Buddhist Architecture in America: Building for Enlightenment [1 ed.] 9781003311645

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Routledge Critical Studies in Buddhism

BUDDHIST ARCHITECTURE IN AMERICA BUILDING FOR ENLIGHTENMENT Robert Edward Gordon

“Buddhist Architecture in America: Building for Enlightenment is a magnificent contribution to the growing body of literature on Buddhism in America. It provides a brilliant and long overdue insight into an aspect of American Buddhism that has been needed for decades. Few authors have provided as comprehensive an insight into American Buddhism as Professor Gordon. It is a must read for all Buddhist Studies scholars.” Charles S. Prebish “As my eyes sweep over the pages of Buddhist Architecture in America, I keep thinking, if I had read Dr. Gordon’s book in the 1970s, my own understanding of architecture and religion and my own book “Space and Place” would be so much better! In the last phase of a very long life, I am happy to think that there can be genuine progress in scholarship.” Yi-Fu Tuan

Buddhist Architecture in America

This book is the first comprehensive overview of Buddhist architecture in North America and provides an analysis of Buddhist architecture and communities. Exploring the arrival of Buddhist architecture in America, the book lays out how Buddhists have expressed their spiritual beliefs in structural form in the United States. The story follows the parallel history of the religion’s emergence in the United States since the California Gold Rush to the present day. Conceived of as a general history, the book investigates Buddhist structures with respect to the humanistic qualities associated with Buddhist doctrine and how Buddhist groups promote their faith and values in an American setting. The author’s point of view starts from the ground floor of the buildings to move deeper into the space of Buddhist practice, the mind that seeks enlightenment, and the structures that help one to do so. It discusses Buddhist architecture in the United States in a manner consistent with the intensely human context of its use. A unique and ground-breaking analysis, this book adds to the study of Buddhist architecture in America while also addressing the topic of how and why Buddhists use architecture in general. It will be of interest to scholars of religion, architecture, space and place, U.S. history, Asian Studies, and Buddhist Studies. It will also be a valuable addition to the libraries of Buddhist communities across the United States and the world, since many of the observations about Buddhist architecture in the United States may also apply to structures in Europe and Asia. Robert Edward Gordon is an Assistant Research Professor at the University of Arizona, USA, and a Fellow at the UArizona Center for Buddhist Studies. His work encompasses a broad range of interests: Eastern art and architecture, art and economics, freedom and aesthetics, art and poverty, and humanistic geography. His writings can be found in The Wall Street Journal, the Japanese American National Museum’s Traveling Exhibition, the journals Space and Culture, Philosophies, Social Philosophy and Policy, The Athenaeum Review, and others.

Routledge Critical Studies in Buddhism

Edited by Stephen C. Berkwitz, Missouri State University, USA

Routledge Critical Studies in Buddhism is a comprehensive study of the Buddhist tradition. The series explores this complex and extensive tradition from a variety of perspectives, using a range of different methodologies. The series is diverse in its focus, including historical, philological, cultural, and sociological investigations into the manifold features and expressions of Buddhism worldwide. It also presents works of constructive and reflective analysis, including the role of Buddhist thought and scholarship in a contemporary, critical context and in the light of current social issues. The series is expansive and imaginative in scope, spanning more than two and a half millennia of Buddhist history. It is receptive to all research works that are of significance and interest to the broader field of Buddhist Studies. Editorial Advisory Board: James A. Benn, McMaster University, Canada; Jinhua Chen, The University of British Columbia, Canada; Rupert Gethin, University of Bristol, UK; Peter Harvey, University of Sunderland, UK; Sallie King, James Madison University, USA; Anne Klein, Rice University, USA; Lori Meeks, University of Southern California, USA; Ulrich Pagel, School of Oriental and African Studies, UK; John Powers, Australian National University, Australia; Juliane Schober, Arizona State University, USA; Vesna A. Wallace, University of California, Santa Barbara, USA; Michael Zimmermann, University of Hamburg, Germany. For a full list of titles in this series, please visit https://www.routledge.com/Routledge-Critical-Studies-inBuddhism/book-series/RCSB. Recently published titles include: Buddhist Architecture in America Building for Enlightenment Robert Edward Gordon Buddhism, Cognitive Science, and the Doctrine of Selflessness A Revolution in Our Self-Conception Hugh Nicholson Indian Buddhist Studies on Non-Buddhist Theories of a Self The Studies of Śāntarakṣita and Kamalaśīla on the Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika, Mīmāṃsā, Sāṃkhya, Jain, Vedānta and Vātsīputrīya Theories of a Self James P. Duerlinger Reimagining Chan Buddhism Sheng Yen and the Creation of the Dharma Drum Lineage of Chan Jimmy Yu Buddhist Visions of the Good Life for All Sallie B. King Women in British Buddhism Commitment, Connection, Community Caroline Starkey Buddhism, Meditation and Free Will A Theory of Mental Freedom Rick Repetti Theravada Buddhism in Colonial Contexts Edited by Thomas Borchert Birth in Buddhism The Suffering Fetus and Female Freedom Amy Paris Langenberg Early Buddhist Meditation The Four Jhânas as the Actualization of Insight Keren Arbel

The following titles are published in association with the Theravāda Civilizations Project The project supports collaborative exchanges among scholars based in the US, Canada, Britain, and Southeast Asia with the aim to undertake a thematic study of Theravāda civilizations in South and Southeast Asia. THERAVĀDA BUDDHIST ENCOUNTERS WITH MODERNITY Edited by Juliane Schober and Steven Collins

The following titles are published in association with the Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies

The Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies conducts and promotes rigorous teaching and research into all forms of the Buddhist tradition. Early Buddhist Metaphysics The Making of a Philosophical Tradition Noa Ronkin Mipham’s Dialectics and the Debates on Emptiness To Be, Not to Be or Neither Karma Phuntsho How Buddhism Began The conditioned genesis of the early teachings Richard F. Gombrich Buddhist Meditation An Anthology of Texts from the Pāli Canon Sarah Shaw Remaking Buddhism for Medieval Nepal The fifteenth-century reformation of Newar Buddhism Will Tuladhar-Douglas Metaphor and Literalism in Buddhism The Doctrinal History of Nirvana Soonil Hwang The Biographies of Rechungpa The Evolution of a Tibetan Hagiography Peter Alan Roberts The Origin of Buddhist Meditation Alexander Wynne

Buddhist Architecture in America Building for Enlightenment

Robert Edward Gordon

First published 2023 by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2023 Robert Edward Gordon The right of Robert Edward Gordon to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Gordon, Robert Edward, author. Title: Buddhist architecture in America : building for enlightenment / Robert Edward Gordon. Description: Abingdon, Oxon : Routledge, 2023. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2022024020 (print) | LCCN 2022024021 (ebook) | ISBN 9781032318455 (hardback) | ISBN 9781032318479 (paperback) | ISBN 9781003311645 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Buddhist architecture--United States. Classification: LCC NA5205 .G67 2022 (print) | LCC NA5205 (ebook) | DDC 726/.1430973--dc23/eng/20220720 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022024020 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022024021 ISBN: 978-1-032-31845-5 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-31847-9 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-31164-5 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003311645 Typeset in Times New Roman by KnowledgeWorks Global Ltd.

To Rashida Ferrer Gordon, and her mother.

Contents

xii Acknowledgments xiii List of Figures List of Templesxiv Introduction

1

1 Buddhism and Architecture: Space, Time, and Heart

8

2 Buddhist Architecture and Its Nineteenth-Century American Beginnings

37

3 The Twentieth-Century Expansion of Architectonic Buddhism67 4 The Proliferation of Buddhist Architecture in America

104

5 The Mandala Form and Buddhist Space in America

127

6 Conclusions and Considerations

154

Index

166

Acknowledgments

I would like to forward my genuine appreciation to the University of Arizona Department of Art History for helping make my personal and professional growth possible. I would like to extend a very special thank you to Paul Eli Ivey for all his help and guidance. His expertise, professionalism, support, and enthusiasm in all facets of this research and my career have meant a great deal. I would like to express a deep and heartfelt thank you to Jiang Wu of the East Asian Studies Department and Director of the Center for Buddhist Studies at the University of Arizona. The time and insight that he brought to this project was foundational, and it would not have manifested as it did were it not for his wisdom and direction. I would like to thank Yi-Fu Tuan, Charles S. Prebish, Donald S. Lopez Jr., Richard Hughes Seager, J. Gordon Melton, and Ed Fields for taking time out of their busy schedules to offer advice and critical judgments as writing progressed. A most heartfelt gratitude is extended to Reverend Elaine Donlin, Reverend Peter Hata, Reverend Kazuaki Nakata, Ms. Eiko Masuyama, Reverend Tatsuo Muneto, Reverend Ronald Kobata, Venerable Hui Dong, Venerable Ajahn Prasert, Man Kuang, TsuKu Lee, Kristin Eriko Posner, Joshua Mulder, Shundo David Haye, Inger Forland, Matthew Coolidge, Victoria Austin, Dana Velden, and many others who took the time to speak with me about their communities, went out of their way to provide important documents, and helped in framing my thoughts about the nature of Buddhism and its architecture in the United States. I especially thank composer Daniel Asia in the most cherished manner possible, for believing in me and supporting my work as a philosopher and historian of art. He continues to be an inspirational figure and a person of ability, taste, and vision. I also thank David Schmidtz, whose example as a philosopher and a human being has truly been an important example in my life. Finally, I would like to convey my profound gratitude to my wife Rashida, my father Richard C. Gordon, my brother Rick, Fr. Gene Koprowski, and Reneé Gauthier, for always being there for me. We still remember, we who dwell in this far land beneath the trees, the starlight on the Western Seas.

Figures

2.1 2.2 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 3.7 3.8 3.9 4.1 4.2 4.3 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 5.6 5.7 6.1 6.2

Chinese Joss House, Weaverville, California, ca. 201246 Joss House, Chinatown, California, ca.191147 Honpa Hongwanji Hawaii Betsuin, Honolulu, Hawaii69 Stupa Atop the Buddhist Church of San Francisco79 Buddhist Church of San Francisco79 Nishi Hongwanji Los Angeles Betsuin82 Los Angeles Higashi Honganji Buddhist Temple83 Karamon in Front of the 1925 Nishi Buddhist Temple88 Example of the gasshō-zukuri Style, minka Farm House, Shirakawa-go, Gifu Prefecture, Japan91 Arizona Buddhist Church, Phoenix, Arizona92 O-naijin Altar, Buddhist Church of San Francisco96 San Francisco Zen Center, Front Entrance108 Insight Meditation Center, Barre, Massachusetts117 Wat Buddhanusorn, Fremont, California121 Hsi Lai Temple, Hacienda Heights, California128 Odiyan Retreat Center, Cazadero, California  128 Hsi Lai Temple, Entrance Gate130 Hsi Lai Temple, Courtyard from Above 131 Hsi Lai Temple, Courtyard from Ground Level133 The Great Stupa of Dharmakaya Which Liberates Upon Seeing, Red Feather Lakes, Colorado142 Amitabha Stupa, Sedona, Arizona144 Chuang Yen Monastery, Main Hall157 Buddha Vairocana, Chuang Yen Monastery158

Temples

Amitabha Stupa, Kunzang Palyul Chöling, Arizona Bodhi Manda Zen Center, New Mexico Buddha Mind Monastery, Oklahoma Buddhist Church of San Francisco Byodo-In Temple, Hawaii Chuang Yen Monastery, New York Eihei-ji Temple (Japan) Fire Lotus Temple, New York First Zen Institute of America, New York Green Dragon Temple (Soryu-ji), California Hanmaum Zen Center of New York Higashi Honganji Buddhist Temple, Los Angeles Honpa Hongwanji Hawaii Betsuin Horyuji (Hōryū Temple, Japan) Hsi Lai Temple, California Insight Meditation Society Retreat Center, Massachusetts Kagyu Shenpen Kunchab Bodhi Stupa, New Mexico Koyasan Buddhist Temple, California Linh Quang Buddhist Center, Nebraska Los Angeles Hompa Hongwanji Buddhist Temple New England Peace Pagoda, Massachusetts Odiyan Buddhist Retreat Center, California Providence Zen Center, Rhode Island Rinzai-ji Zen Center, California Rochester Zen Center, New York Sagely City of Ten Thousand Buddhas, California San Francisco Zen Center Shambala Mountain Center, Colorado Shasta Abbey Monastery, California Soto Mission of Hawaii Shoboji

Temples

Tassajara Zen Mountain (Zenshinji), California Teo Chew Buddhist Temple, Texas Tin How Temple, California Tōdaiji Temple (Japan) The Great Stupa of Dharmakaya Which Liberates Upon Seeing, Colorado Washington Buddhist Vihara, Washington, DC Wat Buddhanusorn, California Wat Buddharatanaram, Texas Wat Dhammaram, Illinois Wat Nawamintararachutis Meditation Center (NMR), Massachusetts Wat Thai of Los Angeles Watt Munisotaram Buddhist Temple, Minnesota Weaverville Joss House, California Zen Mountain Monastery, New York Zenshuji Soto Mission, California

xv

Introduction

Quite often academic studies find their energetic impetus within the biographies of the scholar. Childhood memories, adolescent experiences, and/or a mature fascination with some aspect of the world frequently become the object of scholarly examination. The motivation to engage in this present inquiry stems from my personal interest in Buddhist thought in general. All forms of Buddhism have been a source of fascination for years. Yet, nothing comes from nothing. Western society’s engagement with Oriental culture has been steadily increasing for centuries. And over the recent of decades of heightened globalization and interconnection, the Occidental attraction to Eastern thought and custom has ramified throughout the world. Originally centered primarily on the materialistic concerns of spices and riches, in my opinion the Western allure with Asia is now focused much more on the spiritual, insubstantial elements of Asian culture. There is a certain abstract quintessence present in this modern attentiveness to a distant and antique history that is growing ever more ubiquitous to contemporary consciousness. One gets a sense of it in present-day encounters with the martial arts, yoga, or the New Age movement. Feature films touch on it with storylines that romanticize Oriental wisdom or portray Asian figures with mystical powers (Star Wars even comes to mind here). It is a feeling that references more than just cartographic distance or physical appearance. Something intangible but generative is at work in the juxtaposition of an ancient culture—still alive in unbroken threads—when set against the forward au courant momentum of today’s global modernity. Doubtless my attraction to Buddhist art and architecture stems from this broader setting. In the study of Buddhism in America, the role of architecture is not sufficiently addressed as an explicit endeavor. Scholars have mentioned Buddhist temples chiefly in passing or in a limited context. Michihiro Ima, for example, only briefly discusses the various styles of Japanese Pure Land temple architecture in Hawaii during the early twentieth century.1 An entry in Charles H. Lippy and Peter W. Williams’s Encyclopedia of Religion in America contains just a few pages on Buddhist architecture.2 Paul David Numrich investigated two Theravadin temples, not in terms of architecture, but to understand how Thai immigrant Buddhists have assimilated DOI: 10.4324/9781003311645-1

2  Introduction to the United States.3 Jeff Wilson’s valuable chapter in American Buddhism as a Way of Life discusses the Rochester Zen Garden with respect to community and its structural environment.4 Jonathan H. X. Lee’s short entry in Asian American Religious Cultures quickly but succinctly discusses the syncretistic emergence of Chinese temples in America, which blend Doaist, Buddhist, Confucian, and folk religious traditions in an amalgamation of Chinese religious culture.5 Emma McCloy Layman’s Buddhism in America contains valuable experiential and doctrinal commentary on a number of temples of various denominations. As an early work, one still comes away with the sense of having an authentic feel for the Buddhist groups she investigates.6 George and Willa Jane Tanabe’s Japanese Buddhist Temples in Hawai’i aims at cracking the semantic shell behind the complex symbolism of Pure Land Buddhist iconography. Organized and written principally as a reference resource, “The book is not primarily a history of temples (though brief historical information is included), nor is it an architectural history (though architecture is analyzed).”7 Their central goal is to describe what one sees in the temples. Each of these texts has elements in common with the overall ambitions of this investigation. Yet, in the end none of these volumes explore design or teleology with respect to the structural and spiritual foundations of the sites under consideration, a primary goal of this book. Given the ambitious scope of the project, the discussion at times can be overly general, schematic, or even cavalier with Buddhism’s deep, circuitous history and complex philosophies. I conceive of this short volume as an initial inquiry into the topic. Nonetheless, the objective here is to articulate the larger historical trajectory of Buddhist architecture in the United States while investigating significant examples of Buddhist structures of various denominations, and to understand those artifacts in relation to the spiritual underpinnings of the religion that inspired them. With respect to Buddhist belief, most studies address the Theravada (Path of the Elders), Mahayana (Great Vehicle), and Vajrayana (Diamond Vehicle) traditions as specific categories. All retain the elemental core of the Buddha’s teachings. Each tend to be associated with particular geographical areas in Asia, but have highlighted or augmented different strains of Siddhartha Gautama’s overall message of enlightenment. One finds all three of these Buddhist vehicles or paths and their associated structures in the United States. The issue as to whether a particularly unique form of American Buddhist architecture exists is still an open question, just as a distinctive and universally agreed upon American path of Buddhism has not at this point manifested. In the history of Buddhism, royal and aristocratic patronage greatly helped transition and institutionalize the religion into foreign settings. This did not happen in the United States, which may be one reason why a potential “American Buddhism” is so elusive. The final chapter in this book discusses one way such a path (mārga) or vehicle (yāna) might begin to emerge.

Introduction 3 The 1997 Harvard Divinity School conference of eminent Buddhist scholars found three major tendencies of American Buddhism: Democratization, Pragmatism, and Engagement.8 However, in this inquiry no one practice or Buddhist belief is favored over another. Instead, common denominators are explored. Integral  concepts are foregrounded. Although architecture plays a central role in this study, Buddhist structures are understood primarily as religious artifacts, and are approached from the point of view of the humanities. Written not as a technical or architectural treatise, the discussion instead centers on the humanistic ideas implicit in the subject matter as a way to focus attention on that which unites and elevates us as people. As research progressed, the basic ideas shared among the various traditions formed productive and unifying avenues of exploration. Belief in the Dharma and the setting of America are two such commonalities. Another is the universal need to create buildings within which to conduct religious practice, as well as the desire by many groups to architecturally countenance their spiritual ambitions in forms that relate to the values they hold dear. How this dynamic has transpired forms the exploratory epicenter of this book.  A thorough literature exists that documents the arrival of Buddhism in America. While this study engages these findings, I seek to take the next step in the discussion. For, in my view, it does not seem enough to say that Buddhism “arrived” in America over a century and a half ago solely because at the time some immigrants practiced the religion or that some intellectuals studied or fervently espoused it. Immigrants can easily return home. Scholars keep their distance. An enthusiastic Western minority is still a minority. On the other hand, it is the more durable presence of a building that truly anchors a foreign cultural import into the fabric of a society. Buddhist material culture and religious belief reached the United States simultaneously. The architectural achievements of Buddhists embody the emotions, values, and practices associated with their religious and cultural instantiation. The buildings are important insofar as they ground and formalize the religion’s place in the country.  Their physical presence reifies the insubstantiality of faith and belief. They make tangible the diaphanous winds of intellectual interest and the cosmopolitan fashion of social elites. Buildings are the largest things that humans create (cruise ships, aircraft carriers, and the like are essentially floating buildings; bridges are basically buildings to put roads upon). Their size in relation to the human body retains the innate power to institutionalize the ideas behind their construction. In terms of religious architecture, scale and form become symbolic forces. Indeed, in Asian culture roofs can work in tandem with mountains, and temples are sometimes designed with that natural representation in mind. Sacred structures are large scale religious artifacts that act in concert with the objects, ceremonies, and sentiments that exist and take place within their confines. In the context of this study, we see how “sacred objects are embodiments of the spirit of Buddhism.”

4  Introduction Together they represent Buddhism and “the attainment of Buddhahood” itself.9 Thus, the material reality of Buddhist architecture becomes vitally important in understanding Buddhism’s spiritual birth upon the American landscape and mindset. A book about American Buddhist architecture is somewhat unique. Existing books dealing with Buddhist architecture in general, even quite current volumes, do not include Western sites (including Europe, Australia, and Canada).10 Most volumes situate their scope within Asian countries: “Japanese Buddhist Architecture,” “Indian Buddhist Architecture,” “Buddhist Architecture of Korea,” etc. This is understandable. Buddhism was founded and matured in these regions. Moreover, the structures in the United States are largely derivative of the styles and examples found in the East, and lack the historical importance of older sites from Asia. Nevertheless, there is indeed something both historical and important about the emergence of Buddhism and its architecture in the United States. Buddhist temples, monasteries, and monuments in many ways are transforming the spiritual landscape of the nation. They introduce a new style and cultural custom to the country’s structural, religious, and national identity. The sites and buildings discussed below convey the diversity of expression in Buddhist religious space in the America. Their unique Eastern heritage is compelling enough to articulate their occurrence and contemplate their cultural implications. Some scholarly studies claim that there are more than 1500 Buddhist temples in the United States, while other online databases list nearly 2500 Buddhist communities.11 As such, it was not my goal to address every occurrence of Buddhist architecture in the country. What the book does accomplish, in a limited and imperfect way, is begin to demonstrate the profound relationship between the belief and structural expression of Buddhist thought in an American setting. It positions the United States as country with a significant Buddhist architectural presence. In other words, with Buddhists and their buildings existing in the country now for over 170 years, it demonstrates that the United States is—strange as it may seem—a Buddhist nation. Building edifices of religious valence appears to be linked to the very notion of being human, of creating a suitable place where individuals can survive within a meaningful environment vis-à-vis the antipodes of mundane existence and the larger sphere of divine/cosmic order. Arguably, this is still the case in today’s scientifically-based positivist world. It is a proclivity that is particularly germane to the manner in which some Buddhist communities in the United States use ancient architectural forms to reveal and communicate their goals and beliefs. The mandala-based architecture resident at many Buddhist sites is a form of “spiritual technology” that to some may seem alien, mystical, or even illogical when experienced and explained. For in addition to drawing on their cultural heritage, these structures also intend “to emanate blessings in all directions and radiate spiritual energy throughout the world.”12 To those unaccustomed to such language,

Introduction 5 the conflation of religious and scientific terminologies (such as “energy,” “technology,” and “radiation”) may lead to skepticism about the soundness of Buddhist belief. This book describes how these spiritual technologies work to some extent. However, the truth of any religious claim is neither the significant element nor the fundamental purpose of the present investigation. Paul Eli Ivey makes the comment that religious beliefs can have “truth effects.”13 Buddhist groups that retain such views are compelled by faith in the Buddha and his message to manifest their spiritual beliefs in material form. The buildings they construct signify the ultimate “effect”—or consequence—of maintaining the “truth” of those beliefs. On the other hand, it should be said that engaging in this type of humanistic research also entails “reading” a structure or environment as if it were a text that one can interpret. When doing so, intuitions, feelings, surmises, sensations, and reflections become important ways of understanding the qualitative meanings of a site. In this study, therefore, the terms tends, evokes, implies, and suggests permeate the narrative, since these predicates help approximate the subjective attributes embedded in a humanistic understanding of the objective world. While investigating, I found that temple members and leaders were sometimes unaware of the stylistic decisions that were utilized in the construction of their buildings. Records did not always elaborate on any implied symbolic meanings associated with a temple design. This is because traditions are often passed down without much thought as to their cultural or aesthetic semantic content. In such cases, as with the Japanese Jodo Shinshu churches discussed in Chapter 3, my training in art history and philosophy was brought to bear in trying to understand how certain structural forms relate to the history, emotion, and religious syllogisms of a site. This can be precarious, since the fear is that one can see something not explicitly intended or endorsed by a community. Yet, such interpretations ought not be conceived of as merely speculative. An outside look at things usually produces novel understandings, and can illuminate embedded ideas through scholarship and professional insight. Buddhists as a rule walk the earth with a compassionate spirit, and temple leaders and employees were always gracious or pleasantly surprised when they engaged fresh observations about their structures. This is consistent with the way in which religious communities in general tend to engage the world via their beliefs and practices, where the goal is more so to share or demonstrate perspectives rather than to unequivocally prove a worldview. A discussion on the emergence of Buddhist architecture in America transects the arc of a number of discursive narratives: ideas of sacred space, alternative religions in the United States, technological modernity, the concepts of space and place, and the legacy of America as a New World for religious freedom. Each of these areas could constitute its own monograph with respect to architecture. Yet, this study’s point of view starts from the ground floor of the buildings, as it were, as a way to move deeper into the

6  Introduction space of Buddhist practice, the mind that seeks enlightenment, and the structures that help one to do so. It discusses Buddhist architecture in the United States in a manner consistent with the intensely human context of its use. By and large, the buildings and environments studied below teach, symbolize, reveal, or embody the tenets of Buddhist belief as an expression of a deep emotional connection to the Dharma and the places that they originated: Chinese Buddhists built traditional Chinese temples, Japanese Buddhists built traditional Japanese temples, American Buddhists built or utilized traditional American buildings, etc. The instinctive and identityladen connection to homeland accesses a sentiment closely aligned in mood and meaning with the feelings that the Buddha’s teachings generate within the individuals amid those structures. Here, religious sentiment and cultural sentiment both access a common humanistic space, where architectural form and spiritual belief converge in the emotional center of the human heart. The physical and the spiritual are not understood as wholly separate things, but as a mandala teaches, are unified in time, space, body, and mind in three-dimensional form. Thus, a primary message that the buildings emanate is one of the interconnectedness of things.

Notes

1 Michihiro Ama, Immigrants to the Pure Land: The Modernization, Acculturation, and Globalization of Shin Buddhism, 1898–1941 (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2011), 100–107. 2 Charles H Lippy and Peter W. Williams, Encyclopedia of Religion in America, Vol. 4 (Washington, DC: CQ Press, 2010), 149–152. 3 Paul D. Numrich, Old Wisdom in the New World: Americanization in Two Immigrant Theravada Buddhist Temples (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1996). 4 Jeff Wilson, ““A Dharma of Place.” Evolving Aesthetics and Cultivating Community in an American Zen Garden” in American Buddhism As a Way of Life, Gary Storhoff, and John Whalen-Bridge, eds. (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2010), 195–208. 5 Jonathan H. X Lee., Fumitaka Matsuoka, Edmond Yee, Ronald Y. Nakasone, and ProQuest. Asian American Religious Cultures. American Religious Cultures (Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2015), 311–314. 6 Emma McCloy Layman, Buddhism in America (Chicago: Nelson-Hall Publishers, 1976). 7 George J. and Willa Jane Tanabe, Japanese Buddhist Temples in Hawai’i (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2013), xiii. 8 See, American Buddhism: Methods and Findings in Recent Scholarship, eds., Duncan Ryūken Williams and Christopher S. Queen (Richmond, Surrey: Curzon Press, 1999), xix. 9 Fabio Rambelli, Buddhist Materiality: A Cultural History of Objects in Japanese Buddhism (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2007), 70. 10 For example, see Robert E. Fisher, Buddhist Art and Architecture (New York: Thames & Hudson, 1993); Le Huu Phouc, Buddhist Architecture (USA: Grafikol, 2010); Patricia Eichenbaum Karetzky, Making Sense of Buddhist Architecture (London: Thames & Hudson, 2015); Shubham Jaiswal, Contemporary Buddhist Architecture: India, Bhutan, Thailand, Sri Lanka, Japan (Chennai, India: Notion Press, 2020).

Introduction 7 11 Diane Morgan, The Buddhist Experience in America (London; Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2004), 17. More recently, Finke and Stark count 1656 temples as of 2005. See Roger Finke and Rodney Stark, The Churching of America. 1776–2005: The Winners and Losers in Our Religious Economy (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2005), 241. See the World Buddhist Directory from Buddhanet. http://www.buddhanet.info/wbd/. 12 Tarthang Tulku, Copper Mountain Mandala: Odiyan (Berkeley, CA: Dharma Publishing, 1996), xxiii. 13 Paul Eli Ivey, Radiance from Halcyon: A Utopian Experiment in Religion and Science (Minneapolis; London: University of Minnesota Press, 2013), 10.

References Ama, Michihiro. Immigrants to the Pure Land: The Modernization, Acculturation, and Globalization of Shin Buddhism, 1898–1941. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2011. Finke, Roger and Rodney Stark. The Churching of America. 1776–2005: The Winners and Losers in Our Religious Economy. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2005. Fisher, Robert E. Buddhist Art and Architecture. World of Art. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1993. Ivey, Paul Eli. Radiance from Halcyon: A Utopian Experiment in Religion and Science. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2013. Jaiswal, Shubham. Contemporary Buddhist Architecture: India, Bhutan, Thailand, Sri Lanka, Japan. Chennai, India: Notion Press, 2020. Karetzky, Patricia Eichenbaum. Making Sense of Buddhist Architecture. London: Thames & Hudson, 2015. Layman, Emma McCloy. Buddhism in America. Chicago: Nelson-Hall Publishers, 1976. Lee, Jonathan H. X., et al. Asian American Religious Cultures. American Religious Cultures. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2015. Lippy, Charles H. and Peter W. Williams. Encyclopedia of Religion in America, Vol. 4. Washington, DC: CQ Press, 2010. Morgan, Diane. The Buddhist Experience in America. London; Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2004. Numrich, Paul D. Old Wisdom in the New World: Americanization in Two Immigrant Theravada Buddhist Temples. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1996. Phouc, Le Huu. Buddhist Architecture. USA: Grafikol, 2010. Rambelli, Fabio. Buddhist Materiality: A Cultural History of Objects in Japanese Buddhism. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2007. Storhoff, Gary and John Whalen-Bridge. American Buddhism as a Way of Life. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2010. Tanabe, George J. and Willa Jane Tanabe. Japanese Buddhist Temples in Hawai’i. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2013. Tulku, Tarthang. Copper Mountain Mandala: Odiyan. Berkeley, CA: Dharma Publishing, 1996. Williams, Duncan Ryūken and Christopher S. Queen. American Buddhism: Methods and Findings in Recent Scholarship. Richmond, Surrey: Curzon Press, 1999.

1

Buddhism and Architecture Space, Time, and Heart

Overview The general scope of this book is concerned with East-West cultural interconnections, but its architectonic breadth examines environment and sacred architecture within the critical sphere of human spirituality. Buddhism and architecture are considered in terms of their humanistic meanings and cultural significance, as well as their doctrinal and aesthetic relationship to Buddhist thought in the context of America. The narrative navigates the major contours of their development. Emerging from the Chinese Joss houses of the nineteenth century and the Japanese Pure Land Buddhists temples constructed during the early twentieth century (both in Hawaii and the mainland), we have seen an ever-growing effloresce of Buddhist communities and buildings emerge over the last fifty years. Chinatowns and Japantowns, grandiloquent temples and monasteries such as Hsi Lai and Chuang Yen, hybrid “churches” like those of both the Nishi Hongwanji and Higashi Honganji, monumental stupas (reliquaries), and other mandalabased structures such as at Odiyan Buddhist Retreat and others: these are all part of a story where Buddhists have sought to create a spiritual place with an “old world” feeling in a New World context. Far from their homeland, ambitious Buddhists initially sought to create personal and spiritual places of refuge for a relatively small and somewhat isolated immigrant population. They created organizations and communities to help promulgate their religion while simultaneously preserving a profound sensitivity for their native culture. In the first instance, their architectural aspirations and achievements express the desire for a lasting and stable presence in America, one that we can see as consistent with the Christian religions that emigrated from Europe since the dawn of the country’s founding. On a deeper level, these communities created buildings absorbed in tradition. Much like their Christian counterparts, Buddhist groups utilize classicism and heritage as deliberate design strategies as a way to evoke the depth and authority of their traditional pasts. Other communities, like those of the Rochester Zen Center or the Washington Buddhist Vihara for example, place their traditional practices in contemporary residential structures. DOI: 10.4324/9781003311645-2

Buddhism and Architecture 9 Sites such as these reinforce the sentiment of home and the intensely personal meanings involved in Buddhist introspection, which are important aspects of the story of Buddhism in America. As Richard Hughes Seager writes, immigrant [Buddhist] religion in the United States “tends to be concerned with the more intimate concerns of memory, solace, and spiritual practice grounded in ethnic, linguistic, and ancestral identity.”1 Yet the underlying dynamic uniting the multiplicity of structural forms under investigation is the goal that these communities all seem to share of creating places absorbed with varying degrees of cultural distinctiveness and human emotion. This investigation examines the assorted ways in which Buddhist communities in America do so architecturally as a function of a desire to express their religious beliefs, preserve deep-rooted traditions, and exist harmoniously within American life. In this exploration into the humanistic aspects of Buddhist architecture in the United States, care is taken to explain the homo-tectonic elements from the perspective of the Buddhist practitioner and the communities of the structures under discussion. It is important to allow the buildings to speak for themselves, so to speak, while trying as diligently as possible to avoid presuppositions or external biases. In this way, a certain level of objectivity is obtained insofar, as Amos Rapoport emphasizes in his work with respect to architectural theory, the goal here is “to understand the world (or a particular part of it) rather than to change it.”2 Avoiding assumptions or outside predispositions is an important responsibility. The aim of this book is to explain what Buddhist groups believe with respect to the buildings they construct. The mutability and adaptability of Buddhist thought allow myriad interpretations to be forwarded, and it is not my role to necessarily question or challenge the assertions made by the various communities, say, as an investigative reporter might do when writing an exposé. As one translator of the Dīgha Nikāya (“the Long Discourses”) has stated, “It is not, however, in the true spirit of Buddhism to adopt a ‘fundamentalist’ attitude towards the scriptures, and it is thus open to the reader, Buddhist as well as non-Buddhist, to regard the texts … with an open mind.”3 Since Buddhist sutras form a foundational basis of Buddhist belief, which in turn inspire the creation of Buddhist buildings, this approach carries over to the structures and environments explored in this study. The growing corpus of scholarly and intellectual literature adds to the situation. I found that when discussing Buddhism with monks or priests, knowledge garnered from books usually corresponded with the information they conveyed, but its living expression as articulated through personal talks often seemed somewhat pared down compared to the deep tomes and intricate academic discourses read in preparation. Monks usually sought to provide a basic account of their beliefs to a new acquaintance. At the same time, however, hearing the ideas and beliefs from true practitioners fostered a personal connection that helped expose the humanistic undercurrents that emerged as a result of my research, which

10  Buddhism and Architecture became the methodology of the study. Whether in the interpersonal conversations that have taken place, the statements of belief posted online and in handouts, in the professional texts that communities have published at great cost and effort, or in the primary texts and secondary scholarship that exists, in seeking to understand how the deeply held beliefs of a community relate to the structures that they create, the overwhelming discovery has been one of the interaction between people’s hopes, feelings, values, and worldviews with the art, buildings, monuments, and environments that exist to evidence them. To put the findings succinctly, what we see in Buddhist architecture in America is how ritual, heritage, and lineage work hand in hand with family, heart, home, and the human body. Overall, this study can be understood as a humanistic narrative that examines various structural iterations of Buddhist heritage in the United States deemed significant, both historically and stylistically. It privileges buildings and monuments that exhibit compelling relationships to the spiritual beliefs of their attendant communities. The humanistic approach to these structures unearthed a range of themes that inform and contextualize our understanding of the sites under consideration: the subjective faculties of human experience; the nexus of belief, environment, and design; the significance of lineage, heritage, and tradition; the didactic efficacy of structural symbolism and religious metaphor; the historical currents of technology and culture; and the communicative powers of architectonic form. Together, such forces of human civilization help describe the polyvalent role of architecture in the real-life practice of Buddhism in an American setting. In this history, larger, more monumental structures end up taking precedence somewhat over smaller local sites; however, there is no substantive correlation between structural size to historical impact. Nineteenthcentury Joss Houses were quite humble and relatively unimposing, while many present-day Zen buildings utilize simple houses to conduct their practice and services. Nevertheless, these buildings are just as historically relevant as larger sites in understanding the emergence of Buddhist architecture in America. In the end, the objective of this research has been to get a sense of how these buildings work as artifacts of human emotion and spiritual expression, to gain a familiarity with what they seek to do experientially from a blended structural, cultural, and religious point of view. The hope is that one will come away from this investigation with an appreciation of the symbolic intricacies, cultural importance, and humanistic meanings associated with the structures under discussion.

Methodology: Heart and the Human Element When writing about architecture from a humanistic perspective, one emphasizes the subjectivities surrounding the brute object of the buildings and their environments. But what precisely does this entail? Humanistic things and ideas are referred to as such because they help connect us to our own

Buddhism and Architecture 11 humanity. Architecture and aesthetic meaning are intimately connected to this endeavor. One of the implicit arguments of this book is that space is not some amorphous abstract reality within which we passively live. Rather, it is an interactive process of delineation informed by our subjective faculties as we navigate a putative objective externality. As Vernon Hyde Minor writes in Art History’s History, “Finding correlations between the built environment and the unconstructed landscape, between culture and nature, is humanistic.”4 In the structural-humanistic history presented here, Yi-Fu Tuan’s writings end up becoming an important touchstone in understanding the emergence of Buddhist architecture in an American setting. I use the term “touchstone” here—as in benchmark or vantage point—intentionally and pointedly. For it is important to keep in mind that Tuan’s work helps explain my observations, which derive from the Buddhist communities under consideration, and are not imposed synthetically from the vantage point of scholarly investigation. The theoretical drive of Tuan’s life work as a humanistic geographer is one of privileging attitudes, values, and beliefs when investigating matters of culture and human life.5 An effective and affective way of doing so is by unpacking the mutually informed interaction between human experience and environment. This basic duality takes form in the powerful binary of “space and place,” where within this relation, “each term requires the other for definition.”6 Rather than closed systems of limited scope, binaries can be valuable tools that both sharpen and expand a particular concept, much like binocular vision produces three-dimensional images in the mind or how the totality of a sphere can be understood via a bi-polar axis. As Tuan states, “The human mind appears to be disposed to organize phenomena not only in segments but to arrange them in opposite pairs.”7 Tuan maintains that environment cannot be viewed solely in abstract or empirical terms, as an object without a subject. “Man is the measure,” he writes in his seminal volume Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience. Human products and expedients of knowledge such as art, architecture, myth, religion, and history are all involved in the generation and experience of spatial understanding. In his view, the human body is at the core of any investigation into its interaction with natural and built environments, while the phenomenological breadth of human experience is understood as basic to the interconnected experience among all spatial realms. In forwarding the binaries of space and place/experience and environment, Tuan is essentially stating that the structural form of the human body has a great deal to do with the structural forms that humans create, and that the experience of the world through the human form helps to formulate the conditions for human understanding. This perspective on the human form is pertinent here in that such a conception thereby imbues with physical world with humanistic significance. In fact, the human body (of the Buddha) is sometimes used explicitly as a structural framework (as with

12  Buddhism and Architecture stupas), and is an essential feature in sites designed for ritual circumambulation (parikrama). In Tuan’s numerous works, qualities such as memories, intuitions, insights, sentiments, dispositions, values, and the like are important in understanding how natural and constructed localities relate to one’s somatically informed human sensibilities. Research has shown that these “soft” humanistic attributes are equally important as the “hard” features of structural form when understanding Buddhist architecture in general. In other words, Buddhist structures are understood here first and foremost as humanistic artifacts imbued with cultural, religious, and personal value and significance, and are therefore investigated as such. Of the various humanistic attributes involved in Buddhist thought and practice, the idea of heart takes precedence in a number of semantic ways, whether in terms of symbolically expressing human emotion, figuratively referencing the central core of an idea, or—most applicably—its metaphorical connotation related to the Buddhist concept of compassion (karuna). In this regard, a recurring hermeneutic motif at work in this humanistic narrative is that of the inner and the outer. “Heart,” in its metaphoric capacity, mediates the transition between the interior activities of a building and the external forms extolling them. No other expression seems capable of amalgamating the disparate forms and textures associated with the interaction of (inner) spiritual life and (outer) material entities. For instance, classical forms that mimic a traditional architectural custom can in part warm the heart of a forlorn immigrant by accessing nostalgic memories of the homeland and one’s identity with it. “Heart” captures the deeply personal and communal drama of human experience and emotion that is just as intimate and internal as the vital organ so central to our physical body. Indeed, the feelings of utter hopelessness and humiliation that came with being imprisoned for no other reason but ethnic heritage, as with the incarceration of Japanese-Americans during World War II, is such that its experience was later characterized by those imprisoned as “The Heart of Community.”8 For the interned Japanese, it was the human heart in its collective unity that helped transcend the physical barriers of confinement and injustice. The emphasis Buddhists groups place on “heart” can be witnessed in their present-day public activities as well as in the religion’s ancient writings. For instance, the annual “BuddhaFest: A Festival for Heart + Mind” in Arlington, Virginia, partnered by the prominent American Buddhist magazine Tricycle, is a current example of the Buddhist concern for human emotional and mental well-being. Tibetans are particularly prodigious in emphasizing the concept of heart. The present Dalai Lama sees the heart as an indispensable counterpoint to the purely rational mind and its frequently counterproductive effect on finding human contentment. In The Essence of the Heart Sutra, he writes, “Ultimately, the unhappiness created by human intelligence can only be alleviated by intelligence itself. Therefore, using our intelligence appropriately is essential. To do this, we must conjoin our intelligence to a warm, open heart. The warm compassionate, heart is the

Buddhism and Architecture 13 basis for peace of mind …. This is what I mean by spiritual development.”9 The term is used poetically throughout Buddhist scripture. From various parts of the Avatamsaka Sutra we read, “The Buddha cultivated an ocean of compassion/His heart always as broad as the whole world/Therefore his spiritual powers are boundless/Increasing Vitality can see this.” “Living beings are helpless, wrapped up in sickness/Forever sunk in evil ways, producing the three poisons/The fierce flames of a great fire always burning them/With a pure heart to rescue them, this is the practice.” “Like a clear mirror/Reflecting images according to the forms/So from Buddhas’ field of blessings/Rewards are obtained according to one’s heart.”10 A poem (gatha) from the Mahaparinirvana Sutra underscores the spiritually remunerative power of the heart: The Tathagata enters Nirvana And eternally cuts off birth and death. If one listens with a full heart, One will gain unending bliss.11 According to the sutra, the Buddha’s enlightenment and example was not a singular achievement, but one that contained within it a heartfelt compassion for all sentient creatures. Addressing a large assembly of monks (bhiksus) just prior to his death, the Buddha stated “Today, the Tathagata [i.e., Buddha] the Alms-deserving and Perfectly Awakened One, pities, protects and, with an undivided mind, sees beings as he does his [son] Rahula. So, he is the refuge and house of the world.”12 Written at the very beginning of the text, underscoring its centrality and importance in what follows, we can see in this passage—together with the poetic stanzas—the clear humanistic associations that exist with respect to Buddhist practice, the affective power of family, the spatial qualities connected with spiritual praxis (e.g., a “field of blessings”), and the metaphoric role that architecture can play (i.e., the “house of the world”) in communicating the Buddha’s message of compassion. Heart also captures the doctrinal essence of organized Buddhist belief, the Dharma. In Buddhist philosophy, the term “Dharma” is used as a synonym for “Truth.” In Buddhism, one consequence of the Truth/Dharma is its professed monumental and universal effect on the hearts and minds of sentient beings (sometimes referred together as bodhicitta).13 In Buddhist architecture, the Dharma is the energy source at the heart of both design and function, and is the vital foundation unifying the various themes touched on above. As the very basis of the religion’s belief system, how could it be otherwise. Dedication and adherence to the Dharma is what animates Buddhists, inspires donors, produces merit, and is the spirit that elevates the buildings they construct. Of course, the central tenets of a religion are important to believers of all faiths. However, heart is important to the present study in that it explores the structural instances of

14  Buddhism and Architecture exclusively Buddhist culture in America in order to understand how their design strategies and architectural configurations attempt to instruct and inform human sensibilities with respect to the religion’s deeply held beliefs. Of the many humanistic ideas found in Tuan’s work, his view that architecture can instruct and inform human behavior is also salient to this study. He points out that in the biological realm, humans are not the only species to construct built forms. Termites, beavers, bees, ants, etc. all create structures to support their existence. According to Tuan, if humanity can differentiate in any hierarchical way from other living things, then it must be on the grounds of “awareness.” (In a Buddhist context, we might even associate this quality with “mindfulness.”) For Tuan, outside the mundane function of providing shelter, constructed forms and religiously articulated space have the ability to heighten our consciousness of the interior and exterior, the physical and mental, the terrestrial and cosmic. He states, Architectural space—even a simple hut surrounded by cleared ground—can define such sensations and render them vivid. Another influence is this: the built environment clarifies social roles and relations. People know better who they are and how they ought to behave when the arena is humanly designed rather than nature’s raw stage. Finally, architecture “teaches.” A planned city, a monument, or even a simple dwelling can be a symbol of the cosmos. In the absence of books and formal instruction, architecture is a key to comprehending reality.14 A fundamental aspect of the argument in this book is that the various architectural forms under investigation retain this perceptual and didactic character in a number of ways. A brief look at some fundamental Buddhist texts places this approach in doctrinal context.

Architecture and Scripture Architectural and spatial motifs, metaphors, and imagery are a continuous theme in the Buddhist scriptural record throughout the various traditions or schools. They very often refer to places where the Buddha disseminates his teachings. For instance, in the Lankavatara Sutra of the Zen tradition, we read how “Once the Bhagavan [Buddha] was staying in the South Seas on the peaks of Lanka in a place adorned by countless jewels and flowers …. At that time, the Bhagavan had been expounding the Dharma for seven days in the palace of Sagara, the Serpent King.”15 In D.T. Suzuki’s translation, this palace is situated on Mt. Malaya in the “Castle of Lankā.”16 In the Avatamsaka Sutra, the Buddha “expounds all truths” in a similar setting: “The palace chamber in which the Buddha was situated was spacious and beautifully adorned. It extended throughout the ten directions. It was made of jewels of various colors and was decorated with all kinds of precious flowers. The various adornments emanated lights like clouds; the

Buddhism and Architecture 15 masses of their reflections from within the palace formed banners.”17 In the Lalitavistara Sutra, the Buddha dwelt in “a great celestial palace measuring sixty-four leagues around, where he taught the Dharma to the gods of Heaven of Joy.”18 Elevated places such as mountains and peaks help to symbolically represent the elevated and exalted nature of the pedagogical event taking place in Buddhist scripture. Structures typically associated with kings and rulers—such as palaces, castles, and their accoutrements (e.g., guardian lions that signify royalty)—underscore the regality and ennoblement resident in, and adhering to, the Buddha’s teachings (e.g., the Four Noble Truths). As verse from the Lotus Sutra, one of the most important Mahayana texts, asks: “Will the Buddha teach us the True Dharma/That he obtained while he sat/on the terrace of enlightenment (bodhimaṇḍa)?”19 The terrace here is an architectural apparatus usually set high upon a landscape, providing a vista for those who can “see” a view of the world beyond unaided vision. Moreover, intrinsically valuable, precious, and ornate materials and settings like the ones described above are used in Buddhist sacred texts in part as a metaphor to evoke the effulgence and extraordinary spiritual value of the Buddha’s message. In this regard, the concept of “storehouse,” as an architectural structure that houses valuable goods, akin to a treasury, is sometimes utilized to make the symbolic and mystical connection between the mundane value of worldly wealth and the priceless spiritual worth of the Dharma. In fact, in the Larger Pure Land Sukhāvatīvyūha Sūtra, the central figure of Dharmakara—a monk whose name is variously translated as “Storehouse of the Dharma” or “Treasure of Dharma”20 —vows to become a buddha and establish a pure land for those seeking enlightenment. Amidst his promises, he states: “I will open the Dharma storehouse for the multitudes/ And endow them all with treasures of merit. Being always among the multitudes/I will proclaim the Dharma with the lion’s roar.”21 Examples like these underscore the figurative and metonymic connection between architecture and the expressive transmission of Buddhist beliefs. Arguably, the primary arbitrator between material form and the human mind and spirit is the language of symbolism (metaphor, analogy, metonymy, synecdoche, etc.). And since symbolic connections between spiritual sensations and physical entities can be quite complex, abstract, or difficult to grasp on a literal level, buildings, monuments, and environments—together with the example of human experience—can undertake the role of a teacher. To the extent that this is the case, the Buddha’s example and the structures and settings described in the sutras reinforce the expressive and didactic importance of Buddhist architecture. Furthermore, the express purpose of the scriptures is, by and large, to document and transmit the Buddha’s teachings. They inspire devotion by addressing the reasonableness and discursive logic of the Buddha’s message with language and imagery that aim at reaching the affective impulses of the human heart. Scriptures evoke and rhetorically personify concepts that are

16  Buddhism and Architecture difficult to convey in a literal fashion, since knowledge of these ideas is meant to transform as much as inform human sensibilities. These teachings are in the end about the Truth or the Reality of things, of which the Buddha is often both the one conveying the message and the embodiment of it. Thus, the Buddha is metaphorically characterized as “the house of the world” in the Mahaparinirvana Sutra since, for Buddhists, his enlightenment and release from rebirth (parinirvana) represents the “place” that adherents seek to be. Or, to put it another way, dedication to the Buddha and the Dharma is a driving force in the structures Buddhists build, which help in apprehending the message of the reality of things at the heart of the Buddha’s teachings. The below quote from the Vajrayana Vairocanābhisambodhi Sutra helps to illustrate this observation: Thus have I heard. At one time the Bhagavān (Lord) was residing in the vast adamantine palace of the Dharma realm empowered by Tathāgatas, in which all the vajradharas had all assembled; the great pavilion [comparable to] the king of jewels, born of the Tathāgata’s faith-andunderstanding, play, and supernatural transformations, was lofty, without a center or perimeter, and variously adorned with great and wondrous jewel-kings, and the body of a bodhisattva formed a lion throne.22 One inference we can take away from scriptural entries like this and others like it is that, in the very least, Buddhist architecture can be seen as pedagogical in nature; that the Buddhist temperament toward the Dharma and its spiritual consequences has a great deal to do with the construction of their temples and their use of space. This makes sense. Coming to grips cognitively with the immensity and boundlessness conveyed in Buddhist scriptures is difficult to do. The manifest reality and delimiting qualities of a building can aid and ground the mind in comprehending the cosmic significance of the information being conveyed. Stupas, for instance, are understood as architectural representations of the Buddhist universe and the Buddha himself. In the Tibetan tradition, circumambulating around one is associated with a meditative walk through a mandala palace.23 In the above extract, however, the structure housing the Buddha, created out of faith in the Dharma, is endless, “without a center or perimeter.” Such language speaks to the open-ended reality of space and time immanent in the cosmos. For it is the infinite nature of Reality itself that Buddhism ultimately seeks to explicate.24 As Cheng Chien Bhikshu writes, “This is the reason why in the first few centuries of Buddhist history the main object of worship for the Buddha’s followers was the stūpa, which represents the Buddha as the formless reality realized by him. As someone who has perfectly comprehended the ultimate reality—or rather realized his identity with it—and is able to direct others to it, the Buddha symbolizes that reality.”25 In these ways, the Buddha’s teachings and the purity of the example he sets imbue Buddhist architecture with existential and didactic import, wherever it is found.

