At the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas in Ukiah, California, we talk to professors, monastics, and laypeople about the acquisition of the historic property and the 600-mile bowing pilgrimage that inaugurated it, the transformative relationship between monasticism and education, and the importance of community as the City continues to evolve and expand.

Interview by Leah Chase

The music in this episode is by Rev. Heng Sure. "Bow Down, Turn Around" and "It's Called the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas," recorded in 2025 and 2007, respectively, are distributed by Dharma Radio Music. Additional music is by Blue Dot Sessions.

[bell chimes]

[nun chanting in Chinese]

[bell chimes] [nun chanting in Chinese]

[bell chimes] [nun drumming]

[nun chanting in Chinese]

[bell chimes] [nun drumming]

ROGER KELLERMAN: I was hitchhiking. I was in Oregon at Crater Lake, which is about at least 500 miles from here. And I was going to pack up. I usually stay in a motel for the night. But I… This car—this truck comes along with people in the back of it. And I guess in those days you could do it. And I said, "I'd like a ride. I'm going to Ukiah." So I jumped in the back of a pickup and drove through the night and got here July 4th, 3:00 AM. And I walked straight in it. The feeling was like coming home.

LEAH CHASE: The City of Ten Thousand Buddhas is home today to 300 people living on roughly 1,000 acres of mostly undeveloped open country in Northern California. What has been developed since its founding in nineteen seventy-four is an all-encompassing Buddhist community of integrated institutions: a city not only in name, but in function. Surrounding the monastery with its various Dharma and meditation halls, there are K-12 schools, a university, library, student dormitories, a residential neighborhood for laypeople, an organic farm, dining halls, and a vegetarian restaurant. Though all of this still relies upon donations from overseas organizations, the City supplies its own water and grows some of its own produce on site. Solar panels generate its electricity. Volunteers living in the City and in the nearby city of Ukiah maintain its ambitious scope and scale, serving as maintenance workers, farmers, university administrators, and teachers.

All of this started with one man: Venerable Master Hsuan Hua. Born in China in nineteen eighteen, he spent many years studying classic Chinese philosophical texts and training in various monasteries across China. With the help of his disciples in the United States, he established the Buddhist Lecture Hall in San Francisco in nineteen fifty-eight. A decade later, one pivotal retreat in the summer of nineteen sixty-eight would lay the groundwork for the founding of the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas. It was called the Śūraṅgama Study and Practice Summer Session, where some of his earliest disciples, like Doug Powers and Marty Verhoeven, were in attendance.

DOUG POWERS: He was offering a certain kind of extension of a kind of freedom that we were kind of working for in the '60s and '70s.

LEAH CHASE: This is Doug Powers.

DOUG POWERS: I went over to the monastery as a summer six-week phenomenological investigation of a monastery. And we were just hippies in the '60s, you know, in Berkeley. So from that time there was about, I don't know, 11 people in this warehouse. And so I went over there and did sessions, you know, like week-long sessions every few months.

LEAH CHASE: The summer session was held in the Buddhist Lecture Hall in an old warehouse on 15th Street. Over the course of 96 days, Master Hua lectured on the Śūraṅgama Sūtra from five o'clock in the morning to 10 o'clock at night, taking only one half-day break every Saturday. By the end of the 96 days, almost every student had taken refuge. But Master Hua's vision was much greater than one lecture hall. In nineteen seventy-three, the search was on to find a site upon which they could build the city of his dreams.

DOUG POWERS: We were there for several—quite a few years before… I actually drove him up to look at the— Master Hua—up to look at the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas. We went to the current Buddha Hall and I played basketball. That was a basketball court.

He said, "Well, I think we might want to buy this." And I said, "What would we possibly do with this? We've got, you know, 14 people. There's no way that we can handle this place. It's, like, huge. It’s got all these buildings and stuff.” He said, "No, no, no," he says, "it'll be totally filled, no problem." But I had no imagination of that, you know, so… It just seemed like a lot of buildings and a lot of problems, you know?

