Buddhist Temple Finds a Home in Downtown Clayton

Blue Lotus Dharma Center Senior Priest Sha?ul Hirschmann maintained the temple for six years with his own money. He said as long as he has one follower he?d hold services.

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?We used yoga studios or whatever. We had just had little tiny groups,? Hirschmann said. He said there was a core of maybe five people.

?We ended up at a place behind the Hi-Pointe Theatre. So we built up a temple in there, with only three or four of us,? he said. ?Then in no time, as soon as we opened the doors?we didn?t have any grand opening, just a website and some flyers?we built it up to 50-some people.?

He said when they invited a teacher to come in it was standing room only. ? It was time to move,? he said.

In the beginning of April he signed a lease for a 2,500 square foot space at 7921 Forsyth Boulevard for services and classes.

They?re currently using a space across the hall while they renovate their own space, but when they?re fully moved in there will be a full temple and ceremony, Hirschmann said.

?It will be purification and consecration ceremony,? Hirschmann said. ?It is a weekend-long event that starts Friday night and goes through Sunday.?

He said the temple will be able to bring in lamas and monks for services and classes now.

Hirschmann said they signed only an 18-month lease because as soon as possible they?d like to have their own building.

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Emory's Carlos Museum finds its center with 'Mandala: Sacred Circle in Tibetan Buddhism'

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Atlanta, GA (USA) -- Emory University's Michael C. Carlos Museum, an often-overlooked gem for local art and culture, is exhibiting Mandala: Sacred Circle in Tibetan Buddhism through April 15. Mandala brings to Atlanta many rare and beautiful Buddhist thangkas, or paintings, along with other objects intended for initiation and meditation.

<< Kimbell Art Museum
Four Mandalas of the Vajravali Series, c. 1429—56, Central Tibet, Tsang (Ngor Monastery), Sakya order, Thangka, gouache on cotton, KKimbell Art Museumimbell Art Museum

Mandalas are a kind of technology for meditation, meant to work with personal practice to achieve spiritual insight and liberation. The most common mandalas in Tibetan Buddhist art place a deity at the center of a palace filled with other deities and iconography. This palace is an individual and a cosmological map that lines up with a highly proscribed set of meditational practices so that an individual may see him or herself as the central deity. In fact, Buddhist philosophy describes individual and deity as one and the same.

Mandalas act as visual tools for meditators. The basics of mandala practice are fairly easy to imagine - think about a golfer on the green visualizing Arnold Palmer putting in order to perfect his own stroke.

Although intended for monks, religious art in Tibet touched nearly every aspect of society. For many centuries, Tibet was at the center of a vast Empire, trading with Nepal, India, Persia, China, and Central Asia. In addition to bringing technology and high-level artisans, this trade delivered to Tibet a fantastic range of artistic styles. The painted mandalas on display at the Carlos Museum are fantastically detailed, including myriad deities, monks, and symbols. Their arrangement in circular forms adheres to iconographic conventions, from the colors used to the placement of elements.

A mandala from Dallas' Kimbell Museum is so meticulously painted that even on closest inspection it’s difficult to discern irregularities; It looks as thought it was printed using modern technology, rather than being created by hand 600 years ago.

The exhibit features rare forms of the mandala: The 18th-century Mahakala (Tibet’s protector diety) is unusual for its large central triangle and absence of central deity. Instead, objects symbolic of deities and practice are present, placed with unusual, lotus-shaped palaces. The mandala’s minimalistic design includes some gruesome imagery: flayed human skin, skulls, and intestines, all designed to remind the viewer how transient and unsustainable human life is.

A mandala beautifully decorated with flowers also elides deities, showing instead empty thrones to connote the “thus gone” aspect of the historical Buddha Shakyamuni and his 16 Arhats (acolytes). Tucked away amid the blossoms are wish-fulfilling jewels and ducks in ponds, while deer, traditional symbols for Shakyamuni adorn the four gates.

In addition to painted mandalas, the exhibition includes cosmological paintings, sculptures, and a fantastic, one-of-a-kind three-dimensional wooden carved model of the Guhyasamaja Mandala.

In association with this exhibition, Oglethorpe's Museum of Art has another kind of mandala on display: images created by patients of the psychoanalyst C.G. Jung. Jung used art as therapy, instructing his patients to create images as a means of expressing the conscious and unconscious, and clarifying mental obstacles.

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Mandala: Sacred Circle in Tibetan Buddhism runs through April 15 at Emory's the Carlos Museum. The Sacred Round: Mandalas by the Patients of C.G. Jung runs through May 6 at Oglethorpe.

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Japan Finds Story of Hope in Undertaker Who Offered Calm Amid Disaster

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KAMAISHI, Japan -- Amid the grief of finding her mother’s body at a makeshift morgue in this tsunami-ravaged city last March, Fumie Arai took comfort in a small but surprising discovery. Unlike the rest of the muddied body, her mother’s face had been carefully wiped clean.

