The Woodenfish Project

Sponsored by Fo Guang Shan, the Woodenfish project aims to advance Humanistic Buddhism through a series of projects geared toward young adults. Woodenfish works with them to promote a spiritual, academic, and socially relevant understanding of Buddhism.

Humanistic Buddhism Monastic Life Program

The Humanistic Buddhism Monastic Life Program (HBMLP) is a month-long program for students and young adults at Ayuwang (King Asoka) Temple in Ninbo, Zhejiang Province in southern China. Participants live as monastics while taking academic classes on Buddhism and participating in traditional practices. The program welcomes participants from all countries, faiths and academic fields.

Buddhism in China series: China

Through the Buddhism in China series, the Woodenfish Project aims to aid the development of young scholars in the West with research interests in Chinese Buddhism and related fields by offering them the opportunity for direct, intensive academic engagement with the major historical centers of Buddhism in China.

Platform Sutra Workshop: Guangzhou

The objectives of the Platform Sutra Workshop is to foster a greater understanding of this important scripture and the culture and history of its central influence, the Sixth Patriarch Huineng, by facilitating dialogue between scholars and students from the East and the West, within the context of modern Buddhism in China and monastic life.

Woodenfish Project: Guanyin Workshop

Like our very successful Platform Sutra Workshop, the Avalokitesvara Workshop’s main objective is to bring scholars and students from both East and West together to explore the figure of the Bodhisattva of Compassion and the effects of her sinicization.

Sutra Translation 

The Sutra Translation Project aims to produce innovative versions of several sutras in the Buddhist canon, translated into English from the original Chinese. These are unique, bi-lingual editions, created in collaboration with Fo Guang Shan’s publishing company, Buddha’s Light Publishing.

What is a “Woodenfish?”

At Fo Guang Shan Monastery, the “woodenfish” drum poises the mind and establishes a tempo so that an  assembly of people can chant in unison.

Further, because fish do not have eyelids, their eyes always remain open even when they sleep. To the Buddhist practitioner, thus, the woodenfish symbolizes community, wakefulness, and unceasing awareness.