LEAH CHASE: Long before it was the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas, this was the Mendocino State Hospital. Established in eighteen eighty-nine, the hospital was host to a variety of rehabilitation programs, most notably for the substance abuse patients, psychiatric patients, and the criminally insane. It boasted 70 large buildings and over 2,000 rooms, three gymnasiums, a fire station, a swimming pool, and a basketball court. At one point there were about 6,000 people living on the grounds, including both patients and staff. Ultimately, the facilities were closed in nineteen seventy-two, due to extreme water shortages.

Doug Powers was responsible for the acquisition of the property. During negotiations, he served as a middleman between the owner and Master Hua, as the Master could not speak much English and the owner spoke no Chinese. Master Hua purchased the property in nineteen seventy-six, and within two years, the City was officially opened. This quick turnaround was due in part to a sustainable strategy for the City's renovation. All 70 buildings were preserved in their original state and repurposed to accommodate the practical and spiritual goals of its new hosts.

MARTIN VERHOEVEN: We were on a shoestring. He came over with nothing from China. Nothing.

LEAH CHASE: This is Marty Verhoeven, another of Master Hua’s earliest disciples.

MARTIN VERHOEVEN: And so everything was very frugal and very parsimonious at the beginning. And one of the first buildings he looked at is the Tathagata Monastery for the men now that used to be the facility for the criminally insane.

DOUG POWERS: Well, I mean the buildings are actually very incredible buildings, so you wouldn't want to tear— most of them you wouldn't want to tear down anyway, because they're constructed at a time when, man, nobody builds buildings like these anymore. It's just reimagining your kind of— the way you want to come at it in terms of how you're going to use the space.

MARTY VERHOEVEN: This place was run on a central boiler system that was extremely expensive, huge boilers and operating greasy rooms and everything like that. Somebody said at some point, "We should take this thing down. It's no longer functional, it's ecologically disastrous." And somebody says, "We don't have an Earth Store hall.” And so “Wow, let's build one, or let's make one from this." And so that's one thing you go to.

All of the schools came from somebody's idea of, “What do we do with these old Tudor buildings that were hospital wards?” Let's turn this into a school. “Oh, we got a gymnasium here. Where are we going to bow and worship?” Well, let's turn the gymnasium into a Buddha hall. “Where are we going to get the images?” Let's make them. Master Hua would every morning wake up and craft four little Buddha images and gild them in gold and then drive up here and put them in the hall. And this—all those little Buddha images in the hall were handmade by him. This is how you do it. You don't go out and buy them or import them. You make them. So I think just that even this room you're in now is converted with needing space for people like us and faculty.

We had major assassinations, the two Kennedys and King in the '60s, and then the anti-war movement and civil rights, and then the beginning of the '70s into our period, the environmental consciousness that we were really ruining the planet. So there's a sense of wanting to do something. Conventional engagement wasn't doing the job. I was also inspired because I had read the autobiography of Master Xu Yun, “Empty Cloud,” and he did one of these pilgrimages in China. It's called three steps, one bow. And that really moved me.

LEAH CHASE: In nineteen seventy-seven, just one year after the City's opening, Marty Verhoeven, named Dharma Master Heng Chau at the time, embarked on a two-year pilgrimage from Gold Wheel Monastery in Los Angeles to the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas. With him was Dharma Master Heng Sure, who had taken a vow of silence. Together they traveled 600 miles, taking one bow every three steps for the entire journey.

MARTIN VERHOEVEN: Heng Sure had the idea to do the pilgrimage. I crazily volunteered to go along. I had no idea what I was getting into.

REV. HENG SURE: ♪ Leave the false and find the true ♪

♪ 10,000 Buddhas inside of you ♪

♪ Bow down and turn around ♪

♪ Look inside and see ♪

MARTIN VERHOEVEN: I saw myself sort of like John Muir, you know, backpacking on the highway with redwood trees and the ocean, you know, and a great adventure. And of course it wasn't anything like that at all for the most part. So that quickly changed, but Master Hua confirmed the notion. We said we wanted to bow for world peace and to turn back some of these disasters. And he said, "Well, you know, all disasters and all our problems begin with human greed, anger, and stupidity. And the only way to turn that around is get rid of it first in your own heart. Because by bowing selflessly to others, you will reduce yourself and then maybe you'll have an impact on the world." So it changed from what our expectations were, somewhat romantic and, you know, chaotic, quixotic sort of, to something much more real.