Buddhism and Architecture 17

East and West The discussion thus far has referenced writings from various sects of Buddhist practice and have been analyzed under the generalized rubric of “Buddhism.” This was intentional. As this work is conceived of as a broad history, the discussion proceeds chronologically. Doctrinal divisions—such as the Mahayana, Vajrayana, and Theravada traditions—are not explicated separately, but are addressed as they appear as spiritual aspects of each building and community under discussion.26 Investigation into various sites place the Chinese, Japanese, Tibetans, Thai, and others on the common ground of the American landscape, which blend into a humanistic and holistic narrative consistent with the interconnectedness that the Buddhadharma professes. Given the country’s cultural diversity, this seems to be the correct course of action. As Charles S. Prebish has stated, “One of the most profound developments in the globalization of Buddhism is that the various traditions, once so distinct in their respective Asian homelands, in their new Western settings now find themselves in close proximity for the first time in the history of Buddhism.”27 This unique development makes research into Buddhist architecture in America particularly interesting with respect to Buddhism as a global phenomenon. Reflecting upon what makes Buddhism in America distinct, especially since the religion’s history is one of continual migration and cultural transplantation, helps refine the role that Buddhist architecture plays in our overall understanding of the faith. Prebish further asks, “Is it possible to find some unifying principle or basis by which the huge diversity of global Buddhism might reestablish the sense of spiritual kinship among all Buddhists that prevailed in Buddha’s original sangha of the four quarters?”28 The arrival of Buddhism and its associated architecture in North America may perhaps answer this question to some extent. The emergence of Buddhism in the United States can be understood as distinctive even from that of Europe, although both are considered “the West.” For, part of the overall context of America has to do with its historical and humanistic mise en scène in both space and time. In a way, there is a sense of finality, of endgame, or even of fate in Buddhism’s establishment in an American setting. In terms of space, in a circular world America signifies the furthest West one can travel before reaching the cultural East. (The north-south axis has not been as evocative on the imagination within the overall drama of cultural expansion in human history.) Buddhists in the United States of every denomination are consciously aware of this circumstance, and many make specific reference to it within their mission statements. Hsi Lai Temple in California, for example, posits itself as a “bridge between East and West.” In fact, the name Hsi Lai is literally translated as “Coming West.”29 Interestingly, the idea of “coming to the West” is embedded in both the Chinese and Japanese history of Buddhism as it relates to its modern appearance in America. In establishing a lineage to serve as

18  Buddhism and Architecture frameworks for their ministries, groups such as the Japanese Pure Land Buddhist Churches of America (BCA) and Hsi Lai’s Fo Guang Shan trace the discovery of America back to the fifth-century Chinese explorer Hui Shen, a Buddhist monk who purportedly traveled to North and Central America and spread Buddhist ideas to natives a thousand years before the voyages of Columbus.30  Actually, Hui Shen would have followed a route across the Asia-America land bridge (called Beringia) that genetic scientists have demonstrated was the path taken by Asian migrants at least since the Ice Age 15,000 years ago.31 Tibetan Buddhists in the United States also reference a link to America derived from their ancient history. According to the Tibetans, a well-known prophecy by Padmasambhava (“Lotus Born”), the guru who in 770 A.D. introduced Buddhism to Tibet, foretold their present diaspora in the modern technological era and their residence in the New World: “When the iron bird flies and horses run on wheels, the Tibetan people will be scattered like ants across the face of the world, and the Dharma will come to the land of the red-faced man.” It is a fateful prophecy that Tibetans tend to foreground—as with Tarthang Tulku and his Odiyan Buddhist Retreat in Cazadero, CA—when discussing their place in American cultural life.32 Asian Buddhists in these contexts seem to be fulfilling their own “manifest destiny” in their modern era arrival in North America. Without making any judgments as to the scientific truth or validity of their assertions, what these claims index in the very least is the importance such groups place on forming a spiritual and spatial foundation or lineage for their social and religious presence. It is difficult to overstate the importance of lineage within the Buddhist religion, particularly to Zen and Tibetan Buddhists. As Siddhartha Gautama did not forward himself as a divinity or underwrite his ministry with reference to a cosmological event, his teachings and the stories surrounding his life have retained a somewhat supple cosmopolitan and ecumenical character that has aided in its global expansion since its inception. It is commonly noted that Buddhism’s lasting success has been founded on its ability to adapt and blend to different spiritual traditions outside of its birthplace in India, and we see this same phenomenon occurring in the United States.33 Buddhism was introduced to China, Korea, Japan, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Tibet and other places as a foreign faith, but all of these countries have assimilated the essential strands of the Buddha’s teachings into their indigenous religious institutions. One consequence of this tendency, however, has been the need to find a link—spatial, temporal, or doctrinal—to the original Buddha and his teachings, or a similarity to an older tradition that might serve as a venerable and legitimizing foundation. Thus, as illustrated in the following chapters, architectural structures quite often attempt to augment the spiritual lineage of Buddhist communities, which promulgate their sacred descent in various other ways, whether scriptural, cultural, or historical. The buildings themselves often have lineages, and become

Buddhism and Architecture 19 monumental artifacts promoting and amplifying the deep roots of their respective traditions. Establishing a lineage, whether doctrinal, ancestral, or architectural, all of which occur in the Buddhist faith, is a way to form a connection to the past. It is a way of legitimizing and institutionalizing a particular belief system or set of practices and conferring a foundation of objectivity and authority upon a situation or event, important in matters of spiritual history or transcendental experience, especially when a religion has been transplanted from a foreign source. We see this take place in the scriptural record with almost systematic frequency, which among other things seeks to establish the facticity (to borrow a word from Western sociology and philosophy) of the reality of things that the Buddha expounds across time. Sutras generally begin with setting the scene, which as discussed above often involves situating the Buddha in elevated and noble places of authority and lineage (e.g., Vulture Peak; the site of Enlightenment, etc.) that legitimate the words that follow. This tendency has had significant architectural repercussions. In the Pali Nikayas, which contain some of the oldest Buddhist teachings, the Buddha informs his disciples where to venerate him upon his death: Lumbini, Bodhgaya, Sarnath, and Kushinagar: the places where he was born, enlightened, transmitted the Dharma, and died: places that “should be seen by a faithful man of family that will stir his heart.”34 The Buddha then goes on to tell his disciples to build a stupa “… where four roads meet” as a way to commemorate his memory and message. Monuments have been built at these places and in accord with his instructions ever since. In this regard, the use of architecture within scripture, or in the world at large, helps emphasize the enduring and institutional force of the teachings being delivered. Yet, another way that Buddhist scriptures communicate the legitimizing facticity of the Buddha’s message is through testimony. In addition to being a synonym for Truth and Reality, the Dharma—understood as both the Buddha’s teachings and nature of the universe—is also referred to as the Law. One of the most important poses in Buddhist art is a seated Buddha displaying the dharmachakra-mudra (Chinese: chuan-fa-lun-yin; Japanese: tembōrin-in). This mudrā, or hand gesture, symbolizes “Turning the Wheel of the Law,” the Buddha’s first sermon where he communicated his teachings in the Deer Park at Sarnath. Similar to any legal proceeding, the truth and effectiveness of his message is underwritten through witnesses who have achieved enlightenment and can thereby testify to the veracity of the Dharma being delivered. Very often scriptures contain extended lists of enlightened beings (bodhisattvas) who are present at the documented event to establish a temporal and doctrinal ancestry. The presence of these auspicious witnesses bestows upon the proceedings the corroborating force of truth and reaffirming weight of legacy necessary for any disposition of Law, working somewhat like a family tree. Book One of the Avatamsaka Sutra, for instance—“The Wonderful Adornments of the Leaders of the

20  Buddhism and Architecture World”—states, “A boundless host of enlightening beings, the congregation at the site of enlightenment, were all gathered there: by means of the ability to manifest the lights and inconceivable sounds of the Buddhas …”35 The overwhelming numbers and reverence of these attendants, delivered in systematic repetition, symbolically communicates the unimaginable importance and universal applicability of the Buddha’s teachings across time. This imaginative and rhetorical device can be illustrated from Chapter 1 — “The Setting” of the Lalitavistara Sutra, which is a tactic utilized in many other Buddhist scriptures. As a setting, the scene confirms the environmental and spatial nature of the discursive event taking place: Thus have I heard at one time. The Blessed One was staying in Śrāvastī at Jetavana Grove, in the park of Anathapiṇḍada, along with a great saṅgha of twelve thousand monks. Among them were venerable Jñānakauṇḍinya, venerable Aśvajit, venerable Bāṣpa, venerable Mahānāma, venerable Bhadrika, venerable Yaśodeva, venerable Vimala, venerable Subāhu, venerable Pūrņa, venerable Gavāṁpati, venerable Urubilvā Kāśyapa, venerable Nadīkāśyapa, venerable Gayākāśyapa, venerable Śāriputra, venerable Mahāmaudgalyāyana, venerable Mahākāśyapa, venerable Mahākātyāyana, venerable Mahākaphila, venerable Kauṇḍinya, venerable Cunanda, venerable Pūrṇamaitrāyaṇīputra, venerable Aniruddha, venerable Nandika, venerable Kasphila, venerable Subhūti, venerable Revata, venerable Khadiravaṇika, venerable Amogharāja, venerable Mahāpāraṇika, venerable Vakkula, venerable Nanda, venerable Rāhula, venerable Svāgata, and venerable Ānanda. Along with these monks were 32,000 bodhisattvas, all of whom had only a single birth remaining and were adept in all the perfections of the bodhisattvas. They enjoyed all the super-knowledges of the bodhisattvas and had attained all the dhāraṇīs and all the confidence of the bodhisattvas.36 The appearance of these enlightened witnesses establishes a foundational setting for the dispensation that is about to occur. They act in concert with other matrices of authority, such as nobility and architecture, in order to confirm the juridical ground from which the Truth, Reality, and Law of the Universe is transmitted to the world. These venerable personages can be understood as metaphorically foundational in the structural sense and noble/elevated in the spiritual sense. In fact, the use of witnesses stems from the very beginnings of the Buddha’s sacred history, as when he touched the ground below him underneath the Bodhi Tree of Enlightenment in order to “call the earth to witness” (bhumisparsha-mudra) against the demon Mara who assailed him. One final consideration can be touched upon with respect to the historical East-West timeline at work in Buddhism’s arrival in America. It was stated above that the Dharma is the animating force behind the creation of Buddhist temple architecture. Inspired by the Dharma, Buddhist

Buddhism and Architecture 21 communities across the country advocate for a more compassionate and peaceful human mind and world. These progressive goals for humanity help inform the elevation of many Buddhist places of worship and practice. However, set against these elevating spiritual heights is the well-known Buddhist prophecy of doctrinal degeneration—a spiritual eschatology that predicts the ultimate “death of the Dharma.”37 Referred to as mappo and mo fa in the Japanese and Chinese traditions respectively, the ancient legend predicts a gradual decline in the dissemination, reception, and practice of the Buddha’s teachings, a “Degenerate Age” that we are currently living within according to the various timelines that are postulated in ancient texts. The Degenerate Age is referenced in some, but not all, of the liturgies and publications of the Buddhist groups investigated here. However, as a recognized downward regressive force within the religion, the prophecy sets the upward elevation of Buddhist temples and their progressive goals for humanity in stark relief. In fact, the idea of a Degenerate Age was a large factor in the creation of the Japanese Pure Land Buddhism of Honen (Jodo Shu) and Shinran (Jodo Shinshu) in twelfth- and thirteenth-century Japan. At the time, Pure Land thought was seen as a counterpoise to the fear that the end of the world was near. Pertinent to this discussion is that Pure Land Buddhism is the most popular devotional (non-meditative) form of Buddhism in the United States. As America signifies the final East-West pole of the Asian-based spiritual tradition, Buddhism’s emergence in this cultural and cartographic extremity might seem to imply that the “latter days of the Dharma” have truly arrived. To speculate further on this eschatology, Buddhism’s appearance in the United States coincided with the present-day modernization and globalization of the world. As discussed more fully in the following chapter, America helped spearhead the profusion of modern technologies that have created the global environment within which Buddhists now find themselves. Buddhists have found a home in this setting by acclimating in various ways. Fo Guang Shan, a Taiwanese Mahayana organization, promotes a “Humanistic Buddhism” that they maintain is “relevant and essential for the well being and progress of humanity in modern times.”38 Hsi Lai Temple, their architectural complex in California mentioned above, is evidence of a vibrant and successful transition into contemporary times. Others, such as Theravada Thai communities more grounded in their native and traditional customs, have “Americanized” to a greater or lesser extent as they negotiate their “liminality … their dichotomous cultural identity in the threshold (Latin līmen) between Old and New Worlds.”39 But, what these and other Buddhist communities share is their placement in a country situated at the forefront of the globalized, technocentric world. Having reached the furthest physical and cultural end of the globe, Buddhism also has to deal with existing during a period of unprecedented technological interconnectedness. The Internet and global telecommunication systems have now instigated a collapsing of cultural time and space

22  Buddhism and Architecture that pulls the world together in such an enveloping fashion that it is hard to imagine that things can become significantly more integrated. Humanity has mapped the earth from outer space down to the meter. One can reach another individual in the remotest of regions of the world via the phone and a video screen. There is a sense—which I believe is tangible underneath the surface of contemporary life, whether consciously or unconsciously—that we have almost reached the end of something, that as a collective group of beings we are approaching some sort of boundary or threshold, beyond which our abilities as humans to coexist as we once have is in serious question. If this is true, then the way forward will be to identify and implement ways to understand and cohabitate together successfully in this hypertechnical environment. As shown below, Buddhism, as a so-called “religion of science,” fits well within this technological age, and may provide the key for humanity’s spiritual happiness as it proceeds into the future. To answer Charles Prebish’s question raised earlier about whether Buddhists can reestablish a widespread spiritual kinship, Buddhists around the globe are consequently unified in this “latter day” possibility.

Historical Backdrop The appearance of Buddhist architecture in the United States is one marked by a path roughly leading from the simple and pragmatic to the more monumental and institutional. The earliest Buddhist temples were built on the West Coast, corresponding with Buddhism’s appearance in the United States that began with the arrival of immigrant Chinese workers during the California Gold Rush during the 1840s and 50s. It is difficult to be certain as to when the first ever Buddhist temple was constructed in America. Harvard University’s encyclopedic Pluralism Project claims that by the end of the nineteenth century, “there were hundreds of Chinese temples and shrines on the West Coast.”40 The Taoist/Buddhist Tin How Temple of 1853 in San Francisco is often mentioned as the earliest known Chinese temple on the mainland.41 For the most part, shops, homes, and makeshift structures served as meeting halls and places where religious services could take place until more suitable buildings could be found or constructed. However, around the last decade of the nineteenth century, Japanese Pure Land Buddhists began sending missionaries to Hawaii and the mainland to attend to the spiritual needs of a burgeoning Japanese population. By the first decade of the twentieth century, these groups founded temples all along the West Coast of America. Sadly, draconian immigration laws aimed specifically at Asian immigrants, as well as the Japanese internment camps during World War II, limited the quantity and diversity of Buddhist temple construction for a good part of the twentieth century. However, the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 utterly changed this situation. Buddhists from all Asian countries were freely able to migrate to the United States. This state of affairs has thus profoundly

Buddhism and Architecture 23 expanded the production and diversity of Buddhist architecture to this very day. This brief historical account highlights the parallel narrative of Buddhist thought and the religion’s architectural emergence in America. The story is not unidirectional. For just as immigrant Buddhists from China and Japan were coming to the States, Americans were beginning to explore the Eastern religion with increasing attention. Interest in Asian religions in the West had been steadily increasing since the eighteenth century, yet Buddhism’s current presence in the United States began in earnest during the second half of the nineteenth century. Although California was, and continues to be, ground zero for the emergence of Asian culture in America, there has long been a great deal of Buddhist activity in New York and other Atlantic states.42 Roughly around the time that Chinese immigrants were moving to California, the intellectual class along the Eastern seaboard helped inaugurate a flourishing interest in the religion in the United States.43 Thomas Tweed’s The American Encounter with Buddhism, 1844–1912: Victorian Culture and the Limits of Dissent situates Buddhism’s intellectual emergence in the United States in the year 1844. It was then that translated excerpts of the Lotus Sutra were published in the Transcendentalist publication The Dial and Edward Elbridge Salisbury’s lecture “Memoir on the History of Buddhism” was given at the American Oriental Society in Boston, Massachusetts. Tweed cites the American Transcendentalists as a major contributor in what he labels an “encounter” with Buddhism, a term that suggests the book’s underlying thesis that America’s early relationship with the Eastern religion was not so much an enduring affair as it was a starting point for future engagement. Buddhism found a substantial place in the American religious landscape following Sir Edwin Arnold’s impactful The Light of Asia in 1882 and the successful Buddhist presence at the 1893 World’s Parliament of Religions in Chicago.44 One effect of the Parliament is that it highlighted the variety of Eastern religions in existence and the various denominations belonging to them. In a revised edition of his influential book, Tweed claims “we are in the midst of a second Buddhist vogue, more intense and widespread than the late Victorian ‘fascination’ with the religion.”45 The history of Buddhism in America is marked by this multiplicity. The story is one of emerging Buddhist sects vying for spiritual purchase in their New World context. The motivating impetus of Charles Prebish and Kenneth Tanaka’s significant book The Faces of Buddhism in America argues that this developmental diversity necessitates a differentiation of American Buddhists that underscores the issues surrounding their emerging presence.  They distinguish between two separate groups: Buddhist immigrants in America and Euro-American intellectuals who adopted or sympathized with Buddhism’s message during the religion’s fruitful twentieth century.46 This collection of articles addresses the different religious and cultural “Buddhisms” that exist in the United States, whether Chinese, Vietnamese, Japanese, Korean,

24  Buddhism and Architecture or Tibetan. As a whole, the text is in accord with Tweed’s thesis. For Prebish and Tanaka, Buddhism’s emergence in America is a story that “presents a struggle to acculturate and accommodate on the part of a religious tradition that initially appeared to be wholly foreign to the American mindset.”47 Another aspect of that story can be found in the temporal translation inherent in the transplantation of an ancient religious tradition to the New World. Many of the architectural styles that Buddhist groups utilize in America derive from the most ancient spiritual traditions of the East. Much of the research in this temporal respect has been concerned with assimilation. Paul David Numrich’s Old Wisdom in the New World discusses the challenges of immigrant Theravada Buddhism, and argues that the sect’s Americanization is in accord with complexities of other transplanted religions. Steven Heine and Charles Prebish’s Buddhism in the Modern World: Adaptations of an Ancient Tradition (2003) looks at “how a variety of traditional Buddhist schools and movements have been affected by … the myriad forces of modernization.”48 In fact, the idea of modernization is central with respect to how developments on the other side of the Pacific contributed to the spread of particularly Japanese Buddhism in the West during the later nineteenth century. When the centuries old Tokugawa Shogunate was overthrown in 1868, the subsequent Meiji Restoration ushered in the modern era of Japan. The event, whose roots partially lie in American Commodore Matthew Perry’s forcing open of Japanese harbors in 1853, is a significant one insofar as it “led to the westernization of virtually all aspects of (Japanese) national life.”49 Of importance in the present discussion is that the Meiji authorities withdrew state support for Buddhism in favor of a state-sponsored Shintoism.50 As a result, many Buddhists began to search for friendlier political and economic climes, journeying abroad to locations such as China, Korea, the Hawaiian Islands, and the United States. Looking further back, Alexander the Great’s conquests that reached the borders of what is currently India, the Silk Road linking China to Europe, the travels of Marco Polo and the sixteenth-century missionary efforts of the Jesuit priests, the voyages of Christopher Columbus seeking an oceanic route to the riches of the Orient, the successful British East India Company, in addition to Commodore Perry’s martial/economic incursion in Japan and its political reverberations, are all elements of a long history of bilateral East and West cultural interconnection. These events are sometimes overlooked or downplayed when discussing Buddhism’s emergence in the United States, yet they importantly refer to the larger history of East-West cultural interchange that is the metanarrative undergirding this study. America is enmeshed in this saga insofar as its Renaissance Era discovery was a direct result of a Western fascination with the East, whether for Oriental silk, tea, or spices. The East, too, was much captivated by the West, if only for its interest in Western science, technology, and modern military prowess. In fact, the United States was responsible for the most powerful and violent military contact between the East and West in human history: the explosion

Buddhism and Architecture 25 of two nuclear bombs on the Japanese mainland during World War II. Spiritual interchange was inevitably integrated amid these mundane matters of culture, profit, and war. However, it is only a strange coincidence that an overwhelming number of immigrant Pure Land Buddhists who came to America during the nineteenth century hailed from Hiroshima prefecture.51 America’s developing interest in an “Old World” religion could in part be related to notions of a finding a deeper, historical, and spiritual foundation. Because Buddhism and its structural forms have existed for more than two millennia, their emergence in the United States is relatively new. Buddhists have lived in the country for more than a century and a half, yet Buddhism is still considered an “alternative religion” in America.52 At less than 250 years old, the United States retains one of the youngest cultural histories among the major nation-states in the world today. In many ways, the “newness” of America’s New World founding still resides within the nation’s cultural DNA. Developing and living on the forward edge of technological modernism for over a century tends to place collective consciousness perpetually on the present moment as it continually looks toward the future. It may be that many Americans increasingly feel the need for an alternative cultural and spiritual framework to augment the nation’s relatively young Euro-technocentric history, and are attracted to the antiquity and distinctive  character of Asian spirituality as a counterpoint.53 Henry David Thoreau’s A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers contains a reflection on the antique quality of the Hindu religion amid the American waterway landscape. Written during the burgeoning industrial progress of the nineteenth century, Thoreau’s romantic meditation juxtaposes a reverence for the cultures of the past with a concomitant and fervent respect for the present. His oft quoted statement that “… there is an orientalism in the most restless pioneer, and the farthest west is but the farthest east” is set against his further thought that “Ancient history has an air of antiquity. It should be more modern.”54 The reflective, perhaps even restive, tone that Thoreau expresses about Asia and the past touches on something that, in my view, is still discernable in the population today.55 To the mind of many Westerners, the East seems to retain an ancient, hidden, and mysterious character perched on the edge of imagination. The recent success in the West of esoteric Tibetan Buddhism may help point to this idea, given its exotic ceremonies and the historically closed nature of Tibet.56 Esoteric means “secret” or “hidden,” and the human proclivity to uncover the obscured may be an important part of Buddhism’s appeal in the West, a phenomenon that is discussed more fully in the next chapter. One need only look to Commodore Perry’s effort to forcibly open the hidden Japan of the centuries old Tokugawa Shogunate as an example of this. In the modernity of the West, the ancient traditions and classical forms of the East are set in stark relief. In many developing countries, the present era of globalization, with its international economic and cultural integration,

26  Buddhism and Architecture regularly situates modern technological accouterments in direct proximity with older forms of human life and subsistence. Much of the architecture discussed in this investigation retains the same character with respect to their immediate urban environments. Ancient looking temples exist amid ultramodern metropolitan localities. In some instances, ancient Eastern spiritual “technologies” coexist with contemporary Western-based scientific structural artifacts without contradiction, as with the stupa atop the Buddhist Church of San Francisco. It must be remembered, of course, that the cities of the present-day Orient look very much like the modern cities of the West.57 In this respect, one can say that the West has already gone to the East, and that the influx of Asian religious thought since the nineteenth century is a logical consequence of the west wind of cultural, political, and economic expansionism reverberating back like the ebb and flow of an ocean tide.

Buddhist Non-Duality The dualistic concepts of Yi-Fu Tuan’s humanistic geography—such as space and place, interior and exterior, the terrestrial and the cosmic— are a particularly valuable and fruitful way to approach Buddhist architecture humanistically. I have also emphasized the historical East-West and Old-New divisions that have been a large factor in understanding Buddhism’s emergence in America. Other relevant binaries are at work as well in understanding Buddhist structural expression, such as the distinction between sacred and profane space, or the relationship between the use of non-sacred/everyday places that can be transformed into spiritual environments designed for meditation and contemplation. Even the use of symbolism, so prevalent in Buddhist scripture and praxis, has been bifurcated by some philosophically into a symbol/metaphor opposition, where the former refers to its static use as a tool of scientific practicality, while the latter points to a deeper dynamic process “which leads into the realm of art, ethics, and religion.”58 In this conception, Buddhist architecture takes on the role of a symbol, while the humanistic themes surrounding Buddhist belief (such as heart, as we have seen) are involved in meanings most effectively communicated via metaphor. These dichotomies play a role in the historical narrative presented in this book. Yet, one must be careful when making such divisions when thinking about Buddhist architecture. Buddhist thought is holistic in nature. It emphasizes the interconnectedness of things. For Buddhists, ultimately all distinctions and dualities are seen as illusory. Even the segregation of sacred and profane space, which is a broadly accepted ontological distinction, in the end is also untenable, since for Buddhists everywhere and everything can be an opportunity for spiritual insight.59 The experiential expediency of binary thought espoused by Tuan therefore reaches a limit in the non-duality of Buddhist epistemology.

Buddhism and Architecture 27 This holistic thought stems from the earliest notions of Buddhist belief, and signifies a flash point of sorts when considering Buddhist architecture in an American setting, in a country whose history is grounded primarily in a Judeo-Christian heritage. While similarities exist between Buddhist architecture and those of the Abrahamic traditions, its far Eastern roots point to a discrete set of doctrines that implicitly index an alternative history and attendant meanings. Buddhism’s concepts of “no self” (anatman), impermanence (anitya), and emptiness (śūnyatā) are fundamental elements of its belief system. These beliefs help distinguish Buddhism’s structures from those of Islam and Christianity insofar as it forces one to consider Buddhist buildings in a distinctive manner with regard to purpose and function, or in other words, why they were built and what they are intended to do. Since its inception roughly 2500 years ago, Buddhism directly engages what we might see as the paradoxical nature of human existence. Transcendental wisdom via the Dharma hinges on recognizing that attachment to the idea of a fixed, immutable “self” is a delusion. In the West, the idea of the self and its actualization is virtually unquestioned, and is the foundation of the individual freedoms so important to its democratic institutions. The notion of an immutable self or soul is taken as an obvious fact of human existence, and is a large factor in the Judeo-Christian worldview so predominant in America. In fact, in puzzling reaction to such Buddhist concepts, the non-Buddhist often asks: “who, then, is attempting to achieve Nirvana in Buddhist practice if the self does not really exist?” However, in the Buddhist religion enlightenment does indeed entail embracing the concept of “no-self,” which is understood to be at the heart of eliminating the suffering and dissatisfaction (dukkha) of sentient beings, while belief in the śūnyatā doctrine refers to the idea that all things are ultimately “empty” of a permanent, unchangeable self-existence. Buddhist belief involves realizing the transient impermanence of all phenomena, understanding the karmic implications of attachment to a craving immutable ego, and ultimately transcending the parameters that lead to dualistic thinking (i.e., a “self” that inherently sets up a binary opposition between you and everything else).60 In varying degrees that fold back upon one another interconnectedly, impermanence, emptiness, and “no self” lie at the core of the Buddhist faith. They exist as the spiritual foundation of Buddhist holism as it relates to the very nature of existence itself. As Venerable Master Hsing Yun writes, “The supreme path is one that integrates existence and emptiness (my emphasis). This is the difference between the Chan (Zen) mind and the ordinary mind.”61 Such integrated holist thought is succinctly stated in one of the most important texts expounding the Buddha’s view of reality, the Heart Sutra: “Form does not differ from emptiness, and emptiness does not differ from form. Form itself is emptiness, and emptiness itself is form.”62 These beliefs, although just briefly touched upon here, are central to Buddhism’s enduring antique worldview, and need to be kept in mind when trying to understand Buddhist structures of worship and practice in the United States.

28  Buddhism and Architecture For some Buddhist thinkers, this holistic thinking extends not only to sentient beings, but to the material aspects of the world as well. The Zen Master Dōgen of the Soto sect, for instance, taught that even non-sentient objects in the world transmit the Dharma (mujō seppō): “According to Dōgen, every single thing in the universe participates in, contributes to, benefits from, and is, in fact, nothing other than the universal functioning of Buddhahood.”63 The implications of this idea with respect to Buddhist architecture manifest when discussing Zen sites in the United States. Zen is a branch of Buddhist practice that Americans have embraced most enthusiastically. Investigating Buddhist architecture from that perspective will generate a deeper understanding of just how interconnectedness and emptiness operate in a Western setting. Because buildings silently but not literally “speak” their message, Zen is a form of Buddhist thought that is particularly suited to address how architecture can teach and communicate, as it “rejects the written word and claims an unwritten doctrine, transmitted from mind to mind, where the heart of man directly sees into its own nature.”64 As a subdivision of the Mahayana, Zen Buddhism embraces the holistic idea that all sentient beings retain the “Buddha-nature” (tathāgatagarbha): like a seed in the womb of the mind, an intrinsic Buddhahood is able to be born within us all. This idea stems in part from the interconnectedness of the universe. The concept of Indra’s Net is a famous and influential element of the Gandavyuha Sutra. Each node of the god’s vast, unbounded net contains a jewel that reflects—in infinite measure—the mirrored image of each of the other jewels.65 It is a mythological image that is used throughout the Buddhist world to explain the complex interdependent nature of existence (pratītyasamutpāda), and thus also must be kept in mind when considering Buddhist architecture of every tradition. In the end, the message that Zen teaches is one that finds commonality with other forms of Buddhist thought. It is a teaching expressed in different ways viz. the various design strategies that Buddhists utilize to house and communicate the Dharma, which, as Lokesh Chandra compellingly states, “is an appreciation of intuition and action, a cult of essentiality and purity, a love of nature as the direct embodiment of the Absolute.”66 As a whole (pun intended!), the themes and methods introduced in this chapter form the context and content of the narrative describing the appearance of Buddhist architecture on the American landscape. In the same way that architectural form can give structure to the nonphysical concepts of religious thought, these ideas act as a framework in comprehending the religion’s emergence among the progressive currents of the period within which it began to take shape in the United States. It is a history that is decidedly one of positivity, growth, and elevation (both structural and spiritual) that I believe is the exact opposite of the negativity—as discussed in the following chapter—that many westerners attributed to Buddhist thought upon its arrival in America. It optimistically entails, as Georg Simmel writes of the architectural arts in the early twentieth

Buddhism and Architecture 29 century, a “sublime victory of the spirit” that may obtain when human will finds the gumption to elevate a structure against the inherent downward force of nature. In the end, the story takes root not just in the limited backdrop of the New World, but is ensconced in the ongoing dramaturgy of humanity’s quest to understand itself amid the wonders of the world. Thus, as Simmel goes on to state holistically in a slightly different but related architectural context, “The whole history of mankind is a gradual rise of the spirit to mastery over the nature which it finds outside, but in a certain sense also within, itself.”67

Notes

1 Richard Hughes Seager, Buddhism in America (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012), 6. 2 Amos Rapoport, “On the Importance of Theory,” in Culture—Meaning— Architecture: Critical Reflections on the Work of Amos Rapoport, Keith Diaz Moore, ed. (New York; London: Routledge Revivals, 2019), 29. 3 The Long Discourses of Buddha: A Translation of the Dīgha Nikāya, trans. Maurice Walshe (Boston: Wisdom Publications, 1995), 19. 4 Vernon Hyde Minor, Art History’s History (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2001), 42. 5 Tuan was the first to provide an academic rationale for the field of humanistic geography in the 1970s. While many others have since expanded its scope (Edward Casey’s work particularly comes to mind here), Tuan’s work is foundational and—in my view—continues to be utterly relevant today. E.C. Ralph, Rational Landscapes and Humanistic Geography (London: Croom Helm; Totowa, NJ: Barnes & Noble Books, 1981.), 131. 6 Yi-Fu Tuan, Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1977), 6. 7 Yi-Fu Tuan, Topophilia: A Study of Environmental Perceptions, Attitudes, and Values (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1974), 16. Tuan’s other works underscore this belief. For example, in addition to Space and Place see his Cosmos & Hearth: A Cosmopolite’s Viewpoint (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996); Morality and Imagination: Paradoxes of Progress (Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989); Dominance & Affection: The Making of Pets (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984). 8 Japanese American National Museum. https://www.janm.org/exhibits/ commonground. See also, Duncan Ryūken Williams, American Sutra: A Story of Faith and Freedom in the Second World War (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2019). 9 Bstan-ʼdzin-rgya-mtsho and Jinpa Thupten, Essence of the Heart Sutra: The Dalai Lama’s Heart of Wisdom Teachings (Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2005), 6. 10 The Flower Ornament Scripture: A Translation of the Avatamsaka Sutra, trans. Thomas Cleary (Boston; London: Shambhala, 1993), 114; 295; 304, 11 Yamamoto, Yamamoto, Kōshō, and Dharmakṣema. The Mahayana Mahaparinirvana-sutra: A Complete Translation from the Classical Chinese Language in 3 Volumes (Karin Buddhological Series; No. 5. Ube, Japan: Karinbunko, 1973), 306. 12 Yamamoto, Yamamoto, Kōshō, and Dharmakṣema. The Mahayana Mahaparinirvana-sutra, 3.

30  Buddhism and Architecture 13 Tarthang Tulku, Mind Over Matter: Reflections on Buddhism in the West (Berkeley, CA: Dharma Publishing, 2002), 172; Tarthang Tulku, Copper Mountain Mandala: Odiyan (Berkeley, CA: Dharma Publishing, 1996), 82. Bodhicitta is a Sanskrit term meaning “awakened mind” or “thought of enlightenment.” It is a complex term that can mean different things to different Buddhist schools of thought. See Robert E. Buswell, Donald S. Lopez, and Juhn Ahn, The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 2017), 267–268. 14 Tuan, Space and Place, 102. 15 Red Pine and ProQuest, The Lankavatara Sutra: A Zen Text (Berkeley: Counterpoint, 2012), 22. 16 Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki, The Lankavatara Sutra; a Mahayana Text, Translated for the First Time from the Original Sanskrit (London: Routledge & K. Paul, 1956), 3. 17 The Flower Ornament Scripture, 55–56. 18 The Play in Full: Lalitavistara, trans. Dharmachakra Translation Committee (Freemont, CA: 84000, 2013), 23. 19 Other translations use “place” instead of “terrace.” Tsugunari Kubo, Akira Yuyama, and Kumārajīva, The Lotus Sutra. Rev. 2nd ed. BDK English Tripiṭaka; 13-I (Berkeley, CA: Numata Center for Buddhist Translation and Research, 2007), 12. 20 The latter can be found in Luis O. Gómez, Land of Bliss: The Paradise of the Buddha of Measureless Light: Sanskrit and Chinese Versions of the Sukhāvatīvyūha Sutras (Studies in the Buddhist Traditions. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1996.), 163. 21 Hisao Inagaki and Harold Stewart, The Three Pure Land Sutras. Rev. 2nd ed. BDK English Tripiṭaka; 12-II, III, IV (Berkeley, Calif.: Numata Center for Buddhist Translation and Research, 2003), 19. 22 Rolf W. Giebel, The Vairocanābhisambodhi Sutra. BDK English Tripiṭaka; 30-I. (Berkeley, CA: Numata Center for Buddhist Translation and Research, 2005), 3. 23 Martin Brauen, The Mandala: Sacred Circle in Tibetan Buddhism, trans. Martin Willson (Boston: Shambhala, 1998), 51. First published as Das Mandala: Der Heilige Kreis im tantrischen Buddhismus (Köln: Dumont, 1992) as part of an exhibition at the Volkerkundemuseum der Universität Zurich of that year; Also see Adrian Snodgrass, The Symbolism of the Stupa. Revised ed. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2018). 24 Takeuchi Yoshinori and Jan Van Bragt, eds., Buddhist Spirituality: Indian, Southeast Asian, Tibetan, and Early Chinese (New York: Crossroad Pub. Company, 1997), xiii. 25 Cheng Chien, Manifestation of the Tathāgata: Buddhahood According to the Avatamsaka Sūtra (Boston: Wisdom Publications, 1993.), 8–9. This conception of enlightenment may seem to resemble the “Atman is Brahman” notion from the Hindu religion. It should be noted that Buddhism emerged out of this tradition, but moved away from it in substantive ways. 26 The Vajrayana is technically a subset of the Mahayana. 27 Charles S. Prebish, “Family Life and Spiritual Kinship in American Buddhist Communities,” in Don Browning and David Clairmont, American Religions and the Family: How Faith Traditions Cope with Modernization and Democracy (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006), 195. 28 Ibid. 29 http://www.hsilai.org/en/index.html.

Buddhism and Architecture 31 30 Ryo Munekata, Buddhist Churches of America, Volume 1, 75 Year History 1899–1974 (Chicago: Norbart, 1974), 43–44. See also Stuart Chandler, “Spreading Buddha’s Light: The Internationalization of Foguang Shan,” in Buddhist Missionaries in the Era of Globalization, ed. Linda Learman (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2005), 163–164; Charles G. Legland, Fusang: The Discovery of America by Chinese Buddhist Priests in the Fifth Century, (London: Curzon Press, 1973); Stan Steiner, Fusang: The Chinese Who Built America (New York: Harper & Row, 1979). 31 See David Reich, et al., “Reconstructing Native American Population History,” Nature 488 (11 July 2012): 370–374. See also R.C. Williams, et al. “GM allotypes in Native Americans: evidence for three distinct migrations across the Bering land bridge,” America. Journal of Physical Anthropology 66 (1985), 1–19. 32 Tarthang Tulku, Mind Over Matter: Reflections on Buddhism in the West (Berkeley, CA: Dharma Publishing, 2002), 2. 33 Michael Burgan, Buddhist Faith in America, J. Gordon Melton, ed. (New York: Facts on File, 2003), 47–59. 34 Rupert Gethin,  Sayings of the Buddha a Selection of Suttas from the Pali Nikāyas. Oxford World’s Classics (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 80. 35 The Flower Ornament Scripture, 56. 36 The Play in Full: Lalitavistara, 1; See also, The Voice of the Buddha: The Beauty of Compassion, trans. Gwendolyn Bays (Berkeley, CA: Dharma Publishing, 1983), 5–6. 37 The seminal scholastic book of this degenerate age is Jan Nattier’s Once Upon a Future Time: Studies in a Buddhist Prophecy of Decline (Berkeley, CA: Asian Humanities Press, 1991). 38 Julia Corbett-Hemeyer, Religion in America (New York; London: Routledge, 2016), 259. 39 Paul David Numrich, Old Wisdom in the New World: Americanization in Two Immigrant Theravada Buddhist Temples (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 199 6), 141. 40 http://www.pluralism.org/religion/buddhism/timeline/america. 41 Perry Garfinkel, “In Buddha’s Path on the Streets of San Francisco,” New York Times, October 10, 2008, p. D1. 42 For example, Eastern States Buddhist Temple of America (ESBT), founded in 1962, is an organization that continues to be important. The Buddhist Association of the United States (BAUS), founded in 1964, has two locations: Chuang Yen Monastery, a large monastic location in Carmel NY, and one in the Bronx. 43 See Arthur Versluis, American Transcendentalism and Asian Religions (New York; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993). 44 See Richard Hughes Seager, The World’s Parliament of Religions: the East/ West Encounter, Chicago, 1893 (Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1995); John H. Barrows, The World’s Parliament of Religions: An Illustrated and Popular Story of the World’s First Parliament of Religions, Held in Chicago in Connection with the Columbian Exposition of 1893. 2 Volumes (Chicago: Parliament Publishing Company, 1893). Interestingly, it was in 1882 that the United States government passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, which suspended immigration from China. 45 Thomas Tweed, The American Encounter with Buddhism, 1844–1912: Victorian Culture and the Limits of Dissent (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000), xii.

32  Buddhism and Architecture 46 Recent studies suggest that the “two Buddhisms” model in America is less applicable to the changing dynamics of present day demographic diversity. See Anne C. Spencer, “Diversification in the Buddhist Churches of America: Demographic trends and Their Implications for the Future Study of U.S. Buddhist Groups,” Journal of Global Buddhism 15 (2014), 35–61; See also Chenxing Han, Be the Refuge: Raising the Voices of Asian American Buddhists (Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books, 2021). 47 Charles Prebish and Kenneth Tanaka, eds. The Faces of Buddhism in America (Berkeley; Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1998), 7. 48 Steven Heine and Charles Prebish, eds. Buddhism in the Modern World: Adaptations of and Ancient Tradition (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 5. 49 The International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, Vol.5, ed. William A. Darity (Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2008), 69. 50 Support for Buddhism during the Edo Period (1603–1868) had been slowly decreasing for years prior to the Meiji changeover. Duncan Ryuken Williams and Tomoe Moriya, “Dislocations and Relocations of Issei Buddhists in the Americas” in Issei Buddhism in the Americas, eds. Duncan Ryuken Williams and Tomoe Moriya (Urbana; Chicago; Springfield, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2010), x. 51 Ryuken Williams and Moriya, Issei Buddhism in the Americas, xi. 52 See Eugene V. Gallagher and W M. Ashcraft, Introduction to New and Alternative Religions in America, Volume 3: Metaphysical, New Age, and Neopagan Movements (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2006). 53 European interest in Buddhism has existed at least since the time of Hegel and Schopenhauer. For a discussion on Buddhism’s emergence in Europe see Martin Baumann, “Buddhism in Europe: Past, Present, Prospects,” in Westward Dharma: Buddhism Beyond Asia, eds., Charles Prebish and Martin Baumann (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 85(1603–1868) 105. 54 Henry David Thoreau, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (Boston: J.R. Osgood, 1873), 160; 165. See also, Jimmy Fazzino, World Beats: Beat Generation Writing and the Worlding of U.S. Literature (Hanover, New Hampshire: Dartmouth College Press, 2016), 16(1603–1868) 17. 55 For an excellent treatment on Thoreau’s view of Oriental thought, see Rick Fields, When the Swans Came to the Lake: A Narrative History of Buddhism in America (Boston: Shambhala Publications, 1992), 54(1603–1868) 69. 56 L.A. Waddell, Lhasa and Its Mysteries. With a Record of the Expedition of 1903 (1603–1868) 1904 (London: J. Murray, 1905) is a literary example of these sentiments. 57 Harry Oldmeadow, Journeys East: 20th Century Western Encounters with Eastern Religious Traditions (Bloomington, IN: World Wisdom, 2004); Harry Oldmeadow, Light from the East: Eastern Wisdom for the Modern West (Bloomington, IN: World Wisdom, 2007). 58 Martin Foss, Symbol and Metaphor in Human Experience (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1949), 46. 59 Kazuaki Tanahashi offers a succinct description of this idea from the point of view of the Soto Zen sect. See https://tricycle.org/trikedaily/ fundamentals-of-dogens-thoughts/ 60 For a lucid explanation of Buddhist religious thought see Noble Ross Reat, Buddhism: A History (Berkeley, CA: Asian Humanities Press, 1994). The concept of emptiness is a major element of the Mahayana tradition. For an academically thorough explication of Buddhist thought see Robert E. Buswell Jr. and Donald S. Lopez Jr., The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014).

Buddhism and Architecture 33 61 The Chinese equivalent of the word “Zen” is “Chan.” These will be used interchangeably when discussing the respective ethnic traditions. Venerable Master Hsing Yun, The Essence of Chan: Buddhism in Every Step, Volume 12 (Hacienda Heights, CA: Buddha’s Light Publishing, 2013), 5. Hsing Yun founded the Buddhist order Fo Guang Shan, the organization that built Hsi Lai Temple in Hacienda Heights California, completed in 1988. 62 Heng-ching Shih and Dan Lusthaus, A Comprehensive Commentary on the Heart Sutra (Prajñāpāramita-hr̥daya-sūtra). BDK English Tripiṭaka; 66-I (Berkeley, Calif.: Numata Center for Buddhist Translation and Research, 2001), 127. 63 Pamela Winfield and Steven Heine, “Materializing the Zen Monastery,” in Zen and Material Culture (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2017), 41. 64 Lokesh Chandra, Cultural Horizons of India: Studies in Tantra and Buddhism, Art and Archaeology, Language and Literature, Vol. One, Tara Chandrika, ed. (New Delhi: International Academy of Indian Culture and Aditya Prakashan, 1990), 314. 65 See Francis H. Cook, Hua-Yen Buddhism: The Jewel Net of Indra (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1977), 1(1603–1868) 20. 66 Lokesh Chandra, Cultural Horizons of India, 312. 67 Georg Simmel, “Two Essays,” The Hudson Review, no. 3 (Autumn 1958): 379.

References Barrows, John H. The World’s Parliament of Religions: An Illustrated and Popular Story of the World’s First Parliament of Religions, Held in Chicago in Connection with the Columbian Exposition of 1893. 2 Volumes. Chicago: Parliament Publishing Company, 1893. Bays, Gwendolyn.(Ed.) The Voice of the Buddha: The Beauty of Compassion. Berkeley, CA: Dharma Publishing, 1983. Brauen, Martin. The Mandala: Sacred Circle in Tibetan Buddhism. Trans. Martin Willson. Boston: Shambhala, 1998. Browning, Don and David Clairmont. American Religions and the Family: How Faith Traditions Cope with Modernization and Democracy. New York: Columbia University Press, 2006. Bstan-ʼdzin-rgya-mtsho and Thupten. Jinpa. Essence of the Heart Sutra: The Dalai Lama’s Heart of Wisdom Teachings. Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2005. Burgan, Michael. Buddhist Faith in America, J. Gordon Melton, ed. New York: Facts on File, 2003. Buswell, Robert E. Jr and Donald S. Lopez Jr. The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014. Chandra, Lokesh and Tara Chandrika. Cultural Horizons of India: Studies in Tantra and Buddhism, Art and Archaeology, Language and Literature, Vol. 1. New Delhi: International Academy of Indian Culture and Aditya Prakashan, 1990. Chien, Cheng. Manifestation of the Tathāgata: Buddhahood According to the Avatamsaka Sūtra. Boston: Wisdom Publications, 1993. Cleary, Thomas. Trans. The Flower Ornament Scripture: A Translation of the Avatamsaka Sutra. Boston; London: Shambhala, 1993. Cook, Francis H. Hua-Yen Buddhism: The Jewel Net of Indra. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1977.

34  Buddhism and Architecture Corbett-Hemeyer, Julia. Religion in America. New York: London: Routledge, 2016. Darity, William A. The International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, Vol. 5. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2008. Dharmachakra Translation Committee. The Play in Full: Lalitavistara. Freemont, CA: 84000, 2013. Jimmy, Fazzino. World Beats: Beat Generation Writing and the Worlding of U.S. Literature. Hanover, New Hampshire: Dartmouth College Press, 2016. Fields, Rick. When the Swans Came to the Lake: A Narrative History of Buddhism in America. Boston: Shambhala Publications, 1992. Foss, Martin. Symbol and Metaphor in Human Experience. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1949. Gallagher, Eugene V. and W M. Ashcraft. Introduction to New and Alternative Religions in America, Volume 3: Metaphysical, New Age, and Neopagan Movements. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2006. Garfinkel, Perry. “In Buddha’s Path on the Streets of San Francisco.” New York Times, October 10, 2008, p. D1. Gethin, Rupert. Sayings of the Buddha a Selection of Suttas from the Pali Nikāyas. Oxford World’s Classics. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. Giebel, Rolf W. The Vairocanābhisambodhi Sutra. BDK English Tripiṭaka; 30-I. Berkeley, CA: Numata Center for Buddhist Translation and Research, 2005. Gómez, Luis O. Land of Bliss: The Paradise of the Buddha of Measureless Light: Sanskrit and Chinese Versions of the Sukhāvatīvyūha Sutras. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1996. Han, Chenxing. Be the Refuge: Raising the Voices of Asian American Buddhists. Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books, 2021. Heine, Steven and Charles Prebish. Buddhism in the Modern World: Adaptations of and Ancient Tradition. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. Inagaki, Hisao and Harold Stewart. The Three Pure Land Sutras. Rev. 2nd ed. BDK English Tripiṭaka; 12-II, III, IV. Berkeley, Calif.: Numata Center for Buddhist Translation and Research, 2003. Kubo, Tsugunari and Akira Yuyama, and Kumārajīva. The Lotus Sutra. Rev. 2nd ed. BDK English Tripiṭaka; 13-I. Berkeley, CA.: Numata Center for Buddhist Translation and Research, 2007. Learman, Linda. Buddhist Missionaries in the Era of Globalization. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2005. Legland, Charles G. Fusang: The Discovery of America by Chinese Buddhist Priests in the Fifth Century. London: Curzon Press, 1973. Minor, Vernon Hyde. Art History’s History. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2001. Munekata, Ryo. Buddhist Churches of America: 75 Year History, 1899–1974. Chicago: Norbart, 1974. Nattier, Jan. Once Upon a Future Time: Studies in a Buddhist Prophecy of Decline. Berkeley, CA: Asian Humanities Press, 1991. Numrich, Paul D. Old Wisdom in the New World: Americanization in Two Immigrant Theravada Buddhist Temples. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1996. Oldmeadow, Harry. Journeys East: 20th Century Western Encounters With Eastern Religious Traditions. Bloomington, IN: World Wisdom, 2004. . Light from the East: Eastern Wisdom for the Modern West. Bloomington, IN: World Wisdom, 2007.

Buddhism and Architecture 35 Pine, Red. The Lankavatara Sutra: A Zen Text. Berkeley: Counterpoint, 2012. Prebish, Charles and Kenneth Tanaka. The Faces of Buddhism in America. Berkeley; Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1998. Prebish, Charles S. and Martin Baumann. Westward Dharma: Buddhism Beyond Asia. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002. Ralph, E.C. Rational Landscapes and Humanistic Geography. London: Croom Helm; Totowa, NJ: Barnes & Noble Books, 1981. Rapoport, Amos. Culture—Meaning—Architecture: Critical Reflections on the Work of Amos Rapoport, Keith Diaz Moore, ed. New York; London: Routledge Revivals, 2019. Reat, Noble Ross. Buddhism: A History. Berkeley, CA: Asian Humanities Press, 1994. Reich, David., et al. “Reconstructing Native American Population.” Nature 488 (2012): 370–374. Seager, Richard Hughes. The World’s Parliament of Religions: the East/West Encounter, Chicago, 1893. Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1995. . Buddhism in America. New York: Columbia University Press, 2012. Shih, Heng-ching and Dan Lusthaus. A Comprehensive Commentary on the Heart Sutra (Prajñāpāramita-Hr̥daya-Sūtra). BDK English Tripiṭaka; 66-I. Berkeley, Calif: Numata Center for Buddhist Translation and Research, 2001. Simmel, Georg. “Two Essays,” The Hudson Review, no.3 (Autumn 1958): 371–385. Snodgrass, Adrian. The Symbolism of the Stupa. Revised ed. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2018. Spencer, Anne C., et al. “Diversification in the Buddhist Churches of America: Demographic Trends and Their Implications for the Future Study of U.S. Buddhist Groups.” Journal of Global Buddhism 15 (2014): 35–61. Steiner, Stan. Fusang: The Chinese Who Built America. New York: Harper & Row, 1979. Thoreau, Henry David. A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers. Boston: J.R. Osgood, 1873. Tuan, Yi-Fu. Topophilia: A Study of Environmental Perceptions, Attitudes, and Values. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1974. . Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1977. . Dominance & Affection: The Making of Pets. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984. . Morality and Imagination: Paradoxes of Progress. Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989. . Cosmos & Hearth: A Cosmopolite’s Viewpoint. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996. Tulku, Tarthang. Copper Mountain Mandala: Odiyan. Berkeley, CA: Dharma Publishing, 1996. . Mind Over Matter: Reflections on Buddhism in the West. Berkeley, CA: Dharma Publishing, 2002. Tweed, Thomas. The American Encounter With Buddhism, 1844–1912: Victorian Culture and the Limits of Dissent. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000. Versluis, Arthur. American Transcendentalism and Asian Religions. New York; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993.

36  Buddhism and Architecture Waddell, L.A. Lhasa and Its Mysteries. With a Record of the Expedition of 1903– 1904. London: J. Murray, 1905. Walshe, Maurice.(Ed.) The Long Discourses of Buddha: A Translation of the Dīgha Nikāya. Boston: Wisdom Publications, 1995. Williams, Duncan Ryūken and Tomoe Moriya. Issei Buddhism in the Americas. Urbana; Chicago; Springfield, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2010. Williams, Duncan Ryūken. American Sutra: A Story of Faith and Freedom in the Second World War. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2019. Williams, Robert C., et al. “GM Allotypes in Native Americans: Evidence for Three Distinct Migrations Across the Bering Land Bridge.” America. Journal of Physical Anthropology 66 (1985): 1–19. Winfield, Pamela and Steven Heine. Zen and Material Culture. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2017. Yamamoto, Kōshō. The Mahayana Mahaparinirvana-Sutra: A Complete Translation from the Classical Chinese Language in 3 Volumes. Karin Buddhological Series; No. 5. Ube, Japan: Karinbunko, 1973. Yoshinori, Takeuchi and Jan Van Bragt. Eds. Buddhist Spirituality: Indian, Southeast Asian, Tibetan, and Early Chinese. New York: Crossroad Pub. Company, 1997. Yun, Hsing. The Essence of Chan: Buddhism in Every Step, Volume 12. Hacienda Heights, CA: Buddha’s Light Publishing, 2013.

2

Buddhist Architecture and Its Nineteenth-Century American Beginnings

The Hidden and the Revealed Buddhism and its attendant architecture emerged in America during the second half of the nineteenth century amid a swell of other intellectual and cultural movements. Experimental religious and secular communitarianism was in full swing. Darwinism and evolutionary theory were challenging centuries-old religious conceptions about the origins of humanity. Spiritualism and the Occult drew inspiration from the discoveries and inventions of modern science, even as they stood in practical contradistinction to its methodological underpinnings.1 The Industrial Revolution saw the invention and proliferation of steam locomotive engines that bridged distances, collapsed time, and made difficult to reach places in America more accessible. The world was becoming smaller. Science, discovery, and the products of material invention helped foster a collegial atmosphere among spiritual traditions across the globe, resulting in the first ever World’s Parliament of Religions of 1893 in Chicago, where “the Western City which was deemed the home of the crudest materialism …placed a golden milestone in Man’s pathway toward the spiritual Millennium.”2 The groundbreaking event has since been understood as the formal introduction of Buddhism to a large Western audience. Adjunct to the World’s Columbian Exposition of that year, it was a place where “strange-featured wise men from far Eastern lands” were set in religious and cultural contrast to those of the familiar Christian institutions of the West. Important Buddhist figures such as Shaku Soen and Angarika Dharmapala made a lasting impression on the Parliament, which helped to lay the groundwork for Buddhism’s growth in the country in subsequent generations. All this took place amidst the backdrop of a Protestant majority seeking to cope with an increasingly pluralistic religious environment, as well as the ongoing historical development of Christian churches in the United States, whose own architectural traditions were changing from those of preceding centuries. One way to understand how these events relate to each other emerges within the concepts of the hidden and of the revealed. This chapter DOI: 10.4324/9781003311645-3

38  Buddhist Architecture and Nineteenth-Century American Beginnings investigates Buddhism’s nineteenth-century context with respect to the intellectual, religious, and spiritual atmosphere of the era when Buddhism and its architectural history in America began. It shows how Buddhism’s cultural appearance in the United States is consistent with the tremendous social upheavals taking place in the country at that time. A common characteristic found throughout the period was a quest to explore, engage, and reveal the unknown, to in many ways expose the hidden qualities of a mutually common existence, whether intellectually, spiritually, socially, or geographically. For example, Lewis and Clark’s exploration of the vast unknown expanses of the unmapped continent at the beginning of the century helped to cast the New World in the optimistic light of Manifest Destiny, and stimulated the imagination of countless pioneers and entrepreneurs. The expedition laid the groundwork for the tremendous expansion in population that by the end of the nineteenth century made America a bourgeoning international power capable of attracting immigrants from across the globe.3 Abroad, the Western world applauded Commodore Perry’s breaking open Japan’s veil of isolation in July of 1853, as if a centuries old secret had finally been uncovered. In England, it was written that “the time was ripe, both from the political and the missionary point of view, for a definite approach to the mysterious land of the Rising Sun.”4 At home, many groups aspired to communicate with hidden worlds or to create a new “world” away from mainstream life. Spiritualists sought communion with the unseen occult, just as many religious and secular groups created communal environments outside the view of the obvious and spiritually corruptible society. The persistent desire for religious and secular utopian groups to establish intentional communities signified a quest to reveal an alternate reality embedded but physically separate from the industrialized, urban culture at large. It is a goal that is in qualitative sympathy with the Spiritualist’s claims of uncovering a hidden ethereal reality amid the crass materialism of quotidian being. Utopia, that “no-place” so eagerly sought by so many cultures, was a dream whose actuality was pursued with a particular zeal in the freshly discovered lands of the new burgeoning nation. As Paul S. Boyer states, “American society, with its comparative lack of hierarchy, freedom from the weight of tradition, and openness to social innovation, has historically provided a particularly congenial environment in which communal experimentation could flourish.”5 The rich, pristine nature of the New World was sometimes spoke about in reference to the Garden of Eden, and became a place where many possible “new worlds” could be invented. According to Boyer, utopian communitarianism reached its “greatest efflorescence” in the 1850s, but continued with diminishing success throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, percolating but weakening within the American landscape even to the present day. Its waning history is thus contemporaneous but inversely parallel with Buddhism’s emergence and flourishing success in the contemporary United States initiated in the

Buddhist Architecture and Nineteenth-Century American Beginnings 39 same decade. Yet, within this inverted historical dynamic, many of the various communal societies, millennial sects, and utopian communities have some important elements in common with the way that Buddhists groups have organized their communities over the last century. Important among these include 1) a philosophical or religious basis that served as a foundation for promoting a more peaceful, ideal world for humanity, and 2) the proclivity to employ architectural space to help implement their social aspirations. Within the aurora of a growing consciousness of Buddhism in the West, the religion represented one of the many new ways of understanding the human condition. As Buddhists began immigrating to the United States in the late nineteenth century, their arrival in the States placed these émigrés in a foreign social setting, one enmeshed in the cultural flux of a country coming to grips with an emerging modernism brought about by an increasingly industrialized landscape. As Todd Simmons writes of America at the time, “Never in history had humankind experienced such revolutionary changes in everyday life as was experienced in the nineteenth century.”6 Such vicissitudes in common experience seemed to engender an intellectual atmosphere open to the uncommon. Traditional modes of knowing and experiencing the world were shifting on an international scale. It was a time in the West (both in America and Europe) when alternative lifestyles and epistemologies came to the forefront of cultural discussion, which included Buddhism. Religious authority on matters historical and political was fading in the face of both disestablishment and the indomitable advances of science and technology. The resultant vacuum of the former and the increasingly assertive presence of the latter allowed or nurtured unconventional, even extraordinary (in the case of Spiritualism) ideas about how to live and what was accessible to human sensibilities. By the very end of the nineteenth century, scientific investigation discovered the existence of x-rays, radio waves, and subatomic particles. These revelations challenged traditional ideas of what was real, as they exposed hidden worlds inaccessible to our common senses. They hinted at secret realities and invisible realms that seemed to provide scientific justification from the world of physics for the Spiritualists’ metaphysical claims of a concealed but accessible spiritual world.7 In so many ways, Buddhism fit perfectly with the changes in American culture that scientific advances placed within the social sphere of national development. The newly “discovered” religion can be seen as one of the many novel developments taking place in American life. While disestablishment reduced the political authority of the Christian church, religious belief among the population was increasing, as could be seen in the phenomena of the Second Great Awakening earlier in the century. In fact, Buddhism’s growing appeal in the late nineteenth century compelled many Christian leaders to openly condemn the religion, frequently characterizing it as a heathen or pagan faith.

