Chapter 16: Every tradition: services and what they need · Part 4
Buddhism
The Chinese Buddhist temple is here, under Buddhism; the Chinese folk temple, the Daoist temple, and Yiguandao are under Chinese religion.
Buddhist Churches of America
A temple of the Buddhist Churches of America (BCA), the American branch of Jodo Shinshu Hongwanji-ha, the Shin Buddhism of Shinran Shonin, whose mother temple, the Hongwanji, is in Kyoto. Shin Buddhists entrust themselves to the vow of Amida Buddha and say the nembutsu, Namo Amida Butsu, in gratitude; there is no monastic life and no meditation obligation. It is the most church-like Buddhist body in America, the fruit of an Americanization that gave it its name in 1944, during the wartime incarceration of Japanese Americans: a Sunday service in pews in the hondo before the onaijin altar, sutra chanting, gathas sung with the piano or organ, a dharma talk by the minister (Sensei), and Dharma School for the children. Memorials drive the year: the 7th and 49th days and the anniversaries to the 50th year, and every month's Shotsuki Hoyo. Obon in July and August is the year's peak and its biggest fundraiser, when the neighbourhood comes to dance. Temples are their own nonprofits, run by lay boards and funded by members' dues (from which they pay BCA a per-member assessment, estimated here), memorial offerings, and festivals; ministers are trained at the Institute of Buddhist Studies, ordained through the Hongwanji, assigned through the Bishop's office, and often shared between small temples, for ministers are scarce. The membership is ageing and mostly Japanese American, now with more mixed families and newcomers. BCA ministers have performed same-sex weddings since the early 1970s. Practice varies by temple: some hold services every other week, some in Japanese for elders, and some have a columbarium (nokotsudo).
1 required or forbidden in the building · services, rites, joining, giving, leaders and staff, life together, every item, and every factor →
Vietnamese Buddhist temple
A Vietnamese Buddhist temple (chùa) of the community that came after 1975: East Asian Mahayana Buddhism that blends Pure Land devotion (chanting the name of Amitabha Buddha) with Zen (Thiền) lineages, with one or a few resident monks or nuns, who are celibate and vegetarian. Sunday is the week: chanting led by the monk or nun with the lay ritual team in grey robes on the wooden fish and the gong, a dharma talk if the teacher gives one, then the memorial service in the ancestor hall for the recently dead, whose names and photos hang on its wall and whose families come every week through the forty-nine days, and then a free vegetarian lunch for everyone. People sit on the floor, women on the left and men on the right, elders on chairs along the walls, shoes off. The residents keep their own daily services, which lay people rarely join in America; the 1st and 15th of the lunar month, days of repentance and vegetarian meals, stay on their dates, and every holiday but Tết moves to the nearest Sunday. Tết and Vu Lan are the year's peaks, and the Buddha's birthday draws five or six times an ordinary Sunday. Monastics are scarce, and temples may wait years for one; giving follows trust in the monk or nun. The temple as written is an abbot's temple, founded and led from the top by its monk or nun, with no formal membership; its variant is a temple of a lay association, whose elected board under bylaws invites a resident monk and runs the money, and where monk and board often clash. Federations hold ordinations and retreats but leave money and property to each temple. Many temples began in converted houses, with neighbours' complaints and zoning hearings. Services are in Vietnamese; the community is culturally traditional and keeps its refugee politics.
3 required or forbidden in the building · services, rites, joining, giving, leaders and staff, life together, every item, and every factor →
Chinese Buddhist temple
A branch temple of a Taiwanese Buddhist order, written as Fo Guang Shan's (whose Hsi Lai Temple near Los Angeles is its American flagship): Chinese Mahayana Buddhism blending Chan meditation and Pure Land recitation of Amitabha's name with repentance liturgies and rites for the dead, taught as "Humanistic Buddhism" for this life and society. The mother monastery owns the temple through its American nonprofits, appoints the abbess and sends the monastics, who may be moved to another temple after some years; there's no lay board with power over the clergy, unlike a Vietnamese or Theravada temple's. Fully ordained nuns, celibate and strictly vegetarian, live at the temple and lead every rite; most of the order's monastics are women, and many of its temples are led by abbesses. Sunday is the dharma function in the Main Shrine before Shakyamuni, Amitabha and the Medicine Buddha: a sutra that changes each week, chanted standing at the cushions to the wooden fish, with a dharma talk, then a memorial service for the dead and a vegetarian lunch for everyone, its meals sponsored by families. The temple is open daily for visitors to bow and light incense, and the nuns keep their own morning service. Its income is the dead and the year: memorial tablets at every function, yearly lamps renewed at the New Year and read on the 1st and 15th, and the great rites, the Emperor Liang Repentance, Ullambana in the filial month, and the Water and Land, a week of chanting in many halls that is the year's peak. A Chinese school meets on Sundays, the lay association (Buddha's Light) supplies the volunteers, and the kitchen keeps out meat, eggs, onion and garlic. The variant is a Dharma Drum branch (Chan Meditation Center), centred on meditation: weekly sitting groups, Chan retreats, English classes. Whether branches move lunar days to weekends, and what tablets cost, is unverified.
