City of Ten Thousand Buddhas

City of Ten Thousand Buddhas
The mountain gate to the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas
Basic information
Location	2001 Talmage Road, Ukiah, California 95482
Affiliation	Guiyang Ch'an
Country	United States
Website	http://www.cttbusa.org/
Architectural description
Founder	Hsuan Hua
Completed	1974

The City Of Ten Thousand Buddhas (Chinese: 萬佛聖城; pinyin: Wànfó Shèngchéng, Vietnamese: Chùa Vạn Phật Thánh Thành) is an international Buddhist community and monastery founded by 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 2 miles (3.2 km) 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 its close adherence to the vinaya, the austere traditional Buddhist monastic code.

The Dharma Realm Buddhist Association purchased the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas site in 1974 and established an international center there by 1976. In 1979, the Third Threefold Ordination Ceremony at the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas was held where monks from China, Vietnam, Sri Lanka and the US transmitted the precepts. It was considered unique as it represented both the Mahayana and Theravada traditions.

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 of the art. The heating and air conditioning were centrally controlled.