Aims

Aims of the Hwa Tsang Monastery

1. To encourage the practice and the propagation of Buddhism in Australia.
2. To encourage, foster, and promote, education among the Australian community.
3. To foster mutual understanding and friendship, between Buddhists, other religious groups, and the Australian public.
4. To provide welfare services to those who need help in the Australian community.
5. To develop the monastery for the benefit and interest of its members, and all Buddhists in Australia.

Activities of the Monastery

Dharma activities
The monastery venerables provide dharma talks about the Buddha's teachings, and religious services at the monastery, and by invitation, to schools (SRE), university Buddhist groups, other Sydney or interstate temples, nursing homes, prisons, and other appropriate venues.

Social welfare
Both venerables, and monastery devotees provide spiritual guidance for the terminally ill, conduct memorial services, visit the elderly in nursing homes and hospitals.
Monastery devotees also look after the welfare of the monks and nuns, with offerings and donations to the order.

Sangha (monks and nuns) training.
The senior venerables organise and provide education and training for resident novice monks and nuns.

University Buddhist Societies
Monastery venerables assist as Patrons and Chaplains to guide and support the university Buddhist societies, both in Sydney, and in Singapore.

Tuition Class
The monastery maintains a tuition class for about 180 high school students, from 12 to 18 years old. There are 28 classes for students between Year 7 and HSC. Students are admitted on a first-come, first served basis, regardless of religious background.  Students are encouraged to participate in the Clean-Up Australia activity held annually.  Year 7 to Year 11 students are expected to attend one of the ten Botany, Bio-diversity, and Bush- Regeneration activities held on a Saturday morning, in conjunction with Strathfield Municipal Council throughout the year. There are only two student enrolment days in the year.

Monastery Youth Group
Monastery venerables provide guidance and support for the monastery's Young Bodhisattva Society (Youth Group).

Bi-Monthly Bulletin
This bulletin is used to communicate with monastery members. It also provides shorter Buddhist articles, (in English and Chinese) as well as descriptions of on-going or up-coming activities within the monastery.

Publications
The Monastery has an Editing and Translating Committee that selects and translates Chinese Mahayana texts for the benefit of Australian Buddhists.

Library
The monastery maintains an extensive library of both English and Chinese Buddhist reference texts.

This Website

The Buddha's teachings aim to cultivate wisdom and compassion. So the idea behind this website, is to stimulate interest and thoughts about having, or cultivating these mental disciplines.

We hope many people will contribute their comments, ideas, written articles, sketches, or music to this website. 

The most important part of Buddhist practice, is to be able to apply our wholesome thoughts of wisdom and compassion, towards others in our daily life. So we hope that in sharing your ideas, many others will benefit.

This website was constructed with sketches from our Tuition Class students and teachers, our YBS Youth Group, and students from the University of NSW Buddhist Society (UNIBUDS). Many pictures have annotations from the Dhammapada. The Dhammapada is a collection of 423 aphorisms recorded from the Buddha's Teachings by his disciples. For those who have trouble reading the annotations, we have listed them all in this file;

List of picture annotations.pdf

All HTML programming was completed by our YBS Youth Group, our Tuition Class students, and our Tuition Class volunteer teachers.

Pictures of plants were supplied by members. Botanical inspiration, identification, and analogies for the website were compiled using information from; "Taken for Granted: the Bushland of Sydney and its Suburbs" by D. Benson and J. Howell, "Missing Jigsaw Pieces" by Doug Benson, Danie Ondinea & Virginia Bear from Sydney Royal Botanic Gardens, Les Robinson's marvellous "Field Guide to Native Plants of Sydney", and Alan Fairley & Philip Moore's "Native Plants of the Sydney District."

Only plants indigenous to the Strathfield - Cumberland Plain - Sydney area, are featured on this website. Why is this ? The Buddha's teaching stress the importance of mindfulness and awareness. Hopefully these pictures are a reminder of the great beauty of our Australian botanical heritage and environment. It is a fast disappearing heritage that we should not take for granted. 

Similarly, many of us assume that because we may know the answers to resolving conflicts and problems, or where our sufferings come from, that we must feel relaxed and peaceful. 

Do you feel at peace ? We should not take our mental cultivation for granted. It requires constant, mindful, daily, practice.