Hsi Lai: The Buddha's Birthday (5/24-31)

Please join Coming West (Hsi Lai) Temple in celebration of the birth of our teacher, Shakyamuni (Gautama) Buddha, which is one of the most important events on the Buddhist calendar. During this celebration, we partake in the traditional bathing of the baby Buddha (Prince Siddhartha), and pray not only for auspiciousness in our lives, but to also emulate him and his teachings. Date Sunday, May 24, 2026-Sunday, May 31, 2026, 9:00 am-5:00 pm at Hsi Lai Temple in Hacienda Heights, San Gabriel Valley, Los Angeles County, California

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

Communal Cultivation at Hsi Lai Temple

Hsi Lai Buddhist Retreat, June 7-June 21, 2026 (ages 16-35)

Buddhist Question and Answers at Hsi Lai Temple

Hsi Lai Temple's Sangha Day Celebration, July 17, 2026

Hsi Lai Temple English Dharma Service

I became a Taoist monk for a year

(George Thompson) I lived as monk for year. Here's what happened. Wuhan pandemic lockdown

• 
  Tai chi (moving meditation) and sitting meditation in Taoism, the Way [of harmony with nature], on a holy mountain in China with Master Gu, I had to do it. Then I had to go back for the yin and the yang. For an atheist, what is the Tao?

Meditation as War (with Mara)

Pat Macpherson (Wisdom Quarterly)

"Wrath" (vyapada) is negative in Buddhism. Is it ever useful? (butuzou-world.com)

BHAVANA, West Virginia - The editors of Wisdom Quarterly spent the last two weeks on retreat in rural forest meditation cabins. The cicadas, heat lightning, sudden storms, Mothman, and chilly nights, it seemed more like exotic Asia than the back woods of America.

• Christian stories about Sakka (Magha of Macala) call him "St. Michael," a stream-enterer and ruler of two lower heavens, who defends humans in battle opposing the titans and serpents.
  

Buddhism is deep, very deep. People mainly see the discourses or sutra collection, rarely seeing the source material, just hearing about it secondhand. They rarely see the meditator's self-discipline or Vinaya collection. And almost no one ever studies the "Higher Teachings" or Abhidharma collection.

Sitting in a magnificent wooden hall with high ceilings, surrounded by a tall forest and peaceful meditators from all over the East Coast, I found myself mad like the fighting Irish.

Maybe I went wrong the very moment I thought of meditation as adversarial. But I did. I saw Mara, the dark tempter figure, as an opponent. I went up against his armies, the Cankers of sensual-desires, desiring eternal existence, clinging to wrong-views, and ignorance.

Like a wrathful Japanese deity, I thought I should fight. But all fighters are caught up in fighting until they sue for peace. Until this retreat, no one mentioned Mara had ten more armies, the Fetters binding beings to the Wheel of Samsara:

• (1) personality-belief
• (2) sceptical doubt
• (3) clinging to mere rules and rituals
• (4) sensual craving
• (5) ill-will (wrath)
• (6) craving for fine-material existence
• (7) craving for immaterial existence
• (8) conceit
• (9) restlessness
• (10) ignorance

The first five are called "lower fetters" that bind or fetter us to rebirth in sensual realm planes. The latter five are called "higher fetters" that bind beings to planes of rebirth in the two higher realms, the fine-material and immaterial spheres (A.IX.67-68; A.X.13; D.33, etc.)

The Five Hindrances are hard to overcome if we cannot relax and let go. But these Taints (asavas) and Fetters (samyojanas) which defile minds and hearts are even more subtle adversaries.

The great Earth shook (see photos). Mara is no fool. He does not come on a war elephant. He sends seductive daughters. He does not confront. He subverts with pride and delusion. He does not want beings to end up in the hells. He just never wants them to escape the cycle of rebirth.

I have much to learn.

