Correspondence

The Office

A monastery receives guests through its office. Email the address below, or write to the temple by post. One letter, one matter; a slow reply is not a slight. The temple is not at present open to visitors, so please do not write to request a visit — the online temple is always open, and the office waits here.

Donations & Receipts

Donations to the temple have no set amount; donate as you are able. Online you may donate by credit or debit card, Apple Pay, Google Pay, Samsung Pay, Paze, or directly from a bank account (ACH) — all collected on Clover's secure payment page, and no card number reaches the temple; after a ceremony registration, the registration page and the confirmation mail both carry the door to payment, and the registration number goes in the payment note. Or mail a check (payable to Waken Temple) to the temple's address with your registration number or name. Please never write a card number in an email or text message. Once received, the temple emails your receipt to you.

Temple Affairs

The Office Tradition

The Imperially Revised Baizhang Rules, in its chapter on the two ranks of officers, defines the post in five characters: "the guest prefect has charge of guests" (T48n2025). A monastery appoints a guest prefect to receive and see off all who come — the first gate between students of the ten directions and the resident community. Lodging, questions on the dharma, and letters all pass first through the office; the guest prefect receives everyone with courtesy and answers according to the dharma, favoring none. Now that this site opens its channels of correspondence, it carries the same intent: every inquiry received, every answer given with courtesy.

The Courtesy of a Letter

Letters in a monastery have always favored plainness: the form of address, then the matter, then a greeting — few words, the meaning complete. A monastic is addressed by a monastic title, without worldly rank; one names oneself plainly. One letter, one matter; when the matter is finished, the letter ends. A resident community keeps its own hours, so the speed of a reply says nothing of its weight — every letter is read by the office, none overlooked.

How to Ask About the Dharma

The student's way is the three wisdoms — hearing, reflection, cultivation: one hears the dharma, then reflects, then practices, and a doubt arises in the reflecting. So a question about the dharma is worth asking when it touches one's own case — a passage not understood, a practice obstructed, a mind unsettled; once the doubt is distinct, the question has somewhere to land, and what the sutras and treatises have already been searched for can be answered in a sentence. What an answer rests on is the four reliances: the dharma, not the person; the meaning, not the words. Fortune and misfortune, victory and loss, are not what the dharma answers, and the office takes questions by the same measure.