<< A memorial in Koriyama, Japan, on Saturday was one of many to mark the March 11, 2011, quake and tsunami. More Photos »
Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times

Atsushi Chiba used Buddhist rituals in caring for nearly 1,000 bodies in Kamaishi. “It's a way to comfort the living,” he said. More Photos »

Mrs. Arai did not know at the time, but the act was the work of a retired undertaker well-versed in the ancient Buddhist rituals of preparing the dead for cremation and burial. The undertaker, Atsushi Chiba, a father of five who cared for almost 1,000 bodies in Kamaishi, has now become an unlikely hero in a community trying to heal its wounds a year after the massive earthquake and tsunami that ravaged much of Japan’s northeastern coast a year ago Sunday.

“I dreaded finding my mother’s body, lying alone on the cold ground among strangers,” Mrs. Arai, 36, said. “When I saw her peaceful, clean face, I knew someone had taken care of her until I arrived. That saved me.”

As Japan marks one year since the quake and tsunami that claimed almost 20,000 lives in the northeastern region of Tohoku, stories like these are being told and retold as mementos of hope even as Japan struggles through what is expected to be an effort lasting decades to rebuild the region.

Mr. Chiba’s story has been immortalized in a best-selling book in Japan, which has sold over 40,000 copies and is in its eleventh printing.

“The dead bodies are the most disturbing aspect of any disaster, and some people might not want to remember,” said the book’s author, Kota Ishii, who spent three months in Kamaishi and its environs in the wake of the disaster, chronicling Mr. Chiba’s work. “But this story is ultimately about how small acts of kindness can bring a little humanity, even in a tragedy that defies all imagination.”

The 30-foot waves that struck Kamaishi shortly after the magnitude 9.0 quake on March 11 spared the white statue of Kannon, the Buddhist goddess of mercy, which looks out to sea from the hills above the city. But the waves destroyed the liveliest parts of the city, the bars and restaurants frequented by the area’s fishermen.

As the black water receded, rescuers entered the city’s devastated streets and started pulling the dead from the rubble, carrying them on trucks to a vacant middle school that had escaped damage. The rundown gymnasium quickly became a large morgue.

Mr. Chiba, in his early 70s, whose home was also spared, raced to the gym on the day after the tsunami to look for friends and family, but was struck by the state of the mounting number of bodies there. Most were still clad in muddy clothes and wrapped in plastic, their rigid limbs jutting out and faces bruised by debris and contorted in agony.

“I thought that if the bodies were left this way, the families who came to claim them wouldn’t be able to bear it,” Mr. Chiba said Thursday in an interview. “Yes, they are dead. But in Japan, we treat the dead with respect, as if they are still alive. It’s a way to comfort the living.”

Mr. Chiba set to work. He became a fixture at the morgue, speaking to the bodies as he prepared them for viewing and then cremation. “You must be so cold and lonely, but your family is going to come for you soon so you’d better think of what you’re going to say to them when they arrive,” he recalled saying.

He also taught city workers at the morgue how to soothe limbs tense with rigor mortis, getting down on his knees and gently massaging them so the bodies looked less contorted. When the relatives of a middle-aged victim sobbed that her corpse looked gaunt, Mr. Chiba asked for some makeup and applied rouge and blush.

Mr. Chiba’s attempts to honor the dead quickly caught on. City workers put together old school desks to make a Buddhist altar. They lay the bodies of couples and of family members together. Each time a body was carried out, workers lined up with heads bowed to pay their last respects.

And at Mr. Chiba’s urging, Kamaishi became one of the only hard-hit communities to cremate all of its dead as called for by Japanese custom, enlisting the help of crematoriums as far as Akita, over 100 miles away.

In all, 888 of Kamaishi’s approximately 40,000 residents are known to have died; 158 more are listed as missing and presumed dead.

The disaster has been a major blow to the already declining fortunes of the city, whose steel industry thrived during the 1960s and 1970s but has been shrinking ever since. The tsunami laid waste to half the city, and a year later, streets in the worst-hit neighborhoods are still lined with the shells of buildings and empty plots.

As the city prepared this weekend for memorials to mark the disaster’s first anniversary, a Buddhist priest paid tribute to Mr. Chiba’s contribution to the city’s emotional recovery.

The priest, Enou Shibasaki, from the Senjuin Temple in the hills overlooking Kamaishi, remembers the change that came over the makeshift morgue as Mr. Chiba and city workers tended to the bodies.

“Whether you are religious or not, mourning for the dead is a fundamental need,” Mr. Shibasaki said. “Mourning starts by taking care of the body. It’s the last you see of your loved one, and you want to remember them as beautiful as they were in life.”

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Northeast Portland church finds new life as Heart of Wisdom, a Buddhist temple

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Portland, Oregon (USA) -- On a Wednesday morning, the newly painted red door gleams against the small white church. Just inside, wooden stairs, covered in feathery tufts of old carpet padding, climb to the second-floor sanctuary.

<< A former church that's housed three congregations in Northeast Portland has become Heart of Wisdom, a Zen Buddhist temple. Benjamin Brink, The Oregonian

Scents of fresh paint and fine sawdust mingle in the air. The Douglas fir floor that has supported three congregations in the past 100 years is being refinished for its fourth -- the Zen Community of Oregon.

