City of Ten Thousand Buddhas

The City Of Ten Thousand Buddhas (萬佛聖城, Wànfó Shèngchéng) is an international Buddhist community and monastery founded by the Venerable Master Hsuan Hua, an important figure in Western Buddhism. It is one of the first Chinese Zen Buddhist temples in the United States, and one of the largest Buddhist communities in the Western Hemisphere.

The city is situated in Talmage, Mendocino County, California about east of Ukiah, and 110 miles (180 km) north of San Francisco. It was one of the first Buddhist monasteries built in the United States. The temple follows the Guiyang Ch'an School, one of the five houses of classical Chinese Ch'an. The city is noted for their close adherence to the vinaya, the austere traditional Buddhist monastic code.

History

The Dharma Realm Buddhist Association purchased the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas site in 1974 and established an international center there by 1976.

Originally the site housed the Mendocino State Hospital founded in 1889. There were over seventy large buildings, over two thousand rooms of various sizes, three gymnasiums, a fire station, a swimming pool, a refuse incinerator, fire hydrants, and various other facilities. A paved road wound its way through the complex, lined with tall street lamps and trees over a hundred years old. The connections for electricity and pipes for water, heating, and air conditioning were all underground. Both the architectural design and the materials used for the buildings were state...
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