• Introducing Japanese Deities (fudosama)
  

Suffering is most people's only Teacher (video)

"I don't need it anymore. Suffering is a wonderful teacher. Suffering is most people's only spiritual teacher. And suffering deepens you. It gradually erodes the mind-made sense of self, the ego. And for some people the point arrives when they realize, 'I have suffered enough.' And that, for example, is the case with almost all the people who come to a retreat." - Eckhart Tolle

Why go in search of a solution?
Wisdom Quarterly

What brings us to the Dharma? It's nice to think we pursue the Quest out of some noble motivation, some unquenchable thirst for ultimate truth, or the altruistic desire to save all living beings. But it is often suffering that spurs the search. Siddhartha would not have left his three luxurious palaces if it were not for suffering and the realization that all existence for everyone is beset by this wide ranging problem ancient India called dukkha. So one needn't let the initial motive deter one. Make as much progress as possible while the motivation is present, learning and meditating, being kind to others and spreading the message that there really exists a "complete end of suffering" (nirvana). Wisdom Quarterly could always use help. For soon someone or something (workaholism, busyness, illness) will come along and distract us all over again. Or we'll resort to drinking and drug use. (What do you think that prescription is?) Or we'll sink into a misery unutterable and make everyone around us miserable. The downward spiral is tricky. It has been this way for countless lives.

Eckhart Tolle: The End of Suffering

Eckhart Tolle speaks of nirvana ("the end of suffering") from a unbiased spiritual perspective and how this is brought about through saying "yes" to what is. When resistance stops, one begins to live in the now, in this moment, just as it is. And that opens one up to enlightenment:

Retreats: Religious Replenishing

Buddhism is compatible with practicing other faiths (dreamstime.com).

• Animism: the original "faith," a life dependent on the Spirits (ABC News visits a tribe deep in the Amazon, 9/23/08) VIDEO (2:28)

Replenishing the soul with religious retreats
Michael Virtanen (AP)

Hojin Kimmel is seen during breakfast at Zen Mountain Monastery in Mt. Tremper, N.Y., Thursday, March 20, 2008. Dozens of religious retreats are nestled in the Catskill Mountains and Hudson Valley of upstate New York, many open to visitors seeking quiet getaways and personal enlightenment (AP Photo/Mike Groll).

NEW LEBANON, N.Y. (7/24/08) -- At the former Shaker village, where the Taconic Mountains roll into the Berkshires and New York touches Massachusetts, Yaqin Aubert read aloud Hindu, Buddhist, Taoist, Zoroastrian, Judaic, Christian and Islamic texts during the Sunday service at the Sufi religious retreat.

With two dozen worshippers, who mainly resembled any mostly white upstate congregation, Aubert invoked "the Omnipresent God" and repeated scriptures of peace from seven religious traditions. He told a story about Jesus, whose disciples were angry at their rude treatment by several villagers in ancient Palestine, while Jesus was unbothered.

"I can only spend what is in my purse," was his reply. "All he had inside was peace," explained Aubert, a Sufi Muslim retreat guide. Peace outside comes from peace inside.

Dozens of religious retreats are nestled in the Catskill Mountains and Hudson Valley of upstate New York, many open to visitors seeking quiet getaways and personal enlightenment. Stay for meals or overnight, you'll likely be asked for a donation or pay a small fee. Come for organized retreats for weekends, weeks or longer, with guided learning, solitary prayer or meditation, and pay program fees.

At Abode of the Message in New Lebanon, 25 miles southeast of Albany, the bulletin board by the communal kitchen had a Sufi story about how an individual's inner light can illuminate an entire city. The woman washing dishes described herself as a Sufi Christian. That afternoon, there would be a discussion of the mystical, reverent 13th-century poetry of Rumi, a key figure in Sufism.

Whatever your tradition, this mystical Sufi brand of Islam invites you to deepen your faith here without converting.

The Buddhists in Mount Tremper, 50 miles southwest of Albany in the Catskills, likewise welcome visitors at certain times, recommending the weekly Sunday morning program with beginning instruction in meditation at Zen Mountain Monastery. Senior monastics said they see no conflict between Buddhist practice and someone's search for God. The quest for greater mindfulness and compassion welcomes the question. More>>