Shaolin Temple Cultural Center Official Home Page

Special Annoucement

2010 Shaolin Temp Tour - Journey to the origin (6/30 - 7/14/2010)

Please download and fill out the Registration Form to sign up for the tour.

Welcome

Shaolin Temple Cultural Center is a nonprofit subsidiary organization under the Songshan Shaolin Temple in China. Our aim is to preserve the 1500 year history of the Chan Sect of the Songshan Shaolin Temple, to introduce and promote our characteristic eastern culture of Shaolin to the world. We are actively involved in local charities and community services; with the Buddhist spirit of mercy, wisdom, aspiration and courage, we are wishing to build the “land of purity” in the world.

Despite the existence of diverse religions, races, cultures and of various nations, we would like to expand the thousand years’ Shaolin culture of “Chan (Zen), material arts and medicine”, to encourage the cultural exchange between the east and the west, and to promote the Shaolin spirit of: performing Kung-Fu in the Chan spirit, looking beyond ones way of life and reaching the ultimate wisdom and courage without hindrance and fear. Hope becomes the advocate and practitioner to promote spiritual and physical health in the Shaolin cultural style of living, in which one finds a place in life to achieve the ultimate harmony of the Buddhist Chan Sect.

SongShan Shaolin Temple

In 495 AD, or 1508 years ago, the Shaolin Temple was established. It flourished in the Tang and Song dynasties and reached the peak of development in Yuan and Ming dynasties. According to the records in historic books, the Shaolin Temple had suffered from natural and man made disasters during the last 1500 years. However, the monks of the Shaolin Temple had endured and carried forward their tradition and culture. The Shaolin Temple was the origin of Chan Buddhism. The combined ideas of Chan and martial arts as one are the soul of the Shaolin Kung-Fu system. From 1951 to 1996, the decades of the long renovation of the Shaolin Temple had made a revival into the modern era.

The Shaolin Kung-Fu represents the integration of ancient Chinese and India civilizations, and it is a unique cultural phenomenon. The Shaolin Kung-Fu is a cultural system with traditional Chinese martial arts as its form of manifestation. It has demonstrated not only the quintessence of traditional Chinese martial arts, but also the wisdom of Chan culture of Buddhism. As the Shaolin Kung-Fu developed and passed down from generation to generation, it had become well known around the world.

The great wisdom and courage inherited in the Shaolin Kung-Fu had manifested on the basis of impermanence and emptiness of Buddhism had been understood and respected by people from different cultural backgrounds worldwide. The Shaolin Kung-Fu has become a component part of the most valuable spiritual civilization system of human being and it has become an international folk culture.