Dharma Bum Temple, Buddhist temple in San Diego, United States

The Dharma Bum Temple is a Buddhist spiritual center in San Diego housed in a renovated Swedenborgian Church from 1927. It offers meditation sessions and Buddhist teachings in this repurposed historic building that sits near the downtown area and university neighborhood.

A group that met at a San Diego Buddhist temple in 2003 studied at Fo Guang Shan in Taiwan in 2005 and opened a temple under the International Bodhisattva Sangha in 2006, but abandoned it for lack of funds. That year they started the Dharma Bum Center downtown, named after Jack Kerouac's 1958 book The Dharma Bums, and renamed it Dharma Bum Temple in September 2008. In April 2017 it moved into the 1927 Swedenborgian church in University Heights, bought after a 108-day campaign that raised $497,000 from 1,123 donors.

The name comes from Jack Kerouac's 1958 novel The Dharma Bums, and members call themselves "Dharma Bums". The temple deliberately sets aside chanting and bowing so that Westerners new to Buddhism are not put off, and it also runs a Buddhism-based support group, the Recovery Sangha. Guest speakers from other Buddhist traditions are hosted regularly.

The temple sits in University Heights, north of downtown San Diego, in the 1927 former Swedenborgian church it bought in 2017. It has three meditation areas and room for up to 300 people at once. Classes are free and open to the public, and the temple also runs community service events and field trips to other San Diego Buddhist temples.

The temple's name comes from Jack Kerouac's 1958 novel The Dharma Bums; the group opened its own centre under that name in late 2006, after abandoning a Fo Guang Shan-backed project, and formally became Dharma Bum Temple in September 2008. Members call themselves "Dharma Bums".