shan St. Louis Buddhist Center’s website advertises other opportunities to engage with their Buddhist community and ongoing social action projects. The center’s website advertises several lecture opportunities in upcoming and previous months such as the Buddha’s Light International Association Cloud Lecture Series (which will next be hosted Saturday, December 10, 6:30 – 8:00 pm) and a Buddhist Lecture Series by the University of California, Berkeley, Professor Dr. Lewis Lancaster. Nearby the center also advertises the Bodhi Light Tales Podcast.
The Center seems particularly proud of recently donating a 20-volume set of Encyclopedias of Buddhist Arts to the Lovejoy Library at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, an event which was met with appreciation by the Edwardsville community and local news coverage. The Center also has recently worked with Buddha’s Light International Association to raise money for ventilators for hospitals in Wuhan, China, participate in the Vege Plan A campaign to increase vegetarianism and environmental sustainability, and pack 900,000 meals for the hungry in St. Louis with the meals for a million campaign. These campaigns frequently involved both other Buddhist groups and other non-Buddhist faith groups, with whom the center cultivates a connection with their participation in the Buddhist Council of Greater St. Louis and the Interfaith Partnership of Greater St. Louis Thus the center maintains a vibrant and good-natured connection with both Western and Asian Buddhist groups and the general greater St. Louis community.
Citations
https://fgsstlbc.org/our-founder
https://fgsstlbc.org/%E4%B8%AD%E6%96%87%E7%89%88-chinese-version
https://www.facebook.com/fgsstlbc/
https://www.youtube.com/@foguangshanst.louisbuddhis6072
http://www.hsilai.org/en/fgs/usa.php
http://www.hsilai.org/en/hlt/objectives.php
https://www.fgs.org.tw/en/worldwide/America/
http://www.sfzen.org/all-other-usa-american-chinese-buddhist-temples
htps://www.youtube.com/@fgsdha
https://www.siue.edu/news/2017/10/Venerable-Jue-Huang-to-Present-20-Volume-Encyclopedia-of-Buddhist-Arts-to-Lovejoy-Library.shtml https://www.alestlelive.com/news/article_60474068-ad4b-11e7-8408-47d43cf07024.html