Pasadena Buddhist Temple

Welcome to the Pasadena Buddhist Temple

Shinran Shonin, Founder of Jodo Shinshu

The Pasadena Buddhist Temple belongs to the Jodo Shinshu tradition of Buddhism. Our national organization is the Buddhist Churches of America, headquartered in San Francisco, California. Our temple was established in 1948, and incorporated in 1956. The temple and classrooms were completed in 1958. The annex (Sakai Hall), which is used by the PJAA Bruins organization to conduct basketball practices, was constructed in 1962. We celebrated our 50th anniversary in 2008. We welcome all to come and learn about the Buddha Dharma.
Rev. Gibbs has been our resident minister since January 1, 2014. We are grateful for the presence of Reverend Tetsuo Unno, who has been with us for over 40-years. He conducts service and gives the dharma talk the second Sunday of each month.
Family services are held each Sunday. Service begins at 10:00 am and is followed by a separate English speaking Discussion Group. Reverend Tetsuo Unno conducts service on the 2nd Sunday of each month. Dharma School meets on the 2nd and 4th Sundays of the month following Sunday Service. Sangha Teens and Jr. YBA meet monthly. Monthly Memorial service is conducted the first Sunday of each month in conjunction with the family service.

The Temple is located at 1993 Glen Avenue, Pasadena, CA 91103.
Phone: (626) 798-4781

Gomonshu Visit - 2019

The Gomonshu will be visiting all the temples in the United States this summer and in celebration of his visit there are many events planned. Click on the event to see the information and the registration form.

The Gomonshu will be visiting our temple on Friday, September 6th. His arrival is scheduled for 12:20. Please plan on arriving at the Temple by 12:00 noon at the latest. The Gomonshu will give a short talk, walk around the temple grounds and will have lunch with us. If you plan on attending this Friday, please let Jeannie Toshima know so we can make sure we have enough lunch and table space. There will be a group photo taken to commemorate his visit.
If you have time, we will be having clean-up on Tuesday and Thursday mornings from 10:00 am. Friday morning we will start lunch preparation at 8:00 am.

The Invisible Teahouse

Alan Nakagawa, artist-in-residence, has been working on a project that centers around the tea house that was in the garden for so many years.
He will be at our Obon this year to collect more information and photos of the teahouse. So if you have any, please bring them to Obon this year. He and his assistants will be digitizing them for archiving.
Click on the ColoradoBlvd.net button to go to a recent article (7/10/19) by Kent Matsuoka on Alan's project and the tea house.
Alan has also started a podcast with interviews with temple members and key people in the history of the teahouse. Click on The Invisible Teahouse Podcast to listen to his interviews.

The Invisible Teahouse Podcast

Colorado Blvd.net

THANK YOU! OBON 2019

On behalf of the Pasadena Buddhist Temple Board, I'd like to thank all the members and friends of our Sangha that supported our recent Obon festival by coming out to help. Your generous monetary donations are also greatly appreciated.

The weather was warm and the sky was blue. We had a wonderful turn-out of visitors both days of our event. There were lots of dancers from all over Southern California and most of our food was sold-out both days! We also had some very special guests. Mayor Terry Tornek and his wife, Maria, returned to visit our festival for the third time. Vice Mayor Tyron Hampton came with his family and danced with us. WE also welcomed our good friend from District 4, Councilmember Gene Masuda and his wife Joanne.

I personally would like to thank our SOGs who worked many days before, during and after the event. A large part of the success of this Obon was because of their work. If you don't know who the SOGs are they are:Alan Hatakeyama, Mark Oune, Bobby Fukumoto, Scott Shinmoto, Marvin Inouye, Alan Goto, and Ron Toshima.

Many thanks to our Obon chairs, Gerry Ito and Dona Mitoma for all their work in making sure everything was in place and in compliance with the city. We passed our inspections with flying colours!

Special THANKS to the BRUINS Organization! Without them we would not have the labor to put on such a wonderful event!

Gassho,
Jeannie Toshima, President

If you took photos at our Obon, please share them with us.

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Calendar Reminders