40  Buddhist Architecture and Nineteenth-Century American Beginnings Nonetheless, a broader view of the rapid changes in knowledge and lived experience during the Progressive Era subverts the desire to construct clean lines of segmentation between seemingly opposing viewpoints. For example, scientific research examining electrons and a luminiferous electromagnetic ether had some scientists participating in psychic séances under the umbrella of scientific investigation. The rise of alternative spiritual beliefs toward the end of the nineteenth century, ostensibly in tacit or explicit reaction to the prodigiousness of techno-scientific progress, muddied the intellectual landscape to such a degree that one anonymous writer claimed that “Theosophy, mental science (sometimes called “Christian Science”), esoteric Christianity and Buddhistic metaphysics are, we believe, substantially one and the same thing, and we may also include their intimate relative, known here as Modern Spiritualism…”8 Indeed, Western theorists wholly invested in the epistemological auspices of scientific modernity were equally captivated by the philosophical applicability of ancient spiritual traditions to the progressive world, where Buddhist thought played a substantial role. To many influential intellectuals, such as Paul Carus and Henry Steel Olcott, Buddhism seemed to be a way to reconcile the growing divide between science and religion. To these thinkers, it allowed a path of spiritual fulfillment without the perceived intellectual liabilities of the Judeo-Christian belief systems. Scientific theories such as Darwin’s model of natural selection challenged strict religious ideas concerning the divine origin of Man and the earth. At the same time, however, many evangelicals maintained that Western scientific and technological progress was a direct result of Christianity’s moral and spiritual superiority.9 Certainly, the expressed supremacy of Western religious belief systems by Church leaders was continually invoked in discussions comparing the Buddhist spiritual tradition with that of Christianity. The fact that many individuals at the time referred to Buddhism as the “religion of science” exacerbates the complexity of late nineteenth century public discourse in America with respect to the period’s social and religious environment.10 Architecture ends up becoming a primary locus of expression during this period of rapid development, both on the national level and among the smaller social subsets of the population. Architecture in the Buddhist sphere of nineteenth-century America reflected the quest of an immigrant population attempting to establish a toehold in a new cultural setting. As time progressed into the twentieth century, organizations developed and funds were raised to enable Buddhist groups to build larger structures and temple grounds with traditional designs and religious symbolisms. Their construction has been critical in solidifying a legitimate and durable presence in American society. Similarly, architecture was a principal mechanism that communal groups used rather consistently to express and realize their social ideas within an American context. Building structures, usually with designs that complemented their experimental ideology or religious beliefs, was absolutely necessary in formulating their societies,

Buddhist Architecture and Nineteenth-Century American Beginnings 41 as they generally sought undeveloped areas in order to create ideal communities from scratch. Thus, while of a different nature in terms of their formal characteristics and theoretical underpinnings, Buddhist and communitarian groups can both be understood as examples of alternative realities, or “worlds,” to that of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century mainstream American society. Yet, their desire to seek out new lands on which to exist, together with the symbolic and pragmatic necessity to build, were characteristics found in the larger American culture of the nineteenth-century as well. This agreement with the greater social trends of the period also extends to the concepts of the hidden and the revealed. Communitarian groups mainly lived outside the view of society in order to construct their social experiments, in essence to uncover the imagined or hidden possibilities of human cohabitation. As an ethnic and religious minority, Buddhist groups were a strange and new entry into the American social and ecclesiastical landscape. The Asian religion was enthusiastically investigated, celebrated, and “revealed” by those who were—much like the communitarians—weary of conventional social institutions, especially in light of science and technology. Gold Rush Chinese immigration, Perry’s opening of Japanese harbors and culture, the World’s Parliament of Religions, as well as the influence of Carus, Olcott, and other Western intellectuals therefore signify a way to collectively understand how the symbolic “Light of Asia” made visible the hitherto unseen depths of Buddhist philosophy upon the nineteenthcentury American mind. The notion of revelation is even consistent with the appearance of Buddhism in the world in general, as documented in Buddhist scripture. The Buddha explains to a disciple why this is so in the Larger Pure Land Sukhāvatīvyūha Sūtra: “The reason for my appearance in the world is to reveal teachings of the Way and save multitudes of beings by endowing them with true benefits.”11 The sections that follow explore some of the period’s major social movements with respect to how they relate to Buddhism’s growing awareness in the United States. Implicit in the discussion is the interconnected quality of the various ideas of the era. As should be clear, facile or absolutist borders did not always exist between what on the surface might appear to be distinct realms of conceptual discourse. This is true for the hidden/revealed hermeneutic binary proposed here. Research into the intellectual dialogues of the middle to the late nineteenth century shows that theological debates about the quality and legitimacy of Buddhism as a religion were linked to the larger threat that industrial modernism and scientific discovery held to Christianity. For, generally speaking, the people who were disenchanted with Christianity’s ossified moral and (it was thought) overbearing doctrine tended to be the people who were excited about technological advances and were attracted to Buddhism’s apparent lack of dogma and correspondence with scientific principles. Of course, the struggle between scientific thought and religious doctrine had been progressing for years in Europe since at

42  Buddhist Architecture and Nineteenth-Century American Beginnings least the seventeenth century. However, the debate seems to have reached critical mass during the nineteenth century as the material output of scientific exploration began substantively affecting daily life. The size and latent potential of the New World of America exponentially amplified this development and its public dialogue. Both modern science and the new nation came of age during the century. Indeed, the progress of the former fed upon the growth of the latter.12 Architecture becomes acutely important to the discussion insofar as the process of building a nation was intimately linked with endeavor of building itself. Buddhist and communitarian structural aspirations were an important component of this national state of affairs. In Seven American Utopias, Delores Hayden quotes leading communitarian Albert Brisbane’s enthusiastic belief in the creative power of architecture in the building of an ideal society in the nineteenth-century America: Now if we can, with a knowledge of true architectural principles, build one house rightly and elegantly, we can, by taking it for a model and building others like it, make a perfect and beautiful city: in the same manner, if we can, with a knowledge of true social principles, organize one township rightly, we can, by organizing others like it, and spreading and rendering them universal, establish a true Social and Political order.13 The ambition conveyed in this passage is significant to the entirety of this study, for it speaks to the efficacy of the constructed form in reifying a belief system with environmental and social consequences. Secular communitarian groups formed their environments in critique of conventional life. Millennial groups like the Shakers were disgusted with the profanity of industrial urbanism. They sought to create “Heaven on Earth” through the design and building process in accord with their religious beliefs, forming communities such as “City of Peace” or “City of Love.” In some cases, as with the utopians of Albert Brisbane’s North American Phalanx quoted just above, they desired to change exoteric society through the example of their rather esoteric associations. A great many contemporary Buddhist communities of all denominations share the similar goal of social change through their practices and beliefs, whether by creating temples in the center of major cities, establishing religious complexes in secluded locations, or promoting peace and love by building sacred structures called stūpas whenever and wherever possible. The New England Peace Pagoda in Massachusetts, for example, claims to be “a visible form of prayer for inseparable peace in the world and within the minds of all humanity.”14 Similarly, the Bodhi Manda Zen Center, located in an isolated area of New Mexico, seeks to promote universal well being via teachings and training in Rinzai Zen Buddhist practices. It provides “inquirers…with a welcoming, safe, and caring environment where they can open up to a new experience of themselves — arising each moment in intimate relationship with the whole world.”15

Buddhist Architecture and Nineteenth-Century American Beginnings 43 The sociological, theoretical, and architectural correspondences between nineteenth-century communal groups and twenty-first-century Buddhist communities are thus compelling enough to underwrite their comparison. Their similarities are highlighted to make the explicit point that Buddhist communities as they currently exist ought to be seen in the same historical light as that of past communitarians societies so important to the history of America. The appearance and continuing development of Buddhist communities are not only part of the story of America, but also can be seen as intricately linked to the ongoing development of the nation. Ultimately, the interrelatedness of events and ideas is at the heart of the matter. Buddhism came to the United States as the interconnected quality of the world developed with the advent of an emerging modernity. This modernism of late nineteenth-century Western culture was a direct result of the technological innovations of scientific thought. Buddhism’s ancient beliefs, it turns out, fit seamlessly into that context.

Chinese Celestials and the Golden Mountain Studies about Buddhism’s arrival in America consistently reference the California Gold Rush of 1848–1853 as the event that triggered the first large-scale arrival of Asian immigrants to the United States. Its occurrence attracted thousands of Chinese laborers and their religious beliefs to the West Coast of the country. According to Charles Prebish, “by 1860 roughly 10 percent of Californians would be Chinese.”16 However, the Gold Rush is important to this study for two other reasons. It initiated the building of Chinatowns across California, a development that signified the beginning of the immigrant group’s structural presence in the States. It was also arguably the first significant instance of what has come to be called “globalization,”17 defined by the United Nations as “an increasingly integrated and interdependent world” brought about by “enormous technological progress.”18 These two events have both historic and conceptual valence with respect to Buddhism’s architectural emergence in America. The historical element places an emergent Asian ethnicity within the diversification of a Euro-centric American population. The creation of Chinese ethnic communities developed in the face of overtly racist legislation aimed specifically at Chinese workers. As the first Asian group to appear en masse in the United States, they bore the initial brunt of the official and unofficial discriminatory conduct of a nation coming to grips with a foreign culture in its immediate propinquity. The Chinese example consequently provides a groundwork or exemplar for understanding the cultural and architectural implications of subsequent Asian communities in America, who also suffered from discrimination in each their turn. The economic aspect of the California Gold Rush gives the event historic import vis-à-vis its global impact. For the phenomenon of globalization refers not only to cultural integration, but also explicitly to an

44  Buddhist Architecture and Nineteenth-Century American Beginnings interdependence predicated on technology and its effect on market forces. As Brian and Lawrence Tom state, the nineteenth-century Gold Rush “marked the beginning of globalization, when transportation and communications had evolved to such a state that one event could impact the whole globe.”19 We could also add Commodore Perry’s incursion into Japan during roughly the same time. It was purportedly the overriding strength of Perry’s mechanical steamers that impressed upon the Japanese that the West could no longer be held at bay by the medieval ways of the Tokugawa Shogunate. Scientific advancement worked in tandem with Perry’s boldness to re-open commercial trade routes to the Orient’s secret society, the cultural ramifications of which were especially felt in Europe’s artistic modernism two decades later.20 This cultural and economic integration extends to the religious establishments of a given society. Buddhist missionary work in the early twentieth century, like that of the Japanese Pure Land Buddhist Mission of North America (BMNA), was primarily concerned with providing immigrants spiritual solace in a land devoid of the religious institutions available in their homeland. Yet, the Chinese in California and the Japanese in Hawaii initially came to the United States (Hawaii became a U.S. territory in 1898) not as missionaries but as laborers looking for a better life. They sent money to relatives to make a better living for those at home, as well. A century later, these unpretentious individuals living at the beginning of modernism have developed into much larger organizations with broader sociological objectives. The BMNA has grown into the Buddhist Churches of America, the Buddhist organization with the largest architectural profile in the States, while others such as Buddha’s Light International Association and Soka Gakkai International are exploiting the global interconnectivity of postmodernity to promulgate the Buddha’s message in the twenty-first century. Buddhism’s architectural history in America began in the California Chinatowns. These communities arose in boomtowns that were formed in direct response to the Gold Rush and the quick population growth resulting from people from all over the world seeking newfound wealth. The early Chinese temples in these cities were mostly small and unassuming structures, having few external architectural characteristics indicating their Asian heritage except signage, oriental lamps, and occasionally a sculpture. These so-called “Joss Houses” were not singularly Buddhist in nature. Whether freestanding on the outskirts of a town or amid two-story storefronts on a city street, they generally consisted of an eclectic mix of spiritual traditions derived from the immigrants’ homeland. For example, the Chinese temple in Oroville dating from 1863 retained chapels for the worship of Taoist, Confucian, and Buddhist deities. Similar temples exist in other small northern California Gold Rush towns such as Weaverville, Marysville, Monterey, Mendocino, Cambria, Santa Cruz, and others. The Chinatown in Marysville, California is reportedly the last such extant town dating from the Rush.21 Slightly more elaborate temples built in San

Buddhist Architecture and Nineteenth-Century American Beginnings 45 Francisco also contained a mix of Taoist deities (Kwan Kung, T’ien Hou) and Buddhist divinities (usually Kwan Yin).22 Some of these buildings retain the appearance of ad hoc but functional places of worship for an immigrant population increasingly isolated in a country that saw their presence as a cultural and economic threat. As the initial excitement and monetary output of the Gold Rush subsided, thousands of Chinese laborers remained in the States as railroad workers. Ultimately, their numerical presence came to be seen in a negative light with respect to the American labor market. With the completion of the transcontinental railroad, the nation found itself in dire economic conditions, resulting in the Panic of 1873 and a depression that lasted the rest of the decade. The Chinese suffered greatly as a consequence. Severely oppressive federal laws such as the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, the Scott Act of 1888, and the Geary Act of 1892 made these temple spaces especially important on a spiritual level. These federal laws became progressively harsher and inflexible. Chinamen were gradually treated more and more inhumanly. Although modest in their architectural accouterments, Joss Houses can be seen as vital islands of religious refuge in this unjust social context, while also retaining some of the same transcendental qualities as the more grandiose temples of Chinese cultural heritage: “The temple symbolized a place where the Chinese laborer was a human being. It was a part of a culture which gave wholeness and meaning to existence. The temple symbolized harmony, balance, and justice.”23 It was overwhelmingly men who populated California Chinatowns, by individuals who left their wives and children hoping to amass and send home a fortune from “The Golden Mountain,” (Cantonese: Gam Saan) as it was called.24 As a fragment of their native culture, with their ornate altars, reverential sculptures, and traditional decoration, these temples helped mitigate the loneliness that persecuted Chinese immigrants felt so far from their homeland. Yet, the quest to find a better life concealed in the California mountainscape is consistent with the governing themes of the nineteenth century proposed earlier. The hardships of everyday life during the period were considerable. Disease, poverty, long and difficult working conditions, the strenuous chores of domestic living, as well as other struggles and misfortunes, underscored the uncertainty of life for most people. In this environment, the Chinese, Americans, and others were searching for more than gold. They were in essence seeking to unearth a new reality hidden in ground. The luminous rock revealed the possibility of a vaster, less arduous life unknown to most individuals of that era. Its appeal has existed since the dawn of documented human society. Gold played no small part in the development of Egyptian civilization, where its apotheosis helped instantiate and legitimate one of the longest lasting religions and cultures in history. This ability to initiate or produce new societies finds it confirmation in the creation of Gold Rush cities, Oroville (or “Gold Town”) being the most linguistically conspicuous example. San Francisco is now one of America’s largest and most important cities, but prior to the Gold Rush the town was

46  Buddhist Architecture and Nineteenth-Century American Beginnings a small outpost on the edge of the continent. The modern generative force of gold compelled more than one percent of the United States’ population to move to California.25 For most Americans, as it was in a different sense for Chinese immigrants, it was a journey into the unknown West. With such an inundation of humanity, new towns sprung up seemingly out of the ground being unearthed. As one gentleman of the time wrote of two fictional but not untypical prospectors, “Immediately on fixing their hungry optics to the fragment of auriferous rock, they gave a shout of delight, drove down a stake, fixed a notice of location, and announced the birth of a new town, calling the same Treasure Peaks.”26 California Chinatowns, on the other hand, were not fictional. In fact, their architectural establishment signified the stark reality of the immigrants’ civic presence on the American cultural scene. As mentioned above, the structural prolife of the first Chinese temples were quite humble, and not exclusively Buddhist in denominational class. However, their modest appearance should not minimize the larger themes at work in their presence. The Weaverville Joss House (Figure 2.1) is a fairly simple affair. In its present form it dates from 1874, and is the oldest continually used Chinese temple in California. Yet a sign above the door is rendered in English as “Temple of the Forest Beneath the Clouds.” The lofty title belies its relative simplicity, and suggests that the existential “wholeness and meaning” referenced in the earlier quote retains some accuracy.

Figure 2.1  Chinese Joss House, Weaverville, California, ca. 2012

Buddhist Architecture and Nineteenth-Century American Beginnings 47 The front gate is a somewhat unique element to early temples. In its religious context, the entrance designates a spiritual transition commonly found in larger, more impressive temples in Asia. Gates and entranceways have been historically important symbolic elements in traditional Chinese architecture. They signify a passage from an ordinary space to one imbued with spiritual or cosmic significance. As the center of the world, China referred to itself as “The Middle Kingdom” between heaven and earth mediated by the emperor (the “Son of Heaven”), and in ancient times grandiose architecture most impressively symbolized imperial power.27 This architectural custom is seen in both religious and political environments. Examples of this tradition are evidenced in the Forbidden City’s Meridian Gate (Wumen) in Beijing and also in contemporary Chinese Buddhist towns in the United States, such as the entry gate to the monastic Sagely City of Ten Thousand Buddhas in Northern California. The term “Joss” is thought to be a linguistic corruption of the Portuguese “Deus,” or God. The temple is thus a house containing images of gods, a sacred space meant to designate a true metaphysical transformation in its phenomenological experience. Indeed, the interiors of many temples could be exceedingly ornate. Heavily decorated altars, drapery, lamps, incense burners, and other sacred articles created a suitably auspicious environment for spiritual worship (Figure 2.2).

Figure 2.2  Joss House, Chinatown, California, ca.1911

48  Buddhist Architecture and Nineteenth-Century American Beginnings Although not exceedingly different in form from ordinary buildings found in that time and place, the cosmic element associated with these types of structures is not entirely surprising. In the nineteenth century, the Chinese were commonly referred to as “Celestials,” in reference to the traditional name of China as the “Celestial Empire,” but which also imbued a certain amount of otherworldliness onto Chinese immigrants that further underscored their otherness. But the name also retains a romantic, evocative character that seems somewhat inconsistent with the anti-Chinese sentiment steadily growing in the United States since the immigrants arrived. The increasing Chinese population, overwhelmingly originating from Guangdong Province in southern China, alarmed many Americans, even though it represented a quite miniscule part of China’s total populace. Chinese laborers were efficient and productive during the Gold Rush and as railroad workers, which—together with their growing numbers—was a main reason that they were thought to pose an economic threat to American laborers. The term “celestial” is also raised here to make a conceptual point with respect to the existence of Chinatowns and their religious buildings. The term’s heavenly or cosmic connotation inherently helps to widen the discursive breadth of their structural actuality. The spiritually eclectic Joss Houses in California signify the beginning of Buddhist spaces of worship in America.28 As micro-cultural edifices embedded in the macro-cultural melting pot of American repute, their placement within U.S. cities even to this very day both draws and blurs the line between East and West.29 Chinatowns and Japantowns, as culturally differentiated environments, retain the same socio-cultural character. These Asian spaces are somewhat distinct from other culturally segregated “towns” of European origin, such as “Greek Towns” or “Italian Villages,” insofar as the cultural distance and distinction of Oriental civilization is so stark as to create a larger sense of globalness from the perspective of the West. Placing a discourse in global terms thus expands the comprehensive domain of the discussion toward the universal, or even the cosmic. The American propensity to refer to the Chinese as “Celestials” during the nineteenth century seems to support that intuition. Buddhist spaces of worship and practice greatly expanded in size and purpose by the twenty-first century. As such, an inquiry into their teleology is required to contextualize their presence within the larger sphere of social life and the phenomenon of human cohabitation.

The Profane World and the Buddhist Mind Reverend R.F. Putnam was an Episcopal minister from New England who lived in California during the 1860s. His diary recounts his travels on the West Coast and describes a visit to Tin How temple in San Francisco (pinyin: Tianhou—Mother of Heaven, also known as Mazu, Guardian of

Buddhist Architecture and Nineteenth-Century American Beginnings 49 the Sea) on Thursday, May 22, 1863. Page 113 of the diary contains a passage with terms and concepts that are salient to the ideas in this study: After morning prayers at Trinity, Dr. Thrall, Maria, and myself repaired to the Chinese Temple. After passing through a long, narrow alley way, we came to a common wooden building set apart as a Temple. We went up a flight of stairs, several Chinamen following us, and came into a large room, at the end of which were idols, three in number, sitting under a gaudily spangled canopy. One of these was much larger than the other two, and went by the name of Josh…There is nothing magnificent and nothing costly in the temple. It is simply but in places showily decorated.30 Putnam was seemingly unimpressed with the temple. In fact, a short visit to the adjacent smoking room found the party, and particularly Maria, leaving a few minutes later feeling both “disgusted and frightened” at the stench of opium. As a Christian clergyman, the “idols” must have appeared as heathen as many in the Western religious tradition considered Buddhism and its Joss Houses to be. Indeed, idolatry was a common attack that believers in Jesus Christ leveled against the Asian/Buddhist belief system. His comment that the temple lacked anything “magnificent or costly” subtly hints at the unenthusiastic way many Westerners reacted towards Buddhism’s doctrines and Oriental philosophy in general. In the last quarter of the nineteenth century, intellectual circles were alive with discussions about Asian religion. Some individuals embraced the Buddhist faith wholeheartedly. Others, however, were decidedly unmoved upon learning about its central tenets. These folks found absolutely nothing “magnificent” about the newly discovered and much discussed spiritual tradition. A major criticism of Buddhism voiced by many Christians was that Buddhism’s view of life was negative, even moribund. Writing in 1874, Edward Hungerford’s comments in an article entitled “Buddhism and Christianity” captures the emotive essence of the counter-Buddhist dialogue of the time: “And here is where Buddhism utterly fails. Its view of human life goes out from the deepest melancholy and drapes it in weeds of perpetual mourning. It looks only at the dark side of existence. It degrades man to the lowest of the brute creation.”31 With an unabashedly Christocentric superiority, the judgment was made by some ministers that “‘Oriental religions’ … taken as a whole, they are a mass of fiction, without even a shadow of a foundation.”32 Putnam’s characterization of the temple as gaudy and showily decorated supports the view that to many Westerners of the day, Asian religion—and all the flashy intellectualized hullabaloo about it—lacked any real spiritual depth or cultural value, as if its pagan ornament offered nothing more than a modern reiteration of the ancient lessons of the Golden Calf, a reverence for idol worship

50  Buddhist Architecture and Nineteenth-Century American Beginnings and material wealth that, like the recent Gold Rush, accessed the most dissolute cravings of humanity. Indeed, Christian ministers preached heavily against the desire to leave hearth and home to find a fortune in the California hills. Upon leaving the less than “costly” Chinese temple, Reverend Putnam’s party walked a few blocks away to see the newly built Grace Cathedral right up the hill.33 Putnam’s diary entry here seems dispassionate and documentary in tone, yet one cannot help but wonder at a certain sense of pride of comparison, when he makes specific note that “the cost of the edifice was about $75,000,” a good deal of money at the time. Outside any possible unintended hypocrisy, one gets the sense that Putnam’s visit to Tin How temple lacked any metaphysical significance to him or his companions. The experience did not seem to evince a phenomenological transition from a profane to a sacred environment. On the contrary, it may have seemed to the group that they had entered a realm of pagan profanity that only a visit to the sacred space of Grace Cathedral a half mile away could spiritually assuage. The reverend’s characterization of the Chinese temple building as “common” suggests as much. The temple still exists today, not far from where the original burned down during the 1906 earthquake. Tucked away above a florist and bakery, its altar area still exhibits an ornate complexity that corroborates Putnam’s description of it a century and a half earlier. Yet, it is the terms “apart” and “canopy” in the diary entry that are of special interest with respect to how religious thought and social development pertain to spirituality and its architectural expression. The former term “apart” speaks to the duality of sacred and profane space. The spatial concept is straightforward, yet it is also inherently problematic, even mysterious. If one understands the profane and the sacred as distinct physical/ metaphysical realms that can exist simultaneously, then there becomes a real question as to how these spaces can exist side by side, apart in a seemingly dissimilar adjacency of unbridgeable interrelation. Put in another way, how can the same space be conceived of as sacred by one group of individuals but entirely profane to another, as seen in the example above? If there is a qualitative difference between the two states, which history and research indicates, then what designates that transition? Such considerations help explain the general nature of the religious sites under discussion in this study. As the example of Tin How temple in San Francisco alludes to, sacred space can be found almost anywhere. It can exist in direct proximity to an opium den as much as it can on a hill set aside for an Episcopal church. Like other ecclesiastical structures in America, Buddhist architecture is located more often than not directly alongside non-religious buildings. It can be found on rooftops, in single-family homes, and in downtown metropolises. Thus, the way that space is constructed and perceived is vitally important to understanding how religious environments can retain an utterly distinct ontological existence amid the ever-present reality of secular life.

Buddhist Architecture and Nineteenth-Century American Beginnings 51 Of course, Mircea Eliade’s writings have tried to work through these questions, and any inquiry into religious architecture ought to take his ideas into account. He and others refer to the sacred as the “wholly other” (or ganz andere) with respect to its simultaneous relationship to the non-sacred. He states in The Sacred and the Profane that the inherent paradox between the two states is resolvable through what he calls “hierophany,” a “manifestation” of the sacred in ordinary/profane objects (a stone, tree, a human such as Jesus, etc.).34 For Eliade, religious-oriented humanity seeks to “sacralize” the world: he seeks to make, express, or “charge” the profanity of the ordinary and everyday in terms of the sacred. The idea of hierophany is applicable to the present discussion in its etymological meaning as something with the ability “to reveal” or “shed light upon.” For it is critical to understand that the sacred is what makes the divine accessible, and is not the divine itself. It is what allows an individual, muddied in the profanity of common existence, the ability to recognize and engage the divine. As Eliade puts it, “it opens communication between the cosmic planes (between earth and heaven) and makes possible ontological passage from one mode of being to another.”35 Although some have challenged the totalizing applicability of Eliade’s views,36 important here is how these ideas relate to the religious structures of Buddhism. Sacred architecture is designated as such in that it is a different type of space that is, in one way or another, set apart from other environments, albeit at the same time part of the profane world. Sometimes these spaces are physically distanced from urban life, and are constructed in rural settings to help isolate their spiritual purpose from the profane goals of ordinary living. Other times they are conceptually segregated when rural environments are not accessible, as we see in Putnam’s description of a “common wooden building set apart as a Temple.” In either of these scenarios, if Buddhist architecture can be considered “hierophanic” then what does it reveal? More to the point, how do Buddhist structures “sacralize” as they sit part and parcel with the everyday modern world? The search for golden wealth during the Gold Rush retains a symbolic element that helps refine these questions in the context of the history presented here. Indeed, the discovery of gold and the discovery of Buddhism happened almost co-terminally in the timeline of American history. During the nineteenth-century Rush, the common man sought to change his world by sifting through the profane earth waiting for gold to reveal itself and the new life-world it promised. Since the beginning of civilization, gold has been associated with royalty, wealth, and prestige, all characteristics that imbue a distinctiveness onto an individual or institution that separate them from the ordinary and common. These traits were attributed to religious establishments that for the longest time were also linked to political institutions, which by their very nature stand apart from commonplace existence in order to govern it. Its virtue and value imbued the very specks of gold with an inherent and heightened significance, one that would emblematically transfer to its owner and wearer as an attribute bearer. The radiant

52  Buddhist Architecture and Nineteenth-Century American Beginnings and symbolic properties of gold are so powerful and innate that it retains an immediate connotation of elevation, significance, and sacrality. Thus, to find gold is in a sense to acquire an element of prestige, royalty, and wealth that would in a material capacity set a person apart from the muck and mire of common life. The substance retains this separating effect in a spiritual faculty as well, which—as in the profane world—places one on a separate plane of being. Like other spiritual traditions, its presence in Asian religious contexts is profuse. As seen in Tin How in San Francisco and other early Chinese temples in California, both gold and heavy ornamentation are used to separate the space and its spiritual purchase from the mundane world around it. Its experience is meant to compel an individual to feel aware of the elevation, royalty, and effulgent wealth appropriate to a venerate house of the gods. In this way we see how the awe and splendor of material wealth is meant to generate a concomitant spiritual response in an individual within a specified sacred environment.37 In the Buddhist world, this separating phenomenon can be called transcendence. Buddhists use gold in this spiritual sense prodigiously. In Buddhist environments its preciousness is perceived as a symbol of the Dharma, its purity and luminosity a symbol of the enlightened state of mind, its golden radiance a symbol of the sun as equated with the stainlessness of the Western Paradise (Sukhavati— “Land of Bliss”) of the Buddha of Infinite Light and Life (Amitābha/Amitāyus). As mentioned above, gold’s intrinsic worth has the ability to elevate one away from the pecuniary difficulties of mundane subsistence and remove the adversities and suffering associated with the everyday world. The Buddha’s teachings retain the same spiritual effect for its adherents. According to Buddhist tradition, the historical Buddha Siddhartha Gautama was of royal and wealthy parentage. The long earlobes depicted in Buddhist statuary reference his noble heritage in that the lobes were stretched under the heavy weight of, what we imagine was, heavy gold-laden jewelry. As the eons have passed, his wealth and luxury—and subsequent renunciation of that privileged life to find and preach the Dharma—has reinforced a royal, elevated, and sacred lineage of nobility for the Buddhist religion. Indeed, the most basic tenets of the religion are referred to as “The Four Noble Truths.” The Buddha and his message “sacralize” in Eliade’s conception insofar as they “reveal” a frame of mind that enlightens (“shed slight upon”) one’s spirit to a state that elevates it above the profane. This is the ultimate significance of Siddhartha Gautama’s life story to Buddhists. It is understood as an example of how one can find enlightenment amid the mundane world of common experience, and the prestige and nobility of doing so. To be a Buddha (“Awakened One”) and realize nirvana (cessation) is to end suffering based on profane and “unawakened” desires and their karmic consequences. On the whole, among all Buddhist traditions, to sacralize is to compel the mind to achieve this elevated plane of “truth.” Environments are constructed to facilitate, emblemate, and illustrate this mental space.

Buddhist Architecture and Nineteenth-Century American Beginnings 53 The gold-infused brilliance of enlightenment metaphorically mediates this spiritual transition. Gold is of the mundane earth, but simultaneously retains the intrinsic sacred nature of transcendence both in value and in quality. In the Mahayana, it is believed that all sentient beings have this same nature, emphasizing that the Buddha-nature is latent within human mentality. Enlightenment practices allow one to transcend the degenerate elements of human form as one meditates upon and practices the Dharma. The relationship between a person and the intentionally designed Buddhist environment is in this way profoundly associated with an individual’s state of mind. For the mind as a sacred space is set upon the axis of the body as the highest and farthest place separate from the profane earth under human feet. Temple spaces are constructed to be an expression (i.e., “manifestation”) of the sacred within the mind of Buddhist adherents. They are meant to reveal or shed light upon one’s ability to achieve Buddhahood inasmuch as they radiate the enlightenment of the Buddha as an example therein. The richly decorated devotional areas seen in Buddhist temples utilize gold in various degrees to manifest this expression. Whether in Theravadin temples, Zen meditation centers, the devotion-centric Buddha halls of Chinese monasteries and Pure Land churches, or the ornate ritual spaces of the Tibetan tradition, the emphasis and purpose of the Buddhist environment has at its ultimate core the goal of accessing the hearts and minds of the individuals within it. As we see in the examples further in this study, it is the architecture’s job to orient both the person and the space toward this end. Buddhism’s focus on mental states is evidenced by the ubiquitous disembodied heads of the earthly Buddha Shakyamuni one finds in the large majority of Buddhist places of worship and practice, and in the world at large, reminding one that the mental/spiritual state of a person is the religion’s primary focus. Hence, the purported rationalism (i.e., reason born of the mind) of Buddhist thought so isolated and celebrated among Western intellectuals in the late nineteenth century becomes understandable. To some, Buddhism emerged as a way that one could know the profane world that scientific materialism was constructing in terms of the sacred. Buddhism allowed one to live in a scientific world and a spiritual one simultaneously. As Colonel Henry Steel Olcott stated to a gathering of Buddhists in 1901, “Buddhism is the only [religion] which can endure the test of scientific investigation,” adding later that the Dharma “holds up an ideal of man which reveals the existence in him of a divine germ which, when developed, make him the Buddha.”38 Olcott and the Theosophists’ affinity toward Buddhism is implicit in the laudatory tenor of his remarks. Nevertheless, Helena Blavatksy, who cofounded the Theosophical Society with Olcott in 1875, claimed that theosophical ideas were distinct from Buddhist ones, referring to the group’s beliefs as “Divine Knowledge or Science.”39 Theosophists use the word “science” intentionally both in reference to its original meaning of “knowledge” and, it seems, to associate

54  Buddhist Architecture and Nineteenth-Century American Beginnings its domain of discourse with (and against) modern technology-centered practices.40 However, where some individuals tended to fuse all mystical practices together, others were indignant at the thought of its purported relation to the modern field of science. Writing in Halls Journal of Health, a nineteenthcentury journal devoted to medical health of an ostensibly scientific nature, one anonymous writer exhibits open hostility couched in American chauvinism toward what he claims is the superstitious nature of Buddhism and “the so-called philosophers of India.” “Those who are really masters in Theosophic Science are not to be gathered into the Oriental church which is wholly lacking in the spiritual element. What has Orientalism done to enlighten mankind in comparison with what America has done in less than half a century? Has it ever made a single scientific demonstration of the inter-communion of the two worlds? Not at all.”41 Interestingly, the writer does not challenge the underlying validity of spiritualist phenomena, but only the methodology of its rational confirmation.42 The quote and the short article make perfectly clear that only scientific investigation can bring true knowledge, and that one need look no further than America and its scientific ways to find progressive truth.

Two Worlds Thus far this study has framed the emergence of Buddhist architecture in America with respect to a number of hermeneutic binaries: space and place, East and West, the hidden and the revealed, religion and science, subjectivity and objectivity, and the sacred and the profane. The purpose in utilizing binaries has been to widen the discussion beyond the mere iconographical elements of Buddhist architecture in order to understand how the religion’s belief system correlates to the structural forms it employs to express them. In this regard, of interest here is the specific reference to “two worlds” mentioned in the previous quote, and how it relates to what type of knowledge is being forwarded by Buddhism, Theosophy, Spiritualism, or any belief system that postulates the reality of a realm of sacred or metaphysical report. Spiritualism posits the existence of a “spirit world” where spirits reside and can be accessed by mediums in order to communicate with them. This is not the manner in which Buddhists use or understand the notion of spirituality. The concept of spirituality is immanently complex and difficult to perfectly classify, both scientifically and philosophically, and an examination into the various ideas on spirit offered by Spiritualists and Theosophists would take this discussion too far afield. Yet, the most applicable thing that can be said about their views is that they share an interest and “longing for the ‘supersensible world’—in other words, the many domains of reality our earthbound senses cannot perceive.”43 To thinkers like Rudolf Steiner and others, this world was hidden from ordinary perception in the same

Buddhist Architecture and Nineteenth-Century American Beginnings 55 way that x-rays, radio waves, the atomic world, etc. are present but concealed from normal observation. On the other hand, Buddhist spirituality is concerned primarily with the mental state of an individual. In general, it engages in a conception of spirit that refers to the human spirit: the totality of non-physical realities that constitute the immaterial mind, in contradistinction to the concomitantly existing physical brain and body that “house” it. These spiritual realities include individual experiences such as a person’s hopes, dreams, fears, sentiments, emotions, and the like. They entail the will, cognitive beliefs, and the whole spectrum of subjective mental life. The non-physical quality of these “spiritual” entities can be considered as such insofar as they hold no physical reality as commonly perceived. They retain no mass or corporeal extension that can be isolated and objectified.44 Such a conception includes traditional ideas of spirituality as they relate to religion, which can be understood as an exhibition or manifestation of humanity’s collectively oriented subjectivity that is concerned with our non-physical mental existence. Religion in this regard can be conceived of as a subset or expression of the spiritual, centering the spatial and architectural goals of the Buddhist sites under discussion squarely in the realm of divine theism. A number of points can be made with respect to this basic review of spirit as it pertains to the concept of “two worlds” quoted above. If this formation of human spirituality is accurate, then it becomes clear that we do in a sense live in “two worlds.” For it seems straightforward and unproblematic to assert that one exists simultaneously as a subjective being within an objective reality at large; that we live in an internal “world” of mental/ spiritual existence that is distinct from an external “world” of corporeal experience. From the Buddhist perspective, the metaphysical element (as in beyond the physical) has everything to do with existence. As influential Buddhist monk and scholar Walpola Rahula writes, We have seen earlier that a being is nothing but a combination of physical and mental forces or energies. What we call death is the total non-functioning of the physical body. Do all these forces and energies stop altogether with the non-functioning of the physical body? Buddhism says ‘No.’ Will, volition, and desire thirst to exist, to continue, to become more and more, is a tremendous force that moves whole lives, whole existences, that even moves the whole world. According to Buddhism, this force does not stop with the non-functioning of the body, which is death; but continues manifesting itself in another form, producing re-existence which is called rebirth.45 Rahula succinctly states the conception of spirituality at the heart of Buddhist thought and practice. The two worlds of physical and spiritual form occur simultaneously in their combination. With respect to the argument presented in this study, constructed environments can be understood

56  Buddhist Architecture and Nineteenth-Century American Beginnings as physical expressions of a spiritual space. From the Buddhist perspective, religious architecture augments the communication between these two worlds or realms. In various ways they rarefy the blended actuality of physical and mental “forces” occurring within an individual in order to focus attention on the latter to the great benefit of the former. Of course, “world” here simply means a domain or sphere of experience. Through representational and symbolic modes, religious space seeks to form a communion between the two worlds at work within an individual. These two domains find their correlate in sacred and profane space as well. These same representative and symbolic techniques help delineate a separation between the sacred and profane “worlds” as structurally articulated by different religious groups. Yet, the ultimate non-duality of Buddhist thought imposes a conceptual threshold of sorts on such a view of reality. Influential texts of Buddhist belief “express the central law of life, that all things and events are a part of an indivisible whole.”46 For example, the Dhammapada is an important collection of verses traditionally understood by many as deriving from the Buddha Siddhartha Gautama himself. It has historically been an influential roadmap to the basic philosophical contours of the Buddhist worldview. One salient passage states, “In the Buddha’s universe the mind-matter duality is gone; these are all fields in consciousness.”47 Indeed, those who have achieved nirvana “have crossed the river of life. All that they had to do is done: they have become one with all life.”48 Similarly, a version of the Dhammapada translated by Venerable Weragoda Sarada Maha Thero for the Buddhist eLibrary states, “The duality—‘mind’ and ‘body’ is rejected by the Buddha. The Buddha explains…that all we can talk about is ‘sense experience’, including thought or conception as a sixth sense. The terms nāma and rūpa, commonly translated, as ‘mind’ and ‘body’ are not two ‘entities’ that coexist in relation to each other. They are only two ways of looking at the single ‘activity’ called ‘experience.’”49 It seems appropriate, therefore, that the experience of Buddhist architectural space ought to be comprehended in the same manner. The use here of Tuan’s humanistic geography, as “the perspective of experience,” consequently finds a justification in Buddhist thought. It is thus clear that when analyzing Buddhist places of worship and practice one must be mindful of the totalizing, universal, even cosmic elements associated with the holistic scope of Buddhist thought.

World Building This totalizing worldview returns the discussion back to the time frame of this chapter. The quote earlier from Hall’s Journal of Health speaks to the rapid changes and structural growth that took place in America during the nineteenth century, as much as its subject matter references the new ways that the educated classes were coming to know the world. As argued in this chapter, Buddhism was enmeshed in this epistemological and architectonic

Buddhist Architecture and Nineteenth-Century American Beginnings 57 transformation, a change that saw the flourishing of a new mode of scientific truth emerge simultaneously with the physical growth of the nation. The notion forwarded by some that Buddhism was as an ancient mode of thought applicable to the period’s techno-scientific progress placed its spirituality in simultaneous proximity to the modern world then being constructed. Buddhism and its architecture in the United States began to appear within this new material reality. Given all of the above, what can be said then— in the broadest terms—is that the historical appearance of Buddhism in America and the related occurrence of its architectural forms can be somehow associated to the larger phenomena of human social development. This approach is defensible. Religious architecture is concerned with the largest themes of human existence. It employs symbolism and metaphor as “technologies” because these “instruments” or “techniques” have the ability to convey meaning in a way that separate its structural reality from secular artifacts of architectonic form. These symbolic mechanisms in effect broaden the meaning and significance of a structure beyond its literal or material presence. They fundamentally place religious architecture on a plane of existential wholeness and universal being, the very domain of religion, and situate it viz. the concept of “worlds” in the same extended fashion. As discussed above, the rhetorical and figurative use of the term “world” refers to a sphere or domain of experience. Similarly, to the Buddhist, the mind/body duality is in the end one holistic “world” of experience. Consequently, it is not enough to posit that we live in “two worlds” predicated on the relative subjectivity and objectivity of an individual, and that these spheres coincide with sacred and profane worlds that can be structurally expressed in ecclesiastical buildings promulgating a religious worldview. As a Buddhist worldview stipulates, these dualities ultimately merge into a totalizing and holistic view of human spirituality. It is therefore necessary to universalize the discussion in order to understand how the sacred and profane realms correspond to each other holistically with respect to Buddhist architecture. Doing so situates the strategic purpose of these structures in ambitious agreement with the ultimate holistic goals of Buddhist religious practice. The concept of “world” took on an amplified character during the nineteenth century. Technical progress in transportation and communications underscored America’s discovery as a New World, and opened the human imagination to a global culture that saw the first World’s Fairs, the first World’s Parliament of Religions, and a burgeoning international connectivity that arguably laid the groundwork for the next century’s unprecedented World Wars and increased economic globalization. Buddhism made its official debut in America at the World’s Parliament of Religions of 1893, on the intensified global stage of Western self-glorification in the spectacle of the Columbian Exposition. The ecumenical congress expressly counterpositioned the “crudest materialism” of modern America with the deepest expression of spiritual purpose and religious insight that human history had

58  Buddhist Architecture and Nineteenth-Century American Beginnings engaged in. One of the Parliament’s goals was to “indicate the impregnable foundations of Theism, and the reasons for man’s faith in Immortality, and thus to unite and strengthen the forces which are adverse to a materialistic philosophy of the universe.”50 Session Six of the Parliament featured the general presentation of theosophy to the assembly. The Theosophical Society claimed to form the nucleus of a “Universal Brotherhood of Man” from which to build upon, asserting the endeavor “is the same in vegetable structures, it is the same in the building of worlds, and the same way we know it will tend in that most complicated of all structures—human society.”51 The structural metaphor here, as well as the phrase “impregnable foundations” used to describe the event, is apropos. The Exposition’s primary mode of expression was unassailably architectural. The event was a celebration of the discovery and creation of a New World manifested in the hyper materialism of architectonic form. More than that, it was the pure act of building a White City out of the recent ashes of The Great Chicago Fire (1871) that expressed the continued success of humanity’s ability to order the world. Its apotheosis of the Classical architectural style imbued the World’s Fair with the symbolic aura of both temporal depth and cultural progress, of an intense human purpose that needed to be emblematically codified in a pseudo-religious framework. Martin Verhoeven’s words capture its sublimated breadth well: The Fair in many ways represents what sociologists call a “symbolic universe”—a constructed reality that signifies not the reality of everyday experience, but a corrected version of reality that conforms to that society’s vision of the divinely-established nature of things and the corresponding ideal institutional order. The Fair created a whole mini-universe that both mirrored and pronounced the proper ordering of society, both nationally and internationally. It put everything in its right place and reaffirmed the integration of all the marginal realties into the larger, overarching universe of meaning.52 Verhoeven’s assessment is influenced by the work of sociologist Peter L. Berger, specifically The Social Construction of Reality (1966).53 Indeed, sociological theories that emerged at the ingress of present-day Buddhist practice during the 1960s and 1970s offer a compelling way to understand the emergence of Buddhist architecture and its humanistic and religious import. Working off the nineteenth-century ideas of Max Mueller, Georg Hegel, Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim and others, Berger’s The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion (1967) makes explicit how humans engage in “world construction” under religious and cosmological rubrics. For Berger, the human/profane world is ordered and legitimized over an inherent chaos by a cosmic/sacred canopy that serves as its organization and justification. Order is achieved in the profane microcosm via its direct relationship with the sacred macrocosm. Yet, it is the human

Buddhist Architecture and Nineteenth-Century American Beginnings 59 element of Berger’s theory that is particularly salient to this study. In his view, humans are created “unfinished” with respect to their environment (here he refers to Lapassade’s well known line “L’homme naît inachevé”). Through a dialectical process of externalization, objectification, and internalization, humans construct a “world” (i.e., culture) in order to complete their development: “In other words, man not only produces a world, but he also produces himself.”54 The process of building a world is, in his view, a continual outpouring or “externalizing” of human subjectivity onto the “extraorganismic” environment, an expression of human spirit that includes the brute objectivity of the buildings fashioned to solidify it. “World” in Berger’s sense entails a social world, the totality of laws (nomos) and institutions that constitute human life. Religion, being concerned with universal themes of cosmic and human import, is inextricably involved in this objective expression of subjective human necessity: Religion has played a strategic part in the human enterprise of world-building. Religion implies the farthest reach of man’s selfexternalization, of his infusion of reality with his own meanings. Religion implies that human order is projected into the totality of being. Put differently, religion is the audacious attempt to conceive of the entire universe as humanly significant.55 This final sentence speaks profoundly to the basic argument of this study. While Berger speaks of religion in general, the totalizing scope and fulsome emphasis he places on the purely human elements of “world construction” speaks intimately to the symbolic, social, and spiritual dynamics at work in the structures under present investigation. It will be recalled that this study engages the history of Buddhist architecture in America from the humanistic level. It claims that Buddhist architecture, as an expression of the Buddha’s teachings, is particularly concerned with the human sentiments of the heart. If “world-building” is causally connected with an outpouring of humanity onto the external environment, as Berger’s theory states, then the construction of religious buildings for the express purpose of accessing the hearts and minds of humanity is at a minimum connected to the totalizing and universal process a constructing a humanly inhabitable world, one that is ordered and legitimized within a sacral framework (or “canopy,” in Berger’s paradigm). In other words, Buddhist places of spiritual praxis correspond closely, it seems, with the very human need to build a world, or even to simply build in general. Here, we see a correlation among the various themes and desires to build discussed in this chapter. From the “gaudily spangled canopy” mentioned in Putnum’s description of a Chinese temple, to the communitarian goal of implementing universal social principles in order to “establish a true Social and Political Order,” from the building of a new nation in a New World tinted with Edenic overtones, to the creation of a theosophical “Universal Brotherhood” amid the blended epistemologies of science and religion, the human need to find a universal or cosmological

60  Buddhist Architecture and Nineteenth-Century American Beginnings context within which to exist is in agreement with the holistic ambitions of Buddhist spirituality and many of the buildings it uses to pursue its ends: “to express the central law of life, that all things and events are a part of an indivisible whole.” The emergence of Buddhism and its architecture in America happened to take place within this historic and geographical setting. We can in some sense, then, understand its occurrence with respect to the Columbian Exposition’s point of view and ultimate “vision of the divinely-established nature of things and [its] corresponding ideal institutional order.” This observation is less grandiose than it appears, at least with respect to the modest Buddhist structures that were initially built on the American mainland as the twentieth century turned. However, the buildings of the Japanese Pavilion on Wooded Island at the Columbian Exposition (no longer extant), as well as the Chinese exhibit at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition of 1876, must be mentioned here as the most conspicuous presentation of Oriental architecture in America in the nineteenth century, although they were only temporary structures. In terms of the Chicago World’s Fair, the Ho-o-den (“Phoenix Hall”) was the most impressive and culturally significant example of overtly Buddhist architecture in the United States at the time of its construction. The building was a replica of the late tenth-century Buddhist Pure Land temple still extant in Uji, Japan outside the ancient capital of Kyoto. The structure, “somewhat smaller in size and modified to adapt it for secular use,” was constructed in Japan, shipped by watercraft across the Pacific, and then transferred overland by rail from the coast to Chicago to be reconstructed and gifted to America as a token of friendship.56 Stripped of its religious artifacts, namely of main hall’s large golden statue of Amida Buddha, its appearance—with its large and impressive sweeping Asian-styled roof—in an American setting was purely exhibitionary. Both the original building in Japan and the American replica are symbols of the Japanese nation (the original building is shown on the obverse side of the 10 yen coin). Cultural heritage is infused in the external and internal design of the building, whose shape is meant to represent the mythological bird for which it is named. The building tracks the country’s historical development in a linear fashion, as the left hall is decorated in the style of the Fujiwara Period when the original was built, the right hall the Muromachi Period, and the central hall the most recent Tokugawa Period. Its appearance at the Columbian Exposition signaled to the world that the post Shogunate Japanese placed the country’s new trajectory squarely in the progressive West. As will be discussed in further chapters, the large elaborate roofs of the Japanese Pavilion are a signature element of Oriental architecture. The loftier and more extravagant the roof, the greater space the building contains, and the greater wealth and significance are attributed to its inhabitants.57 In this instance, the grandiose roof of the central hall refers to the most extravagant space of Japanese Pure Land Buddhism.

Buddhist Architecture and Nineteenth-Century American Beginnings 61 As is explored in detail below, this tradition contemplates the existence of “a world called the Land of Bliss” located in the general direction of the West where Amida Buddha resides. It is a place where “one hears heavenly musical instruments constantly being played. And the ground all around is golden in color, pleasant to look at.”58 It is a utopian space of spiritual contentment, a golden world of limitless light and stainless purity known as the Western Paradise, a “Pure Land” for the mind to achieve enlightenment, which in the twentieth century found a home in the West, in the New World of America.59

Notes 1 As Elana Gomel points out that “…the modern concept of the supernatural is a bi-product of scientific empiricism.” See her “Spirits in the Material World: Spiritualism and Identity in the “Fin De Siècle,” Victorian Literature and Culture 35, no. 1 (2007): 195. 2 John Henry Barrows, The World’s Parliament of Religions: An Illustrated and Popular Story of the World’s First Parliament of Religions, Held in Chicago in Connection with the Columbian Exposition of 1893, ed. Rev. John Henry Barrows (Chicago: Parliament Publishing Company, 1893), viii–xi. 3 Moreover, the scientific aspects of the journey were as equally important as the geographic achievements. The mission revealed flora and fauna wholly unknown to botanists of the time. The journey’s methodology of scientific observation and measurement also set it apart from most of the other expeditions of the Western frontier. 4 Thomas Glasson, “Commodore Perry (July 1853) and the Awakening of Japan,” London Quarterly and the Holborn Review 178 (July 1953): 199. 5 Paul S. Boyer, “Forward,” in America’s Communal Utopias, ed. Donald E. Pitzer (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997), xi. 6 Todd Timmons, Science and Technology in Nineteenth-Century America (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2005), 1. 7 On the possibilities that scientific advances held for believers in the occult see Paul Eli Ivey, Radiance from Halcyon, 74–79. 8 “Transcendental Hash,” Buchanan’s Journal of Man 1, no. 11 (1887): 12. 9 Charles E. Rosenberg, No Other Gods: On Science and American Social Thought (Baltimore, MD; London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), 140. 10 See Donald S. Lopez, Jr., Buddhism and Science: A Guide for the Perplexed (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008). For a very helpful book on the changing dynamic of religious thought with respect to scientific advances see Paul A. Carter, The Spiritual Crisis of the Gilded Age (DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University, 1971). For the role of spiritualism and metaphysics in the context of America see Catherine Albanese, A Republic of Mind and Spirit: A Cultural History of American Metaphysical Religion (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007). 11 Hisao Inagaki and Harold Stewart, The Three Pure Land Sutras, 8. 12 Charles W. Calhoun, ed., “Introduction,” in The Gilded Age: Perspectives on the Origins of Modern America (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2007), 3. 13 Delores Hayden, Seven American Utopias: The Architecture of Communitarian Socialism, 1790-1975 (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1976), 8.

