The Sean McDowell Show - Apologist Visits a Buddhist Temple (and GREAT chat with two monks!)

Episode Date: March 25, 2025

What would happen if a Christian apologist (and his 12-year old son) visited a Buddhist Temple? You're about to find out! I had a memorable and fun tour with my new Buddhist friend at the Temple near where I live in southern California. They were kind enough to get us a tour guide and we were able to sit down and speak with their two of their leading monks after the tour. Let us know what you think! And do you want more videos like this? What would you do differently if you were me? What questions should I have asked? And what kind of follow-up discussion would you like. I gave them a copy of More Than a Carpenter, so maybe we follow up and discuss that (?). Let us know!READ: End the Stalemate, by Sean McDowell (https://amzn.to/4eLrUdM)*Get a MASTERS IN APOLOGETICS or SCIENCE AND RELIGION at BIOLA (https://bit.ly/3LdNqKf)*USE Discount Code [SMDCERTDISC] for 25% off the BIOLA APOLOGETICS CERTIFICATE program (https://bit.ly/3AzfPFM)*See our fully online UNDERGRAD DEGREE in Bible, Theology, and Apologetics: (https://bit.ly/448STKK)FOLLOW ME ON SOCIAL MEDIA: Twitter: https://twitter.com/Sean_McDowell TikTok: @sean_mcdowell Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmcdowell/Website: https://seanmcdowell.org

My new friend Elaine is going to give us a tour. She's been a stewardess, a lawyer, a TV news anchor. Did I miss anything? Immigration officer. Immigration officer, a lawyer. I mean, we picked the right person. We're excited to be here and want to learn about your temple. So this is a Chinese Buddhist temple,

Chinese Mahayana Buddhist temple. If you go to any other Buddhist temple like Mahayana or Theravada Buddhist temple, the layout will be different. Before we enter the Bodhisattva hall, you can see there are two Bodhisattva statues outside and these are the protector. They protect not only the properties, they also protect the wisdom of the Buddhist teaching. This is called the Dharma turning wheel of the Dharma. So these three are very important in learning Buddhism. You must have power and the courage to learn how to practice precepts and the concentration like

meditation and the wisdom, the Buddhist teachings. Now first before we talk about Bodhisattva we should know the definition of the Buddha. Buddha is the awakened one, the enlightened one. And bodhisattvas are buddhas to be. The first one is called samantabharta bodhisattva. Samantabharta bodhisattva focuses on practice. And Buddhism would believe that not only you have to learn the scripture, you have to study the wisdom, you have also practice to put all this learning into practice. Okay the second one is called Siddhagarpad Bodhisattva. Siddhagarpad Bodhisattva

focuses on vows. He says I will stay in the hell realm to provide help to other sentient beings who suffer in the hell realm. If the If the hell, until the hell is empty. So there is a way out of hell. Right. We help sentient beings. The hell realm actually in this in Buddhist sense is not eternal. It's temporary. We believe that people go to hell realm, go to different six realms, it's not forever. Your bad karma runs out in the hell realm. It can always elevate to other realms. It really depends on your karma. And a lot of these bodhisattvas, these ones here, they are already reached enlightenment.

However, they choose to delay their nirvana because they want to come back to the six realms to render help to sentient beings. Because most of the people, the purpose of their practice of Buddhism, they don't want to return to the six realms to render help to sentient beings. Because most of the people, the purpose of their practice of Buddhism, they don't want to return to the six realms. So they chose to come back. That's a very sacrificial act for others to help save them from the cycle. Exactly, exactly. Now when you go to Chinese restaurants, do you see statues like that? Yes, I've seen something like that.

Exactly. Chinese restaurant, a lot of them because Maitreya Bodhisattva has different versions of him. He is also known as the future Buddha. We believe that Sakka Muni Buddha, who is the historical Buddha, was the Buddha on Earth 2500 years ago. and we believe that he will be the next Buddha to come to Earth. This is a mantra Bodhisattva focused on benevolence. And this one I think if you go to any Asian countries, most of the Southeast Asian countries, most likely you will see her statue in one of the households. Her name is Avalokiteshvara Bodhisattva. She's known for compassion. She will incarnate into different people,

sometimes as a male, sometimes as a female. But they're all, because they're almost like in our term, it's like goddess or saint, or some people even regard them as semi-god although they don't, they're not really god but they're saint. Like people call me Bodhisattva Elaine. We call each other Bodhisattva as well. So Bodhisattva they call me, it's a compliment meaning that I render help to other people.