And so it was largely a silent pilgrimage. And at night we put on an oil lamp, we stayed in an old station wagon to move a mile a day, camped it at night and studied the Avataṃsaka Sūtra. We would translate that together and write it down and kind of use that as a stimulus for the daily life we were living.

ROGER KELLERMAN: When I was still a layman here, one of my jobs was to be a cook.

LEAH CHASE: This is Roger Kellerman, who you heard from at the beginning of the episode.

ROGER KELLERMAN: And at that time, I know you've interviewed Marty, he was doing his pilgrimage and he was quite near to Ukiah. So we'd drive out with the lunch for him, because most of the times they would cook for themselves on a little primus stove. But when they got near, we started taking the food out to him, and it was really moving to see. They really had a presence (inaudible) about them.

MARTIN VERHOEVEN: I was Man Friday. I was supposed to be the Dharma protector. But I bowed with Heng Sure, did the cooking, the meals and so forth, and I would look at our map and think, "Oh my God, we’ve come from Los Angeles, we're here, and we got how far to go yet and how many months?" And basically he said, "If you're doing this right, you don't look back to where you were. It's gone. And do not look ahead to where you are going because it's not yet come. Just pay attention to the here and now. If you pay attention to the here and now, and if you're doing that, that's called ‘yi xin.’ “That's single-mindedness. And if you step in that way, you will certainly arrive. However, if you look back and look forward, you not only will not arrive, but you'll miss where you are."

Well, first of all, I didn't really meet him in '75, '76. I met him prior to that but in dreams only. I came over based on those dreams. Within a few months I shaved my head and became a monk. And two days later, on the highway. That was it.

ROGER KELLERMAN: If you're going to get into this, you’re getting, you know, kind of, "Let's go up the—not just do the trek through the Himalayas, but climb Everest." You know, you go for it.

[laughing]

I became a novice in October, nineteen eighty. I got the full—it's called full ordination in October, nineteen eighty-two. I returned to lay life in February '94, nineteen ninety-four. When you take refuge, which is like formally becoming a Buddhist, you get a book, a certificate of your taking refuge. And this is the one I got in nineteen seventy-eight. A bit of biographical information and a signature from the Venerable Master and his chop. We call it chop, his seal. 23rd of July, nineteen seventy-eight. He would sign them personally, and he would give you your—it's called a Dharma name. Even as a layman, you get a Buddhist name.

MARTIN VERHOEVEN: He said, "This is not a place where there are 10,000 Buddhas." "Well, why did you give it that name?" He said, "It's a place where 10,000 Buddhas will come, will be made." "Made from who?" He said, "From you guys." He said, “I didn't come here to make statues of bronze and wood and marble. I came to make living, flesh and body Buddhist sages, bodhisattvas, from the likes of all of you.” And he said, "In the future, this will be a smelting foundry for people realizing their full human potential."

LEAH CHASE: The Tathagata Monastery has been home to the monks since the City's inception. Across campus, the nuns live in similar quarters, known as the Joyous Giving House. Situated along the expansive countryside and quaint nature trails, these monasteries lend themselves to spiritual cultivation in quietude.

[water trickling]

And yet just next door are the schools, teeming with children at recess on the playground

[children singing indistinctly]

or talking excitedly in the classroom, a chorus of noise and energy.

[students singing]

One might imagine that these two institutions are in constant conflict. A monastery requires solitude, while a school requires camaraderie. How is it that these two places are able to not only coexist, but to actually complement each other?

