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Buddhist Cultural centre (BCC) in Sri Lanka was founded by Ven.Kirama Wimalajhoti Thera who had returned to Sri Lanka after twenty years of dedicated missionary activity in Malaysia, Singapore and USA. It was inaugurated on January 2nd 1992 under the auspices of Ven.Dr.K.Sri Dhammananda Thera, the chief prelate of Malaysia and Singapore and a plethora of other internationally famed Buddhist scholar monks of the time. It sought to fill a lacuna of the devoted Buddhists in Sri Lanka and the rest of the world. What made Ven.Wimalajhoti thera start the BCC was the dearth of Buddhist publications in Sri Lanka notwithstanding its reputation as a country where Buddhism prevails in its pristine form. This fact was pointed to Ven.Wimalajhoti thera by some of his foreign neophytes who had arrived in Sri Lanka to learn Buddhism when they had strolled quite unsuccessfully all over the outskirts of Colombo along with him in search of some Buddhist publications. The BCC having thus begun in a small scale purporting to dispense the Dhamma among Buddhist devotees expanded massively with time thanks to the dedication and zeal of Ven.Wimalajhoti thera. By now it has perhaps become the world’s largest Theravada Buddhist book collection. It dispenses not only Dhamma books but also other items venerated and frequently used by Buddhists such as images of the Buddha, requisites of Buddhist monks (Atapirikara), incense sticks and meditation cushions…etc. In 1993 a meditation centre was set up on a 20 acre mountainous plateau a midst a salubrious sylvan environment as the first appendage to be added to the BCC network. It is situated in Dekanduwala, Horana about 30 Km away from Colombo. It has residential facilities and provides training in meditation for both local and foreign nationals since 1994. Among the programs it conducted, the two week temporary ordination for young people carried out in 2003 became particularly popular. The training in Dhamma and meditation has also been provided for nuns both local and foreign since 2002. The management and execution of the training programs thereof are done by fifteen fully ordained bhikkhunis. So far around 2000 foreigners have been trained by the centre besides local participants and nuns. This meditation centre is soon to be converted into a fully fledged internationally recognized Bhikkhuni Training Centre equipped with state-of-the-art facilities for training prospective nuns, which is to be affiliated to the BCC and is to be divested of government support. In 1995 a printing press was amalgamated to the BCC to print and publish ancient but extant and rare Sinhala Dhamma treatises. In the same year a mobile bookshop was launched to make the Dhamma books accessible particularly to those who live in rural areas and to promote the reading habit among the general populace. In 2002 a branch of the BCC was started in the Airport at the departure/transit lounge which was designated “Food for the Mind”. It serves to disseminate Dhamma among interested foreigners and locals. Since the very inception of the BCC, exhibitions have been held throughout the island with the intent of popularizing Dhamma books and it could be said with certainty that the effort has been very successful; now even other publishers have begun publishing copious amount of Dhamma books as would be evident to anybody on visiting book exhibitions. In 2011, a gorgeous building designated Sambuddhatva Jayanthi Mandiraya was erected at the heart of Colombo in commemoration of 2600 years of the advent of Buddhism. It consists of 16 storeys and includes auditorium facilities for conferences, seminars, convocations…etc. It also incorporates a bookshop operating under the BCC at Nedimala, Dehiwala, probably the largest of its kind containing books on Buddhism in the world. It is a centre of Buddhist activity wherein seminars and classes are held on various Buddhist themes as meditation and also correspondence courses in Buddhism are conducted for the benefit of those who are desirous of imbibing Buddhist wisdom. Moreover, local and foreign languages are taught there as well as a Buddhist counseling service is carried out; and many more facets to its multifarious Buddhist activities. BCC since its induction in 1992, it has the following achievements to its credit: 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Buddhist Cultural Centre」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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