{"id":101687,"date":"2023-09-07T14:40:55","date_gmt":"2023-09-07T20:40:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/?p=101687"},"modified":"2023-09-07T14:40:55","modified_gmt":"2023-09-07T20:40:55","slug":"you-can-if-you-choose-count-this-as-yet-another-comment-on-the-controversy-about-the-proposed-cody-wyoming-temple","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/2023\/09\/you-can-if-you-choose-count-this-as-yet-another-comment-on-the-controversy-about-the-proposed-cody-wyoming-temple.html","title":{"rendered":"You can, if you choose, count this as yet another comment on the controversy about the proposed Cody Wyoming Temple."},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Within the Hsi Lai Temple in Hacienda Heights, California
(Wikimedia Commons public domain photograph)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

With my late friend Bill Hamblin (whom I miss literally every day), I published the article immediately below back on 12 October 2004. \u00a0I wrote this one; the Hsi Lai Temple sits just over the hill from the home in which my parents spent their final three decades (and where my nephew and his family currently live) and was built while they were living in the area. \u00a0There was some opposition to its construction back in the day, but not from me. \u00a0I absolutely love it.<\/p>\n

I haven\u2019t checked to see whether telephone numbers, calendar items, and times are still the same today as they were nineteen years ago. \u00a0They may be. \u00a0But the URL definitely still works.<\/p>\n

\n

Largest Buddhist<\/a> Temple in the Western Hemisphere<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Nestled against the hills of Hacienda Heights in southern California stands the largest Buddhist temple in the western hemisphere.\u00a0 The grounds are decorated with gardens and statuary traditional to ancient Chinese monasteries.\u00a0 In sharp contrast are the ranch-style homes, typical of modern, suburban, upper middle class California, that crowd about the foot of the temple \u2013 many of them, in this particular neighborhood, occupied by the robed Buddhist monks and nuns who staff the shrine.<\/p>\n

The Hsi Lai Temple \u2013 the name is pronounced something like \u201cshe lie\u201d \u2013 sits on fifteen acres whose shape, a brochure explains, resembles that of a leaf of the Bodhi Tree.\u00a0 It was while meditating under that tree, a fig, that Siddhartha Gautama of the Sakya clan \u2013 the man outsiders know as \u201cthe Buddha,\u201d although Buddhists believe that many have borne the title \u2014 attained enlightenment in sixth-century B.C. India.\u00a0 (The Sanskrit Bodhi <\/em>means \u201cenlightenment,\u201d and Buddha<\/em> means \u201cenlightened one.\u201d)<\/p>\n

The temple complex itself, built in the architectural style favored by the Ming and Ching dynasties that ruled China from the fourteenth century into the twentieth, encompasses a floor area of 102,432 square feet.\u00a0 Besides several sanctuaries, including a private \u201cRequiem Pagoda,\u201d it contains a school, a gift shop, an information center, offices, a museum, and a large dining hall where vegetarian lunches are served.<\/p>\n

The first shrine that a visitor enters is the Bodhisattva Hall.\u00a0 Bodhisattvas, in Buddhist belief, are not unlike saints in the Catholic tradition.\u00a0 They are enlightened beings \u2013 both men and women \u2014 who have vowed to serve others unselfishly, with compassion and loving kindness, and who are unswervingly committed to the classical Buddhist goal of liberating others from suffering.\u00a0 Each represents a virtue that Buddhists should emulate.\u00a0 The Bodhisattva Hall is dedicated to them.<\/p>\n

Buddhist visitors to the hall bow before the statues of five Bodhisatvas, as they also bow to statues of the Buddha, and they bring such offerings as fruit, flowers, and incense.\u00a0 Much like Catholics praying to a saint or Eastern Orthodox Christians venerating an icon, they hasten to explain that they are not bowing before an idol but simply showing respect and humility, and seeking assistance in developing the virtues that the Bodhisattvas illustrate.\u00a0 By depositing a quarter in a machine like a bubble gum dispenser, visitors seeking wisdom or guidance can purchase a plastic ball containing a \u201cdharma saying\u201d \u2013 written on a strip of paper reminiscent of a fortune cookie \u2014 in either English or Chinese.\u00a0 A monk or nun posted nearby can help to interpret these sometimes cryptic statements.\u00a0 Under the Boddhisattva statues and behind the altar is written, in elegant Chinese, the sacred Buddhist \u201cDiamond Sutra.\u201d<\/p>\n

The main shrine of the temple is formally known as the \u201cPrecious Hall of the Great Hero,\u201d and is dedicated to the historical Sakyamuni Buddha \u2013 the Buddha from the Sakya clan.\u00a0 His statue dominates the hall, in which religious services are conducted, though large statues of two other Buddhas flank him on left and right, and more than ten thousand statues of yet other Buddhas richly ornament the chamber\u2019s walls.<\/p>\n