JIN JR SHR: It was an Earth Store Retreat. This was in nineteen eighty-eight. And Master Hsuan Hua brought along a group of his delegation of monks and nuns and laypeople and hosted an Earth Store Retreat in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. And I was blessed to be able to go to the retreat with my family. And I remember this huge hall filled with people every day and this atmosphere and setting whereby people are reciting, bowing, and listening to the humble teachings of Master Hsuan Hua and his disciples left a very deep imprint in me.

LEAH CHASE: This is Jin Jr Shr. Since coming from Malaysia, she has taken on several important roles in the City as a nun, a professor at Dharma Realm Buddhist University, and the principal of the girls’ elementary and secondary schools. A mere 12 years old, when she met Master Hua, she could not have foreseen her career in both education and religious life in the City. And yet, she was instantly drawn to its diverse opportunities.

JIN JR SHR: I had a chance to come to the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas in, I believe, nineteen ninety-one. And it was during the Water, Land, Air Dharma Assembly, and it was very many international devotees and disciples came. So the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas were packed with monastics and laypeople. And I just fell in love with this place. There was no specific things or moments that touched me, but I just had this thought that I wanted to come to school at the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas and to attend Instilling Goodness Developing Virtue School.

LEAH CHASE: The Instilling Goodness Elementary School and Developing Virtue Secondary School, also known as IGDVS, are accredited private schools covering kindergarten through 12th grade, which offer both the standard state-approved curriculum in social studies, English, mathematics, and science, as well as electives in meditation, virtue studies, and Buddhism. At present, there are about 105 students. Kindergarten through second grade are co-ed. From third grade through high school, the students are divided into boys and girls. Established in nineteen seventy-six, the schools have been pillars of education and moral development for the City's youth going on 50 years.

JIN JR SHR: I wanted very badly to ask him about coming to school here. There was a long line of disciples who wanted to speak to him. And finally, it was my turn. And I asked him, you know, "Can I come to school here?" And his response was, "I can't answer your question." And I somehow didn't quite understand his answer. Only in the recent years when I actually, in fact, when I was writing my dissertation, that I realized this first direct communication with Master Hua was really profound—profoundly Chan. He was really reaching out to me to kind of bring out that nature in me that he didn't need to make a decision. The decision was actually mine.

I actually returned to his—the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas during his nirvana. It was a big shock. And I think within a week or even shorter, once I heard about his nirvana, I packed up my bags, and I told myself, I'm not coming back. It was actually at that moment that I resolved to be a monastic. And I had beautiful black hair at that time, long, beautiful black hair that I adored. And within the week I cut it, donated it, and it was a very, very memorable moment. Such an important starting point. Yeah.

JIN CHUAN SHR: So I came two thousand five up here I would say really kind of answering a deeper calling in my heart, wanting to walk a spiritual path. But it was very strange, I have to be honest. I remember, every morning, I would wake up and my first thought would be, you know, "Toto, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore."

[chuckles]

LEAH CHASE: While some come to the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas to pursue an education, others come to undergo monastic training and go through ordination. A rare few do both. Jin Chuan Shr is one of these few. Growing up in Silicon Valley and graduating from Stanford with a BS in physics and an MA in religious studies, he eventually moved to the City to find spiritual fulfillment. He spent his first five years in the City as a lay volunteer, before entering the monastic training program and becoming ordained in twenty thirteen. He then went on to receive an MA in Buddhist classics at Dharma Realm Buddhist University, where he is now an Assistant Professor.

JIN CHUAN SHR: In the monastery, it’s a very tough schedule, at least the training here. You start at four AM. You have—after—for one-hour chanting. You have another hour of bowing. Six to seven, you have meditation. Seven to eight, recite an hour of sūtra. Eight to ten, you do work and service. Ten thirty, you do a meal chant. 11 o'clock, you have your one meal a day to twelve. Twelve thirty, we do Great Compassion Repentance for an hour and a half. Two o'clock, you go back to work to four o'clock. You have about maybe 45 minutes, an hour to kind of clean up and everything. Six thirty to seven thirty, evening chanting. Seven thirty to nine, lecture. Nine to nine thirty, mantra recitation. Every day. Except on the weekends, you add another four hours of recitation. That's the schedule. That's the schedule, okay? It’s pretty intense.

