Zu Lai Temple

The Zu Lai Temple (in Chinese, 如來寺, in Portuguese, "Templo Zu Lai", lit. Tathāgata Temple) is a Buddhist temple in Cotia, São Paulo, Brazil. It is the largest Buddhist temple in South America with 10,000 square meters of constructed area, inside an area of approximately 150,000 square meters. It is a branch temple of the Fo Guang Shan order in Taiwan, practicing the Mahāyāna branch of Buddhism. The Zu Lai Temple states as its main objective the cultural and religious dissemination of the Buddhist Tradition, whilst trying to reach to the general population the teachings of traditional Buddhist education, culture and meditation.

History
In 1992, the religious Buddhist Master Hsing Yun had arrived in Brazil, by an invitation of a local Buddhist Temple in Sao Paulo, for a ceremony. A present monk asked him if he could leave a monk from his entourage in the country so they could continue the teachings. As a result, accompanying monk, Jue Cheng, decided to stay in the country and begin a new project, earning later the title of Master of Sincerity.

The disciple who asked Master Yun to leave a monk in the country has donated a house situated on a farm so that the work could continue. The house was not too small and it became the headquarters for ceremonies, cults and rituals. Four years later, the number of visitors had reached 100, which led to the need to expand the space. Despite the renovation, the place still didn't have conditions to accommodate followers, so it was decided to build a larger temple.

As the Brazilian architects involved in the project were not familiar with the architecture of a temple, Master Sinceridade assembled a team to travel to China with the purpose of studying the Tang Dynasty temples. The cornerstone was laid in 1999. Due to the necessity of importing the tiles and the parapet from China, as this type of work was not yet available in Brazil at the time, the resources were insufficient to commence the works immediately, resulting in the inauguration of the Zu Lai Temple being postponed until October 2003.