Neighbors Wary of Buddhists’ Plan : Retreat: Proposal of monks to build a monastic meditation center in a 60-acre avocado grove has people in rural Valley Center nervous.

Buddhists call their proposed monastery Metta Forest, which means good will, but monks are finding that it takes more than good will and a gentle nature to bring their lifestyle to rural Valley Center.

American and Thai monks from an Ontario monastery want to build a large meditation complex in a 60-acre avocado grove, maintaining the trees as a commercial venture and putting perhaps 40 buildings on the land over the next two decades.

Initially, up to five monks would live year-round in small, austere huts, meditating among the peaceful rolling hills, where rattlesnakes and coyotes roam freely and the buzzing of bees can be heard. A few lay Buddhists also would live there, working as cooks and gardeners.

“We are environmentally friendly; we’re not allowed to cut down trees, we’re not allowed to kill animals,” said Geoffrey DeGraff, a monk whose Buddhist name is Thanissaro Bhikkhu. “We’ve got 2,500 years of history to prove that.”

But it is the expected influx of lay people, sometimes 50 a day, and the number of proposed buildings that have neighbors and county officials worried about the project’s impact on roads, wildlife, water and sewer service, and the area’s tranquil farms.

“We are a very quiet area, you can hear the bees and the hummingbirds,” said Carol Hollingshead, a 10-year area resident who owns a 12-acre avocado and orange grove next to the monastery site.

“I just object to what I don’t understand, and what I don’t know is coming up,” added her husband, Jay. He’s afraid that the complex would resemble “a shantytown.”

At least so far, the project, which is in the early stages of county and public review, hasn’t sparked much reaction from the Pala Indians, whose reservation abuts the monastery site on three sides.

If anything, said tribal chairman Robert Smith, the Indians are simply wondering what the monks are up to. “We are curious to see what activities they’re going to have,” he said.

Among those activities are annual one-day festival/meditation meetings that could swell the monastery’s population, albeit for a few hours. DeGraff said the festivals would be quiet affairs with no music or revelry--just meditation and a potluck meal, with participants car-pooling in.

DeGraff, who will become the monastery’s abbot, is one of three monks now living on the site in temporary, solar-powered wooden and cinder block huts. There is also a temporary office and meditation hall, complete with a towering golden Buddha.

DeGraff is trying to persuade neighbors that the monks want to keep the area quiet and peaceful; indeed, that’s why they picked the site for the monastery.

Meditation among trees is a key part of Buddhism, dating to the enlightenment achieved by Buddha in 528 BC as he sat in contemplation under a banyan tree at a place now called Buddha Gaya in northern India.

Meditation, in groups or solitarily along sun-dappled paths, occupies most of the monks’ typical day, which begins before dawn. The one meal is eaten before noon and prepared by lay people.

But some neighbors remain skeptical, although they readily praise the Buddhists as kind and say religion has nothing to do with their concerns.

“Since they bought the property they’ve been good neighbors,” Carol Hollingshead said. “The exception is there has been a large increase in traffic on the road already.”

Another neighbor said she was concerned that the Buddhists may try to influence the beliefs and practices of the farmers.

“Our main concern is them not agreeing with what the farmers need to do to continue farming,” such as the use of pesticides, said Linda Maddoch, a Fallbrook resident who owns a nearby grove.