But what happens though, I find is—is you train in the external form, but the internal heart can actually feel very oppressed. And that was my experience inside. I felt like I don't actually really want to do this. You know, I felt kind of like, this kind of in— almost like an inner resentment for what's going on. And my sense is the training was actually a bit like the military. But when you actually look at the Buddhist tradition in itself, especially in India, he didn't set it up on a military model. He set it on a mentorship model. So when monks come to train, you find a mentor, and it's through the mutual care of a mentor and a student that the Dharma goes into the heart, and then you can really embody it.

JIN JR SHR: I started as a tutor of three students at the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas. After being offered a tutor job, I was invited to actually teach Buddhist studies to a group of teenagers, a group of teenage girls. And it was a very challenging experience trying to translate my understanding of Buddhism to teenagers in the West, in the United States. And during that time, it actually motivated me to further my studies and to actually learn how to teach better. And that was when I decided to pursue my college education.

LEAH CHASE: Jin Jr Shr first attended San Francisco State University in two thousand and five to study English literature. After graduating, she pursued an MA at Stanford School of Education and returned to the City to teach English and social studies. She then continued her education at Teacher's College at Columbia University, obtaining an Ed.D in twenty seventeen. Such an academic track record is quite atypical for monastics, whose study and practice is focused solely on the Dharma. But Jin Jr Shr sees her path as ultimately productive for both herself and the Buddhist youth.

JIN JR SHR: I see my role as a nun as truly rooted in teaching. But traditionally in the monastic setting, the role of the nun and being a scholar are—don't necessarily come together. But I believe Dharma Realm Buddhist University and Instilling Goodness Developing Virtue School really provided that setting for me to actually test this hybrid identity. To me, you know, Buddhist education is really about developing the inherent potentials in the youth, in the students. So I'm always thinking about, you know, developing curriculum and pedagogy that can actually ignite that light within them.

JIN CHUAN SHR: I was born here. And so maybe like 95% American.

[laughs]

5% Chinese. And so what I found was, in the monastery that the Dharma as it was being presented to me as I tried to apply it actually didn't work. It wasn't the right medicine. And I didn't have a trust that the training would actually really be suitable for me.

But what was a kind of a key moment for me was one of my friends basically, although he's kind of a very straight talker, he said to me, "If you don't become a monk here, I wouldn't want your karma." I said, "What? What do you mean by, ‘you wouldn't want my karma?’" He said, "Because you've been here for all these years.” You know, five years, and before that I was also at Stanford, very much part of the community. Says, "So all these years you've been here, and you had a chance to learn from a lot of the senior teachers, like Doug and Marty and some of the monastics. When you leave, all that experience will be gone. That bridge will be gone, and you'll be responsible. [chuckles] So that's the karma.” I said, "Really? Wow."

And so I remember going back to my room, and before that I had a lot of doubts like what I was supposed to do with myself. It was almost like a camera going into focus like [clicks tongue]. Actually I'm supposed to become a monk here. And I think it came from a sense of gratitude for all the things I've received here and a wish to carry it on.

LEAH CHASE: Jin Chuan Shr has since served as an instructor for the Sangha and Laity Training Program, a seminary program for aspiring monks and nuns seeking full ordination. He also takes his experience to the greater Bay Area, training novice monks at Redwood Vihara in the Santa Cruz mountains and teaching at the Berkeley Buddhist Monastery. Nevertheless, the City remains his primary home.

The Dharma Realm Buddhist University, or DRBU, was founded in nineteen seventy-six, exactly 50 years ago by Master Hua. The name itself is aspirational. The Dharma Realm represents the entire universe, an interconnected web of all phenomena, both physical and spiritual originating from the mind. Like its name suggests, DRBU offers a comprehensive curriculum intended to combine education with religious practice. Students have the opportunity to earn an undergraduate and master's degree, as well as a graduate certificate in Buddhist translation. Doug Powers and Marty Verhoeven are both professors at DRBU, with Doug serving as president since twenty twenty-five.

