East Settling Into West : Buddhists Near End of Battles Over Temple

You’re heading up Hacienda Boulevard in Hacienda Heights, downshifting for the long climb that will carry you over the ridge to La Habra Heights. You pass a Del Taco outlet and a Shell station, round a curve, and wham. Suddenly you’re transported from the eastern San Gabriel Valley to a distant country where breezes seem to carry a hint of incense and elderly men in flowing robes speak softly of ancient wisdom.

There, spread across the Hacienda Heights ridge is a constellation of pagoda-style buildings with glazed-tile roofs, broad eaves and random highlights of green and gold.

This is the Hsi Lai Temple, which will soon be the largest Buddhist monastery and temple complex in the Western Hemisphere, its builders say. The 14-acre complex, which has been under construction for almost three years, opens next summer as the national headquarters of Fo Kuang Shan, Taiwan’s preeminent Buddhist organization.

Although it is five or six months away from completion, most of the remaining work is interior detail, its builders say. All of the structures are in place, and workers have begun laying the first of about 200,000 ocher roof tiles, finishing each roof by attaching fierce-looking ceramic dragon heads at the corners.

The startling vision from the Far East shouldn’t be considered such an anomaly in Los Angeles County, insisted the Venerable Hsing Yun, the 66-year-old, Mandarin-speaking spiritual leader of the group. “Your democratic society in America has a lot in common with Buddhism,” said Hsing, speaking through an interpreter.

The creation of the $15-million Hsi Lai Temple--whose name the founders translate as “the monastery which has come from the East to the West”--comes as the 2,500-year-old religion is beginning to break out of its traditional isolation in this country, according to national Buddhist leaders.

There are 3 million to 5 million Buddhists in the United States.

Last year, 45 American Buddhist organizations joined together to form the American Buddhist Congress, a national body that will weigh in on national debates from a Buddhist perspective.

The temple’s completion also coincides with the emergence of the San Gabriel Valley as a prime destination for thousands of Asian immigrants. For example, Monterey Park, where many of the organization’s members live, has evolved into what has been called the nation’s first suburban Chinatown because of the most recent wave of Asian immigration. The city, which is 10 miles west of the temple, has a population that is just over 50% Asian, contrasted with 14% in 1970.

While the tradition of Buddhism in America is not a long one, there is a natural empathy here, suggested Hsing, a leading propagator of the Buddhist faith in Taiwan, where he has hosted television shows and written a newspaper column while heading a religious organization with about 100,000 followers.

“Americans have been very generous in helping the developing countries and the poor nations,” said the religious leader, a tall, smiling, round-faced man in a mustard-brown robe who is referred to by his acolytes as “the master.” “That generosity is very similar to the teachings of Buddha.”

The organization announced last week that in November it will host the 16th conference of the World Fellowship of Buddhists, whose members are leaders of most of the world’s national Buddhist churches. It is to be the first time that the biennial conference will be held outside Asia.

But the sight of the 10-building hillside complex still rankles some residents of Hacienda Heights, an unincorporated community of about 60,000 people.

Some neighbors have fought it since it was announced in 1981 as a planned “church.” They charged that it was oversized for a neighborhood of single-family homes, that it would jam surrounding streets with traffic and that it would be a jarringly inappropriate cultural presence.

“It was way too big for a neighborhood church,” said Sharon Pluth, a homeowner in an adjacent area. “It was supposed to be the base of operations for a national organization. We felt that to put it in a residential area where there was tremendous opposition just didn’t make sense.”

There have been plenty of misunderstandings between the temple founders and the neighbors, the Buddhists acknowledged. “We didn’t talk to the neighbors very much in the beginning,” said Anthony Yang, the project’s architect and point man in meetings with homeowners. “People said we were putting up a huge, monster temple with architecture that wouldn’t meld into the neighborhood.”

Local opposition set back the completion date by 2 1/2 years.

But Yang and his organization were persistent. “I was born in the Year of the Monkey,” said the architect during a walking tour of the site. “That means I’m patient and hard-working--just right for this job.”

They met with homeowners, scaled down their plans to meet some of the objections and made repeated presentations before county officials considering the zoning change required for the project.