62  Buddhist Architecture and Nineteenth-Century American Beginnings 14 This description was originally posted on its website, newenglandpeacepagoda.org, but can now be found on its Facebook page. The term “pagoda” is synonymous with “stupa.” 15 https://bmzc.org 16 Charles S. Prebish, Luminous Passage: The Practice and Study of Buddhism in America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 4. 17 Brian Tom and Lawrence Tom, Marysville’s Chinatown (Chicago; San Francisco: Arcadia Publishing, 2008), 8. 18 http://www.un.org/esa/coordination/globalization.htm. 19 Brian Tom and Lawrence Tom, Marysville’s Chinatown, 8. 20 The influence of Japanese prints on particularly French art is well known. For a seminal study see Siegfried Wichmann, Japonisme: The Influence on Western Art in the 19th and 20th Centuries (New York: Park Lane, 1985); see also Gabriel P. Weisberg, The Orient Expressed: Japan’s influence on Western art, 1854-1918 ‬(Jackson: Mississippi Museum of Art; Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2011). 21 For more on the Chinatown in Marysville see Roberta S. Greenwood, “A Chinese Temple in California, Lost and Found,” in Archaeology and Preservation of Gendered Landscapes, eds. Sherene Baugher and Suzanne M. SpencerWood, (NY; London: Springer, 2010), 273–290; W. Ebelhard, “Economic Activities of a Chinese Temple in California,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 82, no. 3 (Jul-Sept 1962): 362–371. See also https://www.sfgate.com/ travel/article/Northern-California-historic-Chinatowns-16064369.php 22 The Kuan Yin Temple in Hawai’i is a nice example of an early Chinese temple, albeit not technically located in America at the time of its construction in 1880. 23 George M. Williams, Daniel D. Wong, and Brenda L. Wong, “The Chinese Temples of Northern California,” The Life, Influence, and the Role of the Chinese in the United States, 1776-1960: Proceedings, Papers of the National Conference Held at the University of San Francisco, July 10, 11, 12, 1975, sponsored by the Chinese Historical Society of America (San Francisco: The Society, 1976), 294. 24 The first Chinese newspaper in America underscores this collective mythology, which was called The Golden Hills’ News, and was only in existence for a few months in 1854. Him Mark Lai, The Chinese Historical Society of America, San Francisco, http://cprr.org/Museum/Chinese_Newspapers.html. 25 Edward Dolnik, The Rush: America’s Fevered Quest for Fortune, 1848-1853 (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2014), 19. 26 Sam Davis, “The Hermit of Treasure Peaks,” Californian 1, no. 4 (April 1880): 313. 27 Cai Yanxin, Chinese Architecture (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 32. 28 For further reading about early Chinatowns in the United States, see Lorraine Hee-Chorley, The Chinese in Mendocino County (Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2009); Jennifer Cho and Chinese Historical Society of Southern California, Chinatown and China City in Los Angeles (Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2010); University of California, Berkeley, The Chinese in California: 1850-1925 [electronic resource] via Bancroft Library, Ethnic Studies Library and California Historical Society (Washington, DC: Library of Congress, 2002). 29 For the contemporary multicultural implications of Chinatown architecture see Peter Lang, “Chinatown is Everywhere,” Architectural Design 73, no. 5 (2003): 8–15. Interestingly, Lang references Slavoj Zizek’s comments that New Age “Asiatic” thought now sits in a sort of hegemonic equipoise to Western global technological capitalism, a comment in accord with comments discussed in the previous section of this chapter. It is interesting that just as modern technology was complicit in Buddhism’s cultural introduction,

Buddhist Architecture and Nineteenth-Century American Beginnings 63











it now—according to Zizek—allows one to participate in a techno-capitalist environment without wholly acquiescing to it. See Slavoj Zizek, On Belief: Thinking in Action (New York: Routledge, 2001), 13–15. 30 R.F. Putnam Diary, Library of Congress, American Memory Collection, San Francisco’s Chinatown: Outsiders LookingIn (June 6, 1876), 113–114. See http:// memory.loc.gov/ammem/index.html. 31 Edward Hungerford, “Buddhism and Christianity,” New Englander 33 (April 1974): 278–279 in Thomas A. Tweed, Buddhism in the United States, 1840-1925, Volume 1(London: Ganesha Publishing, 2004), 72. 32 Thomas Allen, “The New Testament of Buddhism,” Baptist Missionary Magazine, 1873-1909 56, no. 10 (October 1876): 360. 33 This structure was the second building on this site with that name, dating from 1862. It was destroyed in the 1906 earthquake and replaced by the large Gothic Revival Cathedral now extant. 34 Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and The Profane: The Nature of Religion, trans. Willard R. Trask (New York: Harcourt; Brace and World, 1959), 11–12. 35 Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and The Profane, 63. 36 For example, Louis P. Nelson claims that sacred “places become inscribed as sacred through belief and practice, they are inextricably linked to sociopolitical identities, and their sacred meanings are notstable.” See American Sanctuary: Understanding Sacred Spaces, ed. Louis P. Nelson (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006), 5–6. 37 This effect has also been traditionally used in political environments, particularly when they are meant to elide themselves with the spiritual or religious authority of a culture. The Forbidden City in China comes to mind in this respect. 38 “Colonel Olcott’s Address at the Buddhist Mission,” TheLight of Dharma 1 (June 1901): 11. 39 H.P. Blavatsky, The Key to Theosophy (New York; Madras: Theosophical Publishing Society, 1893), 1. 40 While one of the initial goals the Society, “to collect and diffuse a knowledge of the laws which govern the universe,” were in consistent with the general goals of science, Blavatsky denied the ability of “exact science” to understand spiritual evolution or progress. She maintained that only ancient and hidden science could adequately address the largest questions as to the origin of the universe and humanity’s relation to it. See Religions of the World: A Comprehensive Encyclopedia of Beliefs and Practices, Vol. 6, eds., J. Gordon Meltonand Martin Baumann (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2002), 2846. 41 Robert Hare, “Buddhism and Theosophy,” Halls Journal of Health 36, no. 2 (1889): 25–26. 42 The article briefly refers to the famous case of Dr. Robert Hare, professor of Chemistry at Pennsylvania, who upon attempting to disprove spiritualism eventually joined the spiritualism movement, writing among other works, Spiritualism Scientifically Demonstrated (1855). The history of Spiritualism falls outside the scope of this study. For more on Professor Hare see Emma Hardinge Britten, Modern American Spiritualism: A Twenty Years’ Record of the Communion between Earth and the World of Spirits (New York: Emma Hardinge Britten, 1870), 115–120; See also, John Lord, Modern Spiritualism, Scientifically Demonstrated to be a Mendacious Humbug, in a Series of Letters to Professor Robert Hare, Author of a Book Entitled Spiritualism Scientifically Demonstrated: Also Some Communications Written for the Spiritual Telegraph and Other Papers Therewith Connected (Portland, Maine: Brown Thurston, 1856). 43 Matthew Barton, “Introduction,” in Rudolf Steiner, Theosophy: An Introduction to the Supersensible Knowledge of the World and the Destination of Man, trans. M. Cotterell & A.P. Shepherd (Forest Row: Rudolf Steiner Press, 2011), x.

64  Buddhist Architecture and Nineteenth-Century American Beginnings 44 While cognitive and neuroscientific research can isolate the part of the brain responsible for processing different types of thoughts and feelings, individual subjective thoughts and such resist this physical isolation and objectification. 45 Walpola Rahula, What the Buddha Taught (New York: Grove Press, 1974), 33. 46 Eknath Easwaran, “Introduction,” The Dhammapada, ed., Eknath Easwaran (Tomales, CA: Nilgiri Press, 2007), 20. 47 Ibid, 88. “Dhammapada” is a Pali term roughly meaning “Dharma Path” or “Dharma Bearer.” 48 Ibid, 251. 49 Weragoda Sarada Maha Thero, Treasury of Truth – Dhammapada (Taipei: The Corporate Body of the Buddha Education Foundation, 1970), 61. http:// www.buddhistelibrary.org/en/displayimage.php?pid=125 50 John Henry Barrows, The World’s Parliament of Religions, 18. 51 Jirah Dewey Buck, “General Presentation of Theosophy to the Parliament,” in The Theosophical Congress Held by the Theosophical Society at the Parliament of Religions, World’s Fair of 1893, at Chicago, Ill., September 15, 16, 17: Report of Proceedings and Documents (Madras, India: Theosophical Society, 1893), 140. 52 Martin J. Verhoeven, “‘Americanizing the Buddha:’ The World’s Parliament of Religions, Paul Carus, and the Making of Modern Buddhism” (PhD diss., University of Wisconsin, 2008), 85, fn88. 53 See Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckman, The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge (Garden City: Anchor Books, Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1967). 54 Peter L. Berger, The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion (New York: Anchor Books Edition, 1967), 6. 55 Peter Berger, The Sacred Canopy, 27–28. 56 Okakura Kakudzo, The Hō-ō-den (Phoenix Hall): An Illustrated Description of the Buildings Erected by the Japanese Government at the World’s Columbian Exposition, Jackson Park, Chicago (Tokyo: K. Ogawa Publisher, 1893), 13. 57 Mira Locher, Traditional Japanese Architecture: An Exploration of Elements and Forms (Tokyo: Tuttle Publishers, 2010), 52–53. 58 Luis O. Gómez, Land of Bliss: The Paradise of the Buddha of Measureless Light: Sanskrit and Chinese Versions of the Sukhāvatīvyūha Sutras (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1996), 16–17 59 Taitetsu Unno, “The Pure Land in the New World,” Tricycle 11, no.1 (Fall 2001): 80–83.

References Albanese, Catherine. A Republic of Mind and Spirit: A Cultural History of American Metaphysical Religion. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007. Allen, Thomas. “The New Testament of Buddhism.” Baptist Missionary Magazine, 1873–1909 56, no.10 (October 1876): 360. Bancroft Library, Berkeley. Ethnic Studies Library University of California, California Historical Society, and Library of Congress. National Digital Library Program. The Chinese in California, -1925. Washington, DC: Library of Congress, 2002. Software, E-Resource. https://lccn.loc.gov/2003543760. Barrows, John H. The World’s Parliament of Religions: An Illustrated and Popular Story of the World’s First Parliament of Religions, Held in Chicago in Connection With the Columbian Exposition of 1893. 2 Volumes. Chicago: Parliament Publishing Company, 1893. Baugher, Sherene and Suzanne M. Spencer-Wood. Archaeology and Preservation of Gendered Landscapes. NY; London: Springer, 2010.

Buddhist Architecture and Nineteenth-Century American Beginnings 65 Berger, Peter. The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion. New York: Anchor Books Edition, 1969. Berger, Peter L. and Thomas Luckman. The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge. Garden City: Anchor Books, Doubleday & Company, Inc, 1967. Blavatsky, H. P. The Key to Theosophy. New York: Madras: Theosophical Publishing Society, 1893. Britten, Emma Hardinge. Modern American Spiritualism: A Twenty Years’ Record of the Communion between Earth and the World of Spirits. New York: Emma Hardinge Britten, 1870. Buchanan, J. R. “Transcendental Hash,” Buchanan’s Journal of Man. December 1, no. 11 (1887): 12. Calhoun, Charles W. The Gilded Age: Perspectives on the Origins of Modern America. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2007. Carter, Paul A. The Spiritual Crisis of the Gilded Age. DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University, 1971. Cho, Jennifer and Chinese Historical Society of Southern California. Chinatown and China City in Los Angeles. Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2010. Davis, Sam. “The Hermit of Treasure Peaks,” Californian1, no. 4 (1880): 313–318. Dolnik, Edward. The Rush: America’s Fevered Quest for Fortune, 1848–1853. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2014. Easwaran, Eknath. The Dhammapada. Tomales, CA: Nilgiri Press, 2007. Ebelhard, Wolfram. “Economic Activities of a Chinese Temple in California.” Journal of the American Oriental Society82, no. 3 (Jul–Sept 1962): 362–371. Eliade, Mircea. The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion, trans. Willard R. Trask. New York: Harcourt; Brace and World, 1959. Glasson, Thomas, et al. “Commodore Perry (July 1853) and the Awakening of Japan,” London Quarterly and the Holborn Review178 (1953): 199. Gomel, Elana. “Spirits in the Material World: Spiritualism and Identity in the ‘Fin De Siècle.”Victorian Literature and Culture35, no. 1 (2007): 195. Gómez, Luis O. Land of Bliss: The Paradise of the Buddha of Measureless Light: Sanskrit and Chinese Versions of the Sukhāvatīvyūha Sutras. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1996. Hare, Robert. “Buddhism and Theosophy.” Halls Journal of Health36, no. 2 (1889): 25–26. Hayden, Dolores. Seven American Utopias: The Architecture of Communitarian Socialism, 1790–1975. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1976. Hee-Chorley, Lorraine. The Chinese in Mendocino County. Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2009. Inagaki, Hisao and Harold Stewart. The Three Pure Land Sutras. Rev. 2nd ed. BDK English Tripiṭaka; 12-II, III, IV. Berkeley, Calif.: Numata Center for Buddhist Translation and Research, 2003. Kakudzo, Okakura. The Hō-ō-Den (Phoenix Hall): An Illustrated Description of the Buildings Erected by the Japanese Government at the World’s Columbian Exposition, Jackson Park, Chicago. Tokyo: K. Ogawa Publisher, 1893. Lang, Peter. “Chinatown Is Everywhere.” Architectural Design73, no. 5 (2003): 8–15. Locher, Mira. Traditional Japanese Architecture: An Exploration of Elements and Forms. Tokyo: Tuttle Publishers, 2010. Lopez, Jr., Donald S. Buddhism and Science: A Guide for the Perplexed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008.

66  Buddhist Architecture and Nineteenth-Century American Beginnings Lord, John. Modern Spiritualism, Scientifically Demonstrated to Be a Mendacious Humbug, in a Series of Letters to Professor Robert Hare, Author of a Book Entitled Spiritualism Scientifically Demonstrated: Also Some Communications Written for the Spiritual Telegraph and Other Papers Therewith Connected. Portland, Maine: Brown Thurston, 1856. Melton, J. Gordon and Martin Baumann. Religions of the World: A Comprehensive Encyclopedia of Beliefs and Practices, Vol. 6. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2002. Nelson, Louis P. American Sanctuary: Understanding Sacred Spaces. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006. Pitzer, Donald E. America’s Communal Utopia. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997. Prebish, Charles S. Luminous Passage: The Practice and Study of Buddhism in America. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999. Rahula, Walpola. What the Buddha Taught. New York: Grove Press, 1974. Rosenberg, Charles E. No Other Gods: On Science and American Social Thought. Baltimore, MD; London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997. Steiner, Rudolf. Theosophy: An Introduction to the Supersensible Knowledge of the World and the Destination of Man, trans. M. Cotterell & A. P. Shepherd. Forest Row: Rudolf Steiner Press, 2011. Theosophical Society. The Theosophical Congress Held by the Theosophical Society at the Parliament of Religions, World’s Fair of 1893, at Chicago, Ill., September 15, 16, 17: Report of Proceedings and Documents. Madras, India: Theosophical Society, 1893. Timmons, Todd. Science and Technology in Nineteenth-Century America. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2005. Brian, Tom and Tom Lawrence. Marysville’s Chinatown. Chicago; San Francisco: Arcadia Publishing, 2008. Tweed, Thomas A. Buddhism in the United States, 1840–1925, Volume 1. London: Ganesha Publishing, 2004. Unno, Taitetsu. “The Pure Land in the New World,” Tricycle11, no. 1 (2001): 80–83. Verhoeven, Martin J. “‘Americanizing the Buddha:’ The World’s Parliament of Religions, Paul Carus, and the Making of Modern Buddhism.” PhD diss., University of Wisconsin, 2008. Weisberg, Gabriel P. The Orient Expressed: Japan’s Influence on Western Art, 1854–1918. Jackson: Mississippi Museum of Art; Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2011. Maha Thero, Weragoda Sarada. Treasury of Truth—Dhammapada. Taipei: The Corporate Body of the Buddha Education Foundation, 1970. Wichmann, Siegfried. Japonisme: The Influence on Western Art in the 19th and 20th Centuries. New York: Park Lane, 1985. Williams, George M., Daniel D. Wong and Brenda L. Wong. “The Chinese Temples of Northern California,” The Life, Influence, and the Role of the Chinese in the United States, 1776–1960: Proceedings, Papers of the National Conference Held at the University of San Francisco, July 10, 11, 12, 1975. Sponsored by the Chinese Historical Society of America. San Francisco: The Society, 1976. Yanxin, Cai. Chinese Architecture. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Zizek, Slavoj. On Belief: Thinking in Action. New York: Routledge, 2001.

3

The Twentieth-Century Expansion of Architectonic Buddhism

Liminal Hawaii Thus far the discussion has established a historical, conceptual, and doctrinal foundation for understanding Buddhism’s emergence in an American setting, and introduced some structural antecedents of its architectural forms. The story of Buddhist architecture in America continues with the arrival of Japanese immigrants during the last decades of the nineteenth century. Situated midway between Japan and the American mainland, the Kingdom and later U.S. Territory of Hawaii saw the first major wave of the Japanese to the United States and its interests. The first Japanese reached Hawaii in 1868 during the first year of Emperor Meiji’s reign, and were therefore known as the Gannenmono (“First Year People”).1 Their population reached roughly 60,000 by the turn of the twentieth century. Japanese workers came to Hawaii to fill the need for inexpensive labor. As with the Chinese in California, the first Japanese temples were modest houses converted to accommodate religious ceremonies. These single room cabins with corrugated roofs lacked the external complexity of later Japanese temples built in Hawaii. Their interiors were rudimentary as well, lacking pews or a formal separation between the sacred altar area (o-naijin) and the laity in attendance (geijin) as existed in the larger temples in Japan. Instead, a small niche was cut into a wall to house the main object of worship (gohonzon). However, as places associated with domestic living, their use as religious structures looked forward to subsequent insular and mainland temples whose purpose entailed both religious and social functions wrapped in the sentiment of home. As has been made clear, Buddhism came to America from Asia via the transplanted religious traditions of individuals looking for a better life in the New World. Immigrants were alienated from their home in distance and culture. Just as with the Chinese, the Japanese in both Hawaii and the mainland sought spiritual comfort in a foreign land. Temples became places where one could find spiritual and cultural solace, famously characterized as “abodes of light and love.”2 The domestic political situation in Japan helped instigate the Buddhist migration to the United States. The Meiji government that ousted the DOI: 10.4324/9781003311645-4

68  The Twentieth-Century Expansion of Architectonic Buddhism Tokugawa Shogunate in 1868 favored the indigenous Shinto religion over Buddhism, as the latter was embedded in the Shogun’s governmental institutions.3 Caught in the crossfire among “Shintoists, enlightenment thinkers, nationalists, imperialists, economists, Confucians, and the newly emergent scientists and historians,” Buddhists were persecuted and their temples were assailed.4 Buddhism entered Japan from Korea in the sixth century via a gifted sutra from the Korean emperor. At the time of the Meiji Restoration, it was portrayed as a foreign religion whose precepts and history were antithetical to the sacred character of the nation. Accusations and fears of barbarous intrusion became heightened decades earlier with Commodore Perry’s incursion (and the Russian advances) on Japanese sovereignty in the waning years of the Shogunate. In a well-remembered edict, Perry’s iron clad “Black Ships” compelled authorities to demand that the majority of temple bells be melted down and effectively modernized into cannons and rifles for the defense of the homeland. The defensive use of bells is both incongruous and consistent with Japanese history. The sound of a bell can notify one of danger. In this sense a bell exists as a sort of guardian or sentinel. However, while sympathetic with the need to protect the country, in Japan their construction, meaning, and existence attaches to the sentimental root of the Buddhist religion and its followers. James Katelaar quotes one written response to the edict from the Kagoshima Prefecture’s historical documents, “Temple bells have stood guard over the dharma and our Imperial land for generations…Each bell is made of a thousand hearts and 10,000 souls.”5 It is not surprising, then, that the command to confiscate them from temples was met with popular dissent from Buddhists throughout Japan. Bells retain a sacred and symbolic place in Japanese culture. They hold spiritual significance in a multitude of ways. In a Buddhist capacity, the temple bell (kansho) is used to signal the beginning of a service. Their presence on temple grounds and in altar spaces is an element found in most denominations in Japan, particularly in the Nichiren and Pure Land traditions. On a doctrinal level, the sound of a bell (or gong) can signify the awakened state of mind, inspiring one to be mindful of the Buddha and his teachings. The sound waves of a bell ripple like a pebble thrown into a tranquil pond. It reminds one of the cause and effect of all phenomena, as well as the impermanency of things as the sound fades away. To the Buddhists in Japan, their potency lied in their ability to inspire the human spirit, and not in the material forms of death and destruction in their transformed use as rifles and canons. Japanese Buddhist temples in Hawaii are significant in their sectarian and architectural diversity. In a single state of limited size, one finds temples from all the major denominations found on the mainland United States: Japanese, Tibetan, Thai, and Chinese. Japanese temples are by far most predominant in Hawaii, with over 90 present structures in current use from the Jodo, Jodo Shinshu (or “Shin”), Nichiren, Rinzai Zen, Tendai, and Shingon schools.6 Japanese Buddhism in Hawaii took shape

The Twentieth-Century Expansion of Architectonic Buddhism 69

Figure 3.1  Honpa Hongwanji Hawaii Betsuin, Honolulu, Hawaii

in 1889, nearly a decade prior to its official continental establishment in San Francisco in 1898. They retain a separate organizational identity from the BCA, the largest Buddhist organization in the States, with a majority of temples found on the west coast. This independence has an interesting architectural correlate. Historians have identified four to five distinct temples styles, with a number of subdivisions extant within their categorizations ranging from converted houses, secular looking “houses of worship,” to large and small traditional structures.7 Of these, the “Indian-Western style” was intended to be a visibly Hawaiian iteration of Buddhist architecture, a stylistic classification the Tanabes forward.8 One of the earliest and most distinctive temples in Hawaii is the Honpa Hongwanji Hawaii Betsuin (HHHB) located in Honolulu (Figure 3.1). The facade blends ancient Indian, Mughal Indian, and Classical Greek architectural components. Bishop Yemyo Imamura conceived its eclectic appearance in the progressive light of Hawaii’s distinct cultural uniqueness. The temple’s second and most influential bishop, he sought to distinguish the Bestuin (a term that designates a temple as a branch of the mother temple in Kyoto) from temples in Japan by incorporating elements from Buddhism’s history in the design. Originally constructed in 1918, its current expanded form dates from the 1950s and integrates historic architectural features from both East and West, expressing within this binary the medial position that Hawaiian Buddhism retains in both culture and locality. In his design, Imamura sought to draw a line starting from the past pointing forward toward the West. As a religion of Indian origin, the round stupa in

70  The Twentieth-Century Expansion of Architectonic Buddhism the rear of the building recalls the reliquary form’s earliest historic shape, exemplifying Buddhism’s structural heritage going back to the Great Stupa in Sanchi, India. The twin radiating stupa towers on either side of the structure and distinctively articulated windows reference India’s later Mughal heritage, while the classically inspired columns point to the Western architectural tradition of Greek and Roman temples. This eclecticism is found in the interior as well, with classical columns and Mughal archways used in conjunction with Protestant pews in the main shrine hall (hondo) on the second floor. The temple is important in an administrative capacity, as it is the headquarters for the Honpa Hongwanji Mission of Hawaii, but its existence is emphasized here as the building’s style intersects with many of the ideas explored in this study thus far. The temple holds a somewhat unique position given the time and place of its historical presence in terms of the EastWest intercourse explicit in the topic of Buddhism in America. It signifies the first authentic instance of an intentionally designed temple (in other words, not just an exhibitionary structure like those seen at World’s Fairs) whose style was explicitly meant to demonstrate the newfound relationship between Asia and the West. Imamura’s goal was not only to mimic earlier stylistic arrangements in order to pay homage to the past, but to communicate a clear message in architectonic form of “Jodo Shinshu Buddhism’s future in Hawaii and the Americas.”9 The HHHB temple is a liminal structure in this respect. Although the Buddhist Church of San Francisco modeled their building of 1914–1937 after a Greek temple, the stylistic choice appears to have been a way to overtly blend into American life. As discussed below, mainland BCA churches constructed at this time lack this optimistic, overtly forward leaning character of the HHHB, as they were dealing with issues of assimilation in an environment increasingly hostile to Asians. Many subsequent Japanese temples in Hawaii exhibit eclectic stylistic elements in their design as well. For example, in addition to its frontal classical columns, the Soto Mission of Hawaii temple directly references the Mahabodhi Mahavihara in Bodh Gaya, India, situated at the spot where Siddhartha Gautama found enlightenment. Others, such as the Jodo Mission of Hawaii temple, resemble the Taj Mahal and its Mughal-Indian heritage. These buildings exemplify the Tanabes’ “Indian-Western” style unique to Hawaiian Buddhist architecture. The religion’s diverse cultural history is celebrated even to the present day. In 2014, the HHHB temple hosted a concert of Gagaku, billed as “A Concert of Ancient Music of the Japanese Imperial Court and Traditional Indian Dance.”10 The performance incorporates a fusion of Chinese, Indian, and Japanese traditional styles going back to the tenth century. Nevertheless, the HHHB stands out from other Indian-Western temples in its explicit intention to act as a harbinger of Buddhism’s incipient presence in the West. Other buildings of this type retain a greater Asian character than they do a Western feel. On the other hand, the HHHB’s diversified appearance does not so much strike one

The Twentieth-Century Expansion of Architectonic Buddhism 71 as Asian as it does the buildings in the U.S. Capitol, or the hyper classicality exhibited at the Columbian Exposition. Its stark white exterior, the classical columns on the jutting portico, and the wide staircase are stylistic features broadly common to official government buildings prevalent to the Western tradition. Analyzing the HHHB’s eclecticism a bit more closely provides further insight into its meaning. It seems that “style” takes on a heightened significance in terms of the architecture’s role in promoting the temple’s beliefs. Conversations with the current Rimban (head minister) Tatsuo Muneto regarding the stupas atop the building reveal that these reliquaries do not contain relics—or even any auspicious objects—as most reliquaries do. Indeed, the Tanabes characterize the stupas as “imitations” of ancient Indian prototypes.11 As a result, these stupas do not retain a traditional religious function, but find their spiritual impact in the stylistic purpose intended by Imamura’s cultural ambition of promoting Buddhism to the Western world. Of course, like in all Buddhist communities, the temple’s primary purpose is to teach the Buddha’s message in accordance with their denomination’s historical and doctrinal values, in this case that of the True Pure Land of Amida. Yet, amid the important goals of cultivating compassion, fostering peace, and teaching the Dharma, the mission statement printed in the HHHB monthly newsletter states that the temple seeks to “create a safe, welcoming, and aesthetically supportive environment to nurture religious development.”12 This short but telling sentence is somewhat unique to other mission statements in the Pure Land tradition. Specifically communicating aesthetics as one of the temple’s primary aims underscores the religious importance and lasting impact of Imamura’s stylistic decisions. Imamura’s work in bringing Buddhism to the West was groundbreaking, and his importance in Hawaiian Buddhist history is considered immense. In fact, a statue of his image sits alongside Jodo Shinshu’s thirteenth-century founder Shinran Shonin in the front of the temple (an image of Shinran can be found in the sacred altar area of virtually every Shin Buddhist temple). Imamura is credited with two major accomplishments that go hand in hand in advancing Buddhism in Hawaii: establishing a system of schools teaching both language and the Dharma, and erecting temples throughout the islands.13 Teaching is the common element between these two activities. Dharma schools were founded inside these temples, whose primary purpose is to disseminate the teachings of the Buddha. The concept and practice of teaching is embedded in the temple’s newsletter: Goji. The term refers to the Five Periods of Buddha’s Teachings found in the Pure Land school, as well as in other Mahayana sects such as Nichiren and Tendai Buddhism.14 Given the emphasis on teaching propounded in the mission statement and the newsletter, together with Imamura’s goal of transplanting a unique form of Buddhism to the West through architecture, the surmise that can be made is that “style” is meant to also be a teaching mechanism as

72  The Twentieth-Century Expansion of Architectonic Buddhism well. As the HHHB was constructed in historical earshot of the Columbian Exposition, the stylistic choice of a dominant white exterior with classical columns merges the cultural legacy of Western civilization with the spiritual weight of Buddhism’s history. It signifies a comprehensible visual vocabulary indicating the temple’s ultimate purpose of grounding the progressive West in ancient Buddhist belief. Hence, the temple’s mission of providing an “aesthetically supportive environment to nurture religious development” becomes clear. Described by Imamura as “abodes of light and love,” the very existence of Japanese Hawaiian temples such as these encapsulates the compassionate essence of the Buddha’s teachings as understood by Shin Buddhists, who venerate the Amida Buddha, the Buddha of Infinite Light and Life (Skr: Amitabha). As with the overall topic of Buddhist architecture in America, the number of Buddhist temples in Hawaii necessitates asserting the general or schematic ideas related to their structural being. In highlighting the Honpa Hongwanji Hawaii Betsuin, this discussion emphasizes the Japanese religious contingent on Hawaii over the other nationalities that exist on the islands. The bias is appropriate, as the Japanese are by far the most prevalent Buddhists in the state. Particularly, it privileges the largest Japanese sect called the “Honpa Hongwanji,” which requires some clarification. The term “Hongwanji” means “Temple of the Primal Vow” and refers to Amida Buddha’s oath “to save all beings by bringing into his Pure Land, the realm of enlightenment, all who say his Name, entrusting themselves to his Vow.”15 The word “Honpa” (sometimes “Hompa”) is an abbreviation of the much longer “Hongwanji-ha” that is first part of the sect’s official name. The Tokugawa Shoguns split the Hongwanji in 1602, forming the Higashi (East) and Nishi (West) denominations. In common usage, “Honpa” denotes the western body of a politically distinct but closely related spiritual division of the overall Japanese Pure Land Hongwanji tradition. With Imamura’s efforts, the Honpa—or Nishi, Hongwanji—retains the largest architectural presence in Hawaii, having more than seven times the number of temples as the Higashi Hongwanji and more than two and a half more than the next closest denomination. Understanding the nature of Amida’s Primal Vow is key to appreciating the spiritual import of the temples built to express it. The concept of compassion is central to Shin Buddhism. It was compassion for all beings that led Amida to create the Pure Land of the West for the achievement of enlightenment. Shin teachings state that a deep, warm-hearted concern for all life prompted the Bodhisattva Dharmakara to make the Primal Vow. Amida’s discourse in the Larger Pure Land Sukhāvatīvyūha Sūtra consists of forty eight individual vows. The eighteenth of these is considered the fundamental or “Primal Vow” that states his desire to become a Buddha and create a place where the suffering and distraction of this “world of endurance” (saha-loka) could be removed, thereby ensuring those within that Land of Bliss (sukhāvatī) the ability to realize final release (enlightenment).16

The Twentieth-Century Expansion of Architectonic Buddhism 73 According to Shinran, faith in the Amida Buddha is all that is required to achieve this world. More specifically, the sincere desire to admit Amida and his compassion into one’s heart is what is needed. This is done by the genuine recitation of the nembutsu (“Namu-Amida-Butsu”), which is meant to inspire compassion in those who “Take refuge in Amida Buddha” by calling out to Amida by name. In truth, to Shin Buddhists it is the Amida Buddha who is constantly calling outward to sentient beings to find compassion, to come to his Land of Bliss: Saying the Name results in birth into the Pure Land, not because it is a good act that people perform, but because it is the activity of Amida Buddha himself giving the virtues of his own practice to them. Shinran therefore stresses that genuine nembutsu arises naturally and spontaneously from the Buddha’s mind that unfolds itself in us and transforms our minds into wisdom and compassion 17 Upon fulfilling his vow, Shin belief states that Dharmakara became Amida, the Buddha of Infinite Light, also known as Amitayus—the Buddha of Infinite Life. Thus, Imamura’s claim that temples are abodes of light and love is not hyperbole. It expresses the sincere ambition to have buildings exist to radiate the compassion emanating from Amida’s Primal Vow. At this point, the humanistic element of Buddhist practice shines forth. An abode is a domestic term signifying both the structure of a house and the familial feeling associated with a home. Ideally it is a space of emotional attachment; a personal sanctuary where one can go to feel centered and loved. These attributes would certainly be welcoming to an immigrant community beleaguered with the travails of a difficult life in an isolated place far from their homeland. We can therefore see how the doctrinal energy of Pure Land teachings can address this situation. Over and over, when one reads the published material of Shin Buddhists, the primacy of compassion expressed in the metaphor of “heart” comes across as the religion’s vital core, central aim, and highest aspiration. It has been written that Imamura was a gentleman of great compassion, urging the Buddhist to make “his family, his community, and indeed the whole world an ‘abode of thankful souls.’”18 Heart is seen as radiating from the smallest constituent of the family to the larger frame of the world within the symbolic language of architecture. As with other Buddhist sects, Pure Land temples of every sort and denomination exist as community centers, as places where individuals and families can come to find spiritual solace in common culture and belief. That an appendix in the Tanabes’ Japanese Buddhist Temples in Hawai’i lists the number of families associated with each temple, indicates the crucial humanistic component latent in the building’s identity. As the Buddha of Infinite Life, the religious message of his Primal Vow is meant to place the well-being of human life on an outward path of an unbounded munificence. As the Buddha of Infinite

74  The Twentieth-Century Expansion of Architectonic Buddhism Life and Light, the image of Amida inside each Shin temple signifies the heart of the building. It radiates a spiritual light from within that can be seen not as a mere simulacra of a divinity, but an aesthetic representation of the deity’s emanating wisdom and compassion. Likewise, it is a warmhearted faith that is preached and practiced by a community of believers, who look to Amida’s radiant example within themselves. This internal dynamic is quite explicitly referenced in the exterior forms of the Honpa Hongwanji Hawaii Betsuin. Imamura’s stylistic decision to reference both Buddhism’s Eastern heritage and its imminent future in the West retains a spiritual as well as a didactic message. A relationship seems to exist between the overt stylistic statement expressed by the temple’s architecture and the manifest significance of uttering the nembutsu to Shin Buddhists. Style can refer to a certain form or appearance within a given taxonomy. This is true for both secular and ecclesiastical buildings. Yet, when style is implemented in such an intentional manner, as it is with the HHHB, it is clear that its external forms are meant to communicate or speak outward toward the observer. As one would imagine, the message would originate from the inner depths of the community’s spiritual beliefs. Just as the nembutsu is a bi-directional call for a compassionate heart, the intentional architecture here exhibits a similar vocative character. The structure can be understood to have a legibility that is meant to be visually read, as much as it inversely intends to call out or radiate its historical and spiritual correspondence. The stupa forms atop the building reinforce this interpretation. Although they do not contain a consecrated artifact traditionally understood as “activating” the monument, their deep religious heritage nevertheless still preserves their radiating efficacy, at least in terms of the aesthetic acquisition of the stupa’s auspicious form. In fact, the spiral structures positioned over the wings of the building allude to this outward-inwardness in their radial shape. Beginning at the bottom, the five winding circuits they describe symbolize Earth, Water, Fire, Wind, and Emptiness. In elevating importance, each element gradually rarefies to the major spiritual message of the Mahayana (śūnyatā), of the Buddha himself. The temple’s overall visual effect on the observer thereby represents a linguistic fluency that instructs the pious individual of the spiritual message at the heart of the building’s internal function, a major element of which is to practice and preach the nembutsu’s call to “take refuge” in Amida’s compassion, and his appeal to find it in the hearts of all beings. It is as if the building transmogrifies the linguistic nature of Amida’s Primal Vow, to a certain extent, into an architectural reality. Indeed, both the temple and the Vow are “places” of refuge for Shin Buddhist adherents, given the blended social and spiritual functions of the building. Imamura’s aesthetic vision for the Betsuin was highly influential toward subsequent temples in Hawaii. The Indian-Western style became a dominant design approach throughout the islands, with 74 percent of later

The Twentieth-Century Expansion of Architectonic Buddhism 75 buildings incorporating similarly eclectic elements.19 The Buddhist temples of Hawaii are striking in their diversity and beauty. Their prodigious concentration in the island state suggests the level at which the Japanese Buddhists have come to identify with the island in a very personal way since their arrival in the nineteenth century. To be sure, the Eastern elements of twentieth-century temples reference a clear affection for their native culture. Prominent Western scholars agree that “Buddhist temples have served as cultural centers for immigrant communities since the last century, and religious ritual offers frequent occasions for families to come together. Whether to honor the dead…or to reenact ceremonies of the giant temple complex in the old country, the immigrant community is reconstituted and reconnected in time and space to its roots—ancestors, buildings, monks, the king and the earth.”20 However, the existence of a smaller but startlingly rendered replica of the Byodo-in Temple outside Kyoto (a symbol of the Japanese nation) situated in the Valley of the Temples Memorial Park on O’ahu, testifies to how the Hawaiian Islands have become a new home for the Japanese. The memory of Japan may still sit in their hearts, but as Imamura’s social and architectural goals indicate, life now finds its future in the West. The kansho bell outside the main temple hall forms its sound.

Discovering New Horizons The two-volume book commemorating the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Buddhist Churches of America begins with a poem: reflections in our memories/mirrored like decoupage an issei pioneer like a snow-crested mountain stalwart/ageless strength/faith courage perseverance a legacy to emulate with quiet dignity pious/reciting namu amida butsu the heritage/discovery in amida’s guidance/gratitude buddha dharma sangha lengthening shadows envelop buddha’s doctrines a quest for truth the temple bell resounds/boldly/striking new horizons a pebble causes ripples/silent/fading rapidly a pebble causes ripples/giant links/the golden chain the temple bell/ echoes/discovering new horizons Written by Ruth Y. Honda, its title “discovering new horizons” is set as the text’s underlying theme.21 A short essay at the end of the book speaks about the need to remember the past as the organization looks toward the future. Bells are particularly poignant objects in this dynamic. The temple bell and its sound are used as a qualitative motif for the present. Its ring marks the transformation from the past as it moves into the future, the figurative and affective essence of a horizon. The Buddhist temple itself

76  The Twentieth-Century Expansion of Architectonic Buddhism is the locus of this transition, and the bell can be seen as a miniature replica of the larger building and its activity: its external configuration as a physical structure exists to create a radiating spiritual energy from within its internal space, one that possesses the ability to inspire and instruct on a level that transcends one’s material body in order to access the seed of enlightenment within. The poem also speaks of the heritage and legacy of Buddhism’s arrival on the continent, and the hardships that the first generation of immigrants (Issei) faced in the formation of a Buddhist presence in America. Thus, as with the Honpa Hongwanji Hawaii Betsuin, legacy, heritage, spirituality, and the dynamics of temple architecture all blend together in the history of the BCA. Hawaii is an important staging point for Buddhism’s emergence in the West, but the official move of Japanese Buddhism to the mainland in 1898 took place in the Gold Rush town of San Francisco, the same year that the Kingdom of Hawaii became a U.S. Territory. The Hongwanji in Kyoto initiated the Buddhist Mission to North America (BMNA) for the same reasons it fostered a presence in Hawaii, to provide spiritual support to an immigrant community lacking the institutional and cultural accouterments found in their native land. From 1898 through the end of World War II, the expansion of Buddhism and its attendant architecture in America is primarily one concerning the Japanese. While Japanese Zen and Shingon temples were built in California in the first decades of the twentieth century, the Pure Land BMNA remained the largest and most significant Buddhist organization, with temples primarily located on the west coast of the country. The organization grew rapidly. By 1931, nearly 12,000 families were associated with the BMNA.22 At the outbreak of World War II the group had established 44 temples throughout the United States. Chinese immigrants still resided in Chinatowns in major U.S. cities; however, overtly discriminatory legislation effectively stifled legal Chinese immigration to the States. This discrimination eventually transferred over to the Japanese. With large numbers of Japanese arriving in California at the turn of the twentieth century, groups like the Asiatic Exclusion League (1905), promoting the idea of a “Yellow Peril,” sought to extend the Chinese Exclusion acts to the Japanese and Koreans. President Roosevelt’s 1907 informal “Gentleman’s Agreement” saw Japan agree to stop its citizens from immigrating to the United States. Entry into the country was restricted to immediate family members, which caused the phenomena of the “picture bride” (shashin-kekkon) whereby women and children became the only Japanese allowed into the country.23 Nevertheless, the ensuing 1924 Immigration Act, referred to by some as the Oriental Exclusion Act, deliberately aimed to maintain a homogeneous Eurocentric population and eventually stymied legal Japanese immigration to the States altogether. The outbreak of World War II and full-fledged hostilities with Japan of course dramatically heightened the cultural differences at the root of

The Twentieth-Century Expansion of Architectonic Buddhism 77 much of this discrimination. Within this racially challenging environment, Buddhist temples in the United States were vital spaces of cultural and spiritual refuge. Looking back to the prewar years, the BCA notes that “The Buddhist church was foremost a temple to hear the Dharma, but its secondary role was a social gathering place.”24 For some Issei and Nisei (second generation) families, these temples were the only place where a connection to their native culture could be found. In fact, it was in the relocation camps constructed for Americans of Japanese heritage during the World War II that the BMNA changed its official name in order to mitigate prejudicial attitudes towards Buddhists in America. In May 1944, at the Topaz Relocation Center in Utah, the Buddhist Mission of North America officially adopted the organizational title of Buddhist Churches of America in order to “lift…the veil of foreignness cast over their religion.”25 The overall ambitions and beliefs of the BMNA remained intact. However, English became the prominent language to be used in conjunction with temple practices. “The aim was to make Buddhism more acceptable, more understandable, more inclusive of all Buddhist thoughts,” and “more adaptable” to the younger generation of followers.26 The desire to avoid discriminatory treatment had a significant effect on the design of some BCA buildings. While the first incorporated temple was the Buddhist Church of Sacramento (1901), the first ever branch of the Honpa Hongwanji was founded in San Francisco. Originally established in 1898 as the San Francisco Young Men’s Buddhist Association, the community became the Buddhist Church of San Francisco (BCSF) in 1905. It appears it was at that time that Reverend Koyu Uchida adopted the term “church” instead of temple in an attempt to close the cultural distance between Buddhism’s “Oriental-ness” and the organization’s American setting.27 These and other early temples in Fresno and Seattle also adopted the linguistic custom of using “church” instead of temple, and formed the backbone of the BCA’s growth in the following decades. Other strategies were employed to assuage Buddhism’s foreignness in an increasingly hostile environment. Referring to priests as “Reverends” was one way to “re-code” Buddhist liturgical practices for American absorption still in practice today.28 Another is the use of Protestant inspired pews and lecterns in the main hall (hondo). The BCSF is noteworthy for other reasons related to its construction and appearance. The present site dates from 1938, replacing an earlier building constructed in 1914 after the original structure was destroyed in the 1906 earthquake. The current building houses the only relics of the historical Buddha Shakyamuni and two of his main disciples in the Western world. The Emperor of Siam bequeathed the relics to the BMNA in 1935, and Bishop Kenju Masuyama and Reverend Shodo Tsunoda escorted them in formal procession to San Francisco. Given the important spiritual meaning attached to these artifacts, the decision was made to construct a suitable place to house them. As a result, the edifice built in 1914 was destroyed

78  The Twentieth-Century Expansion of Architectonic Buddhism in order to construct the current building. This was a significant event in the history of the BCA as well as in the story of Buddhist architecture in America for a number of reasons. The construction of the new building marked the moment when the Buddhist Church of San Francisco became the Mission Headquarters of the BMNA as a whole, since it was thought that the Holy Relics ought to be housed in the highest possible echelon of institutional authority. Moreover, the reason for destroying the 1914 building is interesting. Church records show that the building retained an impressive Greek Revivalist façade with Doric columns, gabled pediment, and classical inspired pilasters. Its overtly Western style was chosen to present the church, wholly in midst of the “Yellow Peril,” in the most acceptable and least threatening manner. It was this edifice that was deemed inadequate for the proper esteem needed to appropriately house the Holy Relics of Shaykamuni Buddha and his disciples. The existing building that replaced the classically-inspired temple, while quite a bit larger, is nevertheless conspicuously devoid of an overtly Western stylistic vocabulary. Indeed, the church does not appear to be a church of any kind, pagan, Christian, or Buddhist. Research into the architect’s reason for this lack of cultural reference reveals a similar purpose for constructing the 1914 building as a Greek temple. According to the former head minister of the BCSF, Reverend Ronald Kobata, architect Gentoku Shimamoto purposely designed the building to look like a non-descript storage facility, or storehouse, so as to avoid any prejudicial backlash.29 It seems that a building imbued with an explicit Western cultural legacy was not a suitable home for the physical remains of the Buddha, while at the same time an edifice of overtly Japanese heritage would not suffice in a hostile Western environment.30 Although the community forewent a traditional styled Japanese building, what was deemed acceptable to protect the relics was a traditional Buddhist reliquary placed on the roof of the BCSF’s new building. The Busshari Hoto, or “The Sacred Tower of the Holy Relics,” is an Indian-styled stupa constructed in conjunction with the two-story concrete church to house the bodily fragments of the Buddha, Shariputra, and Maudgalyayana (Figure 3.2). Busshari derives from the Sanskrit term Buddha-sarira (body), while Hoto refers to a receptacle for precious things, usually a pagoda (stūpa). The building supporting the stupa resists any precise or holistic stylistic characterization. Its hemispheric windows, broken pediments, and vaguely art deco façade help inflect Shimamoto’s nondescript “storage facility” design with a small degree of embellishment (Figure 3.3). The double-bloomed wisteria crest of the Hongwanji-ha (symbolizing humility, sincere reverence, and the family lineage of the faith’s founder) plainly visible above the front door is the only indication that the building may be more than a warehouse. That the structure is not out of place in its American setting validates the architect’s goal of creating a culturally unassuming building.

The Twentieth-Century Expansion of Architectonic Buddhism 79

Figure 3.2  Stupa Atop the Buddhist Church of San Francisco

Figure 3.3  Buddhist Church of San Francisco

80  The Twentieth-Century Expansion of Architectonic Buddhism The rooftop stupa is as equally inconspicuous as it can be. As the first organizationally sanctioned stupa in the United States, its shape and purpose are inherently non-Western.31 However, its continuity with the lower structure is maintained with an aesthetic symmetry between the Indian styled stupa’s rounded shape and the building’s semicircular windows, as well as originally painting the stupa in the same bland beige coloring of the church below (the building and stupa have since been repainted, but the point remains the same even with the new coloring shown here). In a sense, then, Shimamoto creates a “Western-Indian” style inversely proportional to Imamura’s “Indian-Western” style unique to Hawaii. Recall that the stupas on top of the Honpa Hongwanji Hawaii Betsuin lacked any relics, but were intended to retain an intentional, perspicuous function. On the other hand, the BCSF stupa contains the relics of the religion’s founder and can be easily overlooked amid the other buildings in its urban setting. In fact, a tall tree obscures its view from the street from some angles. Actually, this observation underscores an important fact concerning the stupa and its function. Large-scale stupas such as these are a valuable element of Buddhist religious practice, as circumambulating the sacred structure helps one in a spiritual capacity. Perched on the edge of a large metropolitan edifice, with no circumambulatory path present, it might be thought that the BCSF stupa’s primary function is visual or symbolic as it is with the HHHB. The concentric, radial profile of the twin stupas on either side of that building merely suggests the activity of circumambulation. Yet it should be noted that one can in fact perform a full ambulatory circuit around the BCSF stupa. A small interior path exists as one enters the reliquary through its front portal, which tracks the entire circumference of the monument. The implications of this seemingly small, but not insignificant feature correlate to the need that church leaders felt in constructing a new building to house the sacred artifacts. These relics firmly station the deep legacy of Buddhism’s history in the New World. They in effect “activate” the mundane structure into one that is infused with sacred import. Half measures or ad hoc structures would clearly not do given the historic and spiritual weight surrounding the arrival of such auspicious objects. A fully functioning sacred space was required to accommodate the holy relics. A new building to mark the dawn of a new age of Buddhism was needed. A “Sacred Tower of the Holy Relics” was therefore constructed. In the end, Shimamoto’s solution threaded the needle between religious belief and cultural sensitivity with delicate ingenuity. It is plain to see that the church sought to express the elements of its cultural heritage that derive from Buddhism’s historic origin by building a stupa whose form is manifestly Indian.32 The decision makes perfect sense given the Indian source of the relics it contains. Sino-Japanese, Tibetan, and Southeast Asian stupas each have a separate visual identity. In terms of the church building itself, the community of faith forewent a direct route of outwardly expressing tradition or allegiance, whether in terms of a Japanese shrine or even a Classical

The Twentieth-Century Expansion of Architectonic Buddhism 81 western temple. Instead, they coded their religious and cultural identity in the same way that they did with the linguistic adoption of “church” and “reverend,” as well as with the use of Protestant-inspired pews and lecterns. To build a temple’s exterior to resemble a storehouse is outwardly consistent with the free market capitalism immanent in the building’s immediate American setting. Yet, the concept of a “storehouse” is very much pregnant with deep emotional and doctrinal Buddhist implications, particularly within the Pure Land tradition of the Buddhist Church of San Francisco and the BCA as a whole. As discussed above, the central figure in Pure Land Buddhism is Amida, the Buddha of Infinite Light and Life. The story of Amida is told in the Larger Pure Land Sukhāvativyūha Sutra (literally, “The Magnificent Display of the Land of Bliss). In the text, Shakyamuni Buddha acts as an interlocutor mediating his presence in the present eon (kalpa) with the existence of a Pure Land of Bliss. The Buddha tells the story of the Bodhisattva Dharmakara’s pledge to save all beings and the resultant Land of Bliss made possible by the fulfillment of his Vow. In this regard, Reverend Kobata’s comments about Shimamoto’s design are tremendously salient: When I heard this anecdote about the history behind the temple’s façade it brought to mind a name from the Larger Sutra that refers to Dharmakara Bodhisattva, Hozo-Bosatsu in Japanese, which translates into English as “Dharma Storehouse.” On this basis I thought how appropriate that our structure that houses both the sacred relics of the historical Buddha and his disciples, and is the spiritual home that is the BCSF, as well as the flag-ship temple of the BCA, was designed to look like and be a Storehouse of the Dharma. A storehouse’s function is to preserve and protect its contents; it’s a repository of artifacts from the past that will provide an enduring sense of timeless value to the future.33 Thus, we see how Shimamoto succeeds in expressing tradition and belief in a stylistically sensitive but doctrinally potent manner. Once aware of its veiled meaning, one can sense how the symbolic strength of the design corroborates the almost brute presence the structure projects. What appears to be a storehouse is in fact a storehouse, but one that houses spiritual instead of material goods of value. Its existence in an initially difficult foreign environment was there to preserve Japanese culture and protect the members of the community. The quote above verifies that the relics of the past, housed as they are in a distinct bell-shaped structure that is just as much a part of the building it sits on top of (indeed, at the time of its construction, some conceived of the building as essentially the base of the stupa), is the force continually bridging “new horizons” for the church. According to Reverend Kobata, the shape of the stupa mimics that of an inverted Buddhist alms bowl as well, further grounding the stupa, its relics, and the community’s heritage in its traditional past. As the Reverend further asserts,

82  The Twentieth-Century Expansion of Architectonic Buddhism “Obviously the BCSF is not just a building…what makes it a ‘home’ is determined by the actions of the occupant(s).”34 One might also state that the intended “actions” of the building also contribute to its humanistic import. Just as the Indian Buddha Shakyamuni tells the story of Amida Buddha’s Pure Land in the Larger Sutra, the building itself tells a story, with its Indian stupa acting as interlocutor explicating the spiritual space at the heart of the church building qua storehouse: the hondo, with its own “magnificent display” of the Land of Bliss. Indeed, stupas are structures meant to symbolize the Buddha’s body and his teachings in architectural form. Therefore, coded within the building’s frame lie foundational principles and shared values that make the church a Church, or in other words, that make the building a home for its spiritual community.

