In Master Hsing Yun’s representative book, For All Living Beings: A Guide to Buddhist Practice, he says “Do not blame others for your unhappiness, for everything is due to cause and effect.” Many people blame others when they are dissatisfied, but hardly understand that the root of their discontent never falls on others. A good deed is the seed for another good deed. If one thirsts for happiness, he himself has to give out good to the society first. Master Hsing Yun’s life experiences hugely affect his interpretation of the relationship between happiness and cause and effect.
Venerable Master Hsing Yun was born in a small rural village in Chiangsu Province, China on August 19th, 1927. Jiangsu province has long been a center of Chinese Buddhist culture and devotion with many eminent Buddhist temples. In fact, Master Hsing Yun’s family lived very closed to Xiannu Temple. In 1937, the Second Sino-Japanese war broke out and the fight was fierce and frequent. Yun’s family had a hard time because his father never returned and his mother did not have enough money for all their children. In search for his father, he ran into a Japanese army practicing their drills and was approached by a monk asking if he was willing to become a monk. Out of instinct, he replied “Yes”. Then he returned to Qixia Monastery with Master Zhikai.
Having entered a monastery life in 1939 and become fully ordained in 1941, Hsing Yun officially became the 48th patriarch of the Lin-chi Ch’an school. Master Zhikai was characterized by his compassion and humanitarian outlook, which influenced his disciples deeply. During the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War, Master Zhikai turned Qixia Monastery into a refugee camp, and shared everything left in the monastery with refugees. In response to his disciple’s doubt that they had sacrificed too much, Zhikai said: “Saving one life is more valuable than saving a whole monastery. As Buddhists, we must be willing to sacrifice everything. This is one of those times when we must give up all that we have to help others.” (10) During the Civil War, he went to Taiwan to save Buddhism, and started his great career to transform the world with Humanistic Buddhism, which emphasizes taking to heart spiritual practice in daily life. Instead of focusing on practice at certain places, this practice claims that there is no need to go some place else to find enlightenment. “We can realize our true nature in here and now, within this precious human birth and this world. When we actualize altruism, joyfulness, and universality, we are practicing the fundamental concepts of Humanistic Buddhism. When we give faith, hope, joy, and service, we are helping all beings, as well as ourselves.” At the beginning, he encountered many difficulties because of competition from the existing local Buddhist community and widely-spread rumors that communist spies had traveled to Taiwan disguised as monks. His ceaseless effort led to a chance to stay in Yuanguang Temple, where he was accepted because of his hard work and dedication. He started to build an ambitious plan to expand Buddhism to more places.
In Leiyin Temple, Hsing Yun was able to put into practice the ideal he learned from Master Kaizhi of always putting people first. Hsing Yun’s basic philosophy formed: 1. Buddhism is about our world, right now; not only about the next life and the affairs of ghosts and spirits. 2. Buddhism should benefit society and bring people joy, instead of being dour and isolated. 3. Buddhism should adapt itself to modern times and the needs of individuals. This is what he called “Humanistic Buddhism”. To meet people’s need and to attract their attention, Hsing Yun introduced Sutra text chanting line by line and a Buddhist choir. Hsing Yun’s enthusiasm and accessibility earned him more and more congregants.
Hsing Yun’s emphasis on education urged him to build a seminary as the first building of Fo Guang Shan, which was known as Eastern Buddhist College. After the hard time of construction, Fo Guang Shan became very popular. The focus on education also made Hsing Yun send out students oversea to learn teaching skills, leadership skills, and management skills. These students later became leaders within the monasteries and contributed to the constant progress of this Buddhist community.
Hsing Yun traveled to the United States for the first time in 1976, and acutely noticed the need for Buddhism among the immigrant Chinese community. He then founded the Baida Temple, which was well accepted. Despite various misunderstandings, Hsing Yun built his first major temple in the US and integrated it into the local community through a series of community service programs, fund sharing with local charities, dialogue and cultural events with the local community.
In 1991, Hsing Yun founded the Buddha’s Light International Association (BLIA), a lay Buddhist group that offered education, community enrichment, and a funding support structure. In 1998, he founded a Buddhist satellite television station called Beautiful Life TV. In 2000, he founded the Merit Times, an international daily Buddhist newspaper.
