An interesting Article

Here is an Article that I found very interesting, not only does it talk about Wat Carolina, but it also talks about Buddhists and their beliefs. Another thing that I found interesting was how this article talks about how Buddhism has effected America. I think that is something that we can explore in our documentary. I would like to show how Buddhism has made a positive impact on Americans.


The path of simplicity; Buddhists seek a life unburdened by desires and rooted in present-moment awareness. Their philosophy has a home in a thriving temple in rural Brunswick County
Star-News (Wilmington, NC)
April 30, 2000
Author: BEN STEELMAN, Staff Writer

A few miles south of Bolivia in Brunswick County, down a two-lane road lined by Baptist churches and houses with angel statues in the yard, the Lord Buddha is smiling.
On a swampy, sloping tract of land sits Wat Carolina Buddhajakra Vanaram, a Thai Buddhist monastery in the heart of the Bible Belt.

A little more than 10 years ago, three monks from Thailand, clad in their distinctive saffron-colored robes, moved into a former farmhouse at 1610 Midway Road.

The monks are still there. (The "Wat" in Wat Carolina means "monastery" in the Thai language.) Behind the house, however, stands a virtual replica of Old Siam, a complex of buildings with red tile roofs of Oriental design, rising on pilings from the soggy ground below.

After a decade and $4 million in contributions, the complex is still unfinished. "We do everything as we can afford to do it," said Deborah Welch, a member of the board of the Buddhist Association of North Carolina, which supports the monastery.

A small study center and library is complete. Behind it, the roof has just been installed on a large structure that will provide Spartan quarters for visiting monks, office space and other facilities. Windows and siding have yet to be installed, and the names of donors can still be seen painted on the sides of naked steel beams.

Further on, once this structure is complete, will rise a full-sized permanent temple.

The Wat serves as a center of worship for between 400 and 500 loyal Buddhists. Most are natives of Thailand who travel from as far away as Sumter, S.C., or even New York State to pray, to study and to help feed and support the three or four monks who typically live here.

However, Wat Carolina also serves as a spiritual base for a small but growing number of Westerners as well.

"The Buddhist path has no boundaries, really," said Eric Bruton, a Wilmington folk singer who often volunteers to help at the monastery and sometimes drives the abbot, Tan Phrakru Buddamonpricha, to conferences and blessings. "People stumble upon it in their own way."

Buddhists remain a tiny minority in the American religious scene. Estimates of the number of Buddhists in America range from about 400,000 to perhaps 2 million or more, according to Tom Tweed, a professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. By comparison, most surveys list more than 61 million Roman Catholilcs in the United States and more than 2 million Baptists of all denominations in North Carolina alone.

Nevertheless, Buddhism's impact on American culture has been considerable. Henry David Thoreau alluded to Buddhist teachings in Walden (1854). Poets and novelists of the Beat generation, such as Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder and Jack Kerouac, grooved to the parables of Zen Buddhism, transplanted from Japan in the 1950s, largely through the efforts of writer D.T. Suzuki.

College students of the Age of Aquarius made a best-seller of Siddhartha, the German novelist Herman Hesse's dramatization of the founding of the faith.

Buddhist communities began to grow in Fayetteville and Jacksonville after World War II as Asian brides married U.S. servicemen and brought their faith to America with them. Particularly popular in North Carolina is the Nichiren soshu, a populist Buddhist sect which grew up in Japan.

American-born converts, including such celebrities as Richard Gere and Tina Turner, might account for one-fourth of the nation's Buddhists. Far more significant, according to Dr. Tweed, are tens of thousands of Asian-Americans who are shifting their worship from home altars to new, visible facilities such as Wat Carolina.

The story of the Buddhist faith begins more than 500 years before the birth of Jesus, when (according to scripture) a young prince named Siddhartha Gautama was born in the foothills of modern-day Nepal.

Not long before his 30th birthday, Siddhartha had visions of an old man, a sick man and a corpse, which he understood as a metaphor for the suffering of life.

A fourth vision showed him a wandering holy man. This vision convinced him to leave his kingdom, his wife and his son and live as a homeless monk in the forest.

Six years later, after experimenting with various forms of religious discipline, Siddhartha sat down under a bo tree near the town of Gaya and began to meditate. Here, Buddhists believe, he achieved a state of enlightenment, gaining release from all suffering and achieving Nirvana, a state of pure happiness and peace.

The name "Buddha" - by which he has been known ever since - means "the Enlightened One." Buddhists continue to venerate him and study his teachings but he is not idolized.

Basically, Buddhists see existence as a recurring wheel, which represents different states of being. There is an animal world, which focuses purely on survival and instinct, without higher thought; a human world; a heaven and a hell, plus a "Realm of the Hungry Ghosts," which Ms. Welch likens to an array of addictive behaviors or negative, grasping personality traits.

The difference between the Christian and Buddhist conceptions of heaven, hell and earth is that Buddhists see none of these traits as permanent, Ms. Welch said. Souls are reborn and pass through different stages of the wheel repeatedly. The different parts of the wheel can also be manifest as psychological states through which people can pass, Ms. Welch said.

