Not very far from Birmingham city centre lies a beautiful peace monument that is often overlooked by passersby. Located between residential homes, it is easy to miss the Buddhist temple if you don’t know it exists.
We visited the Buddhist temple located close to Edgbaston Reservoir on Osler Street and found a very different world to the hustle and bustle of daily city life. The monastery has a temple with a garden at the back as well as living accommodations and study centre for monks.
We visited the Buddhist temple located close to Edgbaston Reservoir on Osler Street and found a very different world to the hustle and bustle of daily city life. The monastery has a temple with a garden at the back as well as living accommodations and study centre for monks.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00 Welcome to Birmingham Buddhist Vihara.
00:04 The Vihara was established in 1975, founded by our most venerable Dr. Rev. Dharma Bhante.
00:25 He was in India for over 20 years, but he was born in Burma.
00:34 He came to this part of the country in 1975.
00:40 When he came to this country, particularly this part of the country, there was no Buddhist monastery here.
00:51 And of course, there were a handful of Buddhist communities around, including Chinese, Burmese, Indian, Sri Lankan, who settled a couple of decades ago.
01:12 But there are no monasteries for them.
01:19 So Dr. Dharma Bhante, who was good at Hindi language, very good at Hindi, he wrote a few Buddhist books in Sanskrit as well as Hindi language.
01:37 Primarily, it was difficult to set up anything here at all, because he actually came here with the invitations of a group of English people.
02:00 He was a member of the Tibetan tradition, the Karmapa tradition.
02:07 And because he is not Tibetan by himself, he was a Burmese, and he followed Theravadin traditions, myself and other monks who are here with us.
02:23 There are five of us, five monks here regularly, and they are all Theravada school.
02:32 Because there are three schools, one is Orthodox school, Theravada school, the other one is Mahayana school, and Vajrayana school.
02:46 Because Vajrayana school is quite well known to the Western world because Dalai Lama is part of the Vajrayana school.