Little Tokyo—Two Temples Little Tokyo sits in the shadow of downtown Los Angeles’ towering ultramodern architecture. Yet the expressive heart of the community lies in the past, in a nomenclature and pathos most visibly communicated by the traditional Buddhist temples located within the urban Japanese enclave. As one of only three official Japantowns (nihonmachi) in the United States, Little Tokyo presents a unique experience for those interested in Buddhist architecture and humanistic space in an American context. The Pure Land Nishi Hongwanji (Figure 3.4) and the Higashi Honganji

Figure 3.4  Nishi Hongwanji Los Angeles Betsuin

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Figure 3.5  Los Angeles Higashi Honganji Buddhist Temple

(Figure 3.5) Buddhist Churches exemplify the meanings and ideas immanent in the community’s spatial configurations.35 Located half a mile from each other, the Nishi and Higashi churches retain large conspicuous roofs that heroically communicate their Eastern cultural heritage. Modeled in varying degrees on traditional temples in Japan, these buildings nevertheless coexist with contemporary Western structures in distinction but without contradiction. Materials from Japan such as tiles, statues, and texts, in addition to trained ministers from the homeland, sanctify these buildings for spiritual use. Their exterior design and interior artifacts point to a deep emotion and nostalgia surrounding their religiosity and physical existence. They exhibit a level of sentiment and tradition that Little Tokyo itself embodies, and still exists within, the souls of many of its eldest residents. As we have seen, the advent of industrial modernism in the nineteenth century brought into focus a number of cultural binaries that persist today,

84  The Twentieth-Century Expansion of Architectonic Buddhism such as the material and the spiritual, the Eastern and Western, and the modern and traditional. The Nishi and Higashi temples and their locality also draw attention to notions of space and place, the sacred and profane, the inner and outer, and the vertical and the horizontal with respect to the architectural configurations of the neighborhood. Such dualities transition into dichotomies when considered as opposites, if contemplated as contrary conditions from the external vantage point of objective assessment. However, lived experience is subjective in nature. Individuals and communities frame their personal and collective identities in narratives that derive from internal perspectives. Cultural binaries no longer hold as extremities on the ground level of daily life. The example of nihonmachi Los Angeles highlights how such “opposites pairs” (in Tuan’s conception) merge within the lived experience of an environment, as the dualities embedded in the community resolve into one holistic experience with respect to cultural memory, history, and religious faith. The two Pure Land Buddhist churches are a crucial part of this dynamic. It is important to emphasize that these binary relationships stem from the community itself, and are not imposed externally via scholarly investigation. For example, the traditionalism of the horizontally-configured Nishi and Higashi churches sits in stark contrast both in style and materials with the nearby modern vertically-oriented skyscrapers a mile or so away. Each was designed with a distinct set of aesthetic and cultural values that inherently contrast with one another. Yet, in recognizing these distinguishing characteristics, one understands that these binary elements do not militate against each other, but actually inform one’s experience through their differences. The ethnocultural context of Little Tokyo merges with the religious nature of its Buddhist temples to create an overwhelming sense of place. Although the Japanese began to populate the West Coast around the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the community’s historical and emotional epicenter rests in the 1940s, with the traumatic removal and incarceration of thousands of Japanese Americans during World War II. Even the briefest research into the American Buddhist experience during the twentieth century reveals how traumatic the Japanese internment during World War II was to the Buddhist communities in the United States.36 With the onset of wartime hostilities brought about by the attack on Pearl Harbor, Japanese Americans became instant targets of suspicion, racism, and persecution. As the vast majority of Japanese Americans were Buddhists, the effect on these religious communities was quite severe. President Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066 saw over 120,000 individuals of Japanese ancestry from the West Coast and Hawaii forcibly removed from their homes and incarcerated in ten internment camps throughout the West from 1942–1945. The largest with the harshest setting was the Heart Mountain Relocation Center in Northern Wyoming. Nearly all of its inhabitants were from Los Angeles. The Japanese neighborhood in the

The Twentieth-Century Expansion of Architectonic Buddhism 85 city became a virtual ghost town seemingly overnight. An ongoing exhibition at the Japanese American National Museum (JANM) in Little Tokyo entitled “Common Ground: The Heart of the Community” presents the life and hardships that Japanese Americans endured at the hands of the U.S. Government in explicit detail. Although steps were made to create a workable “city,” the living arrangements, political injustice, and natural terrain made captivity an unbearable situation. A written statement by the government attempted to couch their internment in the patriotic language of American history. It refers to the detainees as “colonists” and states, “Self-government will be practiced to the greatest extent possible.”37 Of course, neither propaganda nor the best efforts of the Japanese to deal with the circumstances could mitigate the gloom and humiliation of forced confinement. One of the first things that confined Japanese citizens did in this dire situation was to establish a Buddhist church. Reverend Reichi Mohri of the Los Angeles Nishi Honjwanji established the Heart Mountain Buddhist Church in August 1942.38 With nothing but a sign to indicate its presence among the multiplicity of identical quarters, it is an event that mirrors the creation of early Buddhist churches in America as asylums of spiritual protection in a difficult foreign environment. Indeed, communities from what was soon to be called the BCA formed churches inside all ten of the relocation camps. Internment images from the “Common Ground” exhibition at Little Tokyo’s JANM are striking in their personality. Family portraits are combined with everyday objects charged with intensified meaning from the concentration camps. The photos paint an uneasy picture of domestic life within military-style barracks surrounded by barbed wire. Leisure time sports on makeshift schoolyards show smiles of excitement upon the faces of women whose eyes nevertheless betray depths of resentment. The detainees were eventually permitted to conduct kabuki dance performances and observe the annual Bon Odori holiday (Obon), an extremely important holiday to the Japanese immigrant community. The festival is one that seeks to save the souls of ancestors from misery in the afterlife. In order to merit salvation, seven past generations are said to return home during the days of Obon. The notion of returning home would of course be a sentiment close to the hearts of an immigrant community enduring unjust hardships in a foreign land they sought to make their home. These events, together with the religious activities of the church, helped form a pallid buffer of cultural protection of sorts, amid the desolate physical and psychological landscape of incarceration. In the specific setting of Little Tokyo, the physical existence of the Nishi and Higashi churches today signifies a desire to keep alive the nonphysical memory of its cultural and religious heritage, one made keenly significant during the harsh treatment of Japanese Americans after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. While the City of Los Angeles sometimes characterizes the community as multi-cultural, the area is hermetic enough for one to feel like

86  The Twentieth-Century Expansion of Architectonic Buddhism a foreigner while walking down its streets. Indeed, the words, “Immigrants wanted to have a community where they would feel comfortable with their native tongue” chiseled on a prominent sidewalk underscore this feeling.39 Around the corner, a 40-foot wide semicircular memorial—the “Go For Broke Monument”—commemorates the sacrifices of “… young Japanese American soldiers from Hawaii, the States [and] America’s concentration camps …” who fought in Europe and the Pacific during World War II. A total of 16,131 names are etched on its surface. The monument stands as a deeply moving testimonial to the hardships and dedication of the Nisei fighters and their families. Both the incised names on the “Go For Broke Monument” and sidewalk inscription linguistically express an emotive-historical sentiment that is utterly sincere in its secular/patriotic essence and unassailably affecting in its literal impact. Just down the street from the sidewalk inscription, a tall 55-foot traditional fire watchtower (yagura) stands pointedly at the entrance of the Japanese Village Plaza. The structure is a symbolic marker of cultural identity. As a rural artifact from the homeland set amid the bustle of a contemporary city, it is an homage and deferential symbol of the community’s ethnic heritage. In small villages, a watchtower’s height and function imbued the structure with associations of security and local identity. Its placement in Little Tokyo fulfills the same purpose. The vertical stature of the traditional “Yagura Tower” is of course less impressive than, say, the contemporary 53-floor 777 Tower two miles away. However, given its context amid the history of Little Tokyo’s Japanese Americans, its cultural stature is far greater than the difference in their height might imply. Erected in 1978, the watchtower stands as a symbolic barbican, guarding against the social injustices of the past. Together, the street inscription, monument, and watchtower form the heart of an aesthetic, social, and emotionally infused space. The Nishi and Higashi churches are located in meaningful proximity with these cultural signifiers (as are the Koyasan and Zenshuji Buddhist temples), and thus work in unison with respect to the community’s humanistic character. The Los Angeles Higashi and Nishi churches belong to the Jodo Shinshu Buddhist sect, which originated with the thirteenth-century teachings of Shinran Shonin. Recall that in 1602, the Tokugawa Shogunate split the then unified Hongwanji into two entities, the Higashi (East) and Nishi (West) Hongwanji. The two are separated politically but not spiritually, as each espouse the core beliefs of the Pure Land sect centered on Amida Buddha’s “Primal Vow.” The Higashi temple traces its history back to 1904, “with the vision of Reverend Junjyo Izumida, the founding priest from Japan,” but was established officially as a Honganji branch in 1921.40 The church moved a number of times in the twentieth century before settling into the present building in 1976, designed by Hayhiko Takase. Temple publications state that the Higashi church’s roof design was inspired in part by the famous eighth-century Tōdaiji temple in Nara.41 According to the temple,

The Twentieth-Century Expansion of Architectonic Buddhism 87 its mune-zukuri style is the first of its kind built in the United States. The entire roof is constructed with traditional gawara tiles shipped from Japan at great expense. Municipal fire codes prevented the Higashi church building from being constructed completely of wood, as Tōdaiji. However, specially crafted golden shibi gawara tiles placed at each end of the ridge of the roof augment the auspiciousness of the building, as the same type of golden tiles are found on Tōdaiji temple as well. Together, the gawara tiles shipped from Japan, the ornamental Tōdaiji-inspired shibi gawaras capping the ridge-line, and the mune-zukuri roof design are features meant to uniquely certify the building’s Japanese heritage. They establish a direct spiritual and architectural lineage from the cultural depths of Japanese history. The existing Nishi Hongwanji Buddhist Church, designed by Y. Tom Makino and Toshiaki Miura, dates from 1969, and is considered by many to be the heart of Little Tokyo. It was patterned after the Hongwanji temple in Hiroshima, as that is where a great many of the church’s Issei members originated from prior to the Second World War.42 The Nishi temple incorporates roof tiles both imported from Japan and purchased from local dealers. Founded in 1905 in a makeshift building on Jackson Street, the community moved into a new building on First Street and Central Avenue in 1925, which is right across the street from the present day watchtower and the Japanese Village Plaza. In 1931, it became the first temple in America to be designated as Betsuin (an official subsidiary branch of the mother temple in Kyoto serving as a headquarters for the other churches in the district). This earlier temple retains an impressive Japanese style entrance gate (karamon) placed above its front portal (Figure 3.6), a unique and seminal feature of Buddhist architecture in America at the time. Gates such as these signify a transition from a profane to a sacred space, and define the building externally as unassailably Japanese. This oriental element is integrated with Western-based motifs, such as its Art Deco brick façade with Egyptian pilasters topped with lotus capitals, a popular motif of the era.43 In the Buddhist tradition, the lotus flower is a symbol of purity and enlightenment. In fact, there are four lotus-topped pilasters visually “supporting” the roof, a number that notably corresponds to the Four Noble Truths that are the supporting foundation of Buddhist belief. This newer building, together with its traditional architectural entry, helped solidify the community’s claim as an important Branch/District location. The placement of these elements together demonstrates the dual goal of culturally assimilating into American life as well as highlighting the spiritual message embedded in the building’s function as a Buddhist temple. As the building’s restorer James McElwain claims of the structure: “Souls of their motherland and American materials—this is a building so much like America, the land of immigrants.”44

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Figure 3.6  Karamon in Front of the 1925 Nishi Buddhist Temple

When researching churches such as these, one is struck with the amount of portraits that adorn the walls. It is what imbues these places with a palpable sense of home and humanity. The images of important Buddhist figures such as Shinran, Rennyo, and Prince Shotoku are of course venerated, but they appear as family portraits when seen amid the other names and pictures of important people to the community. When speaking with community members, one almost gets the impression that they knew these ancient personages, albeit in a vicarious way. In fact, according to temple officials the monshus (head priests) of both the Nishi and Higashi come from the Ohtani family, which are said to be direct blood descendants of Shinran Shonin, the religion’s founder. Their photos are very modestly hung on the walls in the main hall of virtually every Shin temple, as if in a living room of someone’s home. Outside of the main hall of the Los Angeles Nishi Betsuin, the beautifully enshrined names of specific individuals who died fighting for America are placed in proximity to photos of locally sponsored baseball teams. If a visitor allows the environment to settle into his or her subjective sensibilities, the overall feeling one gets is of a domestic space of proud parents honored by their family history.

The Twentieth-Century Expansion of Architectonic Buddhism 89 An act of dāna took place at the present-day Nishi Betsuin (the Buddhist concept of dāna refers to the “generosity of spirit,” an honest expression of charity and selfless giving) when Hideya Chiji painted and then donated to the church eight murals depicting the life of Shakyamuni Buddha. Completed on May 16, 1971, the brightly colored paintings adorn the side walls of the gejin portion of the main hall that faces opposite the raised altar area. The gift was truly one of human sentiment and selfless giving. According to Chiji, it was a sudden and intensely personal moment of inspiration that led him to conceive of the three-year project: “The inner causes and conditions which bring forth certain effects do work in a strange way, especially to us who are living within the bounds of time and space. It is beyond our prediction. It was an inconceivable occurrence…”45 Events such as the gifted murals help explain how such an effusive and ceremonial environment can simultaneously hold a private and meaningful place in a believer’s mentality. Indeed, the city of Los Angeles designated the earlier Nishi temple on First Street and Central Avenue (1925) as an official landmark in 1986. The building eventually became the home of the Japanese American National Museum in 1992, which currently sits opposite the museum’s new pavilion opened in 1999 that houses the “Common Ground” exhibit. That the 1925 Nishi Hongwanji church was used as a venue to document the cultural adversities and celebrations of the Japanese reveals the close spiritual connection between Buddhist belief, ethnic sentiment, and architectural expression. Indeed, the 1925 Nishi temple now houses the “Go For Broke National Education Center,” whose major exhibit sits where the altar once stood, the sacred heart of the former temple.

Gateway to the Top of the World When researching Buddhist architecture, what becomes very clear is that the roof of a religious structure is extremely important in communicating a building’s meaning. The Honpa Hongwanji Betsuin Hawaii and the BCSF stupa demonstrate how the space on top of a building can be an important area of architectonic discourse. As the uppermost point of an edifice, the roof signifies its zenith or pinnacle, which retains fertile symbolic qualities that have the capacity to represent the activities below its summit in the highest possible manner. In the Asian religious tradition in general, roofs can be seen as cultural monikers, evocative of mountain landscapes—as places where the gods exist—and even transitional gates between sacred and profane spaces as they govern the vertical transition between heaven and earth. At issue with respect to this study is the transitional rapport between the simultaneous large and small-scale forces at work in Buddhist architecture, or what we might call “cultural scale,” where the roof plays an important role. Cosmically oriented large-scale structures can also exist as deeply intimate spaces of spiritual discovery. In many cases, the broader natural world is summoned through symbolic means to connect one’s inner

90  The Twentieth-Century Expansion of Architectonic Buddhism mentality, aspirations, and personal struggles to a place of psychological tranquility amid the chaotic forces of larger human society. Design strategies are often geared toward the loftier concept of space in the generation of what ends up being at the same time a profoundly private place for many individuals, who find a home in a given religion’s teachings and the buildings used to express it. Similarly, individuals frequently band together in communal accord to donate and raise funds in order to build a temple for the benefit of the entire community of faith. The act of building itself, while collective in nature, is generally seen as benefiting each person in the church individually, as well as the congregation as a whole. The polar extremes of this informal dialectic between the small and the large scale in Buddhist architecture collapse in a bifold manner, as they open a door to a holistic synthesis in terms of the human heart. The idea of protection is a major theme in understanding how design and belief correlate with respect to the cultural scale of Buddhist architecture in America. This was true of the nineteenth century Chinese Joss Houses as much as it was for the Japanese Buddhist Church of San Francisco in the early twentieth century. In terms of the protective features of a building, architecturally enclosed space in general is used to cordon off an area for use. This separation is usually intended to create a barrier of security or delineation to one degree or another. However, it is only when a roof is placed over an enclosed space that its sheltering effect is maximized. The most primal function of a roof is to shield those under its protection from the harsh elements of nature. Over time and with an increased sophistication of design, in most cultures roofs became identified with the symbolic elements of shelter and protection as well. Political and religious regimes ultimately propagated this symbolism to equate their buildings and governments with the protective characteristics of architecture. In the Asian architectural tradition, large roofs signify wealth, power, and social standing. They imply a great space beneath them and the concomitant ability of their creators to shelter those under their grace of security, whether politically, culturally, or spiritually.46 In the case of Japanese Buddhists in America, as the difficulties of living in the United States increased as the twentieth century progressed, the shelter of the Buddhist church took on a progressively greater meaning as well. A 1915 pamphlet claims that even tepid followers of the Buddha (in Denver) found sanctuary in these places: “Although [they] may not have had a zealous faith burning in their hearts, they must have been very lonesome. Consequently, when they heard the Teachings of Buddhism, their hearts must have been as refreshed as the dry desert is by the gentle rains.”47 With the end of World War II, Japanese Americans began the arduous task of reassembling the pieces of a normal life. Closed Buddhist churches reopened and became vital sanctuaries of reassimilation for many dislocated people. Because churches were one of the few places where the Japanese minority could congregate as a foreign ethnicity, sites such as these became—and

The Twentieth-Century Expansion of Architectonic Buddhism 91 remain—places of collective solace, playing the dual role of both sacred spaces and cultural places. In both the Nishi and Higashi sites, social and religious functions fold upon one another in a spiritual blending that takes place within buildings imbibed with the overwhelming sense of personal and cultural refuge. Indeed, the same can be said of Shin Buddhist churches in general. This is one way that the structures embody the spiritual refuge so central to Shin belief in its practice of reciting the nembutsu: Namu Amida Butsu, “I take refuge in Amida Buddha.” Many elements of traditional Japanese roofs appear to merge into the symbolic and cultural ideas of Shin Buddhist belief as they relate to notions of protection. One of the earliest Japanese roof forms derives from single story minka structures, which literally means “people’s house.” The form thus retains an inherent connotation of home that, as we have seen, has been the manner in which Buddhists have emotionally connected to their temples in America. Minka roofs are characterized by shape in terms of their resemblance to forms that relate to the human body. For example, the kabuto-zukuri profile is named as such because of its likeness to the helmet placed on a warrior’s head. Yet it is the gasshō-zukuri style that is of interest here (Figure 3.7). Ostensibly a secular domestic structure, the term means “hand-clasp style” insofar as its long, steep sloping sides resemble a pair of hand pressed together in prayer (gasshō).48

Figure 3.7  Example of the gasshō-zukuri Style, minka Farm House, Shirakawa-go, Gifu Prefecture, Japan

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Figure 3.8  Arizona Buddhist Church, Phoenix Arizona

The suffix zukuri means “to make or create.” When conjoined with gasshō, the phrase therefore means “to create a hand-clasp [form].” The simple gable roof protects the building from collapsing under the weight of heavy snow or pooling water, as the precipitation is guided to the ground by its high pitch. As we will see, when employed in a religious structural context, as seen in the Arizona Buddhist Church in Phoenix for instance (Figure 3.8), the prominent roof form unifies the emotions of a domestic home and the protective function of shelter symbolically with the deep cultural sentiments attached to Buddhism’s spiritual presence in Japan. Gasshō is an integral part of Jodo Shinshu temple etiquette and belief. It is seen universally by Shin Buddhists as a “natural expression of reverence and gratitude.”49 The term is used ubiquitously in religious services and written correspondences. Gratitude for Amida Buddha’s compassion, and reverence for the heartfelt gift of the nembutsu are communicated at every official occasion. According to organizational pamphlets, placing the hands in gasshō in conjunction with Buddhist prayer beads (o-nenju) encircled correctly around them symbolizes respect, Dharma, and oneness. The simplicity of the hand gesture correlates to that of the simple gasshōzukuri architectural style; however, as with the homes that exist underneath these roofs, a depth of meaning permeates the enclosed space it articulates. The simple gesture is a representation of the deepest aspirations and innermost feelings of Shin Buddhists. In a written Dharma Talk, Reverend Ken Yamada of the Berkeley Higashi Honganji temple states: I heard of a group of American junior Youth Buddhist Association (Jr. YBA) students who visited Japan. One day they took a trip to Hiroshima to visit the Atomic bomb museum. If you’ve ever seen the

The Twentieth-Century Expansion of Architectonic Buddhism 93 memorial, you know that it can be a moving and emotional experience. The museum tells the story of how during World War II the United States dropped an atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima in Japan. In a flash, the entire city was destroyed and many thousands of people died, including many children. As the teenagers looked at the memorial, tears started to well in their eyes. Then someone started to gassho. One by one, they put their hands together in gassho, quietly bowing their heads. How else could they express their thoughts and feelings about what they saw and what they felt…50 The triangular hand-clasped gasshō-zukuri form is found on the hippedgable roof of the Los Angeles Nishi Hongwanji Betsuin and many other BCA temples. The form’s organizational and representational importance is reinforced in that it is also found on the Nishi headquarters in Kyoto. Architecturally and culturally, its material appearance on the Buddhist temple roof suggests the shelter of home (minka). Spiritually, it intimates the protective place where Shin Buddhist’s take refuge; it helps symbolically communicate the reverence and gratitude at the heart of the organization’s spiritual beliefs (gasshō). With respect to this last claim, it is unclear to what extent the structural use of the gasshō-zukuri form on the roof of a Japanese Buddhist temple is an intentional reference to the religious use of hands set in gasshō. Simple gables and the praying hands gesture are universal to human societies. Moreover, cultural signifiers tend to get handed down as a matter of tradition somewhat systematically (we see hipped-gable roofs in China, for example), and as a result, original meanings can get absorbed into social custom and obscured over time. But what seems to have taken place is that at some point the universal gable form became symbolically associated with the praying hands gesture as a function of cultural tradition and visual resemblance in the Japanese villages where the gasshōzukuri form predominated. In other words, the gabled gasshō-zukuri form became incorporated with Japanese Buddhist architecture inasmuch as it came to signify traditional Japanese architectural and cultural practice, as seen in the minka structures across the country. This is important because it helped identify and establish Buddhism, a foreign religious import, with traditional Japanese life and custom. Indeed, the structural form is also found on Shinto temples, which also further connected the newer Buddhist faith with Japan’s much older indigenous religion. In my view, the use of gasshō in Buddhist spiritual expression and the gasshō-zukuri roof form’s use in Buddhist temple architecture can be seen as embodiments of the deep emotional, cultural, and religious correspondence between the two communicative practices vis-a-vis the fulcrum of tradition. The Hongwanji wisteria crest is placed prominently amid the triangular gable on the L.A. Nishi church and others (or sometimes a dharma wheel) further reinforces the form's semantic importance to the religious structure, since the wisteria crest— with its two branches coming together in a downward reverent manner—is identified with gasshō, according to the community.

94  The Twentieth-Century Expansion of Architectonic Buddhism The pinnacle and pitch of the gasshō-zukuri roof became augmented as time passed to include elaborately constructed extended eaves. The intricate distended eaves of Japanese roofs are the most recognizable element of Asian architecture, originating in China. Their upturned edges often showcase the complex bracketing system used to construct them, and verify that the outer shell and inner workings of a temple are not intended to be considered separately. In this way the inside and outside are visually connected and are meant to be understood as a single unit,51 underscoring the spiritual connection between the inner beliefs and external structure of a building. In terms of architecture such as the L.A. Nishi temple, the triangular gasshō shape arising from the depths of Japanese culture blends together with its sweeping eaves to create the sense of a mountain, which is significant. The correlation between mountains and noble architecture has a long history in Asia, as many important castles and temples were built either upon them and/or in visual accord with the surrounding landscape. Indeed, many Japanese castles bear a striking resemblance to a mountain.52 Some of the most spectacular temples and castles in the country are set on high terrain, situated to convey authority and provide protection in their defensibility and panoramic view. Their multistory configurations symbolize the mountainous terrain of Japan, which the buildings’ shape evokes. Himeji Castle in Hyōgo Prefecture is an excellent example of this type. Mountains retain a spiritual quality that many Buddhists utilize as an elemental aspect of their spiritual practice,53 insofar as a mystical syllogism between the outside world and one’s interior state of being can obtain. Monasteries are often set in isolated mountain areas, which aid in fostering clarity of mind and engendering a compassionate heart through environmental beauty, both in Asia and in the United States. Shambala Mountain Center in Colorado, Shasta Abbey Monastery near Mt. Shasta in Northern California, Tassajara Zen Mountain Center outside San Francisco, and Odiyan Buddhist Retreat in Sonoma County California come to mind in this regard (in fact, the main temple at Odiyan is called “Copper Mountain Mandala.”). When the mountain concept is implemented in such a religious capacity, a building’s protective function moves beyond the mundane task of shielding one from weather, and can take on symbolic meanings, such as conveying security, nobility, authority, or lineage. Indeed, as discussed in Chapter 1, Buddhist scriptures continually evoke mountain imagery (i.e., spiritual heights) to reference heritage (e.g., Vulture Peak or Mt. Sumeru). In Buddhist structures, quite frequently eave ends are decorated with ornamental edges bearing a lotus blossom, a chakra, or providential Sanskrit letters. These ornamented corners retain a defensive and demarcative purpose that, according to some scholars, “emphasizes the defining border, protecting the space from profane outsiders, announcing (and symbolizing) the truth, and (like an image of a Buddha in an altar in an image-hall) transforming the architecture into a local manifestation of the divine.”54

The Twentieth-Century Expansion of Architectonic Buddhism 95 In addition to the gasshō-zukuri form, the L.A. Nishi Betsuin exhibits another important stylistic element that correlates to the beliefs and heritage of the community. While traditional Japanese architecture finds it origin in China, the inverted “U” shape found on many of their roofs is referred to as an undulating bargeboard or subtle arch (karahafu), and identifies the structure as Japanese,55 as the Chinese architectural tradition does not historically include this feature. In addition to its role as a cultural moniker, its curvilinear form is thought to imbue the façade of a structure with an aesthetic elegance, thereby intensifying the building’s distinction and auspiciousness. The karahafu is an important symbolic feature seen on other Jodo Shinshu temples in one form or another. It was incorporated into the design of the present L.A. Nishi Betsuin’s church that dates from 1969, which stylistically references the large karamon from their previous building of 1925 (see Figure 3.6.). The Higashi Honganji church building (1976) also includes a karahafu roofline, although its protuberance is less prominent than the one found on the Nishi Bestuin.56 The Los Angeles Koyasan Shingon Buddhist Temple that lies hidden between the Nishi and Higashi Hongwanji temples also retains a karamon entrance gate. The Shingon (or esoteric) sect is not affiliated with the Hongwanji, which demonstrates how the undulating form speaks to a temple’s Japanese heritage regardless of denomination. In fact, ad hoc karahafu forms could be found in the World War II internment camps, further attesting to the architectural form’s importance to Japanese heritage.57 As a transitional gate, the karahafu form symbolically preserves the shift between the sacred and profane realms. It denotes the space as an auspicious one, and points directly to Japan’s early architecture. Its historical pedigree goes back to Japan’s famous architectural achievements, including Nagoya Castle (seventeenth century), Tōdaiji Temple in Nara (eighth century), and possibly a shrine in the monastic complex of Horyuji (early seventh century), where the oldest wooden structures in the world exist.58 This concern for architectural ancestry references the reverence placed on one’s ancestry common to Japanese culture, and Asian traditions more broadly. Indeed, according to its temple historian, the design of the current Nishi Bestuin in Los Angeles was patterned after the Hongwanji temple in Hiroshima, as that is where a great many of the church’s Issei originated from prior to the Second World War.59 The concern for architectural lineage is an important characteristic in understanding Japanese Buddhist sacred space, for it parallels the concomitant importance of spiritual lineage at the core of their churches’ form and function. The significance of architecture to—in this instance—Pure Land belief is quite explicitly represented in the highly ornate altar space (o-naijin) that is the inner sanctuary of Jodo Shinshu temples. Figure 3.9 is a photograph of the BCSF altar. As the home temple of the BCA, it represents an especially striking example that can be used to explicate the altar spaces of Shin temples in

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Figure 3.9  O-naijin Altar, Buddhist Church of San Francisco

general. Usually raised upon a stage or platform opposite the outer world of pews and people (gejin), the altar area includes the golden image of Amida, an image of the sects founder Shinran Shonin, and an important descendent of Shinran named Rennyo Shonin. This standardized structural arrangement is consistent to virtually every Jodo Shinshu church. Lineage and heritage are reinforced in that the objects within the altar area are made almost exclusively of wood, a material that has a long and hallowed legacy in Japanese society going back to the indigenous Shinto belief system. The relationship between Jodo Shinshu religious belief and the structures created to express it becomes manifest and explicit as one beholds the altar space of its churches. For the central feature of the altar area is an architectural framework, one that generally incorporates both the gasshō-zukuri and karahafu forms. The o-naijin shrine is the expressive and symbolic heart of the church as community and as a building, andthe spiritual focal point of Shin Buddhist belief. The central object (gohonzon) is typically a gilt wood statue of Amida on a lotus flower surrounded by radiant golden striations within an elaborate structural apparatus. This shrine building (Kuden) is designed to resemble a traditional Japanese palace, underscoring the spiritual nobility of the Buddha’s teachings and those who practice it, and its elevating character within an earthly setting. The shrine building is decorated with ornaments that represent the attainment of nobility through noble deeds, as well as chrysanthemum-laden lamps that signify enlightenment. The entire central shrine is raised upon a dais symbolic of Mt. Sumeru, the cosmic center of

The Twentieth-Century Expansion of Architectonic Buddhism 97 the Buddhist universe. The intricacy of the space is intentional and emotive, as it is meant to communicate the limitless, boundless, and effulgent benevolence of Amida and his realm. The shrine’s golden brilliance is meant to radiate Amida’s compassionate call from the Western Paradise. Its appeal is an emotional one, rooted in a poetic sentiment consistent with the linguistic expressions and sense of place found in Little Tokyo mentioned above. Bishop Kodo Umeza of the BCA writes, The call is the voice from our true and real home, the Pure Land. If we have no home to return to, our lives will be spent wandering aimlessly. Only when we find that our home is everyone’s home can we look at each other as fellow brothers and sisters, parents and grandparents, and live with love and respect for one another. Let us keep our temples and churches close to us, continue to hear the nembutsu teachings with our friends, and live our lives praising the virtues of Amida Buddha.60 Returning to the Nishi Hongwanji Los Angeles Betsuin, its pointed roof sits like a majestic mountaintop, the heights of which its traditional shape alludes, matching the elevated spirit and activities of the believers inside. The roof combines the gasshō-zukuri form—whose sides reference two hands placed to together in prayer (gasshō)—and the traditional karahafu entrance gate, the arch of which emblematically marks the transition between the sacred world within from the profane world outside. In this instance, the amalgamation of these two external structural entities mimics—in both spiritual and architectural effigy—the architectural framework of the Kuden palace within inner o-naijin world of the temple, reinforcing the cultural heritage and spiritual heart of the Buddhist community in architectonic form. The internal Kuden palace of Jodo Shinshu altars sometimes houses a calligraphic depiction of the nembutsu in place of a statue of Amida, supporting the idea that the palace also symbolizes his compassionate call to embrace his realm. The architecture of the shrine area is relatively small, which should not be interpreted as diminutive, but rather reflecting an inner, personal space. When understood in reference to the larger building within which it is housed, the scaling effect from smaller to greater is a radiate one: like the progressively larger ripples that spread out from a small stone cast in a pond, or of a soundwave emanating outward in broader circles from the center of a ringing bell. It is emblematic of the nembutsu embedded in the hearts and minds of the Shin Buddhist. For reciting “Namu Amida Butsu” is not a petitionary prayer or sacred mantra, but both an outward expression of inner gratitude to Amida and his compassionate call from the Western Paradise, implicating the inner soul and outer space of the faithful: Amida Buddha is not the object I am calling, rather the subject who calls me. It transforms the ordinary and mundane into the path of awakening. Nembutsu enriches our lives with deep spiritual connection and makes every moment special, manifesting the Pure Land here and now.61

98  The Twentieth-Century Expansion of Architectonic Buddhism Shin Buddhists continually emphasize gratitude and humility with respect to Amida’s gift of the Western Paradise. In the Pure Land tradition, this means allowing his wisdom and grace into one’s heart. This state of mind is wrapped up in the important concept of shinjin, “entrusting in the heart and mind of Amida.”62 It ultimately entails the unification—or bringing together—of Amida’s wisdom and compassion into one’s soul, which is then likewise filled with wisdom and compassion. Hence the gasshō or “praying hands” shape of so many of the BCA roofs and altar areas becomes legible. Bringing one’s hands together in gasshō symbolizes the unity of oneself with the Buddha and is the highest form of respect. Its importance is made apparent in the wisteria crest that is the symbol of the BCA, whose branches come together to symbolize humility, sincere reverence, and the family lineage of the faith’s founder.

The Pure Land The lavishly ornamental space of the o-naijin world is a symbolic representation of Amida’s Vow and the Land of Bliss it guarantees to those who express faith and gratitude through the nembutsu, as described by the Larger Pure Land Sutra. However, as Kenneth Tanaka writes, “The Pure Land comes to hold a deep personal meaning only within the deep selfintrospection and struggles of a sincere religious search, not as an outcome of detached intellectual inquiry.”63 By all accounts, ensconced as it is at the heart of a community’s church, this other world also retains the “affective bond” of place that Yi-Fu Tuan identifies in his work. Traditionally designed temple buildings become island refuges constructed for immigrant communities seeking the warmth of a home culture. For Shin Buddhists who were born in America, the church is a place that connects one to an unlived past made visible through a living ancestry, and a cultural heritage made structurally manifest amid their lives and spiritual homes. In the end, Amida Buddha and his sacred domain, so prodigiously displayed upon the dais of the o-naijin, negotiates this dual feeling of auspicious otherworldliness and personal domesticity. According to Shinran, rebirth in the Pure Land begins in this realm, the sahā world—the “world of endurance” where the church and its inhabitants presently reside.64 Yet, the journey does not end when a person attains the Land of Bliss via the nembutsu, or even when one achieves enlightenment. We are compelled to return to this world and work for the salvation of others, the so-called “phase of returning” (gensō). We are in effect thrust back into the gejin, with its pews and people with their hands together, chanting, expressing their own desire to find the Pure Land home deep within their hearts— both for themselves and for the rest of humanity—as the burning incense dissipates, and the sound of the bell announcing the beginning of service fades away.

The Twentieth-Century Expansion of Architectonic Buddhism 99

Notes

1 Eleanor Nordyke and Y. Scott Matsumoto, “The Japanese in Hawaii: A Historical and Demographic Perspective,” Hawaii Journal of History 11 (1977): 163. 2 Yemyo Imamura, A Short History of the Hongwanji Buddhist Mission in Hawaii (Honolulu: Hongwanji Buddhist Mission, 1931), 3. 3 Hirochika Nakamaki, Japanese Religions at Home and Abroad: Anthropological Perspectives (London; New York: Routledge Curzon, 2003), 2. 4 James Edward Ketelaar, Of Heretics and Martyrs in Meiji Japan: Buddhism and its Persecution (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990), x. 5 Ketelaar, Of Heretics and Martyrs in Meiji Japan, 5. 6 Even with these numbers, Buddhist temples in Hawaii and on the continent are struggling with diminishing membership. As a result, some in the state fear that their unique heritage is in jeopardy of fading away. See Tiffany Hill, “Buddhism in Hawaii: Fading Tradition,” Honolulu Magazine (July 2013). http://www.honolulumagazine.com/Honolulu-Magazine/July-2013/ Buddhism-in-Hawaii-Fading-Tradition/ 7 In addition to George and Willa Tanabe’s five styles, Lorraine Reiko Minatoshi Palumbo identifies four styles, which the Tanabes’ research corroborates. See “The Process of Transformation of the Buddhist Temple Architecture of the Japanese Society of Hawaii,” dissertation for the Doctorate of Engineering, Waseda University, 1999. 8 George and Willa Tanabe, Japanese Buddhist Temples in Hawai’i, 21. 9 http://hawaiibetsuin.org/temple-history/ 10 This description derives from a playbill provided by the temple. 11 George and Willa Tanabe, Japanese Buddhist Temples in Hawai’i, 59. 12 Reverend Tatsuo Muneto, Goji: Newsletter of the Honpa Hongwanji Hawaii Betsuin, (January 2013): 10. 13 Louise H. Hunter, Buddhism in Hawaii: Its Impact on a Yankee Community (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1971), 69–70. For Imamura’s work on establishing schools see Noriko Asato, “The Japanese Language School Controversy,” in Williams and Moriya, Issei Buddhism in the Americas, 45–82. 14 Judith Snodgrass, Presenting Japanese Buddhism to the West (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003), 207–208. 15 Quoted from the website of the home temple in Kyoto. The phrase is the core of all Pure Land sects, and has been conveyed to me on every temple visit. http://www.hongwanji.or.jp/english/shinbuddhism.html. 16 Shinran in the Contemporary World, The Nishi Hongwanji Commission on the Promotion of Religious Education (Hongwanji International Center: Kyoto, Japan, 1979), 79; Gómez, Land of Bliss, 167. 17 http://www.hongwanji.or.jp/english/shinbuddhism.html. 18 Louise Hunter, Buddhism in Hawaii, 84. 19 Don J. Hibbard, Buildings of Hawaii (Charlottesville and London: University of Virginia Press, 2011), 128. 20 Christopher Queen and Duncan Ryuken Williams, American Buddhism: Methods and Findings in Recent Scholarship (Richmond, Surrey UK: Curzon, 1999), xx. 21 Ryo Munekata, Buddhist Churches of America: Volume 1, Seventy-Five Year History, 1899–1974: (Chicago: Norbart Publishing, 1974), 12. 22 Donald R. Tuck, Buddhist Churches of America–Jodo Shinshu (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 1987), 7. 23 Arthur Nishimura, “The Buddhist Mission of North America 1898–1942: Religion and Its Social Functions in an Ethnic Community,” in North American Buddhists in Social Context, Paul David Numrich, ed. (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2008), 92.

100  The Twentieth-Century Expansion of Architectonic Buddhism 24 Munekata, Buddhist Churches of America: Volume 1, 459. 25 Tetsuden Kashima, Buddhism in America: The Social Organization of an Ethnic Religious Institution (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1977), 60. 26 Ibid. 27 Arthur Nishimura, “The Buddhist Mission of North America, 1898–1942,” 95. This is a logical surmise that scholars seem to accept, given the social context at the time. Discussions with clergy at the BCSF corroborate this assumption. 28 David Yoo uses the term “re-code” to describe this development, which I believe accurately characterizes this practice. See David Yoo, “Enlightened Identities: Buddhism and Japanese Americans of California, 1924–1941,” The Western Historical Quarterly 27, no. 3 (Autumn 1996): 289. 29 Reverend Ronald Kobata, “Where Are We Doing It?,” in Geppo: Newsletter of the Buddhist Church of San Francisco (April 2010): 1. 30 From an interview with the building’s architecture Gentoku George Shimamoto. Mondo: An Oral History of the Buddhist Church of San Francisco, Hiroshi Kashiwagi, ed (SF: Buddhist Church of San Francisco, 1999), 32. 31 Much like it is unclear when the first ever Buddhist temple was constructed on U.S. soil, since many early Buddhist immigrants may have created small or ad hoc temples that lacked formal documentation, it may be that an earlier individual or group erected a stupa in some form or another (like a small mound or pyramid) for personal devotion that is likewise undocumented. 32 BCSF head minister Elaine Donlin confirms the India origin of the stupa’s design. 33 Reverend Ronald Kobata, “Where Are We Doing It?,” 1. 34 Ibid. 35 Other traditional Buddhist temples exist in close proximity to the Nishi and Higashi churches, such as the Shingon Koyasan Buddhist Temple and the Zenshuji Soto Mission. 36 Dunken Ryūken Williams’s American Sutra (2019) is a seminal scholarly work in this regard. 37 C.E. Rachford, “Heart Mountain General Information Bulletin,” Series 2, August 26, 1942. 38 “A Brief History of Los Angeles Hompa Hongwanji Buddhist Temple,” Los Angeles Betsuin Jiho, Special Issue, November 1, 1969. Edited by Eiko Masuyama and Michi Matsunami in 2013. 39 S. L. de Bretteville, “Omoide no shotokyo: Remembering old little Tokyo,” In D. Berke & E. Harris, Architecture of the Everyday (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1997), 70. 40 https://hhbt-la.org/?page_id=1110. Accessed 14/2/20022. 41 Higashi Honganji Buddhist Temple, Nenbutsu to tomoni hyakunen, walking the path of the nem-butsu: 100 years of Buddhism in Los Angeles (Los Angeles: Higashi Honganji Buddhist Temple, 2004), 52–53. 42 Eiko Masuyama, temple historian, personal communication, July 7, 2014. 43 David Holley, “Old Temple, Church Symbolize Efforts to Preserve Little Tokyo.” Los Angeles Times, V_A1. B1-p. 6 1985, p. B1 44 Yukiko Yanagida McCarty, “Little Tokyo and its Buddhist Temple,” Aya Yabe-Durez, Trans., The East 41, 5, p.22. 45 Hideya Chiji, quoted in the commemorative text published by the church, Hompa Hongwanji Los Angeles Betsuin, 1905–1980 (Los Angeles: HHLAB, 1980), 16. 46 Mira Locher, Traditional Japanese Architecture, 93.

The Twentieth-Century Expansion of Architectonic Buddhism 101 47 Quoted from an unattributed article entitled “Brief History of the Tri-State Buddhist Church,” in Tetsuden Kashima, Buddhism in America, 19. 48 Mira Locher, Traditional Japanese Architecture, 57. 49 This sentiment has been confirmed with the many Buddhist practitioners I have encountered in the course of research.This particular quote derives from the Midwest Buddhist Temple of the BCA located in Chicago. 50 Reverend Kenneth Yamada, “Meaning of Gassho,” Dharma Talk for the Berkeley Higashi Honganji Buddhist Temple. February 11, 2008. https://www. bombu.org/content/dharma-talks/27-meaning-of-gassho. This insight into the expression was substantiated during many visits to various Buddhist temples, as well as in the online literature of churches such as the Pasadena Buddhist Temple and the Seattle Buddhist Church. 51 Asano Kiyoshi, “Foreword,” in Mary Neighbor Parent, The Roof in Japanese Buddhist Architecture (New York: Weatherhill, Inc, 1983), 3. 52 Azuchi Castle is an excellent example of this observation. W.H. Coaldrake, Architecture and Authority in Japan (New York: Routledge, 1996), 106–108; Wei-Cheng Lin, Building a Sacred Mountain: The Buddhist Architecture of China’s Mount Wutai. (Seattle, Washington: University of Washington Press, 2014), 1. Martin Collcutt, Five Mountains: The Rinzai Zen Monastic Institution in Medieval Japan (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 1981), xvi. 53 Ibid, xvi. 54 Sylvan Barnett and William Burto, “How Buddhist Roof-Tiles Mean,” Orientations 35, no. 8 (November 2004): 77. 55 George & Willa Jane Tanabe, Japanese Buddhist Temples in Hawai’i, 57. 56 The notion of an architectural “protuberance” viz. the karahafu also may suggest the ushnisha (cranial protuberance) of the Buddha, as seen in countless statutes. The ushnisha is one of thirty-two lakshana (identifying characteristics) of the Buddha. This is, however, only an interesting coincidence, as no documentation exists that would corroborate the visual similarity. 57 See Ansel Adams Mrs. Nakamura and family in park, Manzanar Relocation Center, California. California Manzanar, 1943. Photograph. https://www.loc. gov/item/2002697867/. 58 This surmise comes from Mary Neighbor Parent, who earned her doctoral degree at the University of Tokyo under Horyuji expert Asano Kiyoshi. See Mary Neighbor Parent, Japanese Architecture and Art Net Users System (JAANUS Database). http://www.aisf.or.jp/~jaanus/deta/k/karahafu. htm 59 Eiko Masuyama, written correspondence dated July 7, 2014. 60 Buddhist Churches of America, organizational calendar, n.p., 2016. 61 William Briones, in Los Angeles Hompa Hongwanji Buddhist Temple, Los Angeles Betsuin Jiho 436 (May-June 2016): 9. 62 As an essential part of practical Buddhist belief, it is best to understand the concept of shinjin from those who have dedicated their lives to its impact. Toward that end, I am paraphrasing Buddhist minister Daien T. Haseo from a talk entitled “Shinjin: The Experience of True Entrusting” delivered at the International Buddhist Association at the Tsukiji Hongwanji in Tokyo, July 29, 2006. 63 Kenneth K. Tanaka, “Where Is the Pure Land?,” in Shin Buddhism: Historical, Textual, and Interpretive Studies, ed. Richard K. Payne (Berkeley: Institute of Buddhist Studies and Numata Center for Buddhist Translation and Research, 2007), 110. 64 Kenneth K. Tanaka, “Where Is the Pure Land?,” 111.

102  The Twentieth-Century Expansion of Architectonic Buddhism

References Adams, Ansel. Mrs. Nakamura and Family in Park, Manzanar Relocation Center, California/photograph by Ansel Adams. California Manzanar, 1943. Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/2002697867/. Barnett, Sylvan and William Burto. “How Buddhist Roof-Tiles Mean.” Orientations 35, no.8 (Nov/Dec 2004). Berke, Deborah and Steven Harris. Architecture of the Everyday. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2012. Coaldrake, William H. Architecture and Authority in Japan. New York: Routledge, 1996. Collcutt, Martin. Five Mountains: The Rinzai Zen Monastic Institution in Medieval Japan. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 1981. Gómez, Luis O. Land of Bliss: The Paradise of the Buddha of Measureless Light: Sanskrit and Chinese Versions of the Sukhāvatīvyūha Sutras. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1996. Hibbard, Don J. Buildings of Hawaii. Charlottesville and London: University of Virginia Press, 2011. Higashi Honganji Buddhist Temple. Nenbutsu to tomoni hyakunen, Walking the Path of the Nembutsu: 100 Years of Buddhism in Los Angeles. Los Angeles: Higashi Honganji Buddhist Temple, 2004. Hill, Tiffany. “Buddhism in Hawaii: Fading Tradition.” Honolulu Magazine (July 2013). Holley, David. “Old Temple, Church Symbolize Efforts to Preserve Little Tokyo.” Los Angeles Times, V_A1. B1-p. 6. Hompa Hongwanji Los Angeles Betsuin. Hompa Hongwanji Los Angeles Betsuin, 1905–1980. Los Angeles: HHLAB, 1980. Hunter, Louise H. Buddhism in Hawaii: Its Impact on a Yankee Community. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1971. Imamura, Yemyo. A Short History of the Hongwanji Buddhist Mission in Hawaii. Honolulu: Hongwanji Buddhist Mission, 1931. Kashima, Tetsuden. Buddhism in America: The Social Organization of an Ethnic Religious Institution. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1977. Kashiwagi, Hiroshi. Mondo: An Oral History of the Buddhist Church of San Francisco. San Francisco: Buddhist Church of San Francisco, 1999. Ketelaar, James Edward. Of Heretics and Martyrs in Meiji Japan: Buddhism and Its Persecution. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990. Kobata, Ronald. “Where Are We Doing It?” in Geppo: Newsletter of the Buddhist Church of San Francisco. San Francisco: Buddhist Church of San Francisco. (April 2010): 1–14. Lin, Wei-Cheng. Building a Sacred Mountain: The Buddhist Architecture of China’s Mount Wutai. Seattle, Washington: University of Washington Press, 2014. Locher, Mira. Traditional Japanese Architecture: An Exploration of Elements and Forms. Tokyo: Tuttle Publishers, 2010. Los Angeles Hompa Hongwanji Buddhist Temple. Los Angeles Betsuin Jiho. No. 436 (May-June 2016). Masuyama, Eiko and Michi Matsunami. “A Brief History of Los Angeles Hompa Hongwanji Buddhist Temple,” Los Angeles Betsuin Jiho, Special Issue, November 1, 1969. 2013.

The Twentieth-Century Expansion of Architectonic Buddhism 103 McCarty, Yukiko Yanagida. “Little Tokyo and Its Buddhist Temple.” Aya YabeDurez, trans. The East 41, 5, 17–22. Munekata, Ryo Buddhist Churches of America: 75 Year History, 1899–1974. Chicago: Norbart, 1974. Muneto, Tatsuo Goji: Newsletter of the Honpa Hongwanji Hawaii Betsuin, (January 2013). Nakamaki, Hirochika. Japanese Religions at Home and Abroad: Anthropological Perspectives. London. New York: Routledge Curzon, 2003. Nishi Hongwanji Commission on the Promotion of Religious Education: Shinran in the Contemporary World. Kyoto, Japan: Hongwanji International Center, 1979. Nordyke, Eleanor and Y. Scott Matsumoto, et al. “The Japanese in Hawaii: A Historical and Demographic Perspective.” Hawaii Journal of History 11 (1977): 163. Numrich, Paul D. North American Buddhists in Social Context. Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2008. Palumbo, Lorraine Reiko Minatoshi. “The Process of Transformation of the Buddhist Temple Architecture of the Japanese Society of Hawaii.” Dissertation for the Doctorate of Engineering, Waseda University, 1999. Parent, Mary Neighbor. The Roof in Japanese Buddhist Architecture. New York: Weatherhill, Inc, 1983. . Japanese Architecture and Art Net Users System (JAANUS Database). http://www.aisf.or.jp/~jaanus/deta/k/karahafu.htm. Payne, Richard K. Shin Buddhism: Historical, Textual, and Interpretive Studies. Berkeley: Institute of Buddhist Studies and Numata Center for Buddhist Translation and Research, 2007. Queen, Christopher and Duncan Ryuken Williams. American Buddhism: Methods and Findings in Recent Scholarship. Richmond, Surrey UK: Curzon, 1999. Rachford, C.E. “Heart Mountain General Information Bulletin,” Series 2, August 26, 1942. Snodgrass, Judith. Presenting Japanese Buddhism to the West. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003. Tanabe, George J. and Willa Jane Tanabe. Japanese Buddhist Temples in Hawai’i. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2013. Tuck, Donald R. Buddhist Churches of America–Jodo Shinshu. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 1987. Williams, Duncan Ryūken. American Sutra: A Story of Faith and Freedom in the Second World War. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2019. Williams, Duncan Ryūken and Tomoe Moriya. Issei Buddhism in the Americas. Urbana; Chicago; Springfield, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2010. Yoo, David. “Enlightened Identities: Buddhism and Japanese Americans of California, 1924–1941,” The Western Historical Quarterly 27, no. 3 (1996): 281–301.

