c. 2000 Religion News Service

HOUSTON _ When attorney Peter DiMichele moved to Houston from New York, he didn’t count on finding many like-minded Buddhist souls, much less a well-appointed temple at which to continue studying.

His first week here, DiMichele called Jade Buddha Temple. He was surprised to learn the temple sponsored courses and worship in both English and Chinese, the native tongue of its founders. He was even more pleased when he found the temple campus in far southwest Houston.

The modest subdivision surrounding the temple’s 2.5 acres was deceiving. “I expected a little house and not much more,” DiMichele said.

Instead, he found a handsome Buddhist campus, completed in 1989. It includes a grand hall for weekly services, a smaller meditation hall, youth activity center, library, cafeteria, living quarters for two priests and a lotus pond with a statue of the bodhisattva, Kwan-Yin, as its centerpiece.

The complex is designed to help others seek enlightenment.

The term “buddha” means to be awake, or, in the context of Buddhism, to be enlightened. A bodhisattva is one who has vowed to become enlightened as a buddha. In the Mahayan Buddhist tradition, one of several major strains of Buddhism and the strongest influence on Jade Buddha Temple, it is understood that there are different levels of bodhisattva, ranging from ordinary people to more celestial beings.

“Buddhism provides me with answers,” said Sri Wan Chan, a temple lay leader. “It gives me a path, a way of life. When I first studied Buddha’s first Dharma talk, he pointed out three characteristics of the sutra, or teaching. The first is following `the middle way.’ I have found that very helpful. It is a balanced way.”

Throughout its history, Jade Buddha Temple has tried to reflect that balance.

“Sometimes we get this image that Buddhists tend to be meditating all the time,” Chan said. “One of the very first Buddhist teachings … focuses on three characteristics. The first is the middle way. The second point is the four noble truths. Those are universal.

“The third one calls for being involved in the world,” she said. “It doesn’t suggest we should escape from life.”

With each new group or individual drawn to the Jade Temple comes a particular set of needs. Meeting those needs, while remaining true to a rich heritage is important to temple leaders. Similar efforts by Buddhists to balance the old and the new can be detected across the United States today as Buddhism, introduced in this country a little more than 100 years ago, slowly comes of age.

The bulk of Jade Temple’s 1,400 members are of Chinese descent. But there are also people of Thai, Vietnamese, Burmese, and other national origins who attend Jade’s Sunday morning meditations or its evening and weekend programs. About 5 percent are like DiMichele, Americans who came to Buddhism from other faiths.

Meditation courses are offered in English and in Chinese. In addition, the temple sponsors a weekly Chinese language and culture school for Chinese-American children. Sunday meditation in English is open to the public, as are the temple’s youth program, children’s summer camp, Chinese New Year celebration, and ceremonies marking the birthdays of Kwan-Yin and the Buddha. Worship in Chinese is conducted Sunday afternoons.

Because of its size, the temple also has hosted major Buddhist events, such as a day of teaching by the Dalai Lama.

“Most people when they come to our temple want to find a place to

meditate with other people,” said Hung-I, one of the three temple priests. “Others come to learn something more about the Buddha or to learn from others. Of course, that means many changes, but that, too expresses a Buddhist truth.

“If I were to summarize a main teaching of Buddhism, it would be that the universe is changing constantly, dynamic, yet impermanent,” he said. “We must cherish opposite to be better able to cherish what we have. We must realize all are all interrelated.”

It is obvious Jade Temple has adapted to changing needs, said Wu-Hao Liao, a computer system consultant and former director of volunteers for the temple.

“I think our reverends are open-minded and thought about this in the past,” he said. “If you look at our Great Hall, we have the pews, rather than sit on the floor. If you come to our Chinese group on Sunday service, at the end, we chant with a pianist. If some of the traditional Buddhists came to our temple, they would say `Why?’ Many Buddhists do not use music.

“Our second generation, my children, they’re studying Chinese here, the culture, the Buddhism, but they are Americans. We’re trying to influence them with our traditions, our culture. But our reverends have predicted … that maybe 10 years from now, our English service will draw 500 and our Chinese service will draw only about 60 people.”

University of Houston sociologist Helen Ebaugh, who has conducted a wide-ranging study of 793 immigrant congregations in Harris and Fort Bend counties, says many ethnic congregations serve multiple purposes.

“Unlike what goes on in the home country, when these immigrants re-create religious institutions in the United States, they tend towards congregationalism,” she said. “That involves more lay participation.”

Places like Jade Buddha Temple also offer familiarity in a changing world. Many of the materials used to build the temple were imported from Hong Kong, creating a familiar yellow-and-red structure with glazed tiles and upturned eaves in front of which stands a lotus pond.

“You put these physical images together with the sound of native language and music from home countries, the smell of incense, native food _ these congregations flood the senses with reminders from the native land,” Ebaugh said.

In the past, monks, nuns and priests trained in meditation. Lay people usually came to temple mainly for festivals and other special occasions.

But today, the average American Buddhist has questions “traditional cultures and peoples didn’t have,” said Anne Klein, Rice University religious studies professor and co-founder of the more recently opened Dawn Mountain Buddhist Temple in Houston.

Hung-I said the temple gets regular requests for more intensive meditation instruction. Three- and seven-day meditation retreats are offered periodically. Last year the temple created the Buddhist College, which offers a 12-week intensive course twice a year. So far, it has attracted about 60

students per session.

The priest would like to offer even more in-depth instruction to meet the needs of people like DiMichele, who made periodic trips from Houston to Chicago to complete a year-long Buddhist study program offered by a master teacher there.

DiMichele finds it helpful to study the religion in a temple founded by Chinese because as Buddhism spread beyond India, it was shaped by _ and helped shape _ the cultures into which it spread.

“It’s not just book learning. It’s learning by being around a people and tradition that embodies that Buddhism,” he said. “I think it’s very arrogant of someone who might say we’re `completely American Buddhism.’

“There may eventually develop a distinctly American Buddhism, but that will really take centuries.”

DEA END HOLMES