The fifth one is called Manjushri Bodhisattva. Manjushri Bodhisattva. Manjushri Bodhisattva focused on wisdom. Now what's written under the statutes are the Chinese words, the words in Diamond Sutra. Diamond Sutra explains the doctrine of emptiness. And you see the altar and there are fruits and flowers. A lot of the devotees when they come in, they either go to the corner and get these flowers and fruits or they bring their fruits the corner and get this flowers and fruits or they bring their fruits from home and put on the altar. And on their way home, they bring them home

to receive the blessings from the Bodhisattvas. Oh, so they put them here, go in, take them out. They put them here and they go to do their business and go to pray in the main shrine and they take them on their way home. And I also want to bring your attention to the gate. The four columns, these are the four vows we Bodhisattvas we all make. The first column in Chinese says,

众生无变是愿赌. We want, as Bodhisattvas, we want to render help to all sentient beings. The second column says, 烦恼无尽誓愿断 All the defilements we vow to eradicate all the defilements, all the sufferings we have. The third one reads 法门无量誓愿学 We as bodhisattva, we will study diligently the Dharma.

And the fourth one says 佛道无上士愿成, meaning that we will follow the path to become a Buddha, follow the path of the Buddha to become a Buddha. So this is the courtyard. Remember I described to you how a traditional Chinese Mahayana Buddhist temple, this is a set out. We have a courtyard and then the main shrine is always at the back of the courtyard. We use the courtyard for walking meditation. And meditation is not really only restricted to city meditation. You can also do walking meditation.

What you see here is the main shrine. The main shrine is the most important place. We consider that the holy ground. On the right side, the second floor is our auditorium. Usually we have the concerts, we have seminars. Underneath the auditorium is the office for the monastics and some classrooms for Dharma talks. On the left side, the second floor is the conference room. The fourth Bodhisattva statue, remember when we were in the Bodhisattva hall, she's the

one with the vase in her hand, pointing out the nectar of compassion. The reason I want to bring you here to specifically introduce you to her is because she goes beyond the religious figure. She's like a culture icon. She comes from water. In Buddhism, we say that as long as you cross over the river to the other side of the safer shore, that's fine with us. Regardless if you're a Christian, you're Muslim, you're Catholic, as long as you cross the river reaching the other side of the safer shore, meaning reaching heaven.

Buddha is famously known to decline questions of metaphysical nature. He wants to focus on people's internal world instead of the external world. The most important thing is for you to not suffer. Because most people suffer. Most people, when we say suffer, people say, oh, I don't suffer because I have a lot of college students. I mean, younger than college, younger kids, you don't suffer, right? Daddy spoils. That's right.

The meaning suffer here actually also means means that dissatisfaction things like not just physical right mentally right right when you when you want to play a toy at some point you just you get tired of it right and and you don't want something more fun but then you get this dissatisfaction so it's more like a dissatisfaction. I would like to make an introduction. This is the founder of this temple, Venerable Master Xing Yun. Venerable Master Xing Yun was born in China. He went over to Taiwan after the Civil War in 1949 and established his first temple in Taiwan in 1967.

And since then, now we have more than, we have probably around 300 branch temples throughout the whole world. He is the pioneer of the person who promotes humanist Buddhism. There are three schools of Buddhism the Theravada, the Mahayana and the Tibetan Buddhism. I think most of you know Tibetan Buddhism whose leader is Dalai Lama. So these are, our hearts are the disciples of the Buddha and they practice self-liberation. And Bodhisattva would practice,

provide help to other sentient beings to liberate all sentient beings. So this is the difference between different approach. Buddha is the one in the back in white and the rest of the 18 of them are in golden robes. But I can tell you the one with his arms stretching, we call him arm stretching arha, he stretches his arm after each meditation. And to his right, the one with his hand on his chin, his name is Rahula. Rahula is the son of the Buddha. So Buddha was born for 80 BCE. He

was born into a royal family and the king father and the queen mother wanted to have a child but they were not able to conceive a child for many many years. So one day the queen mother had a dream that there was a white elephant coming to the side of her body and when she woke up she was conceived with Buddha. And the prophets told the king father that the son of yours is either going to be a great ruler of your country or he's going to become a Buddha. So the king father wanted to make sure the son does not go any religious way.

So he paved the way in the palace so that there's no sick people, there's no suffering. So he was way in the palace so that there's no sick people, there's no suffering. So he was restricted in the palace, but he was living a very luxurious lifestyle and he never saw any suffering in the palace. He had an arranged marriage by the king father at the age of 18 and that's why he had the son of Rahula. One day he went outside the palace wall and he realized the outside world is very different from inside the palace. He saw sick people on the street, dead corpse and old people.

He realized that humans suffer and he also saw a monk. So he asked his attendant, what is that? The attendant said those people they let go of all their possessions and seek the truth to the universe to relieve the sufferings. And so he decided to become a monk. He went into mountain and forest and practiced six years of very aesthetic practice. Eventually he was able to become enlightened under Bodhi tree and become a Buddha at the age of 35.