3 required or forbidden in the building · services, rites, joining, giving, leaders and staff, life together, every item, and every factor →
Soka Gakkai International-USA
An SGI-USA Buddhist center: Soka Gakkai International-USA, a lay organization practising the Nichiren Buddhism of the Lotus Sutra, part of a worldwide body founded in Japan in 1930 and led for decades by Daisaku Ikeda. Members chant daimoku, Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, and recite gongyo (passages of the Lotus Sutra) twice a day before the Gohonzon, a calligraphic scroll enshrined in a butsudan at home and at the center; SGI uses no Buddha images. It has had no priests since Nichiren Shoshu's priesthood excommunicated it in 1991: lay leaders, volunteers paired by men's, women's, and youth divisions, lead at every level, and are appointed from above rather than elected; volunteer ministers of ceremony conduct weddings and funerals. Members' monthly rhythm is the district discussion meeting in a member's living room and the kosen-rufu gongyo meeting at the center, where new members receive their Gohonzon; the game holds the center's meeting each Sunday morning, and the discussion meetings as a ministry. There are no dues: members give to the national organization, above all in the May Contribution, and the national body owns the centers and funds them. SGI-USA actively shares its practice (shakubuku, now through dialogue) and calls itself the most diverse Buddhist community in the United States, with many African American and Latino members. Practice varies by center and region; member counts aren't published.
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Soto Zen center
An American Soto Zen center: an independent sangha in the Zen school of Dogen, whose practice is shikantaza, just sitting. The pattern is the convert center that grew from Shunryu Suzuki's San Francisco Zen Center and the other lineages that came to America in the 1960s and 70s; most are small, in a house, a storefront, or a rented room, and the Japanese American Soto temples, which work more like the Buddhist Churches of America, aren't described here. The schedule is daily, early, and quiet: zazen at dawn and at dusk, facing the wall on zafu and zabuton in the zendo, with a short service of chanting and bows, and once a week the main program, two periods of zazen, a service, and the teacher's dharma talk (on Sunday mornings at many centers, Saturday at San Francisco). There is no music, only the han, bells, clappers, and the wooden fish; shoes come off at the door; the kitchen is vegetarian. Retreats are the big events: sesshin of one to seven days, Rohatsu in December, and practice periods at residential centers. A center is its own nonprofit, with a board and a guiding teacher (a priest who has received dharma transmission, addressed as Sensei, or Roshi when senior), often unpaid or on a modest stipend, chosen by the board or the sangha; there is no wider body with authority, only the lineages and the Soto Zen Buddhist Association of priests. Members pay tiered dues with no one turned away, and fees for retreats; commitment is marked by jukai, receiving the precepts. Women priests and abbots are common, priests may marry, and centers are liberal and welcoming. Practice varies widely from center to center.
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Theravada temple
A Theravada temple (wat, vihara) of an immigrant community, following the Pali Canon and the teaching of the elders, with monks living at the temple. Each temple belongs to a national tradition; Thai temples are the most common in America (the Council of Thai Bhikkhus counted 162 in 2014), so the temple as written is Thai, keeping the Thai and Lao lunar year, and its variants are Lao, Cambodian, Sri Lankan, and Burmese temples, which differ in language, names, and festivals (Sri Lankan temples keep the full-moon poya days and Vesak on May's full moon). The monks keep the Vinaya: they don't cook, handle money, or eat after noon, so families take turns by a rota to feed them each morning, and lay stewards handle the money. In America the observance days (Uposatha) at the full and new moons are kept on Sunday: the laity bow to the Buddha and the monks, receive the refuges and the Five Precepts in Pali, hear a Dhamma talk, and offer the monks their meal before noon, sitting on the floor with shoes off and feet turned away from the Buddha. The year's crowds come at the New Year in mid-April, at Vesak, and at Kathina, when the community offers robes and money trees after the rains retreat. A lay board owns the temple and controls its money while the abbot leads its religious life, and the two can clash. There is no formal membership and no dues: giving is dana, in boxes and monthly pledges, and festivals and food fairs fund the temple. Only men are ordained as monks at a heritage temple. Many temples began in a converted house; the kitchen and the monks' quarters are as essential as the shrine. Practice is less certain than for other bodies: much of what's here rests on general knowledge, marked so in the research note, and where it was thin the common Thai practice was chosen.
4 required or forbidden in the building · services, rites, joining, giving, leaders and staff, life together, every item, and every factor →
Tibetan Buddhist dharma center
A Tibetan Buddhist (Vajrayana) dharma center of one lineage, as most American centers are: a nonprofit with a shrine room, a resident or visiting teacher, and a mostly convert membership. The center as written follows the Gelug school's network, the Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition (FPMT), whose centers often have a resident geshe, a monk who has finished the long course of the monastic universities; Karma Kagyu centers (with lay lamas from the three-year retreat), Nyingma, Sakya, and Shambhala centers differ in their teachers, texts, and calendars. There is no single weekly service but a layered schedule: a Sunday-morning practice (meditation, a sadhana chanted together, and the teacher's talk), weekday classes and multi-year study programs, and monthly pujas on the Tibetan lunar days (the Medicine Buddha on the 8th, tsog on the 10th and 25th, the full moon, the protectors on the 29th) that fall on any weekday. The shrine is the richest of any Buddhist room: statues, thangkas, texts and a stupa, seven water bowls, butter lamps; shoes come off, and people sit on cushions or chairs before the teacher's throne. A visiting lama's teachings and empowerments draw the year's biggest crowds. Giving is tiered and per event: membership dues with discounts, course and empowerment fees with dana to the lama, sponsored pujas and lamp offerings for named people, and long campaigns for stupas and prayer wheels. A board runs the nonprofit, but the lineage and the network set the teachers and the programs. Lay people have no diet rule; Tibetan custom eats meat, though FPMT's teachers encouraged vegetarianism and many centers serve vegetarian meals: the center as written sets no rule on meat, and encourages vegetarian food. Most Tibetan families in America gather at their own community centers instead. The lunar dates are reckoned approximately and may be a month off in some years.
1 required or forbidden in the building · services, rites, joining, giving, leaders and staff, life together, every item, and every factor →