For Buddhists here, a gentle rite of spring
Holiday will be a homecoming for many Vietnamese-Americans
It is noon Sunday. The door of a former East Boston Catholic church, now canary yellow, swings open and dozens of Vietnamese-Americans climb the stairs to the second floor, tuck their shoes in cubbyholes, and enter the Boston Buddhist Temple.
An illuminated Buddha statue commands one wall, the altar beneath it smoky with incense and crowded with offerings of oranges and sweetened rice, flowers, and candles. An altar for the ancestors stretches along another wall, neatly packed with framed photos of those who have passed away: older men and women, monks, a few baby pictures.
A gong sounds; the service begins.
Throughout the world, celebrations marking Buddha's birthday started taking place last week. Japanese Buddhists traditionally celebrate the birth of the historical Buddha April 8, while many other countries and traditions mark Vesak -- the day of Buddha's birth, Enlightenment, and death -- sometime during the fourth lunar month, which usually falls in May.
The Boston Buddhist Temple will be among those commemorating the Buddha's birthday next month. Decorating and other preparations, which take volunteers six weeks to complete, are just beginning.
On this Sunday in early spring, as on every Sunday, members of the Universal Buddhist Congregation come to remind themselves of their spiritual precepts: the practice of wisdom, peacefulness, nonkilling and nonfear; of giving kindness, patience, compassion.
There are about 30 at this service, a third wearing the gray robes that signify serious Buddhist study.
For the birthday of the Buddha, the street in front of the temple will be blocked off, and several hundred members of Boston's Vietnamese community will come, many carrying big bowls of food for the feast that follows the ceremony: white rice and curry soup, fried and sautéed tofu, pickled and salted vegetables, sweets and rice pudding.
''The whole place will be filled!" says Chau Tran, 20, a Harvard biology student and member of the Temple's Buddhist Youth Association. ''A lot of people come who can't come every week. It brings the community together."
Tran talks excitedly about the 4-foot-diameter lotus flower the association will create from individual white carnations as their main offering to Buddha; she says they will also proceed through the temple carrying vessels of floating flowers.
Although Buddha's birthday celebration often includes traditional Vietnamese dancing and music after the service, Tran emphasizes that the focus is quintessentially religious.
''It's quite different when compared to, say, Christmas," she said. ''The celebration is still more of a spiritual thing than anything else."
The ceremony includes silent prayers for the dead and thien, or meditation, drumming and chanting, and instruction about the life and teachings of Buddha by the Rev. Thich Giac Duc, 70, vice president of Unified Vietnamese Buddhist Congregation of the United States and spiritual leader.
A Western-sympathizing activist and former political prisoner in Vietnam, Giac Duc escaped to the United States following the fall of Saigon in 1975.
''This community is originally Vietnamese refugees," he says, adding with a smile, ''I am a refugee."
Giac Duc, who says he counts as friends Henry Kissinger and former president Jimmy Carter (''We like each other very much," he confides), is responsible for the care of Buddhists both locally and throughout the world.
In this temple, Giac Duc often finds himself negotiating what he describes as a conflict of culture.
I ''try to make parents be open-minded, make children understand culture," he said. ''This I learned from Christians, let them talk.
''In the East [people are] more internal; absorb suffering and transcend. Here, you have to speak out. The young . . . they want to talk."
Many of these children of first-generation Vietnamese are now grown and come less frequently to temple. They have young families to take care of or are in college, explains Tran.
Tran's 17-year-old brother, Hai Tran, talks about the change: ''If we [the Temple's Youth Association] stood in a circle, it used to go around the whole room. Now, it would be only this big!" he says, circumscribing a knot of just three people.
''Of course," Chau Tran adds, ''most of us come back during the big celebrations."
Everyone is welcome at Buddha's birthday ceremony.
''We do not have any aggressive attitude in Buddhism, no ambition to convert," Giac Duc says. ''All good people are Buddhists.
''[The] main purpose is to bring peace to our own mind, our family, our community, all over the world."
Buddha's birthday ceremony at the Boston Buddhist Temple, 81 Marion Street, East Boston, begins at noon on May 22 and lasts, according to Hai Tran, ''until the food disappears." 