MARTIN VERHOEVEN: If you look at Buddhism properly, it is an educational system. It is not a religious, dogmatic, faith-based belief system. It's a transformative teaching by definition. Therefore, there can't be any Buddhism without education.

I remember traveling with him in Asia, and he would criticize the new temples that were going up, and I said, "Well what’s wrong? They're beautiful, they're spacious. They have these wonderful marbles from Italy." He says, "You're just going to get sunburnt through it." I said, "What do you mean?" He said, "You come and you go [gasps in amazement]. You look up." And he says, "Where are the classrooms? Where are the boards? Where are the books? Every temple, every monastery should be a learning institution."

JIN CHUAN SHR: For those who do have an expectation that monasteries are supposed to be quiet, secluded places, like the question would be like, "Why do we have schools here? They're bothering us," you know? Or people who think we just want a school and we don't want to have monastics around like, "Gosh, why don't we just do a school? These monastics make things too rigid," you know? But to me, you lose the actual transformative quality when you have all these different diversity things rubbing against each other, like Chinese and Western, or Asian and Western communities rubbing against each other. It's through that friction something starts to really—like how you create fire, maybe, say, or how you polish a pearl.

MARTIN VERHOEVEN: Buddhism as a transformative teaching is not passing on a body of knowledge or beliefs or doctrines. It's about experiencing a transformational awakening or change in your heart. Therefore, it's really more like a laboratory science than, say, just a history of science course. And without the laboratory experience, you're only getting half. One of the great masters said, "It's like the two wings of a bird. One wing is theory and knowledge, but the other is experiential practice."

DOUG POWERS: The thing is, as far as students, it's an incredibly rich opportunity. So they're not required to go to anything, you know, any of the ceremonies or go to any sessions or anything. But they're in the midst of it, and they can participate in any amount they want of that. They can go to sessions. We have—actually, a fair number of students actually do the Winter Chan session, which is pretty rigorous, right? So it—what it does is it gives an opportunity for there to be a cross-fertilization.

ROGER KELLERMAN: If you look at that front gate, on the one side it's got the Tathagata Monastery, and the other side it's got Dharma Realm Buddhist University. If we take Tathagata Monastery’s name as a symbol for the spiritual side and the Dharma Realm Buddhist University as a symbol—because we have the schools—as the education side, and I see both flourish.

[people chanting] [bell chiming] [knocking of wooden fish]

ROGER KELLERMAN: When you think of Buddhism, you think of, you know, "Don't bother me, I'm concentrating." But this is also Buddhism. The work is also Buddhism. I mean, when I first got here, I thought this was almost cowboy Buddhism. We're running around trying to fix things in the middle of—you know, it's not quite like it is now. It was much more amateurish. But we had to keep the facility going. But it was, “Is this Buddhism?” “Yes, this is Western Buddhism.”

[chuckles]

You don't go and call out the repair man. You go and fix it yourself.

LEAH CHASE: While many of the old buildings have been remodeled over the many years since the City's founding, plans for new construction are underway. At the foot of Wonderful Enlightenment Mountain, a new monastery is being built, including a new Buddha hall, a precept recitation hall and library, and a male dormitory with about 50 rooms for the monks.

JIN CHUAN SHR: The intention here is to actually have this be the monastery primarily, and it opens up the front campus to be focused on education, so then the university and the schools can really develop. So out here it's very quiet, and you can see the mountain is a very beautiful, secluded spot. And so what happens is the front area kind of receives the public, and then you have the schools. It's the kind of the next area. And then you have this more secluded area for those who want to kind of more focus on practice.

I believe in the future there's even plans to build kind of small huts, kind of places for secluded practice on the mountain. This is the male dormitory. So the monks are going to be living here on both sides. And this is all the kind of store room and classroom buildings. And some lay residents will be staying in the back over there. So this way everyone could be living together and practicing together.

