Benefits of Building a Monastery / Temple

Building a monastery has unbelievable merit. Because it is a holy place with the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha abiding in it, however many atoms the temple or the monastery has, that many lifetimes you are reborn as a king, in the deva or human realms, with all wealth and power. Your merits, including the number of atoms of the whole monastery, increase all the time, for eons.
It is said in the text by the great Indian master Chandragomin: When the temple is built, even the workers who are building the temple and kill worms and insects under their feet while they’re working, have their negative karma purified and are not reborn in the lower realms. Even the smoke coming out of the fire from making food for the workers, who ever it touches, any being, has their negative karma purified and they receive a higher rebirth. That shows how building a monastery or temple is so powerful in benefiting others, purifying karma, and collecting inconceivable merit for sentient beings. It is so powerful in creating merit and purifying defilements that all the wishes of the people who are building the temple are fulfilled. The people who are building the temple/monastery, who offer donations, time, even the workers who are doing the work, receive unbelievable purification and collect inconceivable merits every day, and all their wishes are fulfilled 

Furthermore, Buddha said in the Mindfulness Sutra: Who has built well the support [statue] and supporting [temple], and arranged a place and needs for the Sangha, that one will always go from virtue to virtue [always progressing, with more and more happiness, and more and more virtue]. Even for thousands of ten million eons, the virtue can never be wasted or lost. It is saying that one who has built the holy body of Buddha: statue, the holy speech of Buddha: scripture, the holy mind of Buddha: stupa, the temple or shelf for Dharma, and establishes a monastery for the Sangha, gains very extensive merit that is never lost and always increases.

The merits received from bodhicitta are never lost and increase all the time, while you are walking, working, eating, sleeping, sitting, and doing any activities. They continuously, unceasingly increase. The merits of building a monastery are similar to this.

- Lama Zopa Rinpoche