Hollywood Vedanta Temple
Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, United States
A white three-domed Vedanta temple dedicated in 1938 near the Hollywood Bowl, where Swami Prabhavananda's circle drew Huxley, Heard and Isherwood, and the first American monastics were ordained.
The Vedanta Society of Southern California grew out of Swami Vivekananda's late-1890s Los Angeles visit, was founded in 1930, and built this temple with funding from Carrie Mead Wyckoff, completed and dedicated in 1938. The white, three-domed building follows South Indian temple architecture, and under Swami Prabhavananda it became a hub of the Vedanta-in-the-West story: Aldous Huxley, Gerald Heard and Christopher Isherwood were drawn into the circle in the 1940s, and American monastics were first ordained here in 1946. The society operates under the Ramakrishna Order of India.
The temple remains open daily for quiet meditation, with pujas and Sunday classes per the society's schedule, and pairs with the library's San Francisco Vedanta Old Temple as the other great early Vedanta temple in California.
Visiting
The temple at 1946 Vedanta Place is open daily with no admission fee; the bookshop is in the house next door; Sunday lectures and pujas follow the society's calendar (323-465-7114).
Photo: [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Vedanta_temple_in_Hollywood.JPG), CC0, Toohool.
Associated traditions & practices
Visitor stories