Master Hua's vision was to really have, like, a whole city, right? And he felt that having something built here in the back would really allow the City then to really kind of flourish. It's like zoning, right, from a—if you think about a city zoning, you need things zoned properly for things then to grow. Like you don't want, like, a commercial district right next to the residential district right next to the industrial district. They're all kind of separated out. So this is a very big shift for the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas because in the past, you know, we were all living in the front. And so this place has been under—kind of as a project that people were thinking about for actually decades.

LEAH CHASE: At the time of filming, the development had yet to officially open, but as of late April, the monks have begun to move in.

MARTIN VERHOEVEN: So these buildings are like canvases that haven't been drawn on yet. And that was part of his thing was to stimulate your imagination from a goodness point and wisdom point to see what you could do. His philosophy was based on a Chinese philosophical concept of root and branches, and he was meant to establish the root, and the branches then will flourish from that. And Doug and I are finding this, that another generation of students come in in their teens or their 20s, and they have ideas—branch ideas from this fruit that we never imagined in terms of arts and theater and video, audio-visual, and the whole thing and the whole online enterprise, the whole shifting, ecological—moving this into energy, solar energy. Things that never would occur to me.

DOUG POWERS: All this activity has to be brought back to a kind of really profound humanism. I mean, all this technology and all this is about the human.

ROGER KELLERMAN: You asked about what I want to see in the next 10 years, you know? Yes, I want to see more monks, more university students, more school students. We've got this big place, let's use it.

FRANKLYN WU: I came here when I was 14, so came here for high school. So I came in nineteen ninety-one in July. In July here in Ukiah, it's very dry and very, very hot. But the day I arrived, it rained, and that kind of stuck with me. It’s sort of my association of the smell of City of Ten Thousand Buddhas.

SHARI EPSTEIN: So when I was growing up like we moved here in, I guess, ‘76. Master Hua was here a lot and would even teach—teach us. So he would come and teach classes in the mornings, and the whole community would join, including the kids. Sometimes that would be matching couplets, which is a form of Chinese poetry. He would put the first line to be matched up at night, and then everyone would come in the morning and match it. You know, the people who were good at Chinese, the people who were learning Chinese, the monks and the nuns, the kids, everyone had a chance to do it. And then he would comment on your matches. Somebody would write the passage up on the board and so you'd have the evening to prepare, and then your name was picked at random to talk about that passage of text. One monk, one nun, one layman, one laywoman. Sometimes the kids would even go up. And he would just speak at the end.

LEAH CHASE: Shari Epstein and Franklyn Wu offer unique perspectives on the City. After having grown up here and gone through the IGDV school system, they decided to pursue higher education and careers outside the City. Shari attended Stanford University for her undergraduate, master's, and doctoral degrees, returning to the City every summer to teach. Franklyn attended McGill and Stanford universities and worked as an engineer in Silicon Valley. But even before they left, they knew they would return. Today, they both serve on the board of directors and teach at DRBU.

FRANKLYN WU: I always thought that I would want to do something to contribute back, to, like, be connected to the community, to contribute back in some way. I didn't know what that form was going to take. I had been a board member of this huge organization for 25 years. So I saw a lot of, like, the property transactions and the building plans and all of that. The whole building expansion project in the back. I think that it is both growing and also at a place of crossroads. So I think a lot—it's like a lot of religious communities. It's aging. And then the question has always been about how do we welcome more members? I think that's tough, especially when, like, a very, very respected founder passes away, when you have that transition. That happens to many, many different communities.

SHARI EPSTEIN: That was a huge transition. And now maybe we're having yet another transition.

FRANKLYN WU: Yeah, potentially. So then like people that was his direct disciples are also at a time when they are about to retire very soon.

JIN JR SHR: I think Master Hsuan Hua intently founded this place as a Buddhist city. Master Hsuan Hua left us, you know, four great legacies: you know, developing the Sangha, advancing education, promoting interfaith dialogues, and translating our Buddhist texts.