The Chinese words Hsi Lai<\/em> mean \u201cComing to the West.\u201d\u00a0 The temple\u2019s title thus reflects the intention of the Taiwan-based Buddhist order that sponsors it (the Fo Guang Shan or \u201cBuddha\u2019s Light Mountain\u201d order) to spread Buddhism<\/a> in the West.\u00a0 Accordingly, the temple welcomes visitors between 9 AM and 5 PM every day.\u00a0 (Appointments are recommended for groups.)\u00a0 The staff offer courses and workshops on Buddhism \u2013 including meditation in both Chinese and English and the chanting of Buddhist scripture \u2013 and on such cultural topics as Buddhist dance, playing the zither, vegetarian cooking, and flower arranging.\u00a0 A special celebration of Chinese New Year designed for Americans is held annually, as are celebrations (in April, September, and November) of the birthdays of the three Buddhas of the main shrine.<\/p>\n

The Hsi Lai Temple, situated just off Hacienda Boulevard, not far south of Highway 60, can be reached by telephone at (626) 961-9697, and on the Internet at www.hsilai.org<\/a>.\u00a0 To step onto its grounds is to leave the often hectic and materialistic world of suburban California and to enter an ancient culture, exotic, fascinating, and friendly.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Arizona's<\/a>
The Snowflake Arizona Temple (LDS.org) doesn\u2019t appear to blot out the night sky, as the significantly smaller Cody Wyoming Temple is predicted by some to do. \u00a0It is, however, \u201ca house that God has permitted to be raised, wherein his name is remembered and he is praised morning and evening by men and women whom neither commerce nor sale distracts from remembrance of God and the performance of prayer.\u201d<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

And here\u2019s a favorite passage of mine from the Qur\u2019an, a passage that is typically taken, by both Muslim commentators and Western scholars, to refer \u2014 with manifestly positive appreciation \u2014 to Syriac Christian monks and to the oil lamps of a seventh-century Middle Eastern monastery:<\/p>\n

\u201cGod is the light of the heavens and the earth. \u00a0The similitude of his light is like a niche in which is a lamp, and the lamp in a glass. \u00a0The glass is like a pearly star, kindled from a blessed olive tree of neither the east nor the west, whose oil would almost glow even if no fire touched it. \u00a0Light upon light. \u00a0God guides to his light whomever he will, and he mints similitudes for the people. \u00a0And God knows all things.<\/p>\n

\u201c[Such niches are] in houses which God has permitted to be raised, wherein his name is remembered and he is praised morning and evening<\/p>\n

\u201c[By] men whom neither commerce nor sale distracts from remembrance of God and the performance of prayer and the giving of alms, fearing a day on which hearts and eyes will be overturned,<\/p>\n

\u201cThat God may reward them according to the best of their works and increase them from his graciousness.\u201d \u00a0(Qur\u2019an 24:35-38, my fairly hasty translation)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Qur\u2019an\u2019s laudatory description of Syriac Christian monasteries in late antiquity would not be far amiss if it were reapplied to today\u2019s Latter-day Saint temples. \u00a0They open early in the morning and close late at night, and they are devoted to the remembrance of God, to prayer, and to the service of our brothers and sisters, both living and dead.<\/p>\n

You can, if you choose, count this as yet another comment from me on the controversy about the proposed Cody Wyoming Temple. \u00a0(See, in chronological order,\u00a0\u201cA small tempest about a small temple in Cody,\u201d<\/a>\u00a0\u201cIn the world after the Fall,\u201d<\/a>\u00a0\u201cOnce More, on the Conflict in Cody.\u201d<\/a>\u00a0\u201cAn Update on the Continuing Crisis in Cody, Wyoming,\u201d<\/a>\u00a0\u201cPeggy Brown, Dale Brown, and the Cody Wyoming Temple,\u201d<\/a>\u00a0\u201cMy Last Comment on the Temple in Cody? (Probably Not),\u201d<\/a>\u00a0\u201cMy last post on the temple in Cody? Maybe, for a while at least,\u201d<\/a>\u00a0\u201cWhat if Sacha Cohen were to visit Cody, Wyoming?\u201d<\/a>\u00a0and \u201cSigh. Cody, Wyoming. Again.\u201d<\/a>)<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Posted from Phoenix, Arizona<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 \u00a0 With my late friend Bill Hamblin (whom I miss literally every day), I published the article immediately below back on 12 October 2004. \u00a0I wrote this one; the Hsi Lai Temple sits just over the hill from the home in which my parents spent their final three decades (and where my nephew and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":98385,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[36132,33921,36428,82,641,23782],"class_list":["post-101687","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-cody","tag-hsi-lai-buddhist-temple","tag-preserve-our-cody-neighborhoods","tag-quran","tag-temple","tag-wyoming"],"yoast_head":"\nYou can, if you choose, count this as yet another comment on the controversy about the proposed Cody Wyoming Temple.<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"    With my 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