The final product consists of a main temple, facing a courtyard and surrounded by a series of smaller buildings, including a library, quarters for 40 monks and nuns, meeting halls and administrative offices. The interior walls of the main temple, which will hold 800 worshipers, will soon be lined with 10,000 individual niches, each containing a light and a small statue of Buddha, Yang said. Decorative acoustic tiles with a lotus flower motif are being installed in the ceiling.

At the highest point of the site, on which workers have shifted 200,000 cubic yards of earth while grading the slope, stands a small, two-story shrine--a “memorial hall” to honor the dead, Yang explained.

“It was supposed to be a seven-story pagoda,” he said. “But the county would only allow two stories.”

Also erased from the original plan was an 80-foot golden statue of Buddha planned for a spot near the front entrance to the complex. “We had some concern about that,” said Joseph Badillo, a resident of High Tor, a private community of 125 single-family homes overlooking the site.

But even the scaled-down version of the complex, whose total floor space is 65,000 square feet, is a riveting sight for motorists on Hacienda Boulevard.

Nevertheless, opponents still complain about what they perceive as favored treatment of the Buddhists by the county, particularly the Los Angeles Regional Planning Commission and the office of county Supervisor Pete Schabarum.

“The Buddhists may not know English themselves,” Pluth said. “But they certainly hired people who did. They seemed to know how to do things better than most of us who were born here.”

Most recently, she said, the Planning Commission gave its consent for the Buddhist group to gate the street leading into the temple complex and an adjacent housing development, which was built by a corporation set up by the Buddhists.

“You can’t just close a public road like that,” Pluth said. She added that the gated street would have provided emergency access into High Tor.

“When they were building High Tor,” Pluth said, “county officials answered our objections by saying that the street was a public road. Now they turn around and close it.”

But county officials pointed out that the street closing, which the Buddhists have requested to keep vandals out, has not yet been given final approval. “We have completed the first phase of the process,” said a spokeswoman for the Department of Public Works. She said the request will be considered by the Board of Supervisors after a public hearing.

“One condition would be that there would be emergency access (to High Tor),” the spokeswoman added.

Mark Volmert, a deputy to Schabarum, denied that the county or the supervisor had shown favoritism to the Buddhists. “Mr. Schabarum ultimately voted for the project after lengthy discussions with residents and significant changes to the plan,” Volmert said. “To characterize the supervisor as being supportive of the plan would be a misnomer.”

The public debate has apparently had bruising effects all around. “The truth of the matter was that the opposition from some of the adjacent people had less to do with the size of the project than with racial overtones,” said one county official who asked not to be identified. “They were concerned that it wouldn’t be a Baptist church or something more familiar.”

Pluth scoffed at the notion. “From the beginning, the county was calling us racists,” she said. “They were manufacturing something that wasn’t there.”

But supporters of the Buddhists said the tenor of the public debate has become nasty at times. For example, some residents wanted to know if there would be animal sacrifices on the temple site and the sound of gongs ringing through their neighborhood--both questions indicating deep misunderstandings of the religion, the Buddhists said. Others worried erroneously that they would be allowing into their community a “religious cult” that would seek to entrap their children.

Recently, there have been incidents of vandalism by teen-agers on the temple site. “Some kids have come to throw oranges and shout rude remarks,” said the Rev. Yung Kai, Hsing Yun’s interpreter.

“What can we do to get the support of the American people?” asked Hsing during an interview in his comfortable home with overstuffed leather chairs, a marble coffee table and a view of the temple site through the living room window.

He said meeting space at the temple will be open for use by the community, including non-Buddhist groups. The organization will run charitable programs, and it is planning a student exchange program between its new community and Taiwan.

“Many people in many places have accepted us,” Hsing said. “Not being accepted here is difficult to understand.”

But many in Hacienda Heights have clearly softened their resistance. “I have no problems with the Buddhists being there,” said Sandy Johnson, chairman of the Hacienda Heights Improvement Assn., a volunteer organization that once spearheaded the resistance to the temple. “Sometimes things like that can enrich a community.”