4

The Proliferation of Buddhist Architecture in America

Meditative Architecture The Japanese Pure Land cultural presence in the early and mid-twentieth century was a compelling force in propagating Buddhist architecture onto the American religious landscape. Yet, of the various Buddhist sects that have taken hold in the United States, Zen has been the most familiar and influential with respect to American culture. Its popularity with the Beat Generation in the 1950s helped formalize an indigenous American acceptance in the United States. As a form of the Buddha’s teachings centered on meditation, this Mahayana branch of Buddhist thought has been important in the proliferation of Buddhist architecture that truly began after the 1965 Immigration Act allowed Asian immigration to flower. For from that point onward, Buddhist temples achieve a variety consistent with the structural forms of the larger, more elaborate prototypes found in the various countries of Asia, albeit on a smaller scale. Along with the Japanese-inspired Zen centers, Chinese and Thai communities have quickly played a key role in the explosion of Buddhist religious sites in the United States. Keeping in mind that the generalizing nature of the discussion more so suggests propensities rather than establishes crisp demarcations, this chapter seeks to capture some of the intensity and diversity of Buddhist building and belief which has increased in number and noteworthiness as the twentieth century has turned into the twenty-first. The meditative nature of Zen practice (whether Soto, Rinzai, or Obaku) tends to engender a somewhat different type of architecture in America than that of other Buddhist denominations. A range of structural forms large and small exist, but by and large the concern is more so focused on environment—whether built or natural, and how the inner space of one’s mind can become as quiet and clear as the peaceful and organized space set aside for that purpose. Buddha Mind Monastery in Oklahoma City, “a place of peace and tranquility,” is an interesting modern example in this regard. As a result, a certain modesty of external form seems to prevail in many American Zen structures. Zen sites incline away from pomposity or ostentatiousness, but not always. The Korean Buddhists at Hanmaum Zen DOI: 10.4324/9781003311645-5

The Proliferation of Buddhist Architecture in America 105 Center of New York in Queens, for instance, built an impressive temple with wide colorful sweeping upturned eaves. Seungsahn’s Providence Zen Center in Rhode Island constructed a striking traditional seven-tiered pagoda. But even these sites exhibit a level of reserve, insomuch as the Hanmaum Center is demurely situated amid residential homes, while the Providence pagoda is relatively hidden within a rural suburban neighborhood obscured by trees. Complicating matters as well are large-scale sites, like Hsi Lai or Chuang Yen, that promote a mix of Pure Land and Zen practices. Generally, however, Zen spaces, both inside and outside, are intentionally selected or constructed in order to assist the practitioner obtain a clear and unobstructed ability to understand of the basic tenets of the Dharma (as Truth and Ultimate Reality), a major one of which stresses the mutual interdependence of all phenomena, referred to as “dependent origination” (pratītyasamutpāda). This principle is an aspect of the Mahayana Buddhist belief in the definitive “emptiness” inherent in all things, that nothing in the universe retains an intrinsic, unchanging self-nature. Another major element of Zen is the belief many practitioners hold that enlightenment can be achieved “right here, right now,” in the sacred forests of nature as much as in the mundane world of everyday urban life: “The dynamic working of this deep and wondrous truth is unconstructedness in stillness, it is immediate enlightenment. It is the light of Buddha’s wisdom that burns all thought constructions away.”1 One consequence of this apotheosis of the transient and instantaneous is that nearly any building can be implemented as a zendo (the main meditation hall of Zen practice) if need or utility require it. Indeed, in recent years many communities have adopted “online zendos” that take advantage of virtual technologies, where students can learn from Zen masters from within their own homes. Such a development underscores the domestic and emotive intimacy that Buddhist belief and practice can inspire. Along these lines, in California during the early twentieth century, Rinzai master Shaku Soen’s influential student Nyogen Senzaki developed what he called “floating zendos.” Shaku Soen attended the 1893 World’s Parliament of Religions in Chicago, and is an important figure in raising the awareness of Buddhism in America. A scarcity of funds needed to lease or purchase a permanent location led Senzaki to rent various spaces to teach meditation as they became available and when resources allowed.2 These “floating zendos,” although not ideal, were actually in perfect harmony with the notion of impermanence whose deep realization is so crucial to the attainment of an enlightened mind.3 Like another prominent Buddhist Sokie-an Sasaki from New York, who he knew well, Senzaki promulgated Buddhism with virtually no money. Both men accepted this pointed lack of prosperity as a living embodiment of their teachings, and a rebuke against the growing number of monks in Japan who lived lives of extravagance. Sokei-an Sasaki helped found the first Zen community in America in 1906 with his teacher, which ultimately failed financially.4 He died in 1945

106  The Proliferation of Buddhist Architecture in America a few years after his forced internment during World War II. According to Senzaki and Sokei-an, the centrality of mind as it becomes rarified in the meditative practices of Buddhism allows one to transcend the spiritual dictates of the ordinary world. In a 1939 lecture, Sokei-an stated, “Buddha is that even mind, even and calm, which radiates in multifold directions at once.”5 He claimed that the Zen mind had placed him in “the transcendental world” by his mid-twenties. By eradicating concepts and conditions and eliminating all desire, he was able to find a place of quiet solitude within which to exist. To Sokei-an, Zen practice is meant to have one perceive the balance and harmony of the world regardless of location: Just sit down and meditate. Throw yourself into the great universe. Don’t put a little tag “I” on yourself. Peel the label off and throw yourself into the great universe. You won’t feel it at once. But do it everyday and you will feel it. On a lovely spring day, go sit on a park bench by the Hudson and forget yourself. When your heart beats with the rhythm of the universe, there on a park bench you will find Buddha.6 One thing that can be taken away from these individuals with respect to architecture is the important relationship between mind and environment in spiritual practice. The role of space, whether hallowed or commonplace, is not necessarily a sacral but a spiritual one. A large-scale temple or an expensive meditation center is not required in order to access one’s Buddha nature, although such constructions can aid one in achieving clarity and peace. In American Zen architecture, elaborate monumental buildings are often jettisoned for spaces of simplicity and effectiveness. To the present day, many Zen Centers renovate residential homes and office buildings to accommodate their community’s Buddhist practices and beliefs. In fact, Sokie-an Sasaki’s First Zen Institute of America is currently located in midtown Manhattan. Extant since the 1980s, it is very much akin to the other buildings that the group had used since 1930, which were not inconsistent with the essence of Sokei-an’s teachings. To create such a space from a home or office building is to exemplify how everyday experience or environments, if understood and meditated upon with the proper frame of mind, can lead one to the Buddha. Homes and office buildings are a part of the country’s pragmatic infrastructure. They are the locations where everyday lives are lived, and places where in the Zen mind enlightenment can happen at any moment, even in a park in the heart of a big city, while sitting quietly and allowing one’s heartbeat to synchronize with the “the rhythm of the universe.” As a way to enlightenment, the relationship between structure and belief in Zen Buddhism is one of complicated simplicity, epitomized by a simple but intellectually challenging dictum: “Believe in nothing,” made by Zen master Shunryu Suzuki. Complex simplicity is further typified by the ease of sitting down. The practice of sitting and the seated pose lies at the

The Proliferation of Buddhist Architecture in America 107 heart Zen practice, in both formal and informal settings, and in the end is not as simple a concept as it appears. One of the first lessons that Suzuki teaches in his influential Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind is the crucial concept of non-duality using the most basic element of Zen Buddhism, sitting in the meditative pose called “zazen.” He spends pages explaining the precise way to position the body for maximum effectiveness. Here, the body and the mind are not two separate entities, where if the former is situated correctly then the latter will be affected. The key comes in understanding that they are both distinct and the same: “Enlightenment is not some good feeling or some particular state of mind. The state of mind that exists when you sit in the right posture is, itself, enlightenment. In this posture there is no need to talk about the right state of mind. You already have it. This is the conclusion of Buddhism.”7 For Suzuki, this insight carries over to the external world, as organizing one’s body and mind correctly allows “everything else” to be organized correctly. This is the secret of Buddhism, according to the Zen master. This “everything else” most directly points to the immediate environment of the practitioner. Therefore, a closer look at the community that Suzuki created will help in understanding how the values of Zen Buddhists correlate to the environments they construct. Of course, when considering the built environment, it is important to stress that, as Suzuki states, “Usually religion develops itself in the realm of consciousness, seeking to perfect its organization, building beautiful buildings, creating music, evolving a philosophy, and so forth. These are religious activities in the conscious world. But Buddhism emphasizes the world of unconsciousness.”8 The structural expression of Zen Buddhist values is directly tied to the practice of meditation. (The term “Zen” literally means “meditation.”) To provide an environment in which to exercise their beliefs, Suzuki founded the San Francisco Zen Center (SFZC) in 1962. The SFZC is a seminal organization within the history of Buddhism in America. It consists of the City Center in San Francisco, the Green Gulch Farm in Muir Beach, purchased after Suzuki’s death in 1971, and the monastic retreat of Tassajara (Zenshinji—“Zen Heart-Mind Temple”) in the San Pedro Mountains 150 miles south of the SFZC (1967), which according to the community is the first Zen monastery constructed outside of Asia. The combination of these three sites provides the student of Soto Zen a diverse environmental context within which to learn. The City Center (or Beginner’s Mind Temple) is a large brick western-style building with classical columns at its entrance located in a compact San Francisco neighborhood (Figure 4.1). Its interior is precise, clean, and organized in the fashion common to most Zen centers. As Michael Downing comments, “Plainness here is neither false humility nor a façade. It is true to the bone.”9 The basement zendo has wooden floors and raised platforms (tans) for the black mats used for meditation. There are solar panels on the roof that attest to the

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Figure 4.1  San Francisco Zen Center, Front Entrance

community’s views of social responsibly with respect to the environment, and a serene courtyard at its center that infuses a sense of natural beauty into the somewhat austere interior space. The primary buildings at the Green Gulch Farm are the Green Dragon Temple (Soryu-ji) and the Tea House. Located fifteen miles north of the SFZC, these traditional-styled Japanese buildings combine cultural heritage with the religious practice and social activism of the City Center. The buildings of Tassajara were similarly constructed to be acutely Japanese, to blend into the environmental beauty in such a way as to capture the interconnected holism of traditional Japanese Zen architecture. Architect adherents crucial to Tassajara’s success, such as Paul Discoe, were sent to study in Japan for years in order to learn authentic building techniques.10 In fact, the zendo plan is based on that of Eihei-ji Temple, the home temple of Soto Zen in Japan.11 Tassajara is not easily accessible, befitting its monastic purposes. The grounds are dotted with buildings amid a penetratingly idyllic natural setting. They are modest in size but prodigious in the effort and exactitude needed to affect the spiritual facility of natural harmony and mental clarity that is the purpose of the community’s religious practice. The success of the San Francisco Zen Center in the 1960s and 70s highlighted some of the old nineteenth-century issues concerning the

The Proliferation of Buddhist Architecture in America 109 intersection of cultural East and West. Suzuki came to America in 1959. Ten years later he moved the group into its current residence on Page Street with a renewed sense of helping others as a way to work through the everyday problems associated with establishing an Asian institution in the midst of Western materialism. Rather than propagating the binary, he felt that “the real way to help others should be a combination of the so-called Eastern and Western ways.”12 In establishing multiple environments, he was able to form a balance of the Eastern and Western structural traditions to do so. According to Discoe, the unique challenge of each building at Tassajara was accommodating Japanese tradition with contemporary building standards. Ultimately, though, the process is one that conformed to the community’s religious tenets. The dualities of time and type were approached holistically. As Discoe writes, “From a Zen perspective, the traditional and contemporary, past and future, exist simultaneously.”13 None of the three sites of the SFZC can be considered grandiloquent architectural monuments of religious worship and service. Nevertheless, their well-kept, pristine beauty and spiritual utility captures the preciousness evoked by their number, the Three Jewels of Buddhism: The Buddha, The Dharma, and The Sangha (community). Given the Zen emphasis on being seated and in mindfulness, it might be thought that the important idea within the phrase “practice of meditation” is meditation. However, an oft-quoted statement of Shunryu Suzuki points to the former term as the critical referent: “Strictly speaking, there are no enlightened people, there is only enlightened activity.”14 “Activity” reinforces the Buddhist notion that the essence of reality is of constant change, movement, and transience. To the extent that we accept the provisional notion of “self,” such an identification merely floats on the moving path of the river of reality. Buddhism, of course, has always been concerned with “path.” By following the Eightfold Path as laid out by Shakyamuni, the Buddhist adherent seeks to cross the sea of samsara to reach the other shore of enlightenment. Seated meditation is seen as a practice. Practice entails activity, which in its exercise leads to enlightenment. American Zen students were primarily responsible for sustaining and/or building City Center, Green Gulch Farm, and Tassajara. And the activity involved in the construction and maintenance of these sites is also a form of their spiritual practice. Here we see Yi-Fu Tuan’s insight that architecture instructs borne out in the practical act of constructing a building. Human activity and spiritual movement are embedded in the Japanese inspired structures at Tassajara. Their design “embodies an organic receptivity, a suggestion that humans can follow the flow of natural forces while remaining upright and fully engaged.”15 Each of the three sites has a zendo for practice and a shrine. Yet, in order to mitigate the mystery of enlightenment to Western audiences, Suzuki intentionally foregrounded not only the idea that practice leads to enlightenment, but that in the end they are the same thing.

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Environment, Practice, and Zen With its focus on practice, in my view the SFZC exemplifies one of the major lessons of The Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch, an essential text in the Zen scriptural tradition. The main story of the text reinforces the idea of movement and activity within an architectural metaphor (the platform) to describe the path to sudden enlightenment. The Platform Sutra tells the story of how the Chinese illiterate Huineng became the Sixth Patriarch of Zen Buddhism. In the quest to find his successor, the Fifth Patriarch asked his pupils to demonstrate their understanding through a poem. The leading candidate wrote a poem on a wall, but only after some strategic thinking about his position in the mountain monastery, after which he laid down in his bed. However, after reading the poem the Master divulged to him, “Your understanding has only reached the threshold and has not yet entered inside … if you want to enter the door, you have to see your true nature.”16 The young newcomer Huineng, on the other hand, had been working diligently and arduously in the milling room for months. As a boy walked past the mill chanting the poem, Huineng was immediately struck with its incorrectness. Having heard the Diamond Sutra while working delivering firewood in the marketplace before traveling to the mountain monastery, his mind was already “clear and awake.” Without thinking Huineng asked someone to write his own poems on the wall. Upon reading Huineng’s words, the Master realized that he should be the next Dharma-bearer. He secretly exhorted Huineng to leave at once, and escorted him to the Nine Rivers Ferry to begin his ministry. The message embedded within the text highlights the role of activity and movement in the acquisition of wisdom and truth. It seems evident that the activity of working in a mill and delivering firewood is what led to Huineng’s ability to understand the Dharma clearly. In a very Zen manner, the repetitive and diligent activity of work emptied his mind so that its clarity revealed the true nature of reality. After months of seemingly mindless activity, enlightenment happened instantly, in the quotidian space of workday life. Here we see how Suzuki’s application of the Dharma within the buildings of the SFZC implement Zen belief by emphasizing practice and ritual. Through The Platform Sutra, we are in essence told that schooled and literate reasoning still ultimately centered on the delusion of self can only lead so far, the threshold. However, Huineng’s work and activity, although unschooled and illiterate, had already placed him in the story literally and figuratively inside the door. The movement of the chanting boy and the activity involved in Huineng’s immediate departure underscores this point. In a 1970 lecture Suzuki stated, “The point of our zazen practice is to be free from thinking mind …. In our observation of rituals, the point is to be free from selfish ideas. The practice of rituals is the practice of selflessness.”17 Suzuki is speaking to the community about ritual and

The Proliferation of Buddhist Architecture in America 111 formality in response to some who questioned its use. He felt that the lack of a Buddhist background in America required that students engage in these types of formalities even more so than in Japan. In the 60s and 70s, many excited individuals would come to the front door on Page Street hoping to learn about Zen and its quick path to enlightenment. The urge or insight that caused them to do so, however, merely brought them to the threshold of the arched and columned building. After writing his poem, Huineng crossed the river enlightened, both in the literal and symbolical senses. As a Buddha, he was utterly awake. The other candidate, also literally and symbolically, lied down and went to sleep. If those coming to the San Francisco Zen Center—whether at Tassajara, Green Gulch Farm, or under the arches of the City Center itself—were to walk the path then they would need to engage in the work and activity of ritualistic practice, enter the door, and find that they have no self. The relationship between the everyday and natural environments and that of the Zen practitioner fostered at City Center and Tassajara is one that other notable communities cultivate as well. The Zen Center of New York’s Fire Lotus Temple is the city branch of the Mountain and Rivers Order founded by John Daido Loori Roshi. Like the SFZC, a beautiful rural monastery augments the inner city temple by providing an isolated retreat. The picturesque tranquility of Zen Mountain Monastery, founded in 1980, has been likened to a vision of Daido Roshi’s vows, both religious and communal, “a vow in earthly form.”18 Shasta Abbey Monastery in far northern California, founded by Abbess Master JiyuKennett, does not retain an urban branch. The Order of Buddhist Contemplatives established the site as a training monastery and a place of spiritual counseling for monk and layperson alike. In close proximity to Mt. Shasta, the Soto Zen monks reside within a strikingly beautiful natural environment. According to the community, this beauty translates into the design of their indoor zendos, which are decorated so as “to help strengthen faith in what they represent—the beauty inherent in all existence, the Eternal (Buddha Nature) which is found within ourselves and all things.”19 At this point, it is helpful to revisit the earlier comment regarding the spiritual component of Zen space. Through rituals, practice, and rules, the physical environment is organized to help one to realize the non-physical experience of enlightenment. The non-dualistic tenets of the belief system do not dictate a strict delineation between sacred and profane realms. Transitional spaces of the type seen in the Pure Land o-naijin-gejin shift are not of use in the practical dictates of doctrinal Zen. Rather, spaces are arranged in practical sparsity. At the SFZC, tatami mats in the Buddha Hall help create a rhythmic regularity, but the holism of the room is emphasized. Statues and paintings of the Buddha and bodhisattvas are placed along the walls. These sacred personages of the past represent inspirational and didactic examples of what meditation can help one attain, become. Thus, if

112  The Proliferation of Buddhist Architecture in America there is a mode of sacral delineation to be found, it exists in the prominence of instructional lineage. Lineage is of great importance in Zen Buddhism, indeed as with virtually all other Buddhist traditions. As The Platform Sutra suggests, Zen practice deemphasizes intellectualism or secluded scholasticism in favor of the real-world transmission of belief.20 Experienced Zen masters (or roshis) are the ones that primarily guide students on the correct path to Buddhahood. Their lessons therefore need to be apprehended amid a different form of sacrality, that of a “lineage holder,” which is a person identified as being most capable of transmitting the Dharma of a given school of thought, akin to a family name. Lineage holders signify an unbroken chain of transmission that is meant to authenticate the authority of the temple and demonstrate the living strength of its teachings. Ordained roshis teach others how to “pay attention” in order to learn the truth of deep interconnectedness. The entire religious endeavor is centered on the human capacity to understand the teachings, and the ability to teach them to other humans. When time and energy are expelled to create places of meditation and reflection, these spaces act in conjunction with the teachings of the master. Reflective settings are configured with great precision and purpose. A careful poise is arranged between the pupil and master that is arbitrated through meticulously performed rituals that, like their immediate environment, conform to meticulous standards of balance, mindfulness, and exactitude. Listening to the environment, whether built or natural, is thus akin to listening to the roshi’s teachings. The master is the transitional gateway between the world at large and the mind of the Buddhist practitioner. The physical and the spiritual states are typologies of the sacred and profane. Rinzai master Sokei-an’s celebrated comments about his teaching method are helpful in this regard: I am of the Zen sect. My special profession is to train students of Buddhism by the Zen method. Nowadays, there are many types of Zen teachers. One type, for example, teaches Zen through philosophical discourse; another, through so-called meditation; and still another, directly from soul to soul. My way of teaching is the direct transmission of Zen from soul to soul.21 Buddhists deny the existence of a soul or self in the Western sense. Sokei-an has stated that in using the word “soul” he is referring to a multiplicity of related concepts associated with the mind, “to denote the most profound consciousness. So the one word ‘mind’ can be translated ‘soul,’ ‘consciousness,’ ‘heart,’ ‘brain,’ or ‘mind.’”22 He propounds at length about the symbolic relationship between the soul and that of the natural environment. For Sokei-an, the soul is like a great, boundless, empty ocean that contains the infinity of enlightenment as seen in nature. The moon, the earth, man, woman, trees, weeds, etc., “This is the soul of all life.” The relationship

The Proliferation of Buddhist Architecture in America 113 between the external environment and Zen belief is therefore a didactic one. This is true for internal architectural environments as well. Mountains are lessons, rituals are lessons; anything can be a lesson. Anything can be a teacher. Sokei-an’s “soul to soul” instructional method teaches students how to understand the ultimate interconnectedness of one’s mind or consciousness with that of soul of the universe, how to draw an unbroken lineage of transcendental spiritual relation between the two.

The Heart of Being Human Of the various definitions of the Buddhist soul that Sokie-an provides, “heart” seems to be the most important. It appears nearly everywhere one looks in the Buddhist world. The concept of heart has thus far been a primary feature in understanding the dynamic relationship between the forms and spaces of Buddhist religious existence on the one hand, and the beliefs that lie at their expressive core on the other. This relationship between the objective and subjective components of religious expression continues as the multiplicity of design formations expand with cultural diversity. We see how the polyvalent range of the term “heart” blends together its many semantic senses. Heart is used as a metaphor for a place of close personal emotion, as well as that of connoting the center or core of a built environment. These two senses collapse in the present discussion, as the heart of what a physical Buddhist temple is constructed to access is the spiritual heart of the believer. In the Pure Land temples investigated above, it is hoped that the compassionate heart of Amida merges into the gracious core of the Buddhist aspirant as a place of refuge. The outer protection of the church building thereby fulfills its obligation to provide a place of inner sanctuary, a home for both the body and the mind. In fact, in the great majority of Buddhist communities, “heart” as a rubric of compassion is seen as the best way to protect humankind from spiritual annihilation, as well as to preserve the legacy of their racial and cultural heritage. The teachings of the Rinzai-ji Zen community in Los Angeles encourage “Direct pointing at the human heart to see one’s true nature,” a doctrine in the lineage of the eighteenth century Zen master Hakuin Ekaku. The New York Insight Meditation Center forwards itself as a place “Where Hearts and Minds Awaken.” Its diversity statement is one that encourages “Open Hearts, Open Doors.” As discussed above, the idea of heart is embedded in Buddhism’s scriptural record, given its intimate association with compassion. The word and its expressive valence permeate the literature and reflections of Buddhist thought, as it captures the faculty of human emotion so essential to the disposition of an enlightened individual. Tibetan Buddhists are particularly vocal about the necessity of heart in transcending selfish desire. The Dalai Lama’s An Open Heart: Practicing Compassion in Everyday Life sees the heart as essential to compassion and the redemption of human life.23 To some influential Buddhists, the heart as the seat of

114  The Proliferation of Buddhist Architecture in America loving-kindness and compassion (metta) is the entire basis of the Dharma: “Without loving-kindness and compassion, the Dharma would be considered nothing more than magic.”24 For all its importance and pervasiveness, the concept of heart retains a wispy subjectivity that resists an explicit description that captures its essence completely. As a result, poems are frequently used to evoke the subtleties involved in the diaphanous subject, as a way to speak to the notion without the objective facticity one might expect of a doctrinal belief. The use of poems (gathas) in scripture—as in The Platform Sutra for instance— underscore their didactic and emotive effectiveness. Gary Snyder’s poetic volume Mountains and Rivers Without End: Poem (1996) is an excellent example in that respect. Snyder is a pivotal figure in Buddhism’s burgeoning awareness in the American mainstream that took place during the 1950s and 60s, having been involved in the Beat Movement and noted for his study and advocacy of Asian religion.25 The book contains the poem “Finding the Space in the Heart,” where his love of nature is infused with Buddhist insights from years of study. It tracks his memories from mountain travels in the American West during the 1960s, 70s, 80s, and 90s with exclamations such as “O, ah! The awareness of emptiness brings forth the heart of compassion!”26 Nature, romance, and family conclude his reflection of places he has experienced countless times. For Snyder, his heartfelt feelings for all of these as the years have passed and meanings have changed guarantee their impermanence, as well as those of the mountains that “never stay the same.” Snyder’s work is appropriate in terms of the historical timeline presented here. With improved immigration laws and a rising tide of homegrown interest, Buddhist communities formed at a rapid pace from the 1960s, a growth that has continued unabated to this very day. In addition to Japanese Zen, the Tibetans, Chinese, Thai, and other denominations have since built temples throughout the American landscape. The overall pattern of temple use and construction has been relatively consistent for each of the ethnic groups that have immigrated to the United States. Small, modest, and temporary sites have served as initial places of service and practice until larger, more culturally significant structures could be afforded and built. An exception to this paradigm is the Sri Lankan Washington Buddhist Vihara in Washington D.C., incorporated in 1966 as the first Theravada Buddhist temple in the United States. A vihara is a term used to describe a Buddhist temple or monastery in Southeast Asia. However, it was used originally to describe a small abode or structure to be used by the monastic community (sangha) at the time of the historical Buddha.27 It is therefore appropriate that the Washington Buddhist Vihara (WBV) exists as a converted two-story house located on a residential street. Banners and flags outside the building separate the dwelling from the other homes nearby. Monks can be sometimes seen circumambulating the temple on special days such as Vesak, the day commemorating

The Proliferation of Buddhist Architecture in America 115 the birth, death, and enlightenment of the Buddha. The WBV is notable as it retains a relic of the Buddha brought to the United States by Venerable Bope Vinitha in 1966.28 It is interesting that the community has retained its modest residence given the auspicious nature of the relic in its possession. However, its home in the nation’s capital confers an innate weight and significance upon the venerated artifact. The Theravada School (meaning “Teaching of the Elders”) regards itself as the closest in doctrinal practice to that of the historical Buddha.29 Its decision to reside within the humble dwelling appears to agree with the humility of the Buddha Shakyamuni who, on his deathbed, exhorted the Sangha not to venerate his physical remains but his true legacy, the Dharma. The term vihara is an important one with respect to what Theravadins believe and how those ideas relate to architecture. As with most religions, various sects of Buddhism have developed, such as the Mahayana and Vajrayana. Theravada thought focuses on the Four Noble Truths and emphasizes the Buddha’s teachings as derived from the Pali Canon, a collection of writings detailing the Buddha’s words containing monastic rules (vinaya), discourses (sutras), and psycho-ethical teachings (abhidharma), called the Tripitika, or “Three Baskets.” Although slight differences exist among ethnic traditions, the Theravada vehicle advocates understanding the reality of “things as they really are.”30 They cultivate ways to transcend the delusion of ego and self that are the source of suffering and dissatisfaction: knowledge of impermanence through ethical conduct, meditation, and insightful wisdom. The most effective way to attain peace of mind within this tradition is understood in the metaphor of the “divine abiding,” or the four warm-hearted attitudes of the Brahma-Viharas: lovingkindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity.31 The BrahmaVihara’s are expressed in the living tradition of Theravada belief, whether in meditation or mindful living. The harmful effect of not understanding “things as they really are,” striving for happiness in impermanent objects, puts us in a metaphorical “place” (vihara) of unhappiness. As an article by the Washington Buddhist Vihara states, this unfortunately happens “when we are compelled to understand that the reality is far from our wishes and expectations, when we inherit pain particularly in dealing with individuals and, therefore, dwell in thoughts of hurt and resentment.”32 In many ways, the content and concept of the Brahma-Vihara epitomizes not only the structural context of Theravada temples, but also the spatial conditions of Buddhist architecture in general. As Brahma means “heavenly” or “divine” and vihara refers to a “home” or “dwelling place,” any religious building constructed to express these sentiments of lovingkindness and compassion can be understood as a physical manifestation of these spiritual referents. This is of course what we see, given the effulgence of heart within the Buddhist belief system, and particularly in America where immigrant Buddhists have constructed temples as spiritual homes and cultural refuges imbued with meaning. They are dwellings of high

116  The Proliferation of Buddhist Architecture in America human value meant to engender and symbolize attitudes of compassion and loving-kindness. To the extent they either represent the natural world or allow one access to its didactic force, temples and monasteries are places that exude what Yi-Fu Tuan refers to as topophilia, spaces where human emotion and environmental experience exist to help one perceive the world and foster the values of the community. This dynamic is true for Buddhist temples of traditional Eastern design as well as for those with a Western structural sensibility. A comparison between Eastern and Western Theravada structures built in the same time period of the 1970s illustrates some stark differences between the two, as well as some similarities that exist. The introduction of Theravada Buddhism to the United States during the 1960s and 70s broadened the cultural profile of Buddhist architecture to include Thai and Burmese Asian communities, in addition to that of the Westernbased vipassana (insight) meditation retreats. The existing literature on Buddhism in America highlights Wat Thai of Washington D.C. (1974, wat means “temple” or “monastery”) and the Insight Meditation Society (1976) located in Barre, Massachusetts as noteworthy instances of Theravada thought in the United States, representing the East-West cultural pole.33 These are therefore productive examples to explore architecturally as places where Theravada-based practice exists in an American context. Wat Dhammaram in Chicago (1976), Wat Buddhanusorn in Freemont, CA (1983), Wat Thai of Los Angeles (1979), and the new large Wat Nawamintararachutis Meditation Center in Massachusetts (2014) are other examples of American Buddhist temples with impressive architecture from Southeast Asia. The Insight Meditation Society (IMS) is a Theravada-based meditation community founded by Joseph Goldstein, Sharon Salzberg and Jack Kornfield in 1975 that teaches vipassana and metta (lovingkindness) meditation techniques. The stated mission of the Retreat Center is to be “a spiritual refuge for all who seek freedom of mind and heart.”34 Although the group seeks to promote the Dharma in the West, the society’s aspirations are global in nature. In teaching students how to develop insightful wisdom and compassion through a system of focused thought derived from the Theravada tradition, the society hopes to give rise to peace and happiness in the world at large. The founders travelled to India and Southeast Asia, and learned Theravada practice firsthand. In translating their Buddhist experience to the West, they distilled the Buddhist ideas they found most useful from as much of the cultural influences they encountered. A statement by Kornfield captures their mindset in bringing a clear and straightforward Buddhism to America: “We left much of the Eastern culture, ritual, and ceremony behind in Asia … we felt that for Americans it was an unnecessary barrier.”35 Doing so was meant to present an unobstructed focus on the critical ideas of no-self (anātman) and suffering (dukkha).

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Figure 4.2  Insight Meditation Center, Barre, Massachusetts

The vision of creating a spiritual refuge for Westerners that eliminates outside cultural influence helps in interpreting the design decisions of the IMS Retreat Center (Figure 4.2). The group purchased a mansion on a large estate that was formerly owned by a Catholic church. Its red brick construction and classical façade are a form of traditional American architecture. This structural legibility coincides with the Society’s goal of presenting Buddhism in a culturally unobstructed fashion, as it couches its Eastern religious beliefs in a building of Western classical structural lineage. Vipassana and metta meditation techniques entail conventional seating practices with teachings that instruct students to focus intently on the here and now. Instructors sit in front of an altar, generally with a sculpture of a seated Buddha behind them, as they lead the group seated on cushions through meditation exercises. Practitioners are taught to concentrate moment to moment in order to generate a mental state of focused calm and stillness. In doing so, the student conjures an awareness of the flow of impermanence within the mind and body, and insightful wisdom into the truth and reality of existence, and their part within it. These techniques and insights are meant to foster tranquility and mindfulness within an individual. As with other meditation communities, the exterior environment reinforces the internal state of mind that such activity is intended to promote. The Retreat Center sits on seventy-four acres of land containing many

118  The Proliferation of Buddhist Architecture in America isolated natural vignettes, including a Forest Refuge adjacent to the main property. According to Linda Spink, former executive director at IMS (2013–2017), the Forest Refuge provides a long-term complement to the Retreat’s formal meditation exercises. For Spink, the forest environment fosters a sense of inner stillness that works in tandem with her meditative practices. The Forest Refuge consists of a series of interconnected cabins that allow visitors a more private setting than the Retreat Center, one with greater intimacy to the natural environment in which to practice. Sky Dawson, presently Teacher-in-Residence at the Forest Refuge, claims that many find a sense of home amid the wilderness. The overall meaning she conveys about the Forest Refuge is that it is a refuge. It is a place where one can deepen the experience of mindfulness, wisdom, and insight that the Retreat Center offers.36 She makes the point that although the Forest Refuge provides less instructional structure than that of the Center, one finds their own unique personal connection, or “rhythm,” of experience within the natural setting. Dawson’s comment is quite salient in terms of the present discussion about the role of architecture with respect to the Society’s beliefs. Given the lack of Asian cultural monikers on the facade, the internal nature of focusing inward on the mind, and the broad natural setting of the site, one might think that the physical building of the Retreat Center is somewhat ancillary. The existence of the Forest Refuge seems to intimate that view, as it confirms that the wholly man-made environment is not always required or sufficient to achieve the deepest level of understanding of the community’s teachings, that a closer connection to nature is the key to ultimate spiritual awareness. Yet, the word “Metta”appears boldly on the entablature of the mansion’s front portico. Its placement was purportedly one of the first items of business for the Society when the building was acquired.37 If there is an “insight” to be gleaned from this detail, then it is one that confirms the significance of the structure in providing an institutional framework to support the group’s practices and beliefs. The sought after spiritual state emblazoned upon the physical building states in no uncertain terms that, “this is a place of loving-kindness.” The classical entrance with its historical undertones of sacrality hints at another important comment of Kornfield’s regarding the nature of sacred space. In ancient times, the impressive entrance delineated the transition into a divine realm. Classical Greek buildings were in fact religious structures, a fact that gets obscured in their secular use in the West. The expressly masculine solidity of the Doric Order columns retained the symbolic significance of guardian figures. Their verticality before the darkened space underneath the pediment suggested both the upright human form in symbolic schemata, as well as the trees of a deep, dark forest, whose formidable presence guarded sacred groves where the gods resided. Nonetheless, their presence at the IMS Retreat Center, while important in conveying one of the organization’s spiritual goals, does not signify a metaphysical gateway

The Proliferation of Buddhist Architecture in America 119 of the traditional religious sort. The building is instead a spiritual place for humans, and not a realm of the gods. As Kornfield writes, “We are human beings, and the human gate to the sacred is our own body, heart, and mind, the history from which we’ve come, and the closest relationships and circumstances in our lives.”38 The comment illuminates the recurrent theme of refuge and retreat so prominent in the nomenclature of the community. The context of “refuge” is one that is less concerned with security as it is with withdrawal. The secluded buildings and natural environment combine with the inward stillness of mindful awareness to shelter one from the troubles of life. But for Kornfield, as it seems to be for many Buddhists, a retreat into the dualism of sacred and profane is no substitute for the wholeness that wisdom and insight can bring. Walls, whether physical or spiritual, are boundaries. He continues, “Only when we become aware of these walls in our own hearts can we develop a spiritual practice that opens us to all of life.”39 The open theater of natural life that the Forest Refuge provides seems to speak that goal. The idea of protection intrinsic to the concept of refuge is an important element in understanding how ethnic Thai temples operate as traditionally religious Theravada structures. Goldstein, Salzberg, and Kornfield effectively removed the “Asia out of Asian” religious buildings in creating the IMS Retreat Center. Seated statues of the Buddha and a Zen-like austerity are the only indication of Eastern influence. The Greek Revival inspired American Retreat Center thus conforms well to their stated intention of bringing an understandable version of Buddhism to America devoid of the “cultural baggage” of the mystic ritual that the founders encountered in Asia. The site is comfortably legible, almost like a retirement home, a culturally hospitable place to find refuge from the inner demons of a materially-oriented society. In so doing, however, they replicated the design strategies of immigrant Buddhists who also sought the comfort and security of a home-like environment, who in turn created places of refuge inside the same hyper material culture. Analysis of both a traditional and modern Thai Wat demonstrates the extent to which the Theravadin monks live within a cultural and religious space that, unlike the IMS mansion, is very much concerned with precincts of sacrality and the symbolic mechanisms that govern them. In contrast to the clarity and simplicity of the IMS Retreat Center, an encounter with a traditional Thai temple is one of suffusive decoration. There is a pluralism of forms, colors, and symbolisms derived from Buddhist, Hindu, and animist sources that inform Thai temple complexity. The heavily monastic character of indigenous Thai culture carried over to the temples that immigrants formed in America, as the Thai Buddhist wat has traditionally been a place for the sangha to interact with the community and conduct religious activity. Meditation is an important part of Thai Theravadin practice, but the places created for its exercise are wholly distinct to how the IMS space organizes its environments (or

120  The Proliferation of Buddhist Architecture in America Zen for that matter). As we have seen, the concept of refuge is generated in the IMS Retreat Center’s secluded natural setting and the concomitant inner stillness created through mindful awareness. This interactive physical and spiritual distance that the site propagates creates a barrier, of sorts, between the harmful issues of life and the safety of the retreat environment. On the other hand, the notion of refuge in Thai temples is one of protection, and the overwhelming purpose of the profuse symbolisms of Thai architecture is one of defense. It is a proclivity with a long cultural history: “The Thai were spirit worshippers and brought this belief with them wherever they went. They believed that natural features surrounding their life were protected by spirits, for example: the spirit of the fields, rivers, or mountains, the house spirits who protected their dwellings, and the territorial deity on whom the survival of the country ultimately depended.”40 As a result, design programs for religious structures tend to be cosmological in nature. The various divinities, animals, and mythological creatures are represented to form a panoply of security that guard the transition between the exterior and interior worlds. Numerology is a major mechanism employed to shield the temple from the malevolent forces in the universe. The large multi-tiered roof is a hallmark of Thai architectural heritage. It is a feature found on both traditional and modern styled temple buildings. Their symbolic content is indicative of the profuse religious symbolism associated with these structures. Thai monasteries generally consist of many buildings, the most prominent being the wihan, where most of the daily activities take place. The multi-tiered roofs of these structures (as with the others in the monastic complex) are very often set in cascading sets of two, three, or five. Three is an auspicious number for different interconnected reasons. In the first instance, the large prominent roof points to Buddhism’s largest doctrinal signification: the Three Refuges (or Jewels), which are the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha. In traditional Buddhist practice, entrance into monastic life entails professing faith in the Three Refuges, which along with the Five Precepts allow one into the community.41 In this way, through its structural and symbolic role of a protective canopy, the multi-tiered roof acts as a material and spiritual refuge in the most basic of ways. When understood as Jewels, these three asylums glitter with the enduring preciousness of gold, emeralds, and rubies, whose color inform the golden, green, and red exteriors so common to Thai architecture. Additionally, the number three also refers to the Tripitika, or “Three Baskets,” of the sutra, vinaya, and abhidarma discussed earlier. These collections make up the Pali Canon, which has been so important to the practice of Theravada Buddhism in Thailand. As with other traditions, the elevated rooftop naturally accommodates an interpretation of cosmic orientation. Three multi-tiered roofs signify the Three Realms of Existence in Buddhist cosmology, the realms of desire, form, and formlessness.42 This tri-dhatu (tri-“three”; dhatu-“realm”)

The Proliferation of Buddhist Architecture in America 121 is a very important element of Theravada Buddhism. Together the three realms embody the cosmos as a world system where sentient beings reside, a model of “cosmology, classification of meditation levels, rebirth schema, and the hierarchical categorizing of psychological situations.”43 These exist as the worlds of rebirth, which is the consequence of an individual’s unenlightened perceptions and actions. Ideally, the lessons of the Buddha guide one from space to spacelessness, to a realization of the impermanence and emptiness of form. In terms of Thai history and culture, a significant exposition of this doctrine is the fourteenth-century text Trai Phum Phra Ruang, or Three Worlds According to King Ruang. Theravada Buddhism in Thailand deemphasized the earlier established Hindu conception of the deified king. The text was therefore written as a way to strengthen the monarch’s position as the divinely ordained ruler within a Buddhist population.44 Here, the king is understood as the protector of the people through his knowledge of the Dharma and the moral authority it instills in him. The multi-tiered roof symbolize progressive states of spiritual growth. Sometimes three layers are combined with two layers to make five, as with Wat Nawamintararachutis Meditation Center (NMR) in Raynham MA. In addition to the Five Precepts, as a meditation-oriented community NMR’s impressive five tiered roof also references the “five degrees of enlightenment” common to Zen/Chan meditation. When two layers exist, as with the roof of Wat Buddhanusorn in Freemont California, whose name means “Temple for the Dedication of the Buddha,” the tiers reference the interconnectedness of dualities (Figure 4.3).

Figure 4.3  Wat Buddhanusorn, Fremont, California

122  The Proliferation of Buddhist Architecture in America In terms of numerology, a text in the Pali Canon called the Khuddaka Nikaya (khuddaka-patha, “short passages” or “miscellaneous readings”) states that the number two entails the classification of Name and Form, which when extrapolated indicates the metaphysical transition from physical to mental phenomena. A popular excerpt from the Trai Phum Phra Ruang illustrates the protective force of the Dharma, which aids in explaining the external symbols found on Thai temples. Important to keep in mind here is that the king and the Dharma are understood as one. King Phya Lithai, who wrote the book, casts his personage as a Mahadhammaraja (Great Dharma King) in the deific light of a chakravartin, a Buddha whose teachings are universal, the truth of which can be applied to the entire cosmos.45 As such, like the historical Buddha himself, “he knows merit and dhamma, and teaches people how to know the dhamma.” The chakravartin thus secures all under his canopy of protection: “Neither the ogres, nor the evil spirits, nor any kind of beast that can cause death or bring harm to human beings harbor any evil intentions against great Cakkavati King.”46 The close relationship that remains between the monarch and the Buddhist religion was underscored recently in an American context when Queen Sirikit of Thailand visited Wat Buddhanusorn in 1993. According to the temple, the occasion marked the only instance where the Queen had given a blessing to a temple outside of Thailand. Externally, the Thai Wat retains a number of symbols meant to ward off evil spirits and guard the entrance into the sacred world within. The quantity and character of these guardians varies from temple to temple. In America, where these structures are less grandiose than in Thailand, serpents (nagas) and mythological birds (chofa) are the primary shapes in evidence. Nagas symbolize protection, which is a meaning taken from an episode in Buddhist mythology. Buddhist tradition holds that the great Serpent King Muchalinda emerged to protect Siddhartha Gautama from the rising waters sent by the demon Mara to prevent him from achieving enlightenment during his meditation under the Bodhi Tree. The shape and watery abode of serpents symbolize the fluid nature of impermanence. A chofa is represented as a stylized airborne creature and is found on the points and pinnacles of Thai sacred structures. These hybrid creatures have an undulating profile resembling that of both a bird and a serpent. Their distended forms capture the essence of sky and water, the former suggesting formlessness and the latter indicative of transience. The undulant chofa also evokes the shape of a flame. The flame of enlightenment is a seminal element of Thai aesthetic heritage and is most commonly seen on the top of statues of Thai Buddhas. As in Western culture, the appearance of a hybrid creature signifies the presence of a divinity, and the transitional interaction between the sacred and profane realms that the deity’s appearance instantiates (e.g., cherubim, sphinx, and lamassu).47 Many other hybrid creatures populate traditional Thai temples, although

The Proliferation of Buddhist Architecture in America 123 less of these are seen in American sites, such as half human-half lion figures (norasingh) or half maiden-half goose (kinnaree).48 Fierce looking door guardians (lokapala), such as the large freestanding figures found at Wat Thai of Los Angeles, maintain the transitional gateway between the realms. At Wat Buddhanusorn, the door guardian is located on the gable above the entrance in two-dimensional form, standing amid a dense array of flaming vines whose complexity is meant to further confound evil spirits. Thus, through an amalgamation of structural, sculptural, and doctrinal protective symbolisms, Thai temples form a secure apotropaic space for the spiritual activities of their Buddhist communities. As with the Chinese, Japanese, and Americans examined throughout this study, Thai cultural familiarity and religious belief are involved in designing buildings of deep significance and spiritual solace. In the end, the search for a protective dwelling—whether a vihara, wat, church, temple, or meditative retreat—simply speaks to the very human need to feel safe. Religious architecture retains a visceral strength that humans have implemented, through various mechanisms of symbolic potency, to interact with the unseen spiritual forces that threaten one’s deep-seated happiness. Regardless of ethnic tradition or sectarian school, religious structures exist in common purpose as places infused with personal meaning and cultural value. They signify an outward representation of closely held inner spiritual feelings. Understood within a Buddhist worldview, these buildings are ultimately designed to protect one’s heart. This is the case even for groups who employ what appear to be secular designs to house their activities. These places are often referred to as “Centers,” and thus activate an unambiguous spatial connotation of the term “heart” when it is used figuratively to convey the idea of a central core or nonphysical epicenter. It is with term’s latter sense that situates the overall discussion of temple design into the present day, where the increasing occurrence of mandala-based architecture during the last forty years has been transforming the spiritual landscape of America.

Notes 1 Tenshin Zenki Reb Anderson, “Foreword,” in Paul Discoe and Alexandra Quinn, Zen Architecture: The Building Process as Practice (Layton, UT: Gibbs Smith, 2008), 7. 2 Rudiger V. Busto, “Disoriented Subjects: Reclaiming Pacific Islander/Asian American Religions, in Revealing The Sacred in Asian and Pacific America, eds. Jane Naomi Iwamura and Paul Spickard (New York: Routledge, 2003), 19. 3 The “Floating World” of ukiyo-e Japanese woodcut prints access the same insight, albeit in a corrupted manner. 4 Robert Lopez, “By Way of an Introduction,” in Sokei-an Sasaki, Original Nature: Zen Comments on the Sixth Patriarch’s Platform Sutra (Bloomington, IN: iUniverse, 2010), xvii. 5 Sokei-an Sasaki, “Buddha,” Zen Notes 1, no.3 (March 1954): 1. From a lecture dated April 19, 1939.

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6 Ibid. 7 Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind (Boston: Shambhala, 2011), 12. 8 Ibid, 166. 9 Michael Downing, Shoes Outside the Door: Desire, Devotion, and Excess at San Francisco Zen Center (Washington, DC: Counterpoint, 2003), 26. 10 Tenshin Zenki Reb Anderson, Zen Architecture: The Building Process as Practice, 7. 11 Paul Discoe, Zen Architecture: The Building Process as Practice, 73. 12 Shunryu Suzuki, quoted in Rick Fields, How the Swans Came to the Lake, 268. 13 Paul Discoe, Zen Architecture: The Building Process as Practice, 17. 14 Jack Kornfield, After the Ecstasy, the Laundry: How the Heart Grows Wise on the Spiritual Path (New York: Bantam Books, 2000), 122. 15 Erik Davis, The Visionary State: A Journey through California’s Spiritual Landscape, photographs by Michael Rauner (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2006), 173. 16 Huineng, The Platform Sutra: The Zen Teaching of Hui-Neng, translation and commentary by Red Pine (Berkeley: Counterpoint Press, 2006), 86–114. See also, John R. McRae, The Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch. BDK English Tripiṭaka (Berkeley, CA: Numata Center for Buddhist Translation and Research, 2000), 19–23. 17 Shunryu Suzuki, “Zazen, Rituals, and Precepts Cannot Be Separated” lecture dated 28 July 1970 in Wind Bell: Teachings from the San Francisco Zen Center, 1968–2001, ed. Michael Wenger (Berkeley: North Atlantic Books, 2002), 40. 18 Danica Shoan Ankele, “Editorial: How One Vow Unfolds,” Mountain Record: The Zen Practitioner’s Journal (Winter 2014–2015): 4. 19 Reverend Shiko Rom, “Your Place of Meditation,” Serene Reflection Meditation (Mt. Shasta, CA: Shasta Abbey, 1996), n.p. 20 Noble Ross Reat, Buddhism: A History, 207. 21 Sokei-an Sasaki, “Buddha,” Zen Notes 1, no.3 (March 1954): 2. 22 Sokei-an Sasaki, Original Nature: Zen Comments on the Sixth Patriarch’s Platform Sutra, 84. 23 Bstan-ʾdzin-rgya-mtsho, An Open Heart: Practicing Compassion in Everyday Life, ed. Nicholas Vreeland (Boston: Little, Brown, 2001). 24 Hsing Yun, Humanistic Buddhism: A Blueprint for Life, trans. John Balcom (Hacienda Heights, CA: Buddha’s Light International, 2008), 71. 25 For an excellent article on the Buddhism and the Beat Movement see Carole Tonkinson, “Buddhism and the Beat Generation,” Tricycle 5, no.1 (Fall 1995): 58–64. 26 Gary Snyder, Mountains and Rivers Without End: Poem (Berkeley: Counterpoint, 1996), 151. 27 The Shambhala Dictionary of Buddhism and Zen, eds. Stephan Schuhmacher, et al., trans. Michael H. Kohn (Boston: Shambhala, 1991), 224. 28 Wendy Cadge, Heartwood: The First Generation of Theravada Buddhism in America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), 25. 29 According to Lopez and Buswell, the term “Theravada” is somewhat problematic “given the rare use of the term...as a term of self-identification prior to the early twentieth century.” The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism, 1583; 1667–1668. 30 Gil Fronsdal, “Theravada: The Path of Insight,” in Morreale, The Complete Guide to Buddhist America, 3. 31 Damien Keown, et al., A Dictionary of Buddhism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 41. 32 Wetara Maha Mahinda Thera, “Liberation from Hurt and Resentment: How Possible Is It?,” The Washington Buddhist: Quarterly Newsletter of the Washington Buddhist Vihara (Winter 2014): 14.

The Proliferation of Buddhist Architecture in America 125 33 See Wendy Cadge, Heartwood, 27–30 and Morreale, The Complete Guide to Buddhist America, 16. Paul D. Numrich, Old Wisdom in the New World, 2–10. Diane Morgan, The Buddhist Experience in America, 82. In the Morreale volume, Gil Fronsdale actually highlights the IMS Retreat together with the Washington Buddhism Vihara, 3. 34 http://www.dharma.org/about-us/mission-and-values. 35 Quoted in Wendy Cadge, Heartwood, 29. 36 Conversation between Linda Spink and Sky Dawson called “Touching Stillness” at the Insight Meditation Center, IMS Audio Files, 11 December 2013. 37 Wendy Cadge, Heartwood, 29. 38 Jack Kornfield, A Path with Heart: A Guide Through the Perils and Promises of Spiritual Life (New York: Bantham Books, 1993), 10. 39 Ibid, 190. 40 Pinraj Khanjanusthiti, “Buddhist Architecture: Meaning and Conservation in the Context of Thailand,” PhD diss., (University of York, 1996), 22. 41 Lay Buddhists pledge to adhere to the Five Precepts as a condition of acceptance. The candidate agrees to avoid killing, stealing, sexual misconduct, lying, and harming oneself through intoxicating drugs. 42 Akira Sadakata, Buddhist Cosmology: Philosophy and Origins, trans. Gaynor Sekimori (Tokyo: Kosei Publishing Company, 1997), 41. 43 Dan Lusthaus, Buddhist Phenomenology: a Philosophical Investigation of Yogācāra Buddhism and the Chʼeng Wei-shih lun (London; New York: Routledge, Curzon, 2002), 83. 44 Paul M. Handley, The King Never Smiles: A Biography of Thailand’s Bhumibol Adulyadej (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006), 22. Also see Phya Lithai, Three Worlds According to King Ruang: A Thai Buddhist Cosmology trans., Frank and Mani Reynolds (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1982). 45 The Shambhala Dictionary of Buddhism and Zen, 42. 46 Frank and Mani Reynolds, Three Worlds According to King Ruang, 146. 47 Ori Z. Soltes, Our Sacred Signs: How Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Art Draw from the Same Source (Cambridge, MA: Westview Press, 2005), 22–25. 48 Nithi Sathāpitānon and Brian Mertens, Architecture of Thailand: A Guide to Traditional and Contemporary Forms (Singapore: Didier Millet, Csi, 2005), 178.

Reference Ankele, Danica Shoan. “Editorial: How One Vow Unfolds.” Mountain Record: The Zen Practitioner’s Journal (Winter 2014–2015): 4–5. Bstan-ʾdzin-rgya-mtsho, Jinpa and Thupten. Essence of the Heart Sutra: The Dalai Lama’s Heart of Wisdom Teachings. Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2005. Buswell, Robert E. Jr. and Donald S. Lopez Jr. The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014. Cadge, Wendy. Heartwood: The First Generation of Theravada Buddhism in America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005. Davis, Erik. The Visionary State: A Journey through California’s Spiritual Landscape. Photographs by Michael Rauner. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2006. Discoe, Paul and Alexandra Quinn. Zen Architecture: The Building Process as Practice. Layton, UT: Gibbs Smith, 2008. Downing, Michael. Shoes Outside the Door: Desire, Devotion, and Excess at San Francisco Zen Center. Washington, DC: Counterpoint, 2003. Handley, Paul M. The King Never Smiles: A Biography of Thailand’s Bhumibol Adulyadej. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.

126  The Proliferation of Buddhist Architecture in America Huineng, The Platform Sutra: The Zen Teaching of Hui-Neng, translation and commentary by Red Pine. Berkeley: Counterpoint Press, 2006. Iwamura, Jane Naomi and Paul Spickard. Revealing The Sacred in Asian and Pacific America. New York: Routledge, 2003. Keown, Damien. A Dictionary of Buddhism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. Khanjanusthiti, Pinraj. “Buddhist Architecture: Meaning and Conservation in the Context of Thailand.” PhD Dissertation. University of York, 1996. Kornfield, Jack. A Path with Heart: A Guide Through the Perils and Promises of Spiritual Life. New York: Bantham Books, 1993. . After the Ecstasy, the Laundry: How the Heart Grows Wise on the Spiritual Path. New York: Bantam Books, 2000. Lithai, Phya. Three Worlds According to King Ruang: A Thai Buddhist Cosmology, trans. Frank and Mani Reynolds. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1982. Lusthaus, Dan. Buddhist Phenomenology: a Philosophical Investigation of Yogācāra Buddhism and the Chʼeng Wei-shihlun. London; New York: Routledge, Curzon, 2002. McRae, John R. The Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch. BDK English Tripiṭaka. Berkeley, CA: Numata Center for Buddhist Translation and Research, 2000. Morreale, Don. The Complete Guide to Buddhist America. Boston, MA: Shambhala Publishing, 1998. Numrich, Paul D. Old Wisdom in the New World: Americanization in Two Immigrant Theravada Buddhist Temples. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1996. Reat, Noble Ross. Buddhism: A History. Berkeley, CA: Asian Humanities Press, 1994. Rom, Shiko. “Your Place of Meditation.” Serene Reflection Meditation. Mt. Shasta, CA: Shasta Abbey, 1996. Sadakata, Akira. Buddhist Cosmology: Philosophy and Origins, trans. Gaynor Sekimori. Tokyo: Kosei Publishing Company, 1997. Sasaki, Sokei-An. “Buddha,” Zen Notes 1, no.3 (March 1954). . Original Nature: Zen Comments on the Sixth Patriarch’s Platform Sutra. Bloomington, IN: iUniverse, 2010. Sathāpitānon, Nithi and Brian Mertens. Architecture of Thailand: A Guide to Traditional and Contemporary Forms. Singapore: Didier Millet, Csi, 2005. Schuhmacher, Stephan. The Shambhala Dictionary of Buddhism and Zen., trans. Michael H. Kohn. Boston: Shambhala, 1991. Snyder, Gary. Mountains and Rivers Without End: Poem. Berkeley: Counterpoint, 1996. Suzuki, Shunryu. Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind. Boston: Shambhala, 2011. Soltes, Ori Z. Our Sacred Signs: How Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Art Draw from the Same Source. Cambridge, MA: Westview Press, 2005. Carole, Tonkinson. “Buddhism and the Beat Generation,” Tricycle 5, no. 1 (1995): 58–64. Mahinda Thera, Wetara Maha. “Liberation from Hurt and Resentment: How Possible Is It?.” The Washington Buddhist: Quarterly Newsletter of the Washington Buddhist Vihara (Winter 2014): 14. Wenger, Michael. Wind Bell: Teachings from the San Francisco Zen Center, 1968– 2001. Berkeley: North Atlantic Books, 2002. Yun, Hsing. Humanistic Buddhism: A Blueprint for Life, trans. John Balcom. Hacienda Heights, CA: Buddha’s Light International, 2008.

