Seda Five Wisdom Buddhist Academy Travel Guide

Seda is located in a remote area of Sichuan, China. It is a holy land of Tibetan Buddhism and home to the largest Buddhist academy in the world, the Five Wisdom Buddhist Academy. Thousands of Buddhist residential buildings are built on the slopes here, which looks very spectacular. Here is a travel guide to the Seda Five Wisdom Buddhist Academy for you.

Seda—the holy land of Tibetan Buddhism, where people go around mountains, water and stupas, not for this life but for the next. In this age of material enjoyment and spiritual emptiness, the people who live there continue to enjoy their spiritual beliefs and happiness.

Seda is located in the northeast of the Ganzi Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in Sichuan Province. The terrain and geomorphology are complex, with an average altitude of over 4,000 meters.

There is plenty of sunshine, but the average annual temperature is only minus 1 degree Celsius, with long winters and no summer. There are grasslands, lakes, rivers… and colorful Tibetan customs.

Seda has the Five Wisdom Buddhist Academy and monks’ houses all over the mountains. The dilapidated scriptures learning point built by the master in those days has now become a grand sight, with tens of thousands of lamas.

In the desolate and remote mountains, there are monks’ houses stretching for miles, overlapping each other, and the academy scriptures hall surrounded by monks’ houses. The lamas and nuns wearing crimson robes have created a hidden and spectacular world in Seda.

The legendary Seda is made of shining gold. Some say that the name “Golden Horse” of Seda is the war horse left by King Gesar; but more people believe that it is because of the “horse-headed” gold that shepherds accidentally discovered, “Seda, Sejima, Setang, Selagou”, “Golden Mountain, Golden Water, Golden Dam, Golden Valley”, there has never been any place name named after gold and legends related to gold as many as Seda.

But in fact, Seda is a steady red, red prayer flags, red wooden houses, red palaces, red crowds, merging with the mountains, deep red from the horizon to the heart. The red of the Tibetan area is mysterious and majestic, separating gods and the secular world.

One day, in the hustle and bustle of the city, I suddenly stopped, it was your endless red prayer flags and the fingertips of the nuns.

That shocking red, allows the power of faith to fill people’s chests again. As far as the eye can see, it is the unique Tibetan red of this place, leaving brilliant Buddhist teachings to this world.

Laron Five Wisdom Buddhist Academy: Bodhicitta for all lives

The largest and most mysterious Five Wisdom Buddhist Academy in the world is located here, and Seda is famous for having the world’s first Tibetan Buddhist Academy.

Han and Tibetan Buddhism inherit different systems of inheritance, each producing fruitful results. However, due to the geographical isolation of the plateau, the two Buddhist traditions have rarely interacted in history, leading to mutual suspicion.

Even today, there are still people in Tibet who believe that “monk’s teaching” is not the teaching of the Buddha; Han people, on the other hand, see “Lamaism” as shaking bells and beating drums, and often see it as witchcraft, but in fact, this is because they have not delved into each other and draw conclusions hastily, resulting in the sin of slandering the Dharma and going to hell.

The establishment of the Han monk department in the Five Wisdom Buddhist Academy by the Dharma King, with his great ambition to spread the Great Perfection to the Southern Continent and his deep connection with the Han people, has promoted the exchange between Han and Tibetan Buddhism, making up for this shortcoming.

Under the blue sky and white clouds, red prayer flags, red wooden houses, and red sleeves converge into a sea of red. This is the world’s first Buddhist academy, and it is also a utopia of faith, where there are about 20,000 long-term practitioners. Walking through this red ocean and feeling the lamas and nuns in crimson robes coming and going, one’s heart is deeply shaken.

You can listen to lectures and recitations, or you can sit in meditation and contemplate. It is not about prosperity, it is about faith; away from the hustle and bustle of the city, this Buddhist academy, which lies quietly in the Aba Tibetan and Qiang Autonomous Prefecture of Ganzi, with its layer upon layer of densely packed red houses, and the diligent, simple, and devout lamas and nuns who silently guard it, brings us only awe, surprise, and holiness.

Someone asked the master: How long does it take to cultivate Bodhicitta?

