Together we’ll build the Buddha Hall
A Spiritual Home for All Beings:
The Buddha Hall is a new two-story, 17,000 square foot temple and library, the center of spiritual activity at Sravasti Abbey. It will support Sravasti Abbey’s daily meditation practices, regular sangha and chanting rituals, teachings, retreats, pujas, memorials, and special Dharma events. It is a practice and learning center for monastics and lay practitioners to bring forth the goodness in our own hearts, and then share the tools with others. In the Buddha Hall, we’ll learn together how to replace anxiety, anger, and fear with love, compassion, and wisdom.
Purposeful Design and Features:
The Abbey community is so excited to be able to increase our ability to offer the Dharma to people far and wide. The Buddha Hall will greatly improve the quality of streamed and recorded teachings to share on YouTube and other platforms. Adorned with beautiful Buddha images, its three meditation halls, library, classrooms, and quiet spaces invite us to delve deeply into Buddha’s profound teachings. The main hall will feature a large, central altar with a ten-foot statue of Shakyamuni Buddha, flanked by smaller statues of Venerable Ananda and Venerable Mahaprajapati Gotami, the first Buddhist nun, who was also the Buddha’s stepmother. The Buddha Hall is built from Faswall, an attractive, long-lasting, green building material made of insulated wood chip and cement blocks. Faswall makes a sturdy structure that is both fire and pest-resistant, ensuring the Buddha Hall will serve monastics and lay followers for hundreds of years.
Join Us:
Inspired by a vision to create peace in this chaotic world, hundreds of people have joined in with their offering to bring the Buddha Hall to life. The Pema Chodron Foundation and others are supporting the sangha by supporting the Posadha Room, where we will perform the monastic ceremonies that maintain a virtuous and harmonious monastic community. Construction began in 2022. With your help, we aim to consecrate the Buddha Hall in 2024.
Explore the Buddha Hall
The Buddha Hall is a long-awaited temple and library, the spiritual center for teachings, study, meditation and practice.
The Posadha Room
Join The Pema Chodron Foundation to sponsor the Posadha Room, a very special room inside the Buddha Hall.
Library and Learning
Studying the Buddhadharma
The ground floor features a large library for Tibetan, Chinese, and English texts. It also includes a media room, and Dharma classrooms that allow us to both broadcast teachings and receive instruction from afar.
We’ll Have a Tara Room!
A Special Practice Space
A side room off the main hall, Tara Room, provides space for small-group Dharma teachings, meditation, and contemplation. It’s a place to purify past actions and take refuge in the Buddha’s enlightened activities, a place to reach out to “Mummy Tara.” The entire ambiance with visuals of Tara, beaming joy, will inspire tranquility and devotion as beginning and seasoned practitioners alike share the Dharma.
Learn more about the Tara Room >
Roof Ornaments
Deer, Dharma Wheel, and Three Ganjira (spires)
We’re adding a traditional twist to the Buddha Hall by adding roof ornaments similar to what you see in traditional Tibetan monasteries. The Abbey commissioned master Nepalese craftspeople from Chichhok Solukhumbu Handicraft in Nepal to create the roof ornaments. The three ganjira (spires), two deer, and a Dharma wheel were handcrafted using traditional techniques.
Read more about them >
Statues
Images of Enlightened Beings
The main altar will feature a ten-foot seated Shakyamuni Buddha, flanked by smaller statues of Venerable Ananda, the Buddha’s faithful attendant, and Venerable Mahaprajapati Gotami, the first Buddhist nun, who was also the Buddha’s stepmother. These statues have been specially made by Peter Griffin.
Read more about the statues >
Teacher’s Wing
Hosting Extraordinary Dharma Masters
Sravasti Abbey has hosted many incredible teachers, including renowned Geshes, Vinaya masters, and western scholars. In the future, visiting teachers will stay in a special wing of the Buddha Hall. In addition to a room for the guest teacher, the wing has a kitchenette, private bath, and room for a translator/attendant. Our guest teachers will have their own spectacular view of the mountains.
Learn from books by Ven. Thubten Chodron.
Sravasti Abbey
692 Country Lane
Newport WA 99156 USA
[email protected]
509-447-5549
Also see ThubtenChodron.org