Buddhists believe in impermanence, the notion that nothing lasts forever, that a person must try to welcome change. On the surface, such thinking may seem at odds with the Christian understanding of the eternal God, but both concepts coexist on a corner not far from the Woodlawn Triangle in Northeast Portland.

A church that has been in continuous use for more than a century is being lovingly restored as a Zen refuge by a group who believe they probably won't be the last to hallow this space.

This story begins in about 1891, when the modest wooden church was built to house a Methodist Episcopal congregation. By 1959, the Methodists had moved on. Ukrainian Orthodox Christians had taken their place, installing a three-bar cross on the church steeple. By 1968, the building was home to the Church of the Living God, a historically African American congregation that thrived for a time.

But in recent years, membership dwindled. Last fall, unpaid debts meant the church property faced foreclosure and the prospect of being sold at auction in front of the Multnomah County Courthouse at 11 a.m. on Dec. 15.

Enter the Zen Community of Oregon. Founded in 1976, the small sangha, or spiritual community, began meditating in private homes and yoga studios. Later they rented space at Dharma Rain Zen Center and at St. David of Wales Episcopal Church, both in Southeast Portland. Along the way, the community bought a former elementary school in Clatskanie and transformed it into Great Vow Monastery. But a two-year search for their own space in Portland had stalled.

heart-of-wisdom-zendo.JPGView full sizeBenjamin Brink, The OregonianTony Mandella works restoring the old sanctuary floor in the zendo space, the Heart of Wisdom meditation hall.
"We were a little like a potted plant," says Patrick Green, president of the community's board. "We could only get so big. But as the community matured and more people were ready to teach, we didn't have the space to do it."

Then one evening in October, at the end of a meditation session, someone handed Hogen Bays, one of the spiritual leaders of the Zen Community of Oregon, a crumpled newspaper clipping. It was a public notice about the Church of the Living God property and the auction. Bays and members of the board met with the pastor of the congregation, the Rev. Roy Maxie, and visited the church.

"When we first came into the place, all those years of singing and praying had saturated the building," Bays remembers. "Everybody who walked into the chapel said, 'Ooh, this feels really good.' There were 120 years of spiritual practice soaking the walls."

Bays says he made Maxie an offer. The Buddhist community was willing to pay a fair price for the property, $205,000, so the pastor could pay off the church debts and have a little left over for his next ministry. It was an offer in keeping with the concept of karma -- that actions have consequences and good actions have good consequences. The Zen community could have waited for the auction and probably spent less to acquire the property, but Bays didn't want to benefit from another group's difficult circumstances.

"There's something to be said, especially with religion, about going in with a clean and healthy beginning," Bays says. "If we had taken advantage of somebody's bad luck, that would have set a certain tone."

The sale was final in December, just weeks before the auction date. The Zen community had already decided on what to call their new temple.

"We thought long and hard about names," Bays says. "Great Vow has 'Monastery' in its name so that we won't deviate and become a retreat center. 'Monastery' has a clear purpose." Ultimately, the community chose to combine two central Buddhist principles.

"Our tradition emphasizes wisdom as worthy of being cultivated," Bays says. "But wisdom can appear to be cool, removed. So we wanted to include the idea of warmth, compassion and outreach, the essence of real spiritual life. So, Heart of Wisdom."

The Zen Community of Oregon held a blessing of their new space on Jan. 1 and soon began work on the building. The roof was replaced with one meant to last 50 years. A new furnace was installed, walls were patched and painted. The wood floor of the sanctuary -- now a zendo, or meditation hall -- was taken up, the nails removed, the individual planks sanded and replaced so they could be refinished.

On a recent Wednesday morning, Evan Corcoran was among the volunteers working on the floor, checking each board for stubborn flakes of paint and pushing putty into the occasional crack. Corcoran has practiced Zen since 2000, consistently since 2005. He lived at the monastery in Clatskanie for more than three years before moving to Portland in February 2011.

"I owe a massive debt," he says quietly. "When I arrived at the monastery, I was borderline suicidal." The kindness and quiet that he experienced at Great Vow and the structure of monastic life soothed him, he says. "I needed time to not think."

Corcoran helped install the heated bamboo floor in the monastery dojo. Now he walks several blocks from his home to Heart of Wisdom to make what is, for him, a very personal contribution. "I work out of gratitude," he says. "I'll be tied to this place forever."

Nancy Kodo Conover, a member of the Zen community, coordinates the work on the temple. She says about 100 people have spent time on the project -- individually, in small groups and as larger work parties. Buddhist practice influences the way she and the others see their labor.

"Work is one of our practices," she says. "When we are mindfully doing the work, doing our best, taking care of our equipment and tools, we reflect on how the results of our work will be there for a long time, affecting the next people to come along. If we do a lousy job, someone will have to repair our mistakes.

"Someone built it for us. We are building it for the next generation to come."

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