LEAH CHASE: These four great legacies extend Master Hua's vision for the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas from nineteen seventy-three to today around the unified goal of the Dharma Realm. A world inside a city with every element attuned to the singular goal of cultivating the Dharma. And as new buildings rise with new programs to fill them, the community continues to look for ways to connect with the world beyond.

SHARI EPSTEIN: So sometime when I was young, they had this World Religions Conference with representatives from all different religions, and it was very exciting. But some local evangelical Christians heard of this and decided to demonstrate right outside the gate. And they had big signs, bullhorns, and they were saying all sorts of things, and demonstrating against what they thought was, you know, this horrible stuff happening at the Buddhist temple. And I remember driving by to go to the conference and feeling a little bit scared. I think being here in this community, it was always so open that I hadn't experienced that kind of religious division before.

And so we went in and I thought, "Oh no, what's going to happen?" And during lunch, Master Hua disappeared by himself. He used to drive, as Franklyn said, this old, not renovated or fancy golf cart when he was older. And apparently we learned afterwards that he went out by himself and talked to the demonstrators, and he said, "Listen, it's very hot"—this was during the summer—"and you shouldn't stay out here. You should come in. If you have something to say, come in. Come and join us." And they came into the big dining hall, and they ate. And a couple of them actually got up to talk. And that was just such an amazing experience to me.

ROGER KELLERMAN: I was looking for community. Slowly, as I've gotten older, you know, my family, my close family has passed away in England. There's not much family there. And this is my family. They’ve got Chinese, Americans, you know. I don't quite see it as, you know, distinct. You know, they’re all—we're all together here. And yes, there are different—obviously, you see different nationalities here, but it's kind of like family.

SHARI EPSTEIN: 10,000 is “wan” in Chinese, which means myriad. So it represents unlimited potential. And in Buddhism we believe that all beings have the Buddha nature. And so 10,000 Buddhas represents all living beings’ potential for complete wisdom and awakening.

FRANKLYN WU: In Chinese, sometimes they would say, like, “conglin,” or forest. So forest could be, like, a way of, like a Buddhist location, a Buddhist community or something. And so in that sense, the City has this sort of infinite depth, just like a forest. And I feel like it is—it is the place where multiple things, functions, identities, interactions, like infinite, or—but many of these can really come forth.

JIN JR SHR: To those of us who are immersed in this environment, we don't see a distinction between monasticism and—and the City. The City is a—is monasticism. And monasticism is the City.

MARTIN VERHOEVEN: When I first came into the monastery, it was a refuge from the life I was living, pretty, you know, wild '60s. And then to do the pilgrimage, I didn't really—I was apprehensive about going out on the highway. And I asked the Master, "What do I do?" And he says, "When you go on the highway, be as if you never left the monastery." "Okay, I'll do that." And then after two and a half years of bowing, it was time to come back. And I was like, “I'm apprehensive about leaving the road and the highway to go back to the monastery.” And he says, "And when you come back to the monastery, be as if you never left the highway." And he said, "If you can get these two together, you will have arrived." And I think that hits at that philosophy you're talking about. The highway, the monastery, the world, the religious thing are one and the same. So that's what the spirit of this is. Still working on it, but…

[laughing]

[light guitar music]

REV. HENG SURE: ♪ It's called the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas ♪

♪ It's called the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas ♪

LEAH CHASE: A big thank you to Roger Kellerman, Doug Powers, Marty Verhoeven, Jin Jr Shr, Jin Chuan Shr, Franklyn Wu, and Shari Epstein for joining the show. The City of Ten Thousand Buddhas is free and open to the public, hosting a variety of community events and sessions throughout the year. You can learn more about the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas and all their upcoming events and programs by visiting www.cttbusa.org.

The music for this episode is by Rev. Heng Sure. The songs “Bow Down, Turn Around” and “It’s Called the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas” were recorded in twenty twenty-five and two thousand and seven, respectively, and distributed by Dharma Radio Music. Other various recordings are from Blue Dot Sessions.

Until next time, this has been “The Ho Center for Buddhist Studies at Stanford” podcast.