5

The Mandala Form and Buddhist Space in America

The Open Space of Enlightenment Two large-scale Buddhist complexes that took shape during the 1980s and 1990s exist as monumental examples of Buddhism’s firm grounding and lasting presence upon the religious landscape of America today. Hsi Lai Temple in Southern California and Odiyan Buddhist Retreat Center in Northern California (Figures 5.1 and 5.2) can be seen as grand instances of Buddhist architecture in the West. This chapter explores each site’s layout and professed purpose. In so doing, their similarities and differences intertwine in order to bring to light the unique elements of both. The communities derive from different ethnic and denominational traditions, Tibetan and Chinese, Vajrayana and Mahayana. However, both Odiyan and Hsi Lai utilize space and the natural environment as mechanisms to heighten their community’s spiritual aspirations. While this is a tactic that other Buddhist groups employ in the exercise and propagation of the Dharma, the scale of these two sites sets them apart as particularly striking instances of Buddhist architecture in the United States. The quest for a more peaceful humanity is a shared goal of Hsi Lai Temple and the Odiyan Buddhist Retreat. The different manners in which each community goes about promoting that purpose is a function of their distinct cultural and religious worldviews. The Tibetan Esoteric tradition of Odiyan centers on the use of rituals, mandalas, mudras, and a Dharma transmission that places a deep-rooted emphasis on instructional lineage. As an esoteric practice, it inherently preserves a more mysterious and private disposition. Its spiritual vision is poetic and otherworldly in its architectural manifestation. The community’s choice to limit its visitors and situate its complex in a secluded environment evidences this temperament.1 Conversely, Hsi Lai advocates a mix of Pure Land and Zen Buddhism, where meditation and expressions of faith in the Buddha Amitabha (Jp: Amida) are seen as the most effective way to affect spiritual change. The community is an accessible and outward-leaning one. In contrast to Odiyan, it seeks engagement with the everyday world in America, DOI: 10.4324/9781003311645-6

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Figure 5.1  Hsi Lai Temple, Hacienda Heights, California

which its settlement amid an energetic residential cityscape attests. Zen and Pure Land are the two most prominent Buddhist practices in the United States, which reinforce this aspiration. Of course, the relationship between religious doctrine and its structural expression is formulated in conjunction with the way in which any community understands how its spiritual and communal values can relate to the world. As this study has shown, architecture can materialize the ephemeral import of religious belief. The natural environment can contextualize one’s internal state of

Figure 5.2  Odiyan Retreat Center, Cazadero, California

The Mandala Form and Buddhist Space in America 129 mind in a way that makes the unification of mind and nature one of transcendence. The combination of the two is a potent manner of religious expression. The external world becomes a fulcrum for the “coming out of oneself” that is so important to achieving an internal mindset of “no self” (anātman) and the enlightenment that Buddhism professes. The political overtones surrounding the mission of attaining a more peaceful world is consistent with the political context that is part of the histories of these two sites. In terms of the historical timeline, these sites bridge the discussion from a Cold War context to a post-Cold War period devoid of the political poles that existed after World War II through 1989. During the 1960s and 70s, Buddhists were vocal in their antiwar opposition against American incursions in Southeast Asia. Martin Luther King Jr. famously nominated Vietnamese Zen monk Thich Nhat Hahn for a Noble Peace Prize for his humanitarian work.2 Buddhism became embroiled in the proxy war of Vietnam, leading some Thai monks to advocate killing to defend their nation.3 During the Cold War, Buddhism was pulled in two different directions. Some Western Buddhists saw the religion as an Oriental alternative to what they saw as a war mongering Cold War American society. Others saw it as an exotic reminder of the country’s political troubles in the Far East.4 In the Cold War years, the Odiyan Retreat emerged as a product of the Tibetan diaspora, which was a result of the Communist Chinese invasion of Tibet in 1959 and its religious persecution. Like many others, its founder, Tarthang Tulku, fled Tibet with a profound desire to preserve the country’s cultural and religious heritage, arriving in the United States in 1969. Similarly, the founder of Hsi Lai, Chinese born Venerable Master Hsing Yun, fled Communist China in 1949 for Taiwan, a country with greater religious tolerance, and is credited with expanding religious freedom throughout Asia. In 1967, Hsing Yun established a new Buddhist Order in Taiwan called Fo Guang Shan (“Buddha’s Light Mountain”) whose political objective is to “protect and promote what its members regard as the best of their traditional culture” amid the Western modernity emerging in the East.5 This ambition blends with their further spiritual goal of “establishing a Pure Land on earth through the dual process of physically transforming the world through charity and promoting internal purification through Buddhist teachings.”6 Hsi Lai temple is one of fifty Fo Guang Shan sanctuaries worldwide. Both Tarthang Tulku and Hsing Yun share the aspiration of cultural preservation and the betterment of humanity. Both constructed large culturally infused architectural compounds to promulgate their religious convictions amid the backdrop of a political milieu. However, the product of their efforts has generated distinctive spaces in a manner unique to the spiritual underpinnings of their respective traditions. Hsi Lai Temple, located in the Los Angeles suburb of Hacienda Heights California, was consecrated in July 1988 (Anthony Yang, architect).7 The

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Figure 5.3  Hsi Lai Temple, Entrance Gate

ten building, roughly 15-acre complex rests on top of a hillside that gradually ascends from its main gate to a pagoda at its summit dedicated to the memory of the dead. The buildings’ style derives from Ming and Qing Dynasty architecture,8 and retains the grandiosity of imperial buildings together with the nobility and cultural elevation it implies. Like many other Buddhist temples, it is situated in a residential neighborhood. However, its size and cultural singularity concerned many residents prior and subsequent to its completion, and required many public hearings before permission was granted to begin construction. As a follower of the Mahayana (Greater Path), Hsi Lai’s activities are overwhelmingly concerned with the benefit of others. The entrance is a traditional Mountain Gate (Figure 5.3), which lists the four universal Buddhist vows: to save all sentient beings, to eradicate delusion and stress, to study the boundless Dharma, and to attain supreme enlightenment. The community does so in a number of ways, all of which can be characterized within a culture of openness, structurally epitomized by the site’s open central courtyard (Figure 5.4). The temple is dedicated to public accessibility and social engagement. It outwardly promotes an active intercourse between ordained Buddhists worldwide as well as lay and non-Buddhists in their immediate neighborhood. Outdoor grottoes containing figures of important Buddhist archetypes and Buddhist artworks

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Figure 5.4  Hsi Lai Temple, Courtyard from Above

imported from Asia placed along the public corridors are didactic expressions of the temple’s willingness to share its cultural heritage and spiritual beliefs. In addition to spreading the Dharma, Hsi Lai seeks to be the “United Nations of Buddhism.” The temple regularly hosts national and international conferences, and maintains an on-site publishing house for the translation and publication of Buddhist sutras. In 1988, it hosted the 16th World Fellowship of Buddhists Conference, the first time it was ever held outside of Asia.9 As one of its core values, the promotion of universality and inclusion is evidenced by the community’s accessible presence on the World Wide Web, as well as the accreditation of its University of the West in Rosemead California. The monastic community’s motivating impetus to help others in the modern world is framed under a guiding philosophy called “Humanistic Buddhism.” Rather than advance the traditionally inward orientation of monastic Buddhist practice, where monks retreat to forest environments, secluded locations, or the more private and sometimes isolated tendencies of Esoteric tradition, Humanistic Buddhism is one of outward engagement in the here and now of contemporary life. The community seeks to foster the very human desires for life and happiness, for an ideal world of peace and harmony via the dissemination of the Dharma. As Master Hsing Yun states: The bodhisattva way … is based on humanity with the family as its core. It possesses the non-discriminating universality of Avalokitesvara, who with great compassion and loving- kindness, selflessly helps all

132  The Mandala Form and Buddhist Space in America beings, putting the Dharma into practice in this world. Humanistic Buddhism encompasses all of these ideals.10 In this way, the Fo Guang Shan Order’s Pure Land beliefs promote the existence of an ideal “Pure Land” in this world. As Hsi Lai is the largest of the Order’s foreign temples, whose name literally means “Coming to the West,” it seems that the Buddha Amitabha’s Western Paradise is contemplated in the here and now, in America. The experience of Hsi Lai Temple conveys these sentiments in a number of ways. The monastic community’s commitment to social and spiritual openness was built into the architectural ground plan of the site. At first blush, the layout seems closed off into a rectilinear protective shell of tradition buildings, set high on a defensible knoll like a medieval castle. The site as a whole is meant to convey the physical essence of a mountain (Buddha’s Light Mountain, shan), which is consistent with Asian culture and the architectural symbolism discussed above. Indeed, Master Hsing Yun refers to temple members as “Dharma Protectors,” and like other Pure Land devotees the community of faith puts great stock into taking refuge in the Triple Gem (the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha). However, while observing notions of protection and refuge, much of the design of Hsi Lai militates against this convention to some degree, in favor of community inclusion. The Main Gate, for instance, is slightly less imposing than most Chinese mountain gates. Impressive, to be sure, yet its threshold achieves a greater feel of spatial acceptance than most. Moreover, traditional Chinese temples are usually oriented to face south to avoid cold northern winds, as well as to access the geomantic benefits of celestial alignment.11 Hsi Lai does not conform to this convention. Its orientation lies to the northwest. Discussions with temple members indicate that Fo Guang Shan leaders sought to work within the parameters of the site, accepting the environment as it is with a keenness to responsibly preserve it. This decreased lack of concern regarding orientation appears to be related to the community’s religious beliefs. As one teacher within the temple stated, “Sincerity of faith in the Buddha’s message is more important. His blessing is better than feng shui.”12 Nevertheless, adherence to tradition is a concern evident in the schematic plan of the site. It finds its expression in the vital heart of the mountain monastery. The rectilinear entrance portals anticipate the geometry of the open central courtyard, as symmetry of design was a specific strategy used by the planners that conforms to tradition. As one moves through the darkness of the initial building, the Bodhisattva Hall, a dynamic experiential shift takes place as the bright light reflects off the symbolic inner square. Emerging from the low shaded roof of the intermediate hallway, one encounters a symmetrical arrangement of flat rectangular concrete slabs, open to the sky, with grass in between them like mortar on a brick wall. (Figure 5.5) The monks refer to the bright open

The Mandala Form and Buddhist Space in America 133

Figure 5.5  Hsi Lai Temple, Courtyard from Ground Level

space as “the path to Buddhahood.” Its grid-like pattern is intended to evoke the regularity and abundance of a rice paddy, while the grass represents the weeds of ignorance. The square’s maximum symbolic content is that of the internal space of one’s mind: the balance and proportion of the individual square concrete blocks, mimicking that of the universal cosmos, overwhelms the weeds of ignorance that will continually grow if not for the mindfulness engendered by the Buddha’s teachings. The Fo Guang Shan Order is one that blends Pure Land and Zen Buddhist teachings. They are the two great enduring Buddhist traditions of Chinese history. The “self-power” ( jiriki) focus of Zen meditation combines with the “other power” (tariki) strength of Pure Land faith to create a potent inner-outer dynamic. A published online comment by Master Yun states, “Practiced together, they enable the practitioner to increasingly understand that “our” happiness is not separate from “others” happiness because our heart is nothing less than the universe itself.”13 It is a lesson that the central space of the temple—open as it is to the universe it symbolically mirrors—teaches to those willing to listen to its environmental message. The inner-outer message is further augmented by the grandiosity of the temple’s internal spaces. The Bodhisattva Hall and The Main Shrine on either side of the center court contain monumental statues of important personages in the Buddhist pantheon. The earthly forms of Shakyamuni, Amitabha, Maitreya, Guanyin, and others are bathed in a golden aura of

134  The Mandala Form and Buddhist Space in America light and splendor. They are surrounded in either hall by emblems of vast multiplicity, symbolizing the ever-present ubiquity of the Dharma and its message. The walls of the Bodhisattva Hall are decorated with the entire Diamond Sutra written in Chinese calligraphic script. Similarly, the Main Shrine contains ten thousand Buddha statues, a number that traditionally represents infinitude and universality. Both of these darkened internal spaces work in conjunction with the bright multiplicity of forms found in the geometric layout of the monastery’s exposed center. The square, as exhibited in the temple’s rectilinear design, is a metaphor of the finite earth.14 The decorative elements of the Main Hall and Bodhisattva Hall, arrayed as cosmic multiplicities, have traditionally been a symbol of boundlessness, usually represented in symbolic form as a circle. Yet the wide, open space of the center court is empty of anything except its symbolic message of enlightenment. The overall meaning of the temple’s configuration is clear enough when understood in the context of the entire religious setting. The architectural design brings one, like the Dharma, from the everyday world of earthly form to a transcendent space infinite in character, to the Pure Land, a place where everyone is bathed in the golden glow of Amitabha. In sincere respect and veneration of the Buddha’s teachings, one can therefore find the ultimate path from form to formlessness: the ultimate truth of emptiness (śūnyatā) at the heart of both the physical temple and its spiritual beliefs. Hsi Lai is an open environment. Social interaction is seen as the best way to bring people together in common cause. Its symbolic central square—the manifest heart of the community’s Humanistic Buddhism— is open upward to the world and sky. It is both literally and figuratively “an open heart” of universal Buddhist aspiration. The gate in front of the temple reads “International Buddhist Progress Society,” which is the temple’s official chartered title as a non-profit organization. We see from the above analysis how the group holds true to its values of internationality, interdenominational Buddhism, and societal interaction. Finally, the idea of “progress” is exhibited in the spiritual and symbolic journey that the temple grounds provide. The progressive thrust of its structural layout elevates one from the Main Gate to the Requiem Pagoda at its mountain peak. The Pagoda’s circular shape inherently radiates a universality that validates the monastery’s ecumenical spiritual beliefs, as dictated by the amalgamated Zen and Pure Land belief systems. Master Hsing Yun states, “I vow by ‘offering an incense from my heart’ like mandala flowers, the Dharma will sprinkle across the three thousand Dharma realms. Those who hear or are joyful from reading it are able to receive the benefits of the Dharma.”15 The comment references a famous Buddhist concept put forth by the T’ien-t’ai master Zhiyi of “a single thought moment comprising ten thousand realms,” which had a great effect on Nichiren Buddhism, but whose text Mo-Ho Chih-Kuan contained insights important to Pure Land and Zen as well.16

The Mandala Form and Buddhist Space in America 135 Moreover, Hsing Yun’s reference to “mandala flowers” points to another Buddhist spiritual tradition. If one carefully visualizes the exterior boundaries of Hsi Lai Temple from above, its outline appropriately describes the shape of a mountain (i.e., Fo Guang Shan: “Buddha’s Light Mountain”), but also the unmistakable form of a Tibetan stupa. It is unlikely that the auspicious shape was intentionally designed as such; although, mandalas are a hallmark of the Tibetan tradition. However, its broad retinacular base that tapers to the summit’s circular Requiem Pagoda compels one to that visual suggestion. The pagoda form is the Chinese version of a reliquary stupa. More than a receptacle for relics and deep sentiment, the stupa is the embodiment of the Buddha and his teachings, and is understood as a three-dimensional symbol of enlightenment. For the purposes of this study, the observation is relevant in that stupas also incorporate the formal features of the mandala in their layout. It is an auspicious form that we likewise find in monumental actuality at the Tibetan Odiyan Buddhist Retreat.

A Garland of Immortal Wish-Fulfilling Trees The symbolic expression of a deep inner order may take shape in a beautiful three-dimensional form, a structure known throughout the Buddhist world as a mandala. Odiyan, with its broad views, its temples, and its trees, was created to be a living mandala. For just as mandalas are designed to communicate transcendent truths to the ordinary mind, Odiyan brings sacred principles down to earth.17 The Odiyan Buddhist Retreat in Sonoma County California is a complex of architecture founded by Tarthang Tulku, whose construction was designed as a place for creative work and spiritual practice. The site is named after the ancient kingdom of Oddiyana, thought to be located roughly in present day Afghanistan, that is held to be the source of the Tibetan scriptures central to Vajrayana Buddhism. Its design was inspired by Samye Monastery in Tibet, further highlighting its architectural lineage.18 Odiyan is a three-dimensional mandala, a sacred structural or pictorial diagram of the cosmos that according to the community is an ancient symbol of unity that generates blessings, balances natural forces, and fosters harmony among all beings.19 The facility is part of the Nyingma School of Tibetan Buddhism, the oldest of the four major lineages. “Nyingma” in fact means “Ancient Ones.” The land, once sacred to the Native American Pomo people, was consecrated in 1975. A community primarily of volunteers and lay Buddhists has been helping build the site since that time. The hard work entailed in creating such a large temple complex is considered an important part of how real life training can help drive home the message that the Dharma is also a way of life.20 Structurally, the multi-edifice compound consists of four monumental

136  The Mandala Form and Buddhist Space in America structures: the Enlightenment Stupa (1980), a central 80-foot sanctuary called the Copper Mountain Temple (1983), the Vajra Temple (1996), and the Cintamani Temple (2002). Work is continually performed to maintain the complex, but with the completion of the Cintamani Temple the site now retains all of its major components. As the above quotation from Odiyan’s founder conveys, the interconnectivity of the natural environment as a didactic typology is key to understanding how the beliefs of the community correlate to its architecture. Mandalas are sometimes characterized as “vision-catalysts,”21 and Odiyan signifies Tarthang Tulku’s vision of the splendor and beauty of nature and its didactic efficacy on the well-being of the human spirit. Indeed, instructional lineage, so very important in Tibetan Buddhism, is sometimes expressed in the visual metaphor of a “garland of immortal wishfulfilling trees.”22 The term “garland” references blooming flowers, a highly expressive aesthetic metaphor for the awakened mind that blossoms from the seed of enlightenment within, in addition to the notion of a connected chain. The meticulously maintained and effusive flora of Odiyan embodies this idea sentimentally. Trees (as in family tree) are a figurative image of branching strands emerging from a connective central axis. The symbols of both the tree and flower emphasize lineage, nature, and radiance, and are deep emotional concepts in the Tibetan tradition. Both retain the underlying ideal of a mandala, a key component of Vajrayana practice, which at its most basic level signifies an inner circle radiating outward. Within its symbolic complexity, the simplicity of a flower is, paradoxically, adequate to express the seemingly intricate layout of the Odiyan Buddhist Retreat. Radiant splendor, the natural environment, and a living beauty that touches all life are floral concepts that Tarthang Tulku has expressed as rooted in the spiritual meaning of Odiyan. The mandala (Skrt: “circle”) is an intimate part of the deeply held spiritual beliefs and worldview of the Tibetan tradition. The symbolic technicality of the mandala can be overwhelming, especially when attempting to comprehend their representational content when encountering one as a two-dimensional image. As a “technology,” adherents often discuss mandalas in an objective sense, using language that is meant to convey both their firm belief in its power and the authenticity of its ritualistic effects. Numerology has been a way to present these assertions within an objective cast. In order to understand Odiyan, however, it is necessary to step back into a more subjective state. Tarthang Tulku’s vision of the mandala as expressed in the monumental edifices of the complex is actually one of poetic simplicity. For all of the site’s symbolic numerology and geomantic auspiciousness, discussed below, its founder sees the concept of the mandala form in the expressive strength of a flower. Its affective beauty is seen as a shared property connecting all living things (hence the “garland” metaphor). The mutually informed interaction between the natural/cosmic environment and the internal state of mind of the individual coalesces in the human sentiment of loveliness and

The Mandala Form and Buddhist Space in America 137 the appreciation of beauty that the “living mandala” space of the Odiyan flower provides. As with other Buddhists, the natural environment imparts a religious lesson in its inherent harmony and effulgent splendor. For Tarthang Tulku, the radiating impact of a blossoming flower and flowering plant captures the overwhelming beauty of the natural world, which teaches us the lesson of physical and spiritual concatenation: “Each array of beauty, from a single flower to an entire landscape, is a display of meaning and caring. Each has a significance and importance, its own rhythm and momentum that connect to a larger cosmos and to the human heart.”23 In this profession, we are introduced to the strategic purpose in the design of Odiyan, and— while its mandala form differs from the other sites under discussion in this study—it ultimately brings us back to the common ground of Buddhist humanistic thought: the heart. For instance, Odiyan’s plan bears an inverse relationship to that of Hsi Lai Temple. Both communities share the express goal of bringing the Dharma to the modern West, but each goes about doing so in different ways. Whereas the Hsi Lai layout retains an open center that is self-contained within the rectilinear format of a traditional Chinese temple setting, the main structure of Odiyan, the Copper Mountain Temple, is constructed in the shape of a mandala whose domed curvilinear center blossoms upward and outward beyond its immediate rectilinear environment. This inverted dynamic extends to how each site relates to the world outside its borders. As made clear previously, the Fo Guang Shan Order is one that is quite open to engaging others. It has a desire to communicate and interact with society on a global scale. The design, placement, and personality of the site is one of exposition and engagement. On the other hand, Odiyan is a closed environment. Like the community’s homeland of Tibet, it exists in a highly secluded mountain environment that is greatly inaccessible to the external world (the community does not allow visitors, unlike Tassajara Zen Mountain Center). Its spiritual lineage is of the esoteric tradition, one whose character and practice is enveloped in secret teachings and privileged knowledge. The community’s online presence mirrors its real-world aura. Its website provides beautiful imagery and a schematic description that evinces a visual wonder, leaving one wanting to know more. As a place of seclusion and solitude, rather than providing an accessible and interactive discourse with the external world, Odiyan relies more so on the spiritual technologies within its grounds to propagate its religious message. These mechanisms form the core of the site’s man-made environment. The overall spiritual flow of Odiyan’s isolated architectural environment is one of radiant energy. Every structure within its secluded location is constructed to transmit the spiritual ideas of the community. To do so, space is constructed in a manner whose historical precedent resides in the ancient notion of ideal form, where geometry and numerology coincide with spiritual efficaciousness. For example, in Buddhism the number 108 is

138  The Mandala Form and Buddhist Space in America considered auspicious, carrying traditional esoteric mathematical and astrological meanings going back to ancient Indian religious belief. Its numerical reference is found in many of the Retreat’s structures, as it activates the august potency of the Buddha’s Eightfold Path to Enlightenment.24 The Vajra Temple, for instance, holds 108 thousand statues of Padmasambhava facing outward to aid in the transmission of blessings. The temple’s pagodashaped elevation is intended to emit the saint’s fortuitous spirit centrifugally, following the symmetrical path of the radiating octagonal form. To that end, the eight-sided structure creates vertices that point in every direction like a compass. In Buddhism, a vajra refers to the indestructible glass-like purity of a diamond. Tibetan Buddhism is considered the Vajrayana (“Diamond Path”), and its overall teachings are forwarded in the context of the spotless translucency of an adamantine substance. Accordingly, the Vajra Temple is constructed with a great deal of transparent material: “the mass of statues, each gold plated, are set on multilayered racks forming a beehive of energy and emanation through the glass brick walls.”25 The Enlightenment Stupa is one of the largest in the Western world, at 113 feet high with a 72-foot square base. According to the community, it is a symbol of the enlightened mind and is abundant with the power of Awakening; it “transmits this power: penetrating the darkness of confusion like a beacon of light.”26 An additional 108 smaller stupas are placed throughout the grounds that augment this effect. The zodiacal significance associated with 144 (12 × 12) is employed to add to the colossal stupa’s emanating power. The placement of 144 prayer flags from the zenith to the earth is intended to “spread their blessings in all directions.” Additionally, 128 bells are also suspended from the stupa. As a factor of eight (8 × 16), they again access its numerical power of providential force to project a spiritual energy of good will and peace. A ten-ton prayer wheel, the largest in the world, sits at the center of the Enlightenment Stupa. Its spinning movement expels prayers at a pace unattainable by human standards of practice. In the symbolic realm of Buddhist thought, the stupa’s golden color is seen as a metaphor of enlightenment, and the sound of the bells represents awakening. The entire structural precinct thereby translates the physical into the non-physical, and exemplifies the technological character of the entire sacred complex. It is clear that the ideas of transmission and radiation are central to the spiritual efficacy of Odiyan. Understanding how this process works is therefore essential in appreciating the humanistic goals of the site. When beholding the Copper Mountain Mandala, the sacred center of the Odiyan site, it quickly becomes clear that the community accepts that the idealized geometric forms of the circle and the square found in ancient sacred architecture still retains a spiritual value in the modern world. In the history of ancient thought—across many cultures—the circular shape symbolizes the cosmos, while the square suggests the closed nature of earthly limits. In religious architecture, the orientation of the four-sided square generally points

The Mandala Form and Buddhist Space in America 139 to the boundaries of earthly habitation, correlating in number to the directions North, South, East and West. Within this schema, the microcosm and macrocosm, semantically embedded in these geometric shapes, is thought to entail a spiritual technology (yantra), designed and implemented to perform a specific task: to harness larger natural and cosmic energies toward a spiritual consciousness within the individual. Of course, humans have realized for millennia that the universe is organized in a balanced, symmetrical, and harmonious fashion. It has been further recognized that mathematical ratios expressed in numerical form are an effective way to comprehend and predict cosmological phenomena. Such ratio and symmetry was equally noticed in the natural world as well as in the human body. Geometry, therefore, seemed to provide the soundest way with which to understand this connection between the large and small scale—the macrocosm and the microcosm—as truth. A symbolic correlation was ultimately made that still holds today in religious thought. The circle as a form found in the sky (the sun, moon, the atmospheric dome) became associated with the cosmos, the eternal realm of the gods. The square as a form generated by the mental ingenuity of mankind (perfect squares are not found in nature), most conspicuously used when constructing a building, became linked to its terrestrial ground. The implementation of the mandala form (as used in the construction of stupas, for example) is therefore used to connect the heavens and the earth by creating a cosmic axis (axis mundi) between them.27 The integration of the two worlds is understood to generate a psycho-cosmic harmony between the material spaces of earthly form and the spiritual space of interior consciousness.28 Here, the verticality of man is implicit in this link, as the merging of physical architecture and the physical human form becomes implicitly involved in the transfer and acceptance of non-physical energy through a material substrate. For Tibetan Buddhists, this axis represents a system (qua Mt. Meru) “linking all the planes of existence and experience...where there is a yogic practitioner attempting to become a Buddha, the axis runs precisely through the center of his or her body as well. Essentially, it is from this axis that all Buddhological phenomena and noumena radiate.”29

Synthesis and Sentiment The creator of Odiyan states, “The Sanskrit word ‘Mandala’ means center intimately together with its periphery, a symbol of the structure of reality that reveals the dynamic interplay between the whole and each of its distinctive parts.”30 With Tarthang Tulku’s words, the transition between the circular domes of the Copper Mountain Mandala and the rectilinear radiating forms around them becomes clear. As we have seen in the examples throughout this study, mutual interconnectedness is the heart of the Dharma, and is the symbolic principle informing the structures created

140  The Mandala Form and Buddhist Space in America to communicate it. In its brute actuality, the Odiyan mandala expresses a deeply held human idea that conceives itself in balanced accord with its natural setting, which in turn sits as an indispensable part of the cosmic flux. As has been continually argued above, the quest to internalize the Dharma within external structural forms is linked to the very humanity that makes us connect with one another culturally and environmentally, to search for the truth as a reality that we share. In the constructed landscape he has created, Tarthang Tulku suggests “the symbols of the mandala are precious treasures for human beings. Externally, their presence radiates blessings in all directions; internally, they communicate to us the keys to enlightenment.”31 In a sense, blessings are the essence of the religious practice and spiritual purpose of Odiyan, and those presented in this discussion in general. As consecrations, they give voice to the chance of a sacred order. As directed hope and faith, they encapsulate the pursuit for personal meaning in an external world. Descriptions in printed texts reveal that the Odiyan community draws parallels between the natural beauty and constructed splendor of the site and the magnificent display of beauty and grandeur of Amitabha’s Pure Land.32 In that realm, a voiced expression of hope and faith in the Buddha of the Western Paradise guarantees rebirth in a land of dream-like beauty (the nembutsu in the Jodo Shinshu tradition discussed in Chapter 3). People unfamiliar with Buddhism who had the rare chance to visit the Odiyan temple complex in 1996 have stated, “I don’t believe in God, but I felt I had walked into a prayer.”33 Temple members believe that “natural beauty manifest blessings.” The professed spiritual technologies at Odiyan acknowledge that reality through their focus on transmission. All of the structures of the mandala communicate the Body (kaya), Speech (vaca), and Mind/Heart (citta) of enlightenment. These aspects of the Buddha’s nature come forth at the time of ultimate realization, and can be experienced when in the midst of the mandala field. Communication is at the core in the creation of the temples, stupas, and their accouterments at Odiyan. The breath of the wind becomes the voice of the blessings written on prayer flags, which speak their sacred aspirations through the air. Spinning prayer wheels continuously churn out the seed syllables of sacred mantras that spread like deities speaking blessings that radiate and grow. Devoted followers (nyingmapa) speak daily prayers and ceremoniously circumambulate the grounds to help affect peace and world harmony. This peripatetic element of the community therefore works in tandem with its architecture, which is designed to foster harmony among sentient beings. These mechanisms are co-terminal with the continuity of teachings of a given order’s Dharma Holder. The Nyingma School is a Tantric form of Buddhism, and the term “tantric” means “continuity.” Tibetan traditions find their identity in their lineage, which guarantees the authenticity of their respective teachings and provides adherents with a living example with which to aspire.34 The radiate force and communicative

The Mandala Form and Buddhist Space in America 141 effect of symbolic architecture is of a kind, then, with the transmission of the Dharma via a lama or guru. Ultimately, Odiyan is a spiritually moving place. The monastic and lay residents claim that it is the very heart of their faith. One volunteer stated that the experience of working on the property “transformed her life.”35 The copper of its dome references the community’s Tibetan home and the color of the illustrious Samye Monastery, which is referred to as “The Glorious Copper-Colored Mountain.” The founder has dedicated the creation of Odiyan to the memory of those executed in Tibet during the Chinese invasion and persecutions. Situated as it is in the green mountains of California, the community has still been able to find a connection to the Land of Snow. The memory of the Native Americans who lived for centuries on its lands confers a deep spiritual history to the site that the Tibetans recognize and admire. In fact, some Buddhists from Tibet find an affinity with the Navajo Indians and Native Americans in general, and find common spiritual ground with their use of mandalas and respect for nature.36 Indeed, Tibetans erected six stupas in New Mexico and Colorado between 1983 and 1996.37 Tarthang Tulku’s wistful and poetic description of the mandala disarms its forbidding complexity and imposing structures. His informed and matured understanding of the Retreat’s grounds gives one a sense of experiential accessibility that belies the community’s closed nature. Other Tibetan groups have taken residence in the United States, but none can match Odiyan’s grandiosity and architectural splendor. However, Tarthang Tulku makes the explicit point that the mandala is a Buddha-field for the environment and the mind, which explains why the closed nature of the compound does not affect its spiritual activation. The Tibetan mandala is an enlightenment field. One might walk into its realm and feel the pleasure of its splendor and the power of its beauty, but its center is a centrifugal one that radiates this power outward. Its nucleus can activate a natural energy in order to circulate its spiritual content externally. Nature’s beauty, harmony, balance, and life work in conjunction with mandalic architecture and auspicious artifacts to build an inductive power. These include relics, statues, mantras, and other efficacious objects situated in the heart of the stupa and temples. For the Tibetans, in this way the very existence of the mandala form is enough to certify its potency: “As the perfect field of realization, the mandala arrives at no final point that can be touched. It has no root that can be unearthed, and it displays no edge whose location can be discovered.”38 There is a lyrical and expressive quality to mandala-based environments that seems intentionally to access both the objective and subjective constituents of human mentality. In my view, the linear complexity and asserted effectiveness of the mandala is set amid humanistic notions replete with a reflective spirit that educes instead of proves its effects. While this characterization is not to be found in the formal literature of Tibetan Buddhism written in English, it nevertheless is ensconced in the structural forms one

142  The Mandala Form and Buddhist Space in America encounters in their environments. As Odiyan is by far the most elaborate of those in the Western world, it is a perfect place to evidence the thought. The Cintamani Temple was the last of Odiyan’s structures to be completed. As the last, it holds a place of importance. “Cintamani” means “wishfulfilling jewel.” Made of bronze, its preciousness as a jewel is evident in its effusive radiant color. It is arrayed with Bodhisattvas in golden niches around the perimeter of its circular shape. Its physical presence is that of an overtly objective entity, brute in its glorious form and energy. Its spiritual presence, however, retains its most vital subjective purpose: “wishfulfilling.” Thus, like the other sites presented in this study, its architectural form points directly to its spiritual purpose, to the non-physical place that sits at the core of why the building was created, the human heart.

Embodied Space: The Stupa Form in America The Great Stupa of Dharmakaya which Liberates upon Seeing (Figure 5.6) was consecrated in 2001 by Tibetan Buddhist lamas on land adjacent to Shambhala Mountain Center in Red Feather Lakes, Colorado. A stupa is a Buddhist reliquary that incorporates a mandala as a foundational base, and helps illuminate the microcosmic and macrocosmic associations within the body and the mind. As a spiritual technology, a stupa relies on an association between the symbolic exigencies of its architectonic formula and the manifold faculties of the individual within a

Figure 5.6  The Great Stupa of Dharmakaya Which Liberates Upon Seeing, Red Feather Lakes, Colorado

The Mandala Form and Buddhist Space in America 143 sacred environment. In this worldview, the body is understood in architectural terms, where symbolic correspondences relate to auspicious forms. Indeed, within the confines of this discussion we might also state that space itself needs a body. As so often happens, the mandala form evinces a poetic reaction to its existence in line with the humanity involved in their creation. As Lokesh Chandra writes, From the roots of instinct, from a nest to a dwelling, to the creation of geometric bricks in the Vedic citis, to the superstructure of caityas over the citis, the symbolisation of philosophical categories in the stupas, and infinite possibilities of the human subconscious revealing themselves in the constellation of mandalas, a vast array of space embodying transcendence—rūpa and śūnyatā in communion—is a panorama of the eternal absolute in a flux of appearances. Life is well-being. Well-being becomes Being. The body needs embodied space.39 Chandra’s historical perspective speaks to humanity’s enduring need to understand its place in the wider sphere of cosmic existence—the particular to the universal, the human to the divine. The Great Stupa of Dharmakaya can be understood as an archetype in that quest by examining how it engages humanity with respect to memory, temporality, and the physical and spiritual sensibilities of those who behold it. Contemporary stupas in the West derive from the most ancient spiritual traditions of the East. Chandra claims that the construction of a stupa is “a monument of the magnificence of Dharma, that gives us a world contemporaneous with every period of history.”40 Built as memorial monuments to enlightened beings, structures such as The Great Stupa of Dharmakaya signify an important development in the history of sacred architecture in America, as they seek to access the transcendental heart of humanity through a spiritual engagement of the senses. This particular reliquary contains the remains of Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, who created the surrounding community as a Tibetan exile with the goal of delivering his Shambhala vision to North America. Like Odiyan Buddhist Retreat, it is located in a somewhat hidden, majestic, tree-laden landscape of northern Colorado, outside Fort Collins. Stupas such as these are a part of the long history of sacred Buddhist architecture going back to Aśoka’s Great Stupa at Sanchi, near Bhopal India of the third century BC, the eighth century stupa atop the Borobudur mandala complex in central Indonesia, and the fourteenth century Boudhanath stupa in Kathmandu, Nepal. In fact, unlike Odiyan, its proximity to Fort Collins conforms to ancient conventions of placing a stupa in a secluded area yet close to social life. In ancient India, it was thought that monasteries “must not be too far from the city but also not too close to it, within easy reach of all the people.”41 The earliest official stupa to be constructed in the United States can be found on the roof of the Buddhist Church of San Francisco discussed in Chapter 3. Built in the 1930s, it was endowed with relics of the historical Buddha and his main disciples in 1935, the only such relics in the western

144  The Mandala Form and Buddhist Space in America world.42 During the last few decades there has been a tremendous increase in stupas and mandalas of all types being built in the United States, primarily from the Tibetan Vajrayana tradition exiled from Tibet during the Chinese invasion of their land in 1959. The emergence of contemporary sites such as these indicates an increased East-West cultural interaction, and the relevance of Eastern religious ideas in America that has taken shape since the late nineteenth century. Interest in Asian religions in the West had been steadily increasing since the eighteenth century, but within the last fifty years spiritual teachers from India and Tibet have brought their religious traditions and ideas to the New World, quite often as exiles. They have established small communities and slowly have been able to raise the funds needed to plan and construct monumental stupas and architectural mandalas. The American Southwest has seen a number of impressive stupas take shape. The 58-foot Kagyu Shenpen Kunchab Bodhi Stupa in Santa Fe and the 36-foot Amitabha Stupa built by Kunzang Palyul Chöling in Sedona Arizona (Figure 5.7) are two striking examples.

Figure 5.7  Amitabha Stupa, Sedona, Arizona

The Mandala Form and Buddhist Space in America 145 The formidable and accelerated presence of sites such as these in the United States compels the historian to understand these non-Western structures, and the spiritual forces undergirding their existence, as an evolving part of a Western-oriented mythology that places the New World as a destination of sacred significance. In addition to being memorials to enlightened individuals, stupas are thought to embody the Buddha’s essence through a symbolic arrangement that stresses its relationship to the Buddha’s mind (citta), body (kaya) and teachings (dharma). Important to Mahayana Buddhism is the concept of the Threefold Body of the Buddha (buddha-trikaya), the three distinct but concomitant manifestations of a transcendental being. While not described by the historical Buddha Shakyamuni, the concept of the tripartite body was introduced early in the Common Era as a way to conceptualize the universality of the Buddha-nature.43 The trikaya entails the nirmanakaya, which refers to the expressed body of mundane existence (the historical Buddha Siddhartha Gautama is an example of this manifestation), the sambhogakaya, described as the “reward” or “heavenly body” (Bodhisattvas exemplify this appearance), and finally the dharmakaya, understood as the transcendent “truth body” of a Buddha, or “the body of ultimate reality.”44 Important to this discussion is that this last emanation is not essentially one that is accessible to the senses, as it represents the utter truth of existence, a spiritual state that according to Buddhist doctrine entails the pure emptiness of reality, its non-dualistic impermanence. Hence, The Great Stupa of Dharmakaya architecturally fulfills the human need for an embodiment of this spiritual state of existence. The three bodies of awakening are enmeshed within the psycho-cosmic language of human enlightenment, and a fully enlightened being can be manifest in any of these three forms.45 The introduction of the Threefold Body of the Buddha opens the discussion conceptually toward the functional elements of The Great Stupa of Dharmakaya. When stupas are built in memory of the Buddha or an influential guru, they involve a complex and subtle spiritual-somatic dialogic mediated by symbolisms. In fact, the techno-symbolic efficacy of the stupa is the foremost design component of the Dharmakaya Stupa’s existing architectural form.46 According the Shambhala community, the 108-foot monument retains the stupa-form’s earliest symbolic function: “that of a motherly womb that can transform the seeds of the past into the life forms of the future, as it contains the main relics of Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche in the heart-center of the 20-foot-high golden Buddha seated on the ground floor.”47 The visuality associated with a seated Buddha in meditative posture is the primary aesthetic and symbolic component of the stupa’s spiritual efficacy. For in this architectural arrangement, the monument itself represents a seated Buddha.48 “Dharmakaya” literally means, “truth-body.” Thus, in terms of the religious goals of The Great Stupa of Dharmakaya, this representation is profound, as it makes explicit the correlation between the mundane body of earthly form and the Dharma-body characteristic of

146  The Mandala Form and Buddhist Space in America the enlightened state. It expressly implies the inherent capacity of the former body to ultimately attain the spiritual state of the latter. This somatic symbolism extends to the equally profound spatial configuration of the mandala form, which as an arrangement of universal spiritual totalism demonstrates the ability of all beings everywhere and in every time to achieve the highest level of spiritual insight. In the terrestrial geography of mandalic space, the axis mundi refers to the center of a posited cosmic relation: “It is a pathway of ascent, leading upward through the confining carapace of the physical world, passing beyond its limits and bounds to the unlimited and the unbounded.”49 Its appearance here can be found in The Great Stupa of Dharmakaya’s central spire, which moves through the body of the stupa into the ground via its spine—or “life-force-pole.” The bodily reference to the spine here is salient, as it underscores the inner mandala intrinsic to the body and mind of the human form espoused by the Buddhist worldview. Indeed, ancient Indian philosophy presupposes a relationship between architecture and the person, a relation that understands the micro and macro environments existing as a unified whole inside each individual.50 The relationship between the body, the mind, and the environment becomes the critical dynamic of the stupa monument when understood within the complex apparatus of the mandala field. To maximize their efficaciousness, stupas are oriented toward the rising sun in the East. Their square bases are configured within a sacred circle (mandala), which when activated directs— through symbolic mechanisms and sacred rituals—the cosmic energy of the universe into the spiritual field of the site. To enhance the terrestrial potency of the monument, sites are chosen geomantically to maximize the sacrality of the setting. Locations that retain a sacred character with respect to the surrounding environment are generally chosen, often areas with an historic spiritual lineage, as with Odiyan, as well as places of tremendous beauty or palpable solitude, as with the Amitabha Stupa in Sedona Arizona.51 Given The Great Stupa of Dharmakaya’s monumental proportions, its edifice is meant to, in a very technological sense, harness the maximum amount of cosmic/spiritual energy for the common good of humanity. At this point in the discussion, it is evident that the symbolic mechanisms at play are truly the all-encompassing aesthetic and religious forces at work in sites such as these, as it is indeed at virtually every religious site. Yet, what is the technological nature of this symbolism, and how can we understand the causal linkages inherent within the spiritual claims postulated by these structures and environments and their resident communities? As this study has continuously shown, and as the literature on the subject suggests, architecture both instructs and reveals. How this architectonic function takes place has to everything to do with the symbolic force of ritual. The repetition of form, whether in a mantra or a building, garners, imitates, accesses, and harnesses the cyclical dynamics immanent

The Mandala Form and Buddhist Space in America 147 in the universe. In fact, the mandala form is qualitatively dictated as a circle by this episodic redundancy: the diurnal change from day to night, the movement of the planets and stars, the changing of the seasons, etc., all exist in diagrammatic form as a macrocosm. In other words, the mandala’s existence and potency as a symbol finds its “blueprint” in nature’s cosmic reality. Symbolic architecture accesses that power as a microcosmic reality mimetically arranged for one’s spiritual sensibilities, which are mediated and attuned by one’s sensory and somatic faculties. The meditational use of a pictorial mandala guides and instructs the human mind in a didactic rhythm toward understanding the ultimate reality inherent in this natural/ cosmic order. The same event occurs while ambulating within or around a large architectural mandala, while the concomitant use of chanting and meditating multiplies the effect. The microcosm of man takes shape in the repetition of walking and speaking mantras, in the inhalation and exhalation of breath, and the expansion and contraction of the heart. What becomes revealed mentally and spiritually in this process is one’s place in the cosmic order. As the central tenet of Buddhism is that the idea of a fixed, unchangeable self is an illusion, the movement inherent in the proper somatic and meditative use of a mandala field ultimately imparts this lesson—via intuition and psychic experience—in a dramatic and transformative manner. The sacred event becomes a “hierophany” in Eliade’s famous conception discussed above, in that the mundane world as represented by one’s material body is encapsulated in a cosmic perspective and transcended by the sensible acquisition of the larger temporal space at hand. Given what has been outlined regarding the nature of stupaic architecture, The Great Stupa of Dharmakaya Which Liberates Upon Seeing can now be addressed in terms of its phenomenology (as in the human consciousness of experience). As the stupa’s name states, as one enters the mandala field of the community, the spiritual efficacy of its visual acquisition is meant to generate a sense of transcendence. The starkness of its white façade is a symbol of the natural “primordial” purity Buddhists believe is endowed within every person, while the swirling colors intimate the authentic individual emerging from that purified state. Its golden elements underscore the preciousness of the Buddha’s message and the stainless purity of the enlightened mind. Joshua Mulder, the stupa’s Director of Art and Design, states that “seeing this ‘out of context’ structure is like coming upon your own basic goodness.”52 In other words, when one sees the formidable structure amid its woodland seclusion, its beauty and distinctiveness instantly shocks the beholder out of a drowsy or conditioned state of mind. Thus, as the term “Buddha” means “awakened,” viewers become “liberated” from the mental or spiritual slumber of conditioned experience and are set upon the path of Buddhahood. Shambhala Buddhists insist that every aspect of the building has a meaning as it motivates “the evolution of a human towards a more fully embodied religious existence.”53

148  The Mandala Form and Buddhist Space in America It is evident that environment plays a prominent role in the humanistic message of the monument. Indeed, Buddhist communities believe that stupas create harmony and peace wherever they are built. It is a belief that finds its nascence from the religion’s very beginning, when the historical Buddha Siddhartha Gautama advised his followers to erect a stupa at a crossroads, thereby amplifying its dispersive power. Indeed, the quadrangular base is oriented to the four cardinal directions in observation of this dictate. The Great Stupa of Dharmakaya’s power stems from its favorable shape, its mandalic blueprint, its symbolic efficacy, as well as the sacred relics embedded within its interior. The Tibetan word for stupa is chörten, meaning “receptacle for offerings.” In many stupas, a fragment/relic sits at the core of its physical structure that symbolically creates the spiritual being that is corporeally absent. The relics and fragments at the center of the stupa act as a spiritual energy animating the physical monument and transforming its materiality into the essence of the Buddha-body, or truthbody. Relics can be the cremated fragments of the historical Buddha. They can also be billions of hand-written sacred mantras, vases intended to heal and protect the environment, sacred substances like cedar, water and rocks from all seven continents, meteorites from space, rare physical remains from past Buddhas and enlightened masters, sacred images and more. The Great Stupa of Dharmakaya interior structure is in the process of being filled with sacred mantras and prayers, statues embodying enlightened energies, and 100,000 miniature stupas called tsa tsas. What is striking about the communities currently building stupas in America is the overall optimistic tenor of their engagement with the world. Almost to a kind, the promulgation of world peace and personal happiness is the overall humanistic message surrounding their actions. While acknowledging humanity’s problems and postulating the Buddhist path as the way out of those troubles, stupas are constructed within a confident and hopeful cosmic disposition. From ancient times stupas were generally erected to mark the location of a significant event in the Buddha’s life: his birth, enlightenment, first sermon and his death. Yet, stupas are not memorials in the traditional sense of mourning or loss, but are empowering structures infused with the energy of the relic or efficacious objects embedded in them. Indeed, Buddhists believe that the animated, activated stupa brings the Dharma alive. Finally, there are many different types of stupas. The Great Stupa of Dharmakaya is of the “radiant descent” type, indicated by the flight of stairs descending from the “open heart” of the Buddha on the structure’s central portal. Underlying this sentiment are the prayer flags connected to the monument (just as with the Amitabha Stupa and the Enlightenment Stupa at Odiyan), which discharge innumerable blessings upon the wind for the well-being of all life on earth. The open heart reinforces the visual characteristics of the stupa insofar as it itself “sees in all directions.” Nevertheless, the sensory elements embedded in the stupa’s design are not finally the

The Mandala Form and Buddhist Space in America 149 point of the entire architectural endeavor. Its whiteness retains an intentional message that is not immediately cognizant to the conscious mind. For the practitioners at Shambhala, it is also the color of “All-Encompassing Space,” of emptiness (śūnyatā), the far-reaching philosophy central to so much of Buddhist thought. To the followers of Shakyamuni, nothing has an intrinsic unchanging self-reality: everything of form is “empty.” In the presence of The Great Stupa of Dharmakaya Which Liberates Upon Seeing, one is meant to have all nonessential impurities that block spiritual insight removed. As Lokesh Chandra’s words stated in the beginning of this discussion, the dharmakaya—or truth body—entails both rūpa and śūnyatā in communion, form and emptiness together. What can be gleaned from this analysis of the stupa form is that the message is indeed, as Chandra proclaims: “Life is well-being. Well-being becomes Being. The body needs embodied space.”

Notes

1 As one Tibetan Buddhist said during the only open house, “It’s hard for even Buddhists to get in.” Bill Broadway, “A Revelation In Gold and Stone; Lavish Buddhist Center, 21 Years in the Making, To Open Its Doors to Public,” The Washington Post, May 25, 1996, p. B07. 2 Ari B. Bloomekatz, “Peace Activist Brings a Message of Hope; Thich Nhat Hanh, a Vietnamese Buddhist Monk, Visits MacArthur Park in L.A., Drawing More than 1,000.” LA Times, 30 September 2007, p. B.3. 3 See Eugene Brassel Ford, “Cold War Monks: An International History of Buddhism, Politics and Regionalism in Thailand and Southeast Asia, 1941–1976,” PhD diss. (Yale University, 2012). 4 Michael K. Masatsugu, “‘Beyond This World of Transiency and Impermanence’: Japanese Americans, Dharma Bums, and the Making of American Buddhism during the Early Cold War Years,” Pacific Historical Review 77, no. 3 (August 2008): 423–451. 5 Stuart Chandler, Establishing a Pure Land on Earth: The Foguang Buddhist Perspective on Modernization and Globalization (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2004), 1. 6 Carolyn Chen, “Cultivating Acceptance by Cultivating Merit: The Public Engagement of a Chinese Buddhist Temple in American Society,” in Iwamura and Spickard Revealing The Sacred in Asian and Pacific America, 73. 7 Edmund Newton, “‘Plodding’ Architect Triumphs with Temple,” Los Angeles Times, April 8, 1988, p. V14. 8 The Pluralism Project, Harvard University, “Hsi Lai Temple,” last accessed 12 December 2021. https://hwpi.harvard.edu/pluralismarchive/hsi-lai-temple; http://www.hsilai.org/en/hlt/index.php 9 Edmund Newton, “Buddhists Consecrate Hsi Lai Temple,” LA Times, July 28, 1988, p 3. 10 Hsing Yun, Humanistic Buddhism: A Blueprint for Life, xviii. 11 Cai Yanxin, Chinese Architecture, 9. 12 The quote derives from a personal conversation with Man Kuang, a teacher at Hsi Lai Temple. 13 http://www.hsilai.org/en/faq_subpages/faq.html. 14 Kapila Vatsyayan, The Circle and the Square of the Indian Arts (New Delhi: Abhinav Publications, 1997), 25.

150  The Mandala Form and Buddhist Space in America 15 Hsing Yun, “Master’s Letter to Dharma Protectors and Friends,” 2009. Published online via the temple’s official website. http://www.hsilai.org/en/ml/ 2009e.php. 16 See Neal Arvid Donner and Daniel B. Stevenson, The Great Calming and Contemplation: A Study and Annotated Translation of the First Chapter of Chih-I’s Mo-Ho Chih-Kuan (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1993). 17 Tarthang Tulku, Lotus Mandala: Sacred Garden (Cazadero, CA: Dharma Publishing, 2012), 5. 18 Peter Steinfels, “To Pray in a Tibetans Temple, Buddhists Built One in California,” New York Times, June 26, 1996, p. A12. 19 Odiyan community pamphlet, n.p., n.d. 20 Tarthang Tulku, Mind over Matter, 164–165. 21 Denise Patry Leidy and Robert Thurman, Mandala: The Architecture of Enlightenment (New York: Asia Society Galleries, 1997), 9. 22 Tsering Lama Jampal Zangpo, A Garland of Immortal Wish-fulfilling Trees: The Palyul Tradition of Nyingmapa (Ithaca, NY: Snow Lion, 1988). 23 Tarthang Tulku, A Garland of Flowers: Beauty of the Odiyan Mandala, 141. 24 These are Right Understanding, Thought, Speech, Action, Livelihood, Effort, Mindfulness, and Concentration. 25 Jane Reichhold, Visiting the Temples at Odiyan (Annapolis, CA: Jane Reichhold, 1996), 6. This is short 13-page self-published document. Its content stems from the only public open house that the community sponsored to celebrate its official “opening” and commemorate the twenty-year anniversary of its consecration. 26 Tarthang Tulku, Copper Mountain Mandala: Odiyan, 79. 27 Adrian Snodgrass, The Symbolism of the Stupa (New Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1992), 163–164. In some ancient arrangement, this geometric symbolism is reversed. The circle stood for the earth world and the square the heaven world. See pages 101–102 of the same volume. 28 See, Kapila Vatsyayan, The Square and the Circle of the Indian Arts (New Delhi: Roli Books International, 1983). 29 Dina Bangdel and John Huntington, “Buddhist Cosmology: Environment of Meditative Transformation,” in Dina Bangdel and John Huntington, The Circle of Bliss: Buddhist Meditational Art (Chicago: Serindia Publications, 2003), 67. 30 Tarthang Tulku, A Garland of Flowers: Beauty of the Odiyan Mandala, 58. 31 Tarthang Tulku, Copper Mountain Mandala: Odiyan, 79. 32 Tarthang Tulku, Mind over Matter, 200–201. 33 Peter Steinfels, “To Pray in a Tibetan Temple,” A12. 34 John Powers, A Concise Introduction to Tibetan Buddhism (Ithaca, NY: Snow Lion, 2008), 93. 35 Quoted from an interview with a woman at the Tibetan Nyingma Institute in Berkeley California who wished to be unnamed. 36 See Peter Gold, Navajo and Tibetan Sacred Wisdom (Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions, 1994). 37 Ann Racicot, “Stupas Along the Rio Grande,” Tricycle 6, no. 4 (Summer 1997). 38 Tarthang Tulku, Mind over Matter, 200–201. 39 Lokesh Chandra, Cultural Horizons of India: Studies in Tantra and Buddhism, Art and Archaeology, Language and Literature, Vol. One, ed. Tara Chandrika (New Delhi: International Academy of Indian Culture and Aditya Prakashan, 1990), 9. 40 Gustav Roth, Stupa: Cult and Symbolism (New Delhi: International Academy of Indian Culture and Aditya Prakashan, 2009), 6.

The Mandala Form and Buddhist Space in America 151 41 Andreas Volwahsen, Living Architecture: Indian, trans. Ann E. Keep (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1969), 91. 42 Ryo Munekata, Buddhist Churches of America: 75-Year History, 57–58. 43 Michael Pye, “The Lotus Sutra and the Essence of Mahayana,” in Buddhist Spirituality: Indian, Southeast Asian, Tibetan, and Early Chinese, ed. Yakeuchi Yoshinori (New York: Crossroad Pub. Company, 1997), 176. 44 Ingrid Fischer-Schreiber, et al., The Encyclopedia of Eastern Philosophy and Religion: Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, Zen (Boston: Shambhala, 1989), 377. 45 See Tozen, The Dharmakaya Sutra: Complete with Commentary (Amsterdam, NY: Dragonyana Press, 2006); Guang Xing, The Concept of the Buddha: Its Evolution from Early Buddhism to the Trikāya Theory (London: Routledge Curzon, 2005). 46 See Anagarika B. Govinda, The Psycho-cosmic Symbolism of the Buddhist Stūpa (Emeryville, CA: Dharma Pub, 1976); See also, Adrian Snodgrass, The Symbolism of the Stupa.. 47 http://www.shambhalamountain.org/great-stupa/great-stupa-symbolism; Vajradhatu Stupa Project, The Great Stupa of Dharmakaya Which Liberates Upon Seeing. Consecration Edition (Boulder CO: Shambhala USA, 2001), 54; 79–81. 48 The four receding “steps” above the four prominent gates represent the folded legs of the Buddha, the central vase (or bumpa) the Buddha’s torso, the harmika above that the eyes, and the elongated conical rings atop the stupa his enlightened mind. 49 Adrian Snodgrass, The Symbolism of the Stupa, 163. 50 Martin Brauen, The Mandala: Sacred Circle in Tibetan Buddhism, trans. Martin Willson (Boston: Shambhala, 1998), 51. First published as Das Mandala: Der Heilige Kreis im tantrischen Buddhismus (Köln: Dumont, 1992) as part of an exhibition at the Volkerkundemuseum der Universität Zurich of that year. 51 The Story of the Amitabha Stupa (Sedona, AZ: Kunzang Palyul Chöling, 2004), n.p. 52 Joshua Mulder, Audio Interview for Colorado Public Radio, July 20, 2004. http://www.cpr.org/news/story/great-stupa-dharmakaya. Last accessed, March 8, 2015. 53 Ibid.

