Home

Events

Dharma

Education

About Us

Branches

Vegetarian

Oct. 3, 2008

CDR Members Visit a San Jose Buddhist Temple

Dharma Masters Gwei, Shi, and Ging Rueng, along with several lay people from CDR made a visit to a Vietnamese Temple in San Jose. It is called the Perfect Virtue Buddhist Temple, or Chua Duc Vien in Vietnamese. The San Jose Temple, like CDR, is a sanga of nuns. They are located at the junction of McLaughlin avenue and Tully road. Years ago they sent 5 nuns to CTTB to study and met Dharma Masters Gwei and Shi there. We arrived at the temple around 10 a.m. When we drove into the parking lot we soon saw a beautifully worked landscape: several gardens interspersed with the temple buildings. The Abbess came and greeted us. She invited a landscaper who worked there to meet with us and show us around, because we've expressed interest to see their place. They have visitors numbered five hundred or more each weekend, to join in their dharma ceremony. This popularity is partly because the area nearby has a large Vietnamese population who are devoted Buddhist, and partly because the temple is known for its plants, trees, flowers, walkways, rocks, ponds, and a great many variety of small buddha and bodhisattva statues placed in the landscape like a picture book. The landscaper is a young man who has been working there not too long. Already he's made the place looked quite fantastic: clean, green lawns with exotic trees and plants selected from nursery far away, growing vigorously and profusely. A closer look reveals that the automatic sprinklers or drip-lines are buried nearby, to supply the needed water to the vegetation growth without human labor. How nice it is to enjoy the plants without worrying about watering them. While the flowers and trees give us the views of natural colors, the smells of subtle fresh fragrances, and the shapes and forms that rekindle our sense of curiosity and wonder, there's another group of objects situated here that's man-made and probably from the hands unknown master craftsmen. There are large pieces of rock, each taller than a man, that stand there by themselves, showing us their indescribable rock shapes which somehow made me feel respectful towards them. There are rock tables and chairs that's shaped to look like they are made of tree stumps. There are plant containers and incense holders that are huge, with ornate carving of animals and geometric patterns adorning the surface. There are rock turtles, rock tablets, rock benches, rock stepping pads... With all the rocks it is a stark contrast to a Japanese Rock Garden, where only a few rocks placed far away from each other and surrounded by immaculately arranged wavely-looking sand, as if they are islands in a vast body of water. That's probably the result of aesthetics from a cold country. Vietnam being subtropical it probably has a natural affinity to variety and density. This place perhaps has hundreds of different plants, covering an area of half of a street block, yet there are no weeds. That says something about the work they've put into it. While we were looking around, the landscaper described the properties of several different plants, and Dharma Master Gwei and Shi mentioned how nice they were. He accompanied us for almost an hour. Then the Abbess came and invited us to lunch. At the lunch table the five nuns who went to CTTB came out and greeted Dharma Master Gwei and Shi. After the meal, the Abbess gave us another tour. First we went through the kitchen as we came out of the dining area. I liked the kitchen because it was clean, open, simply equipped with cooking utensils and stoves, yet complete enough to cook meals for hundreds of people. Then we went into a new building where there's a memorial room of the Abbess's master, who was the founder of this temple. When her master first started this temple there were only a few nuns and even less buildings. After her master passed away the Abbess almost couldn't stay at this temple because the Vietnamese Buddhist Association she belonged to wanted to change the place to something else and remove the nuns. Only by asking some respected elders to intervene did the Abbess and the nuns managed to keep the place. This is an indication that in many Asian societies men and women have different social status, and women were not treated with equal respect as men. The 5 Vietnamese nuns who went to CTTB to study were pleasantly surprised that they were treated as equals there. Later the temple prospered and Abbess oversaw many building projects that took place and made the temple what it is today. It got so busy with the building works that at one time the Abbess was interrupted 10 times during a meal, and she had to walk out to consult the workers about the work situation, then returned to the meal, then walk out again... Now this new building is built in Western style. The first floor has the Master Memorial Room, the top floor has a room that housed a Buddha picture, with windows on many sides to let in the light and for looking out to the gardens below. There are many bedrooms to accommodate the nuns. But during some auspicious days when nuns from other temples came to visit, they may have to sleep in the hallway because of the crowded situation. They have these mobile beds that look like blanket chests on wheels, an ingeniously designed device that serves to accommodate the visiting guests very well. There was a variation of this design: a blanket chest on 4 wheels with a side-board and stand. The top of the blanket chest is flat so that people can sleep on it, using the pillow and blanket that's stored inside the chest as needed. The side-board and stand are attached to one end of the bed/chest and can be flipped over to rearrange into a low desk on the bed. With the dimension of 2.5' wide by 6' long by 2' tall, this bed/chest can serve the functions of a storage box, a bed, a meditation platform, and a study desk. And when not in use, it can be wheeled back down into a storage room with ease. A marvel it is. At the basement of this building there is a large hall that serves as the school for the children. They use office compartment enclosure to partition the hall into several classrooms. Since each classroom is open inside the hall the noise can be quite loud there. Educating young kids in such an environment is not easy. At one end of the hall again has a picture of the Abbess's Master, and the Master's Master. Later one of the lay people, who's got years of building experiences, mentioned that although this temple has many buildings and a well-worked landscape, it lacked a master plan at the beginning, so that the buildings came out one after another and problems began to surface; the school classrooms being one of them. That is a lesson we need to take heed here at CDR as we are earnestly setting up a new school for the next year. By the time we were to leave, the Abbess and several nuns came and we said goodbye to each other. The Abbess gave us each a gift: a round glass plate with a lotus flower engraved on it. It also has the words "Nam Mo A Di Da Phat", which sounded like "Namo Amituofo" in Chinese, or "Namo Amitabha" in English. The also gave us bags of fruits to take back to CDR, and wanted to give us a counter fixture that's still in excellent condition. We said that we would take it when we go there the next time with a truck. The spirit of kindness and generosity is abundant here. We visited the San Jose Temple on a Friday. The following Tuesday after coming back to CDR we talked about our visit during lunch. One lay person said that she was so proud of our Dharma Masters because now that she has seen dharma masters from the other temple she understands that our Dharma Masters conduct themselves with dignity and grace in all places, whether it's eating, sitting, standing, talking, meeting. It is from learning the proper dharma and diligent practice that our Dharma Masters have achieved this level of mastery. We are grateful that we lay people at CDR have the opportunity of being with our Dharma Masters and learning proper dharma.