Avalokitesvara Enlightenment Day (8/1)

Avalokitesvara Bodhisattva

This weekend (either Saturday or Sunday), Hsi Lai Temple will be conducting a noontime offering to the great Kwan Yin Pusa (Guanyin Bodhisattva), who began as the male deva Avalokita (Avalokitesvara).

It is unknown which day it will be because it is officially posted as "Sunday, 8/1, at 10:00 am, but Sunday is 8/2, Aug. 2, 2026. So maybe it starts on Saturday at 10 and culminates with noontime offerings at 12 the next day? Call the temple for proper details.

• Hsi Lai (Coming West) Temple
• 3456 Glenmark Drive (near 60 Fwy)
• Hacienda Heights, LA, CA 91745
• info@ibps.org, (626) 961-9697

It will be located in the Hsi Lai Temple main shrine at the top of the steps near the giant incense cauldron that looks like the Liberty Bell. Fortunately, for the Fo Guang Shan (lit. "Buddha's* Light Mountain") Movement Buddhists of the world and others, there will be a Livestream (live from Los Angeles):

Buddha's Light Mountain

Fo Guang Shan (FGS, Chinese 佛光山, Pinyin Fó guāng shān, lit. "Buddha's Light Mountain") is an international Chinese Mahāyāna Buddhist organization and monastic order. It is based in Taiwan and practices Humanistic Buddhism, whose roots are traced to the Linji School of Chan Buddhism.

The headquarters, Fo Guang Shan Monastery, is located in Dashu District, Kaohsiung, Buddhist Taiwan, and is the largest Buddhist monastery in the island country .

[Of course, mainland China lays claim to Taiwan as an integral part of the PRC (People's Republic of China) just as it insists that Bon/Vajrayana Buddhist Tibet and similarly oppressed Muslim Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in the northwest are part and parcel of the nominally communist actively capitalist post-kingdom].

• Buddhism in Taiwan
• Buddhism in China

The organization is also one of the largest charity organizations in Taiwan. Its counterpart for laypeople is known as the Buddha's Light International Association. Founded in 1967 by Hsing Yun, the order promotes Humanistic Buddhism and is known for its efforts in the modernization of Chinese Buddhism.

The modernist order is famous for its use of technology, and its temples are often furnished with the latest equipment [1, 2]. Hsing Yun's stated position for Fo Guang Shan is that it is an "amalgam of all Eight Schools of Chinese Buddhism." More

• (*Sadly, while it sounds like one big, united Buddhist family, in fact the Buddha in the title refers to the "Cosmic Buddha" Amitabha, as in Amitofu, not the historical one from Earth, who is lovingly called the Sage of Scythian Shakya/Saka Clan, Shakyamuni, Siddhartha Gautama) 
• Hsi Lai Temple, Los Angeles; CC Liu, Crystal Q. (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly Wiki edit FGS