References Bangdel, Dina and John Huntington. The Circle of Bliss: Buddhist Meditational Art. Chicago: Serindia Publications, 2003. Bloomekatz, Ari B. “Peace Activist Brings a Message of Hope; Thich Nhat Hanh, a Vietnamese Buddhist Monk, Visits MacArthur Park in L.A., Drawing More than 1,000.” Los Angeles Times, September 30, 2007, p. B.3. Brauen, Martin. The Mandala: Sacred Circle in Tibetan Buddhism, trans. Martin Willson. Boston: Shambhala, 1998. Broadway, Bill. “A Revelation In Gold and Stone; Lavish Buddhist Center, 21 Years in the Making, To Open Its Doors to Public” The Washington Post, May 25, 1996, p. B07. Chandler, Stuart Establishing a Pure Land on Earth: The Foguang Buddhist Perspective on Modernization and Globalization. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2004. Chandra, Lokesh and Tara Chandrika. Cultural Horizons of India: Studies in Tantra and Buddhism, Art and Archaeology, Language and Literature, Vol. One. New Delhi: International Academy of Indian Culture and Aditya Prakashan, 1990.

152  The Mandala Form and Buddhist Space in America Donner, Neal Arvid and Daniel B. Stevenson. The Great Calming and Contemplation: A Study and Annotated Translation of the First Chapter of ChihI’s Mo-Ho Chih-Kuan. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1993. Fischer-Schreiber, Ingrid. The Encyclopedia of Eastern Philosophy and Religion: Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, Zen. Boston: Shambhala, 1989. Ford, Eugene Brassel. “Cold War Monks: An International History of Buddhism, Politics and Regionalism in Thailand and Southeast Asia, 1941–1976.” PhD Dissertation. Yale University, 2012. Gold, Peter. Navajo and Tibetan Sacred Wisdom. Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions, 1994. Govinda, Anagarika B. The Psycho-Cosmic Symbolism of the Buddhist Stūpa. Emeryville, CA: Dharma Publishing, 1976. Iwamura, Jane Naomi and Paul Spickard. Revealing The Sacred in Asian and Pacific America. New York: Routledge, 2003. Kunzang Palyul Chöling The Story of the Amitabha Stupa. Sedona, AZ: Kunzang Palyul Chöling, 2004. Leidy, Denise Patry and Robert Thurman. Mandala: The Architecture of Enlightenment. New York: Asia Society Galleries, 1997. Masatsugu, Michael K. “‘Beyond This World of Transiency and Impermanence’: Japanese Americans, Dharma Bums, and the Making of American Buddhism during the Early Cold War Years.” Pacific Historical Review 77, no. 3 (2008): 423–451. Munekata, Ryo Buddhist Churches of America: 75 Year History, 1899–1974. Chicago: Norbart, 1974. Newton, Edmund. “‘Plodding’ Architect Triumphs with Temple,” Los Angeles Times, April 8, 1988, p. V14. Powers, John. A Concise Introduction to Tibetan Buddhism. Ithaca, NY: Snow Lion, 2008. Racicot, Ann. “Stupas Along the Rio Grande.” Tricycle 6, no. 4 (Summer 1997). Reichhold, Jane. Visiting the Temples at Odiyan. Annapolis, CA: Jane Reichhold, 1996. Roth, Gustav. Stupa: Cult and Symbolism. New Delhi: International Academy of Indian Culture and Aditya Prakashan, 2009. Snodgrass, Adrian. The Symbolism of the Stupa. Revised ed. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2018. Steinfels, Peter. “To Pray in a Tibetans Temple, Buddhists Built One in California.” New York Times, June 26, 1996, p. A12. Tozen. The Dharmakaya Sutra: Complete With Commentary. Amsterdam, NY: Dragonyana Press, 2006. . “Buddhists Consecrate Hsi Lai Temple,” LA Times, July 28, 1988, p. 3. Tulku, Tarthang. Copper Mountain Mandala: Odiyan. Berkeley, CA: Dharma Publishing, 1996. . Mind Over Matter: Reflections on Buddhism in the West. Berkeley, CA: Dharma Publishing, 2002. . A Garland of Flowers Beauty of the Odiyan Mandala. Berkeley, CA: Dharma Publishing, 2008. . Lotus Mandala: Sacred Garden. Cazadero, CA: Dharma Publishing, 2012. Vajradhatu Stupa Project. The Great Stupa of Dharmakaya Which Liberates Upon Seeing. Consecration Edition. Boulder CO: Shambhala USA, 2001.

The Mandala Form and Buddhist Space in America 153 Vatsyayan, Kapila. The Circle and the Square of the Indian Arts. New Delhi: Abhinav Publications, 1997. Xing, Guang. The Concept of the Buddha: Its Evolution from Early Buddhism to the Trikāya Theory. London: Routledge Curzon, 2005. Yanxin, Cai. Chinese Architecture. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Yoshinori, Takeuchi and Jan Van Bragt. Eds. Buddhist Spirituality: Indian, Southeast Asian, Tibetan, and Early Chinese. New York: Crossroad Pub. Company, 1997. Yun, Hsing. Humanistic Buddhism: A Blueprint for Life, trans. John Balcom. Hacienda Heights, CA: Buddha’s Light International, 2008. . “Master’s Letter to Dharma Protectors and Friends,” 2009. Published online via the temple’s official website. http://www.hsilai.org/en/ml/2009e.php. Zangpo, Tsering Lama Jampal. A Garland of Immortal Wish-Fulfilling Trees: The Palyul Tradition of Nyingmapa. Ithaca, NY: Snow Lion, 1988.

6

Conclusions and Considerations

Institutions and Classicism What can be taken away from this discussion, given the various communities that were examined in this book? I was interested in exploring Buddhist architecture and religious expression because of the intimate relationship that exists between the two. The sites here were chosen as either historically or stylistically significant with respect to how design and belief relate in the buildings that Buddhists build in America. However, style and form only become interesting when understood in relation to what they might mean or “say.” It was possible to include many other sites in this regard. Nonetheless, one thing that can be said as result of this investigation is that religious structures are an intentional form of architecture. Religious communities tend to want to communicate something about their beliefs and traditions with the buildings they construct. Certainly secular design strategies can do so as well, as we often see in political structures. Yet, the spiritual, historical, ancestral, and doctrinal intensity of devout belief amplifies the cultural drive of a religious community’s architectural aspirations. This expressive intensity becomes particularly acute for immigrant communities who are being persecuted or feel under assault in their transplanted homes. This book argues that architecture has the ability to teach or reveal. The examples of Buddhist architecture discussed above communicate their cultural (as in ancestral, ethnic, or aesthetic customs), spiritual (i.e., emotional and expressive feelings and values), and religious (doctrinal, ritual, or sacral) beliefs in complex, interconnecting, and deeply personal ways. In these settings, suggestive language and humanistic motifs have pervaded the discussion as a function of the subjectivity involved in communicating such nonphysical content in structural form, where objective fact becomes less important than conveying aspirational and transcendental meaning. It was stated at the outset that the materiality of a building can reify the insubstantiality of spiritual thought and work in tandem with religious practice. However, something over and above expression occurs when such personal dispositions get infused and elided with the inherent scale and brute DOI: 10.4324/9781003311645-7

Conclusions and Considerations 155 actuality of architecture. This is where I think the idea of “institutions” becomes salient, and with how and why traditions are so important. A consistent motif within this short survey has been the use of traditional or classical architectural forms, both Western and Eastern, to communicate a community’s heritage. This is important because architecture is a primary way to institutionalize values, traditions, and histories. We see this in its use as a social convention and with its ability to inspire wonder, order, and stability. Classical structures are a hallmark of this strong propensity. Whether in the East or the West, classical forms are tied directly to the upper or ruling classes of society. The notion of classicality in the West derives from Greco-Roman antiquity. According to J.J. Pollitt, we use the term in a historical sense when referring to ancient Greece or Rome, and in a qualitative sense when “expressing recognition of a standard of perfection within a particular genre, a standard by which succeeding objects or developments within that genre are to be judged.”1 A closely aligned phrase of the latter sense is “Golden Age.” The Tang Dynasty in China (618–907 CE) and Heian Period in Japan (794–1185 CE) are two prominent East Asian examples. Yet, an offshoot implication of classicality emerges having to do with its use as a protective device, a recurring theme in the emergence of Buddhist structures in America. Immigrant groups want to be accepted in their transplanted homes, or at least left to their own devices unhindered. To be accepted is to be protected. The Japanese Buddhist Church of San Francisco utilized a classical Doric façade in their 1914 building to help insulate themselves from external anti-Asian sentiments. Outward expressions of foreignness were considered precarious at that time, and the traditional Western style helped shelter them from harm. It blended the church into the American cultural landscape as a protective device, but also conveyed an authentic sense of national patriotism that later Japanese Americans during World War II continued to retain even in the face of persecution. Legibility is another way to foster acceptance and protection. When things are recognizable, a feeling of understanding naturally occurs. If combined with various levels of aesthetic appeal or impressive grandiosity, the experience of such forms can cultivate a sense of appreciation or approbation. This can further lead to an acceptance of forms and ideas that differ from mainstream thought. The classical columns found at the San Francisco Zen Center and the Insight Meditation Society perform this function for their communities to some extent. As we have seen, the Buddhist Church of San Francisco designed its current building with a commercial legibility as a way to protect the community within the conventions of a capitalist society, but was still able to remain faithful to its foundational beliefs. The Honpa Hongwanji Hawaii Betsuin in Honolulu employed classical Greek architectural components as a forward leaning mechanism to communicate what Yemyo Immamura felt was Buddhism’s burgeoning acceptance in the West, which would naturally imbue the religion with a level of cultural safekeeping.

156  Conclusions and Considerations With respect to Asian-based structures in the United States, aesthetic appeal and impressive grandiosity have been particularly effective ways to foster both interest and appreciation. The Chinese Pavilion at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition of 1904 in St. Louis Missouri as well as the impressive Japanese pavilions at the earlier Columbian Exposition in 1893 generated great interest for many Americans, at least within the hyper specialized and controlled setting of a World’s Fair. The earlier less striking Joss Houses were similarly marginalized within the hermetic environment of Chinatowns or their dispersed locations, which mitigated their cultural impact on the institutions of America as architecture. Generally speaking, though, once the negativity towards Asians began to subside in the late 1960s and early 70s, it became safer for Buddhist communities to construct overtly recognizable, larger scale Asian buildings. The Nishi and Higashi Pure Land temples in Little Tokyo built at this time attest to this emerging proclivity. Since that time, interest in Buddhism has grown substantially in the West, and the fear of persecution has subsided. In this newer more open environment, traditional or classical Asian buildings have begun to flower around the country, particularly large-scale buildings and complexes. In addition to Odiyan Buddhist Retreat and Hsi Lai Temple, many others sites evidence this development with impressive elaborate structures, such as Wat Nawamintararachutis (Thai, Raynham Massachusetts), the Linh Quang Buddhist Center (Vietnamese, Lincoln Nebraska), Watt Munisotaram Buddhist Temple (Cambodian, Hampton Minnesota), Teo Chew Buddhist Temple (Vietnamese, Houston Texas), Byodo-In Temple (Japanese, Oahu Hawaii), Wat Buddharatanaram (Thai, Fort Worth, Texas), Chuang Yen Monastery (Chinese, Carmel New York), and others. The buildings in these communities implement the traditional conventions and classical motifs of the institutions of their native lands, which has two main effects in my view. Buddhist groups create their buildings not only to house their practices, but to create for themselves a small enclave of home. As Alexander Tzonis and Liane Lefaivre write in Classical Architecture: The Poetics of Order, “Every classical work is, in a sense, a temenos, cut out from the universe by virtue of its special order. To fashion this work is to make a world within a world.”2 We see this take place most vividly in the United States with Odiyan Buddhist Retreat and the Shambhala Mountain Center, two insulated communities discussed in the previous chapter, which are named after auspicious mythical kingdoms in the Tibetan tradition transplanted into the here and now. The nostalgic and affective environments we see in Buddhist sites is a deliberate exercise. They create a sense of order and custom, a place of cultural refuge predicated on religious belief set amid a wider landscape that is markedly distinct from the spiritual and structural antecedents of their origin. This is true even though harsh anti-Asian mentalities have abated in the country. In addition, the use of classical forms is consistent with how architecture is used in Buddhist scripture. As we saw in Chapter 1, elevated places of

Conclusions and Considerations 157

Figure 6.1  Chuang Yen Monastery, Main Hall

nobility and splendor—such as palaces, mountains, and castles—are used metaphorically to communicate the elevation and nobility of the Buddha’s teachings. As classical architecture is associated with the upper classes, their use in a Buddhist context places its teachings likewise within this elevated social context, thereby reinforcing the Buddhist belief in the Noble Eightfold Path and the Four Noble Truths. The motif of mountains that we have seen throughout this study buttress the point. In terms of classicism, Chuang Yen Monastery (Figure 6.1) is a particularly impressive example of a large scale Buddhist site. CT Shen and his wife Nancy founded the non-denominational temple, which occupies a large estate of 225 acres roughly an hour north of New York City. Leased in 1975, most of its large buildings date from the 1980s. The Great Buddha Hall houses the largest statue of the Buddha Vairocana in the Western world, according to the temple (Figure 6.2). The buildings of Chuang Yen “reflect the style of China’s Tang Dynasty,”3 a Golden Age in that culture’s history that thereby augments the doctrinal auspiciousness of the monastery and its classically inspired buildings along the lines articulated just above.4 Yet another way that immigrant Buddhist communities have sought to secure a safe and enduring existence in America is through the formation of official organizations. It must be said that this tendency has been quite consistent since Buddhists began immigrating to the United States, when widespread receptivity to the religion and Asians was low. An organizational framework is a form of social architecture, it provides an administrative canopy that protects as a legible bureaucratic armature that can shield those beneath it. Working in combination with their architectural

158  Conclusions and Considerations

Figure 6.2  Buddha Vairocana, Chuang Yen Monastery

presence and achievements, it is a way for Buddhists to foster an institutional identity through an inherent connotation of establishment. More than a simple act of self-nomination, this strategy is one of legitimization and stabilization. The tactic has so far proved very successful in conjugating the inherent foreign overtones associated with Buddhism with the frequently used and unassailably nationalistic reference to the nation in their titles. In addition to the Buddhist Churches of America, groups such as the Buddhist Association of the United States, the Eastern States Buddhist Temples of America, Soka Gakkai International USA, and the Theravada Buddhist Society of America are some other notable organizations that have also employed this strategy. Of course, the desire to organize is not just a Buddhist predilection, but common to human civilization as a whole. Nonetheless, the Buddhist disposition to formally consolidate is particularly germane in the context of ensuring the safety and longevity of a persecuted minority population.

Conclusions and Considerations 159 The cultural consequence of Buddhist groups utilizing traditional or classical architectural models from Asia in their large (and small) scale buildings in the United States is that such structures still retain the institutional associations, meanings, and strength of their native lands. They preserve, if somewhat diluted by their lack of original context, the stabilizing power and aura of authority that instantiated their construction in Asia. Such a transplant has important cultural implications. To reiterate a point from the introduction, they introduce a new style and historical custom to the country’s structural, religious, and national identity, one with institutional energy. In this respect, they are transforming the spiritual personality of the nation insofar as they are foundational structures created with the declarative force of endurance and implantation. Indeed, unlike an embassy, which maintains its home country’s national sovereignty, these buildings are American buildings, constructed by American citizens on the American landscape. According to the Pew Research Center, as of 2012 only one percent of the U.S. population is Buddhist.5 Yet, this religious minority has existed in the country for more than half of its history. Given the variety of Asian traditions and Buddhist sects that now exist in the United States, the history and prodigiousness of their structural presence, and the persistent impact that the religion has had on the cultural mind of its people—amplified by the nation’s tremendous visibility and influence on the world stage—it seems to me that America ought to be counted as a Buddhist country, albeit a smaller one. Finally, within this last point, we might therefore ask if there is some common principle that can unite Buddhist thought and practice with the religion’s material and spiritual emergence in American culture? Here, the notion of freedom may perhaps end up being crucial to Buddhism’s lasting assimilation in the United States. Freedom is at the core of both the West’s democratic heritage and Buddhist religious belief (nirvāna— liberation from cycles of rebirth). The concept of freedom is complicated and multifaceted, whether in the East or the West. The liberal tradition in Europe and America is grounded in political ideas stemming from freedom’s positive (“freedom to”) and negative (“freedom from”) conceptions with respect to individual rights.6 In Buddhism, nirvāna entails freedom from the determinative effects of karmic existence; it involves achieving a oneness with the absolute. As Robert Thurman quotes of a third century Buddhist monk in his groundbreaking book on Tibetan Buddhism: “Buddhas do not wash away sins with water. They do not heal suffering by laying on of hands…They introduce beings to freedom by educating them about reality.”7 The connection between Buddhahood and freedom is so strong that, in the Avatamsaka Sutra, the Buddha is in many places identified with freedom, as when the important Bodhisattva Samantabhadra (“Universally Good”) states: “The Buddha is called Ocean of Joy with the Light of Virtue, Fame, and Freedom.”8 Thus, if the essence of Buddhist practice is to follow the Buddha’s compassionate example toward

160  Conclusions and Considerations achieving an enlightened state of mind, then the religion’s ultimate goal is, in fact, freedom: Arouse your minds to seek enlightenment, Kindly care for all living beings, Abide by the great vows of universal goodness, And you’ll attain freedom like the King of Truth.9 This thematic and metaphysical intersection between concepts of freedom in Buddhist doctrine and that of the West is interesting, at least with respect to whether an enduring and scripturally grounded form of American Buddhism can manifest and endure. Some have postulated that the Buddhist ideas of generosity (dāna), moral living (sīla), and mindfulness (bhāvanā) are needed to combat the materialism of Western notions of freedom, so as to eliminate violence and oppression throughout the world.10 Indeed, as mentioned earlier in this book, Buddhist ideas having to do with peace in the world have resonated with Westerners from the nineteenth century to the present day. But, can Buddhist and American conceptions of freedom be understood within one another? Is our unified connection as human beings enough to begin to bridge the cultural divide between the two value systems? One can only speculate at this point. However, if American citizens can come to know and culturally identify existing political ideas of individual freedom with Buddhist spiritual thought and purpose, then such a turn could inspire new texts, artworks, and buildings that—unlikely as it may seem—situate Buddhism as not only consistent with the nation’s identity, but as a necessary and inescapable and part of it.

The Nature of Buddhist Sacred Space A concluding observation resulting from this study has to do with the nature of sacred and profane space. It stems from experiencing the places under investigation as both a religious and a non-religious person (in Eliade’s famous conception), in attempting to walk the line between objectivity and subjectivity with the hope of ascertaining both viewpoints, as clearly each were involved in the creation and existence of these humanistic spaces. As we have seen, the non-duality of Buddhist thought prohibits a strict, all-encompassing delineation between sacred and profane space. However, like the idea of self-identity that is seen as provisional under the Buddhist worldview of “no-self,” sacred space is also accepted on a contingent basis in Buddhist environments. In Zen meditation halls, the sacred seems to be tied to instructional lineage in the practice of attaining immediate enlightenment. Spaces where meditative practice take place are considered special—and thus kept simple, clean, and clear for clarity of mind—but not sacred in the traditional metaphysical sense of the word. In Pure Land temples that recognize a sacred/profane dualism in the o-naijin/gejin spatial

Conclusions and Considerations 161 configuration, the platform of the Amida Buddha is also sometimes used as a stage for performances and quasi-secular ceremonies. Yet, it is still a special space. Memory and meaning keep it so. Natural environments retain this same special character as well, and retain an added sacral component in Buddhism’s overwhelming respect for nature. When set aside or preserved for the explicit function of spiritual growth and realization, the inherent hallowed stillness of nature pervades its experience in both religious and non-religious minded people. These points of convergence speak to the essence of sacred space in Buddhist architecture. From my point of view, the overarching spiritual quality of these special/sacred places is one of attaining a depth of mind. Sacred space is deep space in Buddhist environments. It entails crossing over into a place where the mind breaks the superficial plane of everyday life to access the deeper spaces of the spirit, where enlightened realizations can occur. The metaphysical transition comes from the move away from material concerns into a heightened place of sentiment, deep reflection, and emotional insight. This is why we have seen that sacred spaces are so identified with concepts of home, for that is a special kind of dwelling that people connect with on the most humanistic, personal, and emotional of levels. As places closely associated with the heart, such spaces are able to foster a sense of peace and self-reflection. In Buddhist sacred space, one moves into a physical and spiritual place where a deep sense of interconnectedness can take over the mind. I have always been fascinated with the metaphor of “being deep,” when used as a spatial euphemism to describe the mental state of one who goes beyond the surface understanding of things. It carries the association of moving downward into something: the earth, water, etc. Indeed, upon enlightenment the Buddha placed his hand downward onto the ground to call the earth to witness (bhumisparsa-mudra). In a religious context, it is the opposite of the traditional way of conceiving sacrality, which is usually one of a heightened and elevated spatial orientation. This is certainly how many non-Buddhist faiths express the sacred or divine (think of the Christian conception of heaven, for instance). However, the idea of deep space seems applicable to Buddhist sites if only in the emphasis that Buddhism places on the mind, of being aware of the transient interconnected nature of all phenomena and delving deeper into the true nature of reality. To move deeply into something is to embed oneself in a substrate; to move into a Buddhist space entails embedding oneself into an environment that privileges the heart. This study has explored some significant instances of that process. Moreover, the experiential effect of sincerely crossing over into the deep space of Buddhist architecture involves acceding to the accouterments of the religion’s symbology and its environmental sensibilities. Environments have the ability to mold and transform a person. We see this in the sociological sphere, where certain professions and their surroundings can fundamentally alter an individual’s persona. The untrained law student,

162  Conclusions and Considerations for instance, “becomes” a lawyer by spending enough time in the court room and other legal settings, learning its language, customs, and ethics. Environmental transformations can sometimes be quite dramatic. On the spiritual level, the harsh environment of a prison can harden a convict’s personality and view of humanity beyond repair. The ghastly and horrific theaters of war can impose intense psychological changes to one’s personality, often with pathological, emotional, and spiritual consequences. The term “spirit” has been used profusely throughout this exposition. The diaphanous essence of spiritual phenomena has been intertwined in all of what has been written. It continues to be a difficult concept to pin down. Yet, in my opinion, one way to understand the connection between environment and spirituality is to contemplate the two within the simile of temperature. Temperature, like spirit, entails an experience that is ever-present and intensely personal. It is both physical and nonphysical, spatial but individual in feeling. One cannot hold or touch a temperature alone, a physical host is needed to sense or retain it. The same can be said of the subjectivity inherent in the spiritual aspects of existence. Christians often speak of knowing your “spiritual temperature” in terms of the level of one’s religious fervency. However, in the context of spatial understanding, the simile of temperature can help us fathom how certain spaces can create a depth of heart and mind. Temperature is a relative concept, and it happens to be the case that in a given environment all things will assume the temperature of the greatest energy or radiating force within its confines. In domestic life, we see this phenomenon in the enclosed “environments” of refrigerators and ovens, and in the use of central air conditioning within a home. Warm things get cold when ensconced in a cold environment; cold things get warm when embedded in a closed heated area: objects rise or fall thermally to match the ambient temperature generated by the dominant radiate energy within a delineated space. Similarly, when entering Dharma-inspired Buddhist environments, nature, bells, chants, incense, statues, paintings, lectures, rituals, symbols, buildings, monuments, etc., all serve to radiate an affective and humanistic power that causes those within its field to assume their combined spiritual essence. Through these spiritual technologies, the entire setting is meant to effectively raise one’s heart and mind (or “spiritual temperature”) toward a deeper plane of understanding and awareness equal to that of the “energy” emitted by the interior and/or exterior environment. This may be why the sun has been so influential as a natural metaphor for enlightenment. It is the most powerful radiating force in the earthly realm. As we have seen continually in this study, the concept of radiance is a profound force in Buddhist environments. The golden sun-like Buddha is the most ubiquitous symbol in the Buddhist worldview. Indeed, Vairocana is called the Great Sun Buddha. The Pure Land Amitabha is the Buddha of Infinite Life and Light. As the most influential Buddhist

Conclusions and Considerations 163 deity in America, his presence accesses this dynamic, as his Pure Land realm is thought to radiate outward to those who vow to take refuge in his realm. Similarly, stupas are constructed with the concept of radiate spirituality at their heart. A stupa’s mandalic ground delineates its environment like a transcendental blueprint; the relic(s) at its core “activates” its radiating spiritual power outward in directions guided by the coordinates of its orientation. Bells create a radiate energy similar to that of the mandala form. The circle of their sound emanates a spiritual signal that is meant to touch people on the most sublime of levels, one that accesses a deeper plane of consciousness (I liken Buddhist temples to bells in this respect in Chapter 3). These spiritual technologies are not mechanical in nature, but are poetic in inspiration and effect. Prayers, in this sense, are some of the most potent means by which the mind can ascertain its equanimity and transcendence in the Buddhist world. When sung, as Buddhists tend to do, the musical substrate augments the radiant effect of prayers on the human heart. Music, as the language of beauty and spirit, has that power.11An excerpt from a Tibetan monk’s poem may help capture these sentiments: The chariot of excellent merit pulls the sun Of the tradition of the Khenpo, Lopon and King (Nyingmapa), Ever illuminating the garden of the great Secret Doctrine. The supreme, pristine petals of scriptural And practical realization beautify this world… Mt. Meru, composed of the molecules of the Buddha’s three secrets, Is a great jewel of powerful accomplishment, Surrounded by an unending chain of golden mountains Of doctrine upholders. May the Buddha’s doctrine continue to adorn this realm And remain forever more.12

These thoughts and theories have emerged in the process of research and writing about the role of architecture in the practice of Buddhism. They are a result of experiencing and thinking about Buddhist structures qualitatively, from the point of view of characteristics that unify and designate us as human. As human beings, our social and emotional needs— made tangible through the generation of objects, buildings, texts, and environments—are grafted onto the natural landscape. “Meaning” is the mediating force that coalesce and adhere the two spheres. Since language is the primary manner in which to convey meaning (I argue elsewhere it is the only way), the deep, poignant, and malleable nature of symbolic imagery has therefore played a central role in this study, which attaches to the primordial and enduring religious impulses resident in the collective temperament of humankind.

164  Conclusions and Considerations Humanistic geography has been the method of unpacking this dynamic. It is a truly generative way of understanding the world we have created, as the subjective and the objective techniques of knowledge are mutually allied in its processes. In this sense, humanistic geography is an epistemology. As a result, this book is a work of both history and philosophy. For, at its root, philosophy is about understanding what we believe and why we believe it; it is about analyzing our most basic thoughts and ideas for logical validity. Yet, logic in religious matters has less to do with deductive laws of reason that mechanically achieve an undeniable truth condition. On the contrary, Buddhism starts with an undeniable truth (Reality; Law; Dharma). Its symbolic mechanisms, or “technologies,” involve finding ways to make the infinite and omnipresent nature of transitory Being intelligible to human sensibilities. Buddhism emerges from the logical consequences of cause and effect (karma). But as these karmic conditions relate to moral actions and their humanistic basis, the syllogisms at work suggest inferences from “propositions” that originate in the evanescent essence of spiritual existence. Hence, if the buildings and monuments discussed above seem somewhat mystical or supernatural in their aspiration and appearance, this is because history and experience has shown that such numinous content require modes of communication and cognition that can access both the heart and the mind, which are seen as typologically aligned with the relationship between nature (biology; atmosphere; cosmos) and human being. This investigation has hopefully begun to demonstrate the profound relationship between the belief and architectural expression of Buddhist thought. The narrative sought to introduce the idea of Buddhist architecture as a part of the cultural history of America. The limitations of this study relate to the small number of examples it highlights versus the great amount of sites that presently exist in the United States. However, the locations that have been explored retain some of the most notable and significant Buddhist structures in the United States. The American setting allows one in effect to drive to East Asia, Southeast Asia, and Tibet within the span of a couple of days in order to see and experience the Buddhist architecture of their respective traditions. Further research will therefore surely raise opportunities to expand and improve on this attempt to understand how Buddhist architecture functions as an environment and an expression of the human heart.

Notes

1 J.J. Pollitt, Art and Experience in Classical Greece (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1972), 1. 2 Alexander Tzonis and Liane Lefaivre, Classical Architecture: The Poetics of Order (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1986), 5. 3 James W. Reid, Chuang Yen Monastery: A Place of Beauty, Tranquility, Meditation and Faith Within the Context of World Buddhism, organizational publication (Carmel, NY), 22, n.d.

Conclusions and Considerations 165

4 The relationship between secular and religious buildings in East Asia complicates this dynamic to some extent, in that each looked quite similar to each other. What distinguished secular and religious structures, according to some scholars, is was what happened inside of them. See Robert E. Fisher, Buddhist Art and Architecture, 110. Moreover, it seems that local buildings and government sponsored buildings from the Tang to Ming dynasties “mutually reinforced each other and at certain times developed side by side.” See Fu Xinian, Traditional Chinese Architecture: Twelve Essays, trans. Alexandra Harrer (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2017), 250. 5 https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/04/05/5-facts-about-buddhistsaround-the-world/ 6 See Isaiah Berlin, Two Concepts of Liberty: An Inaugural Lecture Delivered before the University of Oxford on October 31, 1958; (Oxford, UK: Clarendon, 1958). 7 Robert A.F. Thurman, Essential Tibetan Buddhism (Edison, NJ: Castle Books, 1997), 12. 8 The Flower Ornament Scripture: A Translation of the Avatamsaka Sutra, trans. Thomas Cleary (Boston; London: Shambhala, 1993), 216. 9 Ibid, 265. 10 Sulak Sivaraksa, “Buddhism and Human Freedom.” Buddhist-Christian Studies 18 (1998): 63–68. 11 Jan Swafford, Language of the Spirit: An Introduction to Classical Music (New York: Basic Books, 2017). 12 Tsering Lama Jampal Zangpo, A Garland of Immortal Wish-fulfilling Trees (Ithaca, NY: Snow Lion, 1988), 146–147.

References Berlin, Isaiah. Two Concepts of Liberty: An Inaugural Lecture Delivered before the University of Oxford on October 31, 1958. Oxford, UK: Clarendon, 1958. Cleary, Thomas.(Ed.) The Flower Ornament Scripture: A Translation of the Avatamsaka Sutra. Boston; London: Shambhala, 1993. Fisher, Robert E. Buddhist Art and Architecture. World of Art. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1993. Pollitt, J.J. Art and Experience in Classical Greece. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1972. Reid, James W. Chuang Yen Monastery: A Place of Beauty, Tranquility, Meditation and Faith Within the Context of World Buddhism. Carmel, NY: Chuang Yen Monastery, n.d. Thurman, Robert A.F. Essential Tibetan Buddhism. Edison, NJ: Castle Books, 1997. Tzonis, Alexander and Liane Lefaivre. Classical Architecture: The Poetics of Order. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1986. Sivaraksa, Sulak. “Buddhism and Human Freedom.” Buddhist-Christian Studies 18 (1998): 63–68. https://doi.org/10.2307/1390436. Swafford, Jan. Language of the Spirit: An Introduction to Classical Music. New York: Basic Books, 2017. Xinian, Fu. Traditional Chinese Architecture: Twelve Essays, trans. Alexandra Harrer. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2017. Zangpo, Tsering Lama Jampal. A Garland of Immortal Wish-fulfilling Trees: The Palyul Tradition of Nyingmapa. Ithaca, NY: Snow Lion, 1988.

Index

Note: Page references in italics refer to figures and with “n” refer to endnotes. Alexander the Great 24 American Buddhism 2–3, 160; democratization 3; engagement 3; pragmatism 3; tendencies of 3; see also Buddhism American Buddhism as a Way of Life 2 The American Encounter with Buddhism, 1844–1912: Victorian Culture and the Limits of Dissent (Tweed) 23 American Zen architecture 106 Amida Buddha 72–74, 82, 91–92, 97–98, 161; “Primal Vow” 86; sacred domain of 98; statue 60–61 Amitābha/Amitāyus 52 Amitabha Stupa 144, 144, 146, 148 ancestral lineage 19 architectonic Buddhism 67–98 architectural lineage 19, 87, 95, 135 architecture 1; Asian 93; Japanese Zen 108; mandala-based 4, 123; meditative 104–109; Oriental 60; religious 3, 51, 57; and scripture 14–16; see also Buddhist architecture Arizona Buddhist Church, Phoenix, Arizona 92, 92 Arnold, Sir Edwin 23 Art History’s History (Minor) 11 Asian American Religious Cultures (Lee) 2 Asian architecture 93 Asian culture 1, 3, 23, 132 Asiatic Exclusion League 76 “Atman is Brahman” notion 30n25 Avatamsaka Sutra 13, 14, 19–20, 159

Beat Generation 104 Beat Movement 114 bells 68, 75–76, 138, 162, 163 Berger, Peter L. 58–59 binaries: of environment 11; of place 11; of space 11 Blavatksy, Helena 53 bodhicitta 13 Bodhi Manda Zen Center 42 Bodhi Tree of Enlightenment 20 Boyer, Paul S. 38 Brahma 115 Brahma-Viharas 115 Brisbane, Albert 42 British East India Company 24 Buddha 109; in Avatamsaka Sutra 13–14, 19–20, 159; Eightfold Path 109, 138, 157; enlightenment 13; Four Noble Truths 87; in Lalitavistara Sutra 15; meaning of 147; rejection of mind and body duality 56; teachings 2, 6, 16, 18, 19–21, 52, 59, 68, 71–72, 115, 122, 133–134 “BuddhaFest: A Festival for Heart + Mind” 12 Buddhahood 4, 28, 53, 112, 133, 147, 159 Buddha Mind Monastery, Oklahoma City 104 Buddha’s Light International Association 44 Buddhism 1, 56–57, 92–93, 105–106, 163–164; American 2–3, 160; architectonic 67–98; architectural achievements 3; and California Gold Rush 43–44; and Christianity 40–41; during Cold War 129; criticism by Christians 49; entry in Japan 68;

Index 167 focus on mental states 53; founding of 4; Humanistic 21, 131–132, 134; Mahayana 2, 15, 17, 53, 104–105, 115, 127, 145; and monks 9; Nichiren 134; nirvāna in 159; non-duality 26–29; sacred space 160–164; and sacred structures 3; science and religion 40; Shin 72–73; Theravada 2, 17, 24, 116, 120–121; Tibetan 135–136, 138, 141, 159; in United States 3, 17, 38–39; vajra in 138; Vajrayana 2, 16, 17, 115, 127, 135; Zen 106–107, 110, 112, 127 Buddhism in America (Layman) 2 Buddhism in the Modern World: Adaptations of an Ancient Tradition (Heine and Prebish) 24 Buddhist architecture 1, 18–19, 59, 104–123; and Dharma 20–21; emergence of 5; environment, practice, and Zen 110–113; heart of being human 113–123; historical backdrop 22–26; humanistic aspects of 9–10; material reality of 4; meditative architecture 104–109; nineteenthcentury American beginnings 37–61; in the United States 2, 22–26; see also architecture Buddhist Association of the United States 158 Buddhist Churches of America (BCA) 18, 78 Buddhist Church of Sacramento 77 Buddhist Church of San Francisco (BCSF) 77, 80, 90, 96, 143, 155 Buddhist Mission of North America (BMNA) 44, 76–78 Buddhist mythology 122 Buddhist scriptures 16, 19–20, 94 Buddhist temples 1, 82, 84, 116, 130; in Hawaii 72, 75; in the United States 4, 22, 72, 75, 77 Busshari Hoto 78, 79, 80 California Chinatowns 46 California Gold Rush 41, 43–46, 51, 76 Carus, Paul 40 Celestials 43–48; see also Chinese chakravartin 122 Chandra, Lokesh 28, 143, 149 Cheng Chien Bhikshu 16 Chiji, Hideya 89 Chinese 127; architectural tradition 95; Celestials 43–48; immigrants in the

U.S. 76; immigration and Gold Rush (see California Gold Rush); invasion of Tibet 129, 141, 144; Joss houses 8; religious culture 2; temples 2, 6, 22, 44, 46, 52, 132 Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 45 Christianity 27, 40–41 Christian Science see Theosophy Chuang Yen Monastery 8, 156–157, 157, 158 Cintamani Temple 136, 142 Classical Architecture: The Poetics of Order (Tzonis and Lefaivre) 156 classicism 8, 154–160 Cold War 129 Columbus, Christopher 24 “Common Ground: The Heart of the Community” 85, 89 compassion (karuna) 12, 13 Copper Mountain Mandala 94, 138–139 Copper Mountain Temple 136–137 cultural heritage 4, 60, 80, 85, 97–98, 108, 113, 131 “cultural scale” 89 culture: Asian 1, 3, 23, 132; Japanese 68, 95; Oriental 1; religious, Chinese 2 Dalai Lama 12, 113 dāna 89, 160 Darwinism 37 Dawson, Sky 118 Degenerate Age 21 democratic heritage 159 Dhammapada 56 Dharma 3, 6, 15, 28, 52, 53, 92, 105, 109–110, 112, 114–116, 120–122, 127, 130–135, 137, 139–141; and Buddhist architecture 20–21; in Buddhist philosophy 13, 16; and heart 13 dharmachakra-mudra 19 Dharmapala, Angarika 37 The Dial 23 Diamond Sutra 110, 134 Dīgha Nikāya 9 Discoe, Paul 108–109 “discovering new horizons” (Honda) 75–82 doctrinal lineage 19 Downing, Michael 107 dukkha 27 Durkheim, Emile 58

168  Index Eastern States Buddhist Temple of America (ESBT) 31n42, 158 Eightfold Path 109, 138, 157 Eihei-ji Temple, Japan 108 Eliade, Mircea 51 embodied space 142–149 emptiness (śūnyatā) 27 Encyclopedia of Religion in America (Lippy and Williams) 1 enlightened beings (bodhisattvas) 19 Enlightenment 127–135, 138 Enlightenment Stupa 136, 138 environment: binaries of 11; Buddhist 160–162; mandala-based 141; manmade 118, 137; natural 111–112, 118–119, 127–128, 136–137, 161; physical 111; practice 110–113; Yi-Fu Tuan on 11; and Zen 110–113 The Essence of the Heart Sutra (Dalai Lama) 12 ethnic heritage 12, 86 evolutionary theory 37 exact science 63n40 The Faces of Buddhism in America (Prebish and Tanaka) 23 “Finding the Space in the Heart” (poem) 114 “floating zendos” 105 Fo Guang Shan (“Buddha’s Light Mountain”) 21, 129 Fo Guang Shan Order 132, 133, 137 Four Noble Truths 52, 87, 115 Fujiwara Period 60 Gandavyuha Sutra 28 Gannenmono (“First Year People”) 67 A Garland of Immortal Wish-Fulfilling Trees (Zangpo) 135–139 gasshō 92, 98 gasshō-zukuri form 91, 91, 93–94, 96–97 Gautama, Siddhartha 2, 18, 52, 56; see also Buddha Geary Act of 1892 45 globalization 1, 17, 21, 25, 43–44, 57 “Go For Broke Monument” 86 Goji 71 gold 45–46, 51–53, 120, 138 The Golden Mountain 45 Goldstein, Joseph 116, 119 Grace Cathedral 50 The Great Chicago Fire 58

The Great Stupa of Dharmakaya which Liberates upon Seeing, Red Feather Lakes, Colorado 142, 142, 143, 145–149 Greco-Roman antiquity 155 Hakuin Ekaku 113 Hall’s Journal of Health 54, 56 Hare, Robert 63n42 Harvard Divinity School 3 Haseo, Daien T. 101n62 Hawaii 67–75; Honpa Hongwanji Hawaii Betsuin (HHHB) 69, 69–72; Japanese Buddhism in 68–69; Japanese Buddhist temples in 68–69; Japanese immigrants in 67 Hayden, Delores 42 heart: in Buddhist thought 12; and Dharma 13; and intelligence 12; in metaphoric capacity 12 Heart Mountain Buddhist Church 85 Hegel, Georg 58 Heian Period, Japan 155 Heine, Steven 24 heritage 10; Buddhism’s Eastern 74; Chinese cultural 45; cultural 4, 60, 80, 85, 97–98, 108, 113, 131; democratic 159; ethnic 12, 86; Japanese 77, 78, 87, 95; Judeo-Christian 27; Mughal 70 hierophany 51 Higashi Honganji Buddhist Temple, Los Angeles 8, 82–84, 83, 95 homo-tectonic elements 9 Honda, Ruth Y. 75 Honpa Hongwanji Hawaii Betsuin (HHHB) 69, 69–72, 80, 89, 155 Ho-o-den (“Phoenix Hall”) 60 Hsi Lai Temple, Hacienda Heights, California 8, 17–18, 21, 127, 128, 129–130, 130 Hsing Yun 27, 129, 131–132, 134–135 Huineng 110–111 Hui Shen 18 humanistic attributes 12 Humanistic Buddhism 21, 131–132, 134 humanistic geography 26, 29n5, 164 human spirit 55, 59, 68 Hungerford, Edward 49 hybrid “churches” 8 Ima, Michihiro 1 Imamura, Yemyo 69–71, 73–74

Index 169 Immamura, Yemyo 155 Immigration Act 1965 104 Immigration Act of 1924 76 Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 22 impermanence (anitya) 27 IMS Retreat Center 119–120 Industrial Revolution 37 Insight Meditation Center, Barre, Massachusetts 117, 117–118 Insight Meditation Society (IMS) 116, 155 institutions 154–160 instructional lineage 112, 127, 136, 160 intelligence, and heart 12 Islam 27 Ivey, Paul Eli 5 Izumida, Junjyo 86 Japanese 108–109; Americans, incarceration during World War II 84–86; architectural and cultural practice 93–95; Buddhists in America 90; culture 68, 95; heritage 77, 78, 87, 95; immigrants in Hawaii 67; internment camps 22; mainland and nuclear bombs 25; roof forms 91; temples 6, 67, 68, 70 Japanese American National Museum (JANM), Little Tokyo 85, 89 Japanese Americans 84, 90; incarceration of 12, 84; of Little Tokyo 86; and sense of national patriotism 155 Japanese Buddhism 24, 76 Japanese Buddhist Church of San Francisco 90, 155 Japanese Buddhist sacred space 95 Japanese Buddhist Temples in Hawai’i (Tanabe and Tanabe) 2, 73 Japanese Pure Land 21; Buddhist Churches of America (BCA) 18; Buddhist Mission of North America (BMNA) 44; Jodo Shinshu churches 5; temple architecture 1 Japanese Zen architecture 108 Japantowns (nihonmachi) 82 Jodo Shinshu: churches 5, 96; gasshō 92, 98; religious belief 96 Joss Houses 10, 44, 45, 49 Judeo-Christian heritage 27 Kagyu Shenpen Kunchab Bodhi Stupa, Santa Fe 144

karahafu 95–97 Katelaar, James 68 King, Martin Luther, Jr. 129 Kobata, Ronald 78, 81 Korean Buddhists 104 Kornfield, Jack 116, 118–119 Koyasan Shingon Buddhist Temple, Los Angeles 95 Lalitavistara Sutra 15, 20 Lankavatara Sutra 14 Larger Pure Land Sutra 98 Layman, Emma McCloy 2 Lee, Jonathan H. X. 2 Lefaivre, Liane 156 The Light of Asia (Arnold) 23 lineage 10, 17; ancestral 19; architectural 19, 87, 95, 135; doctrinal 19; importance of 18; instructional 112, 127, 136, 160; spiritual 18, 87, 95, 137, 146; Western classical structural 117; in Zen Buddhism 112 Lippy, Charles H. 1 Little Tokyo: ethnocultural context of 84; two temples 82–89 Loori, John Daido 111 Lotus Sutra 15 Mahabodhi Mahavihara 70 Mahaparinirvana Sutra 13, 16 Mahayana Buddhism 2, 15, 17, 53, 104–105, 115, 127, 145 mandala: architectural 144, 147; flowers 134–135; form and Buddhist space 127–149; synthesis and sentiment 139–142; Tibetan 141; as “visioncatalysts” 136 mandala-based architecture 4, 123 Manifest Destiny 38 Marx, Karl 58 Masuyama, Kenju 77 McElwain, James 87 meditative architecture 104–109 Meiji Restoration 24, 68 “Memoir on the History of Buddhism” (Salisbury) 23 mindfulness 109 Minka roofs 91 Minor, Vernon Hyde 11 Modern Spiritualism 40 Mo-Ho Chih-Kuan 134 Mohri, Reichi 85 monks (bhiksus) 9, 13

170  Index mountains 3, 15; green 141; and noble architecture 94; and spiritual quality 94 Mountains and Rivers Without End: Poem (Snyder) 114 Mueller, Max 58 Mulder, Joshua 147 Muromachi Period 60 Native Americans 141 nembutsu 73, 74 New Age movement 1 New England Peace Pagoda 42 New York Insight Meditation Center 113 Nichiren Buddhism 134 nihonmachi Los Angeles 84 Nikayas 19 Nishi Hongwanji Betsuin 8, 93 Nishi Hongwanji Buddhist Church 87 non-duality 26–29 “no self” (anatman) 27 numerology 120, 122, 136–137 Numrich, Paul David 1, 24 Nyingma School of Tibetan Buddhism 135 objective-subjective 59, 113, 141–142, 164 Odiyan Retreat Center, Cazadero, California 8, 127, 128, 129, 135, 156 Olcott, Henry Steel 40, 53 Old Wisdom in the New World (Numrich) 24 o-naijin shrine 96 o-naijin world 98 An Open Heart: Practicing Compassion in Everyday Life (Dalai Lama) 113 Order of Buddhist Contemplatives 111 Oriental architecture 60 Oriental culture 1 Oriental Exclusion Act see Immigration Act of 1924 Orientalism 54 Oriental religions 49 Padmasambhava (“Lotus Born”) 18 pagoda 62n14 Pali Canon 115 Perry, Matthew 24–25, 38, 44, 68 Phya Lithai, King 122 place, binaries of 11 The Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch 110, 112, 114 Pollitt, J.J. 155

Polo, Marco 24 Prebish, Charles S. 17, 22, 23–24, 43 profane world 48–54 Pure Land 98, 127; belief systems 134; Buddhist iconography 2; Buddhist Mission of North America (BMNA) 44, 76; Buddhists 22, 25; Buddhists temples 8, 84, 156, 160; Jodo Shu 21; traditions 68, 71–72 Pure Land Nishi Hongwanji 82, 82–84 purported rationalism 53 Putnam, R.F. 48–50 Queen Sirikit of Thailand 122 Rahula, Walpola 55–56 Rapoport, Amos 9 religion 2–3, 5, 8–14, 59; Asian 23, 41, 49, 114, 144; Buddhist 18, 27, 52, 68, 122; Eastern 23; Hindu 25, 30n25; of science 22, 40; Shinto 68 religious architecture 3, 51, 57 Rennyo Shonin 95 Rinzai-ji Zen community 113 Rochester Zen Center 8 Rochester Zen Garden 2 Roosevelt, Franklin D.: Executive Order 9066 84; “Gentleman’s Agreement” 76 The Sacred and the Profane (Eliade) 51 The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion (Berger) 58 sacred space 5, 47, 53, 80, 87, 91, 118; of Grace Cathedral 50; Japanese Buddhist 95; nature of Buddhist 160–163 Salisbury, Edward Elbridge 23 Salzberg, Sharon 116, 119 San Francisco Young Men’s Buddhist Association 77 San Francisco Zen Center (SFZC) 107–109, 108, 111, 155 Scott Act of 1888 45 scripture: and architecture 14–16; Buddhist 16, 19–20, 94; purpose of 15 Seager, Richard Hughes 8 Second Great Awakening 39 Second World War 87, 95 Senzaki, Nyogen 105–106 Seven American Utopias (Hayden) 42 Shakers 42

Index 171 Shakyamuni Buddha 89 Shambhala Buddhists 147 Shambhala Mountain Center 156 Shasta Abbey Monastery 111 Shaykamuni Buddha 78; see also Buddha; Gautama, Siddhartha Shimamoto, Gentoku 78, 80, 81 Shin Buddhism 72–73 Shin Buddhist belief 91, 96 Shin Buddhist churches 91 Shin Buddhists 92, 98 Shinran Shonin 71, 86, 88, 95, 98 Shintoism 24 Shinto religion 68 Siddhartha Gautama 122 Simmel, Georg 28–29 Simmons, Todd 39 Snyder, Gary 114 The Social Construction of Reality (Berger) 58 Soen, Shaku 37, 105 Soka Gakkai International USA 44, 158 Sokie-an Sasaki 105–106, 112 Soto Zen 107 space: binaries of 11; see also sacred space Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience (Yi-Fu Tuan) 11 Spink, Linda 118 spirit 5, 9, 13, 15, 161–163; human 55, 59, 68; Thai worshippers of 120 spiritualism 37, 54 spirituality 50, 54, 162–163; Asian 25; Buddhist 55, 60; human 8, 55, 57 spiritual lineage 18, 87, 95, 137, 146 spiritual technology 4, 139, 142 “spiritual temperature” 162 spirit world 54–55 Sri Lankan Washington Buddhist Vihara, Washington D.C. 114 Steiner, Rudolf 54–55 stūpas 42; built by Buddha’s disciples 19; Busshari Hoto 78, 79, 80; described 16; form in America 142–149 Sukhavati 52 Sukhāvatīvyūha Sūtra 15, 41, 72, 81 śūnyatā doctrine 27 supernatural 61n1 sutras 9, 15, 19, 115, 131; see also specific sutras Suzuki, D.T. 14 Suzuki, Shunryu 106–107, 109

Tanabe, George 2 Tanabe, Willa Jane 2 Tanaka, Kenneth 23, 98 Tang Dynasty 155 Taoist deities 45 Teachings of Buddhism 90 Theosophical Society 58 Theosophic Science 54 Theosophy 40, 54 Theravada Buddhism 2, 17, 24, 116, 120–121 Theravada Buddhist Society of America 158 Theravada Buddhist temple 114 Theravada School 115 Thich Nhat Hahn 129 Thoreau, Henry David 25 Thurman, Robert 159 Tibetan Buddhism 135–136, 138, 141, 159 Tibetan Buddhists 113, 139 Tibetan Vajrayana tradition 144 Tin How Temple 22, 48, 50, 52 Tokugawa Shogunate 24–25, 44, 60, 68 Toshiaki Miura, 87 touchstone 11 Trai Phum Phra Ruang (Three Worlds According to King Ruang) 121–122 transcendence 52 transcendental wisdom 27 Tricycle 12 Truth see Dharma Tsunoda, Shodo 77 Tulku, Tarthang 18, 129, 135–137, 139–141 Tweed, Thomas 23 two worlds 54–56 Tzonis, Alexander 156 Umeza, Kodo 97 United States: Buddhism in 3, 9, 17, 38–39, 68–69; Buddhist architecture in 2, 22–26; Buddhist temples in 4, 22, 72, 75, 77; Chinese immigrants in the 76; Chinese temples in 2, 6, 22, 44, 46, 52, 132; early Buddhist churches in 85; Japanese Buddhists in 90–92; stupa form in 142–149; Zen community in 105–106; see also Hawaii Universal Brotherhood of Man 58, 59 utopian communitarianism 38

172  Index Vairocanābhisambodhi Sutra 16 Vajra Temple 136 Vajrayana Buddhism 2, 16, 17, 115, 127, 135 Venerable Bope Vinitha 115 Venerable Weragoda Sarada Maha Thero 56 Verhoeven, Martin 58 vihara 114–115 Washington Buddhist Vihara (WBV) 8, 114–115 Wat Buddhanusorn, Fremont, California 116, 121, 121, 123 Wat Dhammaram in Chicago 116 Wat Nawamintararachutis Meditation Center (NMR) in Raynham MA 116, 121 Wat Thai of Los Angeles 116 Wat Thai of Washington D.C. 116 Weaverville Joss House 46, 46 A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (Thoreau) 25 Western Buddhists 129 Western classical structural lineage 117 Western culture 43, 122

Western materialism 109 Western modernity 129 Williams, Peter W. 1 Wilson, Jeff 2 World Fellowship of Buddhists Conference (16th) 131 World’s Parliament of Religions in Chicago, 1893 37, 41, 57, 105 World War II 12, 22, 25, 76–77, 84, 86, 90, 95, 106, 129, 155 World Wide Web 131 Yamada, Ken 92 Yi-Fu Tuan 11, 98, 109, 116; humanistic geography 26; view on architecture 14 Y. Tom Makino 87 “zazen” 107 Zen Buddhism 28, 33n61, 104, 106, 107, 110, 112, 127; lineage in 112 Zen Buddhists 107, 133 Zen meditation 133 Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind (Suzuki) 107 Zen Mountain Monastery 111