He replied: For all lives.

In the 8th century, a Buddhist master, Santideva, once said:

All happiness in the world comes from the heart of altruism; all unhappiness in the world comes from love for oneself.

That month, I searched through mountains and mountains, not for what I sought, but to touch the compassionate eaves of your mountain monks’ houses.

Sky Burial: The most solemn ritual of reincarnation

Why don’t you see family members crying at a sky burial?

Family members will not cry because here, death is a new birth, a cycle of birth and death. This is where it happens. If family members cry, it will only cause the deceased to float between life and death, unable to reincarnate.

What is reincarnation?

All people have past lives and future lives. All beings die and are born again, born and die again, endlessly, like a wheel turning non-stop, circulating endlessly. Here, we have encountered many children who know their past lives. When they are two or three years old, they can tell you about their previous lives. If people go and check, they will find that such past lives do exist. Therefore, our current practice is to accumulate virtue for the next life.

How many people will leave in spring, summer, autumn, and winter? How many people will stay in spring, summer, autumn, and winter? Birth, death, death, birth, life after life…

Mandala: A pure land of ten directions and all Buddhas and Bodhisattvas

That year, I prostrated myself and turned the prayer wheel, respectfully paying homage to the Nirvana of the True Word Sky Burial Platform in the academy.

Mandala, a Sanskrit word, means “circle”. Go around mountains, water, and stupas. The Dharma King built this mandala that can be seen and circumambulated, so believers prostrated themselves here and turned the prayer wheel.

108 rounds for the inferior merit, 1080 rounds for the middle merit, 10,800 rounds for the superior merit… turning, turning, turning out endless Dharma, lingering in the high sky of 4,000 meters, illuminating faith.

The legendary Seda is a place of compassion for the Buddha. Turning the mandala and prayer wheel for 100 rounds will cure diseases; the living Buddha is baptized with clear water, bringing the power of faith and purity to bless travelers; the sky burial ritual, the monk’s chanting provides a ladder to heaven for the suffering soul.

The Buddha said that there are eight sufferings in life. Seda has comforted the suffering of birth, old age, sickness, and death. So when we leave Seda, we, the ordinary people in the world, will probably experience the suffering of separation from loved ones again.

In the evening, there are still devout people prostrating themselves in the mandala, one, two, three… I don’t know how many times they will repeat this action in a lifetime! Repenting for all the evil karma they have created in the past.

Day after day, diligent practice, only to break free from the cycle of birth and death.

A human body is hard to obtain, the Dharma is hard to hear! Never cease practicing.

Perhaps there is no force more persistent in the world than belief.

Regardless of age or day or night, this is a belief that goes deep into the marrow!

Visual day and night twilight, as beautiful as a flower

The golden rays of the setting sun fall down, and the houses on the entire mountain are bathed in this golden light.

The twilight here is too long. Every day at sunset, when cities in China start to sink into darkness from the east, it is still bathed in ten thousand rays of light.

Golden twilight, red houses, shimmering stupas, it seems that you can find eternity here at an altitude of 4200 meters.

There are countless practitioners who come here with faith, stay, and then build houses with the intention of never leaving. As more and more practitioners come to practice here, the dark red Tibetan wooden houses are also increasing.

A world without the complexities of the mundane world.

Misty haze, green mountains and grasslands, red like a large patch of cranberries, beautiful and moving. Red robes, yellow monk hats, against the backdrop of the blue sky are simply beautiful colors.

If the stars in the sky are like streetlights guiding all beings, then the lights on earth are definitely the source of life’s strength. “There should be no dwelling, but give rise to the mind”, under the stars of the sky, one by one, the dim lights gradually light up, illuminating the whole of Seda, illuminating people’s hearts…

Standing on the mountaintop, looking up is a starry sky of thirty thousand feet, looking down is an endless sea of lights; the sound of the wind, the sound of the rain, the sound of chanting, all sound reaching the ear; at this moment, Seda is no longer Seda, it is transformed into a messenger, conveying the belief of all beings.

In that lifetime, go around mountains, water, and stupas,
The next life is like a dream bubble, only for the warm encounters on the journey.