City of Ten Thousand Buddhas: From Asylum to Monastery
The buildings were designed to house the mentally ill. Seventy large structures, over two thousand rooms, three gymnasiums, a swimming pool, a fire station -- the Mendocino State Asylum for the Insane, founded in 1889, was a small city unto itself. By 1974, the hospital had closed, and the Dharma Realm Buddhist Association purchased the sprawling campus near Ukiah, California. What had been a place of confinement became a place of voluntary austerity. The monks who moved in eat one meal a day, always before noon. Most sleep sitting upright. Some take vows of silence and wear tags reading "No Talking." On 488 acres of meadows, orchards, and institutional architecture, the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas became one of the first Chan Buddhist monasteries in the United States and one of the largest Buddhist communities in the Western Hemisphere.
The Master's Vision
Hsuan Hua visited the valley three times before committing to the purchase. He saw something in the abandoned hospital grounds that others might have missed: the natural surroundings he considered ideal for spiritual cultivation, the infrastructure already in place, and the isolation that monastic life requires. Hsuan Hua was an important figure in Western Buddhism, a Chinese monk who wanted to create an international center for propagating Buddhist teachings in the West. By 1976, the international center was established. In 1979, the City hosted a Threefold Ordination Ceremony that brought together monks from China, Vietnam, Sri Lanka, and the United States, transmitting precepts across both the Mahayana and Theravada traditions -- a rare unification in a religion with deep sectarian divides. The temple follows the Guiyang school of Chan Buddhism, one of the Five Houses of Chan, and is noted for its strict adherence to the vinaya, the traditional monastic code.
Ten Thousand Gilded Figures
The Jeweled Hall of 10,000 Buddhas, completed in 1982, anchors the spiritual life of the community. Streamers, banners, and lamps adorn the interior. In the center stands a 20-foot statue of the thousand-armed Avalokitesvara, the bodhisattva of compassion known as Guanyin in Chinese. Along the walls, 10,000 images of the Buddha -- each molded by Hsuan Hua himself -- create an effect that is overwhelming in its repetition, the same serene face multiplied until individuality dissolves into something larger. Rows of yellow bowing cushions line the red carpet. The Five Contemplations Dining Hall, also completed in 1982, seats over 3,000 people for communal meals served in the formal monastic style. Only vegetarian food is served anywhere on the campus. The Jyun Kang Vegetarian Restaurant doubles as the university cafeteria, offering vegan meals rooted in the principle of non-harming.
A Monastery That Runs Schools
Hsuan Hua founded the Instilling Goodness Elementary and Developing Virtue Secondary Schools in 1976, making the City one of the few monasteries in the world that also operates a K-12 education system. Boys and girls attend in separate divisions, studying meditation, yoga, Buddhism, and world religions alongside a standard academic curriculum. Students come from across the United States and from as far as Taiwan, China, France, Belgium, and the Netherlands, boarding on campus during the school year. Dharma Realm Buddhist University, also founded in 1976, offers a Bachelor of Liberal Arts and a Master of Arts in Buddhist Classics. In 2018, it received accreditation from the Western Association of Schools and Colleges, a milestone that validated decades of academic work in an unconventional setting.
The Discipline of Daily Life
Two practices set the City apart from most Chinese Buddhist monasteries: the monastics always wear the full-length sash over their robes, and they eat only one meal per day, always before noon. At night, most sit upright rather than lying down to sleep. Men and women occupy separate sections of the campus, with gender-neutral buildings in between. Monastics maintain no social lives, perform no outside rituals for weddings or funerals, and some choose vows of silence lasting weeks or months. Several monks and nuns refuse to touch money at all, eliminating even the thought of personal wealth. A single stick of incense is offered by one monastic for the entire assembly -- Hsuan Hua considered the personal offering of incense a superstition and noted that cheap incense damages walls and statues. The six guiding principles he established are stark in their simplicity: do not fight, do not be greedy, do not seek, do not be selfish, do not pursue personal advantage, do not lie.
Peacocks and Pheasants
The 488-acre campus includes a 10-acre organic farm certified by California Certified Organic Farmers, whose produce supplements the communal meals. The farm's main adversary is not weather or insects but the monastery's own peacocks. The birds roam freely, accustomed to people and entirely unintimidated, and they eat or damage a significant portion of the crops. Countermeasures have included covering plants, relocating birds to a walnut farm, and simply planting more than needed. During special Dharma Assemblies, the monastery holds Liberating of Life ceremonies in which animals -- especially pheasants and chukar partridges -- are purchased from hunting preserves and released on the grounds. Deer and squirrels wander the campus alongside the peafowl. It is a place where the Buddhist principle of compassion toward all living things creates practical complications that the community addresses with patience rather than force.
From the Air
Located at 39.13°N, 123.16°W near Talmage, California, about 2 miles east of Ukiah and 110 miles north of San Francisco. From altitude, the campus is identifiable as a cluster of institutional buildings amid meadows and orchards, distinctly different from the surrounding agricultural land. The old hospital-era layout is still visible -- paved roads winding through the complex, large buildings arranged in an institutional grid. Nearest airport is Ukiah Municipal Airport (KUKI), approximately 3 miles west. The Russian River Valley lies to the east, and the coastal mountains rise to the west. Clear weather is common in the inland valley, though winter fog can settle in the low-lying areas.