As a result of Hsing Yun’s effort of elevating Buddhist women, at Fo Guang Shan, female monastics outnumber male monastics. During the progress of branching out internationally, Hsing Yun also hoped to enfranchise more female monastics.
Guangming Temple in Orlando, Florida, (legally registered as International Buddhist Progress Society, Florida) is the second largest branch temple from Fo Guang Shan. Fo Guang Shan, Chinese for “Buddha’s Light Mountain”, was founded by Venerable Master Hsing Yun Taiwan in 1967. Evolved from a mountaintop bamboo forest to the largest Buddhist monastery in Taiwan, Fo Guang Shan attracts not only monastic practitioners but also lay practitioners with its four missions: to propogate Buddhist teachings through cultural activities, to nurture talents through education, to benefit societies through charitable programs, and to purify human hearts and minds through Buddhist practices. Under the leadership of Master Hsing Yun, over a thousand monastic practitioners and lay practitioners help to build over 200 branch temples all over the world. These temples, with the goals of propagating Humanistic Buddhism and establishing a Pure Land on earth, help bring confidence, joy, hope and other services to people of the local communities.
Although Fo Guang Shan received tremendous help from the general public and aimed to spread its good to everyone, it closed its door to the public in May 1997 to create a more cloistered environment for monastics to practice Buddhism. This only lasted for three years. In 2000, President Chen Shuibian and government officials from Kaohsiung visited Fo Guang Shan and asked it to reopen its door to the general public. As this was the wish of many constituents, Fo Guang Shan deciced to re-open the monastery to the pubic to some extent. While trying to provide a relatively cloistered environment for monastics to practice Buddhism by establishing a different practice system, it also provides the public with a Pure Land environment to practice Buddhism.
Guangming Temple is built in the Chinese traditional style, which distinguishes it from any other local architure nearby. Its shiny glazed terra-cotta roof tiles curve up toward the heavens, teeming with delicate dragons, lion dogs, horses and monks. As one of the “Best Roofs” according to Orlando Weekly (2015), the appearance of the temple conveys a sense of grandeur. After walking into the main shrine, which is the part any Buddhist practitioner should visit first before any other part of the temple, the first thing you will see is a giant porcelain Buddha. On the altar in front of a bodhisattva or Buddha statue, there display candles, incense, flowers and fruits. Visitors often sit with feet flat on the floor in a cross-legged meditation posture.
In support of building such a splendid temple, Fo Guang Hui(佛光会) was set up. It mainly consists of Chinese immigrants who are lay practitioners, donates and bears a large part of Guangming Temple’s spendings. When the temple was first built, a member from Fo Guang Hui bought the land and gifted it to Master Hsing Yun. Large as the amount of donation Fo Guang Shan generally receives, it is not enough for it to branch out in such a grand scale internationally. Besides major income sources through the auction of Master Hsing Yun’s calligraphy work and publishing of his books, branch temples develop their own ways to help support themselves. For example, Guangming temple has a vegetarian dining hall (“Waterdrop House”,滴水坊) that provides delicate and delicious vegetarian food. These foods are made of tofu, beans, rice and vegetables. With the price ranging from five to twenty dollars, these vegetarian dishes are popular because of their good quality. Besides the dining hall, the temple also has a gift shop containing Buddhist books and other accessories related to Buddhism. Through these sources, the temple is able to support its running and provides more free classes to the general public.
