10,000 Relics Transform Small California Buddhist Temple

BISMARCK TRIBUNE
By John Rogerts

Dharma Master YongHua displays a bottle containing aromatic shariras, part of the temple collection of Buddhist relics

CALIFORNIA---Although he'd been a practicing Buddhist for 20 years, until 10 months ago Dharma Master YongHua hadn't even seen so much as one of the sacred relics known as shariras that are so important to his faith. So it came as quite a surprise to the modest, soft-spoken monk when he learned he was becoming the caretaker of more than 10,000 of them. YongHua's modest Lu Mountain Temple became a repository for the thousands of colorful crystals, two teeth and a single hair that are believed to have come from the body of the Buddha himself. A congregant offered up the collection that he'd painstakingly gathered for years. [link]