This week, thousands will visit the Nan Tien Temple as part of Lunar New Year celebrations.
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The Berkeley complex, which is one of the largest Buddhist temples in the southern hemisphere, is marking the beginning of the year of the tiger with prayers, exhibitions and a lantern festival.
According to Venerable Zhi Li Shi, the tiger is regarded as an animal of great power, strength, courage and braveness, and that this year people are encouraged to take on these qualities.
Those visiting the temple offer prayer and burn incense, which plays an important role, according to Venerable Shi.
"What are we burning out? This has a symbolic meaning, for example, burning off greed, anger, hatred, our bad habits, and our worries, afflictions and fears, so we don't carry them to the next year."
Another theme of the celebrations is light. Part of visiting the temple for many devotees includes lighting a candle.
"This is not just a physical light," said Venerable Shi. "When you are lighting this candle it helps to light up our thoughts, so that we can grow in wisdom in the new year and illuminate the dark corners of our hearts and our minds so that we can see things clearly and live without fear."
While in person attendance was possible on Lunar New Years Day, other services that would have previously been open to the public in person were instead held online. The chanting services held on Monday night, were live streamed online to a global audience.
"Technology has helped us a lot in reaching out to an even wider community while maintaining a safe distance," said Venerable Shi.
The Lunar New Year festival globally is the largest human migration, with hundreds of millions of people travelling to spend time with family.
With travel restrictions and border closures in place in many countries, new year celebrations have looked a bit different in 2021 and 2022.
In Wollongong, the Nan Tien Temple has held a reunion dinner for people to come together who may be separated from their family.
"Normally at New Year's Eve, people will gather together with their family members to enjoy a reunion dinner. But we realised that because of COVID, it's a bit hard for people to fly back to China or to different parts of the world. So, instead, we invited them to come back to the temple, and to enjoy a reunion dinner with us," said Venerable Shi.
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