Coming Soon: Fo Guang Shan (North Island)’s Buddha’s Birthday on TV One

The new season of New Zealand TV One’s popular television program “How the other half lives” will be featuring New Zealanders who have chosen to live a lifestyle outside the mainstream. In one of the episodes, the popular Host Marc Ellis will step into the shoes of a Buddhist and introduce the development of Buddhism, its propagation and teachings in New Zealand. The show will also feature one of the most important occasions for the Buddhists ~ The Buddha’s Birthday, which was filmed in Fo Guang Shan (North Island) on 11 April as a perfect ending of that episode which is scheduled to be aired on TV One on 27 September 2010, 8pm.
During the show, Marc Ellis will join the distinguished guests to do flower offerings, bathe the Buddha, “One Million Heart Sutras in The Buddha” sutra copying and attend the baby blessing ceremony. Venerable Manwang, Fo Guang Youths and Elaine, the teacher of the Children’s Dharma Class were also interviewed by Marc Ellis. They hope to be able to propagate the right values and teachings of Humanistic Buddhism to the audience in NZ.
The production team expressed their heartfelt gratitude to the temple for their unfailing support and cooperation in making the filming so successful. They reckoned the concept of Humanistic Buddhism can be applied to everyday life and were impressed that on this significant occasion of the Buddhists, different leaders from different religions were invited to pray for world peace, which shows the strong Buddhist values of tolerance and benevolence towards other religions.