Under the influence of Hsing Yun’s philosophy that Buddhism should benefit society and engage people more actively, Guangming temple holds a variety of activities and events. Aside from festival activities, most temple activities happen on Sundays. A typical activity schedule in Guangming Temple is as follows:
Buddhist Study groups 10:30am –12:00pm
Young Adult Division (YAD) Meeting
11:30am—3:00pm
Sunday Children’s Program
10:30am—12:30pm
Chinese Language Class
1:30pm—3:30pm
Most of these activities happen in classrooms in Guangming Temple. Buddhist Study involves a master giving lecture and participants discussing Buddhism. Young Adult Division Meeting promotes Buddhism through events and activities that induce education, volunteering, leadership, and friendship, while building a strong structure and example for future members to follow. Sunday Children’s Program emphasizes teaching Buddhist Etiqutte, science and crafts. Chinese Language Class offers people who are interested in a different culture a chance to get exposed to Chinese culture and improve language skills. Other programs also include Meditation practice, Chinese Cultural Courses which focus on the culture side instead of language skills, Tai Chi class, and Yoga class. From these various classes, we can see that the temple also serves as a multifunctional social and cultural center besides a Zen Center. For an annual festival activity, the temple would recruit local people as performers. This not only presents Chinese culture to others, but also invites everyone to be part of it. The dance and music would create a live cultural experience for anyone who participates in it. Similarly, the social environment in Tea House engages local people actively. People would gather in the tea house, watch tea performances, and chat while tasting tea. These cultural and social activities and events attract more people and enables them to bond with each other.
There are different practice ways in Guangming Temple, depending on the degree to which people accept Buddhism. For general public, the regular practice way is to meditate, attend class, and participate in discussion. Interestingly, although normally both lay practitioners and monastic practitioners have to obey five percepts, only monastics need to obey them here. The five percepts include: not taking the lives of living beings, not taking anything that is not given, to abstain from sexual misconduct, to abstain from telling falsehoods, and abstain from distilled and fermented intoxicants, which are the occasion for carelessness. As the main purpose is to teach Buddhism as a life philosophy that can be widely applied, the boundary between a Buddhist and general audience seems to blur.
In terms of membership and ethnic composition, there are two masters and about seven hundred members. Among them, about two hundred are members of Fo Guang Hui. There are approximately 60% Chinese immigrants, 37% white and 3% other.
The early development history of Hsing Yun’s Humanistic Buddhism sets the basic framework for its practices: adapt to local culture, meet people’s need, and preserve central elements. For Guangming Temple, it preserves most of the central ideas of Buddhism, but approach them with a more innovative way to better adapt to Western culture. In the main shrine, although the arrangement of candles, flowers, or fruit is in front of a bodhisattva or Buddha statue as tradition, the seats look similar to a bench in a western church. Instead of focusing on text chanting, it teaches history and shares interpretations of Buddhism as a life philosophy to deal with daily life problems. To meet the needs of social functions, it holds festival activities regularly to introduce eastern culture to the local community, opens the tea room to share tea culture and to interact with each other, and offers Chinese language classes for anyone interested in sharpening language skills. Despite many changes, the temple preserves the main ideas of Buddhism and maintains basic practice methods such as meditation. This adaptation originates from Master Hsing Yun’s interpretation of Buddhism: it should benefit society more and focus on the current life instead of the next life.
As a branch temple of Fo Guang Shan, Guangming temple has a strong connection to Fo Guang Shan and other branch temples. Monastics from other branch temples often visit and attend Guangming Temple’s activities. For example, in September 2015, several monastics from Vietnam stayed in this temple for several days and practiced Buddhism with local monastics. Originated from the same philosophy of Master Hsing Yun, these temples hold similar Buddhism teaching classes, festival activities and share similarities in temple arrangement. As it focuses more on teaching Buddhist history and philosophy instead of text chanting, Guangming Temple welcomes people regardless of their age, race, class, gender, nationality and even religious background. It is not necessary that practitioners be Buddhists—they can accept Buddhism’s life philosophy to whatever degree they want. Because of this tolerance and acceptance, Guangming Temple also has a good relationship with other western communities.
Guangming Temple
Main Shrine
Main Shrine
Main Shrine
Classroom
Calligraphy on the wall
Calligraphy
Vegetarian Dining Hall
Vegetarian Dining Hall
Food in Vegetarian dining Hall
Tea Room
Gift Shop
work cited: Michon, Nathan, and John Gill. The Life of Master Hsing Yun. Buddha’s Light Publising. Print.
Hsing, Yun. For All Living Beings: A Guide to Buddhist Practice. Los Angeles: Buddha’s Light Pub., 2010. Print.