Guiding Principles and Customs
Hua set up the six principles for all monastics and lay practitioners to follow as guidelines for spiritual development. These principles were "to not fight, to not be greedy, to not seek, to not be selfish, to not pursue personal advantage, and to not lie."
Since spiritual development is a full-time endeavor, certain rules and customs are followed by the community:
- Different sections of the campus are designated for men or women, and generally the genders do not co-mingle. This is particularly noticeable at ceremonies and meals, where men and women separate into different sections.
- Out of respect to the lifestyle of the monastics, modest clothing is worn by the laity at all times.
- Smoking, drug use, and the consumption of meat products and alcoholic beverages are prohibited.
Other notable customs:
- Unlike in many temples found in Asia, no incense is ever offered personally by any of the lay practitioners and guests. Hua believed that it was totally superstitious to insist on personally offering incense to the Buddhas, and pointed out that high-quality incense is expensive while poor incense can ruin the walls and statues. Instead, a single stick of incense is offered by a monastic for the entire assembly, and then all practitioners would simply bow and pay respects.
Read more about this topic: City Of Ten Thousand Buddhas
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“For the child whose impulsiveness is indulged, who retains his primitive-discharge mechanisms, is not only an ill-behaved child but a child whose intellectual development is slowed down. No matter how well he is endowed intellectually, if direct action and immediate gratification are the guiding principles of his behavior, there will be less incentive to develop the higher mental processes, to reason, to employ the imagination creatively. . . .”
—Selma H. Fraiberg (20th century)
“For the child whose impulsiveness is indulged, who retains his primitive-discharge mechanisms, is not only an ill-behaved child but a child whose intellectual development is slowed down. No matter how well he is endowed intellectually, if direct action and immediate gratification are the guiding principles of his behavior, there will be less incentive to develop the higher mental processes, to reason, to employ the imagination creatively. . . .”
—Selma H. Fraiberg (20th century)
“The proclamation and repetition of first principles is a constant feature of life in our democracy. Active adherence to these principles, however, has always been considered un-American. We recipients of the boon of liberty have always been ready, when faced with discomfort, to discard any and all first principles of liberty, and, further, to indict those who do not freely join with us in happily arrogating those principles.”
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“So easy is it, though many housekeepers doubt it, to establish new and better customs in the place of the old.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)