Founder

Thich Minh Quang, the founder of the Palm Beach Mahabodhi Compassionate Charity, is a Vietnamese-American Buddhist monk in the Mahayana tradition.  He is known as Minh Quang to his Buddhist people and his university students.  However, his title "Thay," which means a teacher or master, is added by his Buddhist people in the normal monastic activities.  As a monk in the Buddhist tradition, Minh Quang follows the Buddha to dedicate his life to provide a calm and peaceful shade to those who seek to take Buddhist refuges.  His mission is to inspire others to realize their potential, including the potential to be enlightened, through Buddhist meditative cultivations, to develop a sense of self-responsibility, and to progress toward mental clarity or wisdom, and to achieve positive visions.

Minh Quang came to the United States of America from the Vietnamese refugee camp in Malaysia under the sponsorship of the State of New York.  In his college years, he joined the International Buddhist Monastic Institute, in San Fernando Valley, California, to become a Buddhist Bhiksu while studying Chemistry at Cornell University.  After relocating to California for monastic training, he attended California State University, Northridge, and earned a B. A. in Philosophy and completed his studies in a Master program in English there. In his monastic training, Minh Quang specialized in Buddhist meditative cultivations built upon the principles of the major Mahayana sutras.  Also, he managed to learn classical Chinese, the scriptural language of the Mahayana Tripitaka.  In addition to his home monastery in California, Minh Quang has traveled extensively on invitation of the Vietnamese Buddhist laity in order to give teachings, to conduct ceremonies, and to help establish Buddhist centers.  His destinations for teachings covered New Hampshire, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, Nebraska, Kansas, Kentucky, Tennessee, South Carolina, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and Florida, and even Ottawa in Canada.  

As a part of his further scholarly education, Minh Quang, attended the graduate program in the Department of Religion at Florida State University where he earned an M. A. in religion in 2001 and a Ph.D. in religion, specialized in Buddhism, in 2007.  In addition to his native Vietnamese, he became proficient in Chinese, French, and Sanskrit in his graduate years.  Also, for both Buddhist and research purposes, he visited the sacred Buddhist pilgrimage sites in India several times.  In addition to the four major pilgrimage sites of Lumbini, Bodh Gaya, Sarnath, and Kushinagara, he visited Katmandu and Dharamsala, Sanchi, Ellora, and Atjanta. In his fourth visit to India in Summer 2007, his destinations also covered the Buddhist sites in Southern India, including Nagarkonda, Hyderabad, and Amaravati.  Visiting other well-known Buddhist sites in Singapore and Malaysia was a part of his experience.  

During his visits to the sacred Buddhist sites, Minh Quang came to learn about the poor living conditions of the people in remote villages in Bodh Gaya.  With sheer compassion, he joined other Vietnamese Buddhist monks and nuns and the local Indian volunteers to help those needy people.  One of his major focuses was to help support the poor schoolchildren in those remote villages to learn how to read and write.  Again, he hoped to develop their potentials.  He envisioned that with their learning, they would be able to improve their lives and the lives of other villagers in the future.  In establishing the Palm Beach Mahabodhi Compassionate Charity, Minh Quang and his team envision that they will be able to help those needy villagers more effectively.

Co-Founders

My charity work cannot be done without the support of my team of directors. They are exceptional co-founders of the organization. Working without pay, they volunteer their time and skills with the hope that the organization will grow and will be able to help improve the lives of many others.