Chuang Yen monastery

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Chuang Yen Monastery (Chinese: 莊嚴寺)is a buddhist Pure Land monastery in Carmel, New York. The monastery was built and is maintained by the Buddhist Association of the United States on land donated by C. T. Shen. His autobiography, My Memoir is published by The Institute for Advanced Studies of World Religions and is distributed free at the monastery.

The monastery grounds contain several prayer halls, dormitories, a dining hall, a memorial area, and a library. Most of the buildings are built in an imitation of Tang dynasty architecture, and the main hall contains a 37-foot statue of the Buddha Vairocana, encircled by 10,000 small statues of the Buddha on a lotus terrace. The larger Buddha statue is said to be the largest of its kind in the Western Hemisphere. The library contains over 70,000 books in Sanskrit, Chinese, Mongolian, Japanese, and Tibetan, and is open to the general public.

They hold also seminars and summer camps in both the English and Chinese languages.

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