The White
Lotus Society

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Many streams. One living water.

We are a welcoming spiritual community rooted in the Golden Rule. We do not blend traditions. We drink from one underground water, and we go deep.

The roots are many. The water is one.

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Live the Luminous Way.

Spiritual life becomes real through contemplation, creative expression, mutual care, and reverence for creation.

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The Long River

Long before anyone spoke of a White Lotus, Laozi, keeper of the royal archives, rode toward the western pass, and the gatekeeper asked him to leave his wisdom behind. He wrote eighty-one short chapters, the Tao Te Ching, and went on into the mountains. The Way that cannot be named, the water that serves all things, the soft that wears away the hard: this was the first spring. Some centuries later, in India, the Mahayana opened the Dharma to everyone, and the bodhisattva vowed to awaken for the sake of all beings. The sutras told of Amitabha, whose vow of infinite light and infinite life carries even the weakest across by trust and by remembering his Name. This was the second spring. In the first century, in Galilee and Jerusalem, Jesus taught that God is love, that we should treat others as we wish to be treated, and that the last shall be first. His followers held their goods in common, fed the poor, healed the sick, and prayed in the name that saves. Thomas carried the gospel east to India, and the Christians of the East carried it on toward Persia, Central Asia, and China. This was the third spring, and now the three ran side by side along the Silk Road. In the year 402 a scholar named Huiyuan, raised on the Taoist classics, gathered 123 companions on Mount Lu, and before an image of Amitabha they vowed to walk together toward the Pure Land. They named themselves the White Lotus Society, after the flower that blooms spotless from clear water. In 635 a Christian teacher named Alopen came to Chang’an and was welcomed, and his scriptures, the Jesus Sutras, spoke the gospel in the language of the Way and the Light. In 781 the Stele of Xi’an was raised to tell the story in stone, a cross rising above a lotus. In the twelfth century Mao Ziyuan renewed the fellowship for ordinary men and women, with simple precepts, shared worship, and the Name of Amitabha on every lip, and the lotus became the people’s flower. In time the Eternal Mother, Holy Sophia and the Holy Spirit, became the tender face of the divine for the poor. In the centuries when rulers taxed and crushed them, the faithful rose in a long struggle against oppression, carrying the lotus as the banner of those who asked for justice and mercy. That river has reached us. Today the White Lotus Society gathers as a church of one Light, and Golden Flower Abbey keeps the inner way of the Tao, the prayer of the heart of Christian Zen, and the saving trust of Pure Land in a single practice. We hold the Golden Rule as our creed, serve our neighbors, tend the living Earth, and welcome everyone. Three springs, one river, one Light.

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The light that came before the empire

A lineage written in mountains, monasteries, and stone.

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What we stand for.

We carry faith into the world through peaceful service, a generous imagination, and the conviction that every life has dignity.