At the hub of the wheel, in Buddhist depictions, are the rooster, the snake and the pig, signifying Pride, Anger and Ignorance (or Delusion), the three forces that keep souls bound to the recurring cycle.

"Again, again, again, again," Abbot Phrakru said "always suffering." Our desires attach us to worldly things, the Buddha taught. Eliminate those desires, and souls can escape the wheel of life and pass to a higher level.

Beyond this point, Buddhists care little about the nature of God, or gods, or what the Next World is like.

The Buddha once gathered up a handful of crushed leaves and compared it to the forest behind him. The leaves in the hand are what humans can comprehend of the universe; the great expanse of trees is the totality of the universe itself.

"When you get caught up in metaphysics or explaining the universe, you can lose the present moment," Ms. Welch said. And existing in the present - without the distractions of the dead past or the unborn future - is much of what Buddhism is about.

To reach Nirvana and gain detachment, Buddhists try to follow the four Perfections - compassion, loving kindness ("and you have to learn to love yourself before you can love others," Ms. Welch said), sympathetic joy and equanimity, or balance.

"That last one's a toughie, especially for me," Ms. Welch said, grinning.

To reach those ends, Buddhists try to practice the Middle Way, sometimes known as the Noble Eightfold Path: Right Understanding, Right Thought, Right Speech, Right Action, Right Vocation, Right Effort, Right Mindfulness and Right Concentration. These eight points resolve into wisdom, morality and meditation, a prayerlike state in which worldly distractions are left behind.

Much of this teaching - which Buddhists find in the Tripitika or "Three Baskets," a compilation of the Buddha's sayings and sermons and other traditions - sounds a lot like the essence of other religions. In fact, many of the Westerners at Wat Carolina do not see Buddhism as exclusive.

"I'm also many other religions as well," said Mr. Bruton, who's studied with Abbot Phrakru almost from the beginning. "There are universal truths here - truths that you can find in Christianity, Judaism and other faiths."

"It's like a tree," Ms. Welch said. "Different religions are the branches, but they have the same trunk."

Meanwhile, Buddhism itself has split into different branches. The monks at Wat Carolina practice one of the oldest versions, Theraveda or "the Teachings of the Elders." Practiced today mainly in Thailand, Burma and Sri Lanka (formerly Ceylon), Theraveda focuses heavily on meditation and concentration as means to Nirvana. This leads to an emphasis on monastic life.

Abbot Phrakru and his fellow monks belong to the Dhammayut Nikaya, a religious order which can trace its history back nearly 2,500 years - almost to the time when the first Buddhist missionaries reached Thailand.

The order is a reform movement based on the ideas of the Thai kings Rama IV and Rama V, and it remains close to Thailand's royalty, much as the Church of England and other Anglican churches are connected to the British throne.

Rama IV, Rama V and the present king of Thailand, Bhumibol Adulyadej, were all monks before they ascended the throne. In Buddhism, becoming a monk is not necessarily a lifetime commitment; in Thailand, many young boys enter a monastery for a few months or years as part of their education.

Abbot Phrakru and his fellow monks still live in a manner very close to that of Buddha and his early followers.

They take what amounts to a vow of poverty. The only personal property they are allowed to own consists of four robes, one bowl, one razor to shave their heads, one needle to repair their clothes and one filter for their water.

They generally fast each day after noon and perform their own chores. Abbot Phrakru, whose spiritual rank might be compared to a Christian bishop's or archbishop's, sweeps and vacuums the monastery's living quarters.

Loyal believers supply the monks' meals. "They eat well," Ms. Welch said. "We make sure they eat well." Some believers travel hundreds of miles each week to provide food. By doing so, Theraveda Buddhists believe, the believers earn merit that can help improve their position in the next life and move closer to Nirvana.

Stray cats wander the monastery grounds, drawn by trays of food and water left out for them - an obligation for the monks. Buddhists are solicitous of all forms of life, in part because of their belief in reincarnation. One key purpose of the monks' filters is to prevent them from swallowing bugs or other tiny animals; and, while they are not strict vegetarians, the monks are forbidden to eat the flesh of animals slaughtered especially for them. (Meat from the local grocery, on the other hand, is fair game.)

The majority of the world's estimated 353 million Buddhists are not Theravedan. A later schism brought about the Mahayana or "Great Vehicle," schools of Buddhism which predominate in Japan, Tibet, Nepal and much of East Asia. Mahayanists believe that lay believers, as well as monks, can achieve Nirvana and that some spiritual masters, called bodhisattvas, can delay their enlightenment to stay on Earth and aid others to attain Bodhi, the highest truth.

Relations between the different Buddhist sects are generally cordial, though. Abbot Phrakru recently traveled to Charleston, S.C., to meet with Tibetan monks representing the Dalai Lama.

What matters in Buddhism is not so much dogma as intention, Ms. Welch said. And personal experience is most valuable of all.

"Buddha taught that unless you know something for yourself, it's not going to work for you," she said.


posted by Calli