He started to teach until he reached 80 years old. Pity that today we don't have any water. Usually we have water and kids will throw their pennies and make wishes there. And remember what the definition of a Buddha is the awakened one, the enlightened one, and the Bodhisattvas are the Buddha-to-be. Our hearts are the ones that have reached Nirvana and they're not subject to the cycle of rebirth anymore.

So a lot of people are asking, what is Nirvana? Nirvana, actually, if you think about it, is just the extinguishment of fire desires. Now, we believe that when you leave the world, the first thought when you depart the world is we'll decide where you go, right? And so if you still have a lot of the attachment to the material world, to the human world, chances are you may come back here, right? So it's very important that you practice during the lifetime so that you don't have the attachment to the world. So we talk about meditation. Meditation is just to settle all the mud down.

You become calm enough, the mud will settle down, then you'll be able to see the clear water. Then you can see your true nature. This is the main shrine of the temple. Main shrine is considered the most important place of the temple. Every Sunday morning, we have the communal Dharma service, Dharma function, and every first Friday of the month we have a great compassion

ceremony. So a lot of the regular and irregular Dharma services are held here, very auspicious. We just had an incredible tour and get a chance to sit down with two of my new friends. We have Venerable Huiza, that's the best I can do, and Venerable Huedon. And we just got some questions for them about what they do. Some of these come from me personally, some of these came from Twitter, throughout there what people would want to know. So thanks for carving out time and being willing to answer some questions. Sure. Maybe you could explain what it means to be the abbot for us and when that started for

you, help us understand what role that is. I'm the abbot of Fuguan Shan Xilai Temple. Here, Xilai temple is one of the branch temples of the Fo Guang Shan Buddhist order which has its headquarters in Taiwan. It is one of the largest Buddhist orders in the world. It has more than 300 temples around the world and Shilai temple is one of them. And I am the head monk of this temple. This is what the term Abbot means. It means head monk. I would love to hear how you became a Buddhist monk. What was that process like? That was the time when I was studying at University of the West which is affiliated with Fo Guang Shan Buddhist

Order and Shilai Temple. And it was founded by the same founder of the temple, Master Xing Yun. Actually, I'm not sure if you can see from the camera this picture that is the picture of our founder met with the Pope the founder of a Fokong Shambhu disorder already passed away to be found almost two years until now and he founded the university and when I was studying there and I've been practicing and studying Buddhism during the week and come to Shilai Temple to volunteer on the weekends and after several years of study and I decided to be ordained as a monk.

You're the head monk. What responsibility rests upon you here? What does that particularly mean? As a head monk, my duty is to lead the monks and nuns to practice, of course to make decisions for the temple. So we have the Buddhist services and also activities and I will preside over those services and events. Now you're in Southern California, the broader LA area. How large is kind of the Buddhist community around here? Do you have any sense of how many come and how large it

is in this area in Southern California? Here and greater LA areas there are many traditions and includes the Southeast Asian traditions, the Tarot tradition like monks and nuns, monks from Thailand, Sri Lanka, Cambodia, and of course there are many Americans, Caucasians learning and practicing Buddhism as well. Basically I would say more and more people are interested in Buddhism nowadays. We do have a layperson's association for Los Angeles chapter. We're probably looking like about several thousand of our own members. Is your family Buddhist? Did you ever think I'll become a Muslim, maybe an atheist, maybe a different faith, or was it always I'm a Buddhist but just not sure if I want to become a monk? I came from China. We don't really have that tradition to naturally become a Buddhist or be ordained.

So this is a personal decision. Oh, okay. Very interesting. What are some of the most common things that you just see people misunderstand and you're like, my goodness, if they would just understand this. I and the worship the Buddha and praying praying for their good fortune and good health. However, to us Buddhism is cultivation of wisdom and compassion. So, but it's a very, it is a very common, not just in the United States, but also in many countries and many Buddhists are

doing that. A very common misconception regarding Buddhism in the West, people would see Buddhism passive, or even pessimistic. All the Buddhists monastic or lay do need to very actively practice, cultivate Buddhism. And also we also have a lots of programs and events outreach to the communities and try to help out people in the communities and not to convert people to Buddhism, but just simply as a good practice of compassion.

I think in fact what our master promotes throughout his whole life is a Buddhism that we call humanistic Buddhism. And humanistic Buddhism is just that, being part of the community, going into the society, and we practice among the masses rather than being in isolation. So being in the masses, first of course is to promote Buddhism to more people, but it's also a reminder for us that we couldn't exist outside of society. We couldn't exist in the void. We should be part of the society.

If we let go of the society in the future, society will let go of the Buddhist temples. And so it should be a good interaction between the Buddhist temples and the community that it serves. If somebody showed up and said I'm a Hindu or I'm a Muslim and I want to practice and learn here, would they have to give up their other beliefs? Could they combine them together? What would that look like? Because I'm a Christian, so we believe there are certain things of what it means to be a Christian, obviously, and that would be true for Muslim and other faiths. How would you look at someone who said, I want to be a Christian Buddhist or a Muslim Buddhist? Would that be okay? Or would you gently push back on that and resist some of those

ideas? There are people from different other religions, you know, taking our Buddhist classes here. Oh, English Buddhist. That's interesting. Class and meditation class, yoga class. There are people doing that and come here regularly to find inner peace. The founder of our Buddhist order did mention in one of his books that people can have more than one faith. Oh he did? Okay, interesting.

Yeah, so because of the to us, faith is a more of the mental activity. People having faith in certain beliefs by cultivating and developing wisdom. Do you have a view or an opinion about who Jesus was? Was he an enlightened one? Is he a historical figure that is not that important in your tradition? If somebody came up to you and said, oh, you're a monk, who do you think Jesus was?

How would you answer that? I do hear a lot of newcomers to Buddhism that says that Jesus Christ is like a Bodhisattva of Buddhism. I believe in our tour, Elaine had taken you to a Bodhisattva hall. Bodhisattva in Buddhism is an enlightened being or a being in the process to ultimately become just like the Buddha with his wisdom and compassion because we see the life of Jesus Christ as in a life of sacrifice, sacrificing to alleviate the suffering of the people and thus this aligns with the idea of the Bodhisattva path.

If you could ask a Christian anything, what would it be and why? Within Christianity or Catholicism, there's a really big concern about why does it need to, you know, the identity of this country, it needs to be just one identity. The pillars of a harmonious society, it's I believe, I don't know what is the source of it, but the three factor is diversity, equity, equity and inclusiveness. What our master had said, that a garden is beautiful because it has so many flowers in it. And if it's only one type of flower and it's all over the place, it wouldn't be beautiful. And in fact, now in science, we also talk about biodiversity.

It's not just that human beings are really great, but we shouldn't just only care for our existence. We should care for the existence of all beings, of the animals and the trees that when there's this biodiversity that we can support ourselves that only then that we can survive. Of course for a garden to function there's some things you can't allow in or it ruins the garden, right? Of course, of course. We need to pick up. So we've got to have some inclusiveness and some exclusiveness, but that's a conversation

for another time. Someone said, do you make a distinction between good and bad desires or are all desires bad and to be avoided? There are desires like people have the aspiration to become either better in their spiritual practices or to be a good person or to be successful in their life. I think those desires are very positive and they could be benefiting others and society as well. And of course there are desires that could be very

selfish and even in sacrifice of other people's interests. This is very helpful to me to understand. Can I just push a little bit just to get clarity for myself? So ideally if I wanted to really advance within Buddhism, I will let go of the desire to be a father because neither of you have kids. I would let go of any other desires and become a monk. That would be a good thing for me to do, to separate myself from the desire to be a father, grandfather. At certain stage, it is yes, it is a necessary necessary. Peace

of mind is the goal to all the practitioners, you no longer desire it at certain stage of the practice that you desire the goal at the next level. But once you reach there, and you no longer desire that, it's just becomes the cause of that success. And then you are there and you no longer desire that. Also like to point out that the Buddha himself, he was a father, he had a son.

And although we know the story of him leaving the palace to practice meditation, to seek wisdom, but after he had achieved wisdom or enlightenment, he returned to his home country. He visited his father, mother, and he visited his son as well. And it is him that convinced his son to join him in the Buddhist community and to practice together. And in fact his son Rahula achieved enlightenment in his community as well. So I think there is a certain idea of what kind of care or what kind of love that you would want to provide to somebody. Is it just a love that is a very finite and a very narrow definition or you want the best

for them is true liberation and true wisdom. So I think it's all onto the definition of love and care that we would want to provide to others. But I also like to point out another caveat of the practice of Buddhism should be carried out in moderation. And moderation in Buddhist terms is the middle path. We should always walk on the middle path, not towards extreme as in it should be a practice or a cultivation that's sustainable for you and for your family, that it can be carried on for more and more people rather than if You walk on the more extreme path, which you think might be true but it might not be sustainable for you the spiritual path or cultivation should be viewed and a

broader sense Do you believe the deities in Buddhism are real or they just metaphors? Could be either way. Any figures in people's faith that believes or could be real from our the Buddhist perspectives all the deities that were all the sentient beings that could you know have their own causes and conditions to be in existence. So, and they could be also metaphors or symbolism, like some Bodhisattvas in Buddhism, like Manjushri, who represents wisdom.

He could be real figure in the past, maybe a human being or a being who, through his cultivation to become, to cultivate wisdom and became a jushri, as a bodhisattva, as a saint, a Buddhist saint. So it could be either way. This has been very enlightening so pun intended. But thank you very much for taking the time, your explanations, your

patience. Thank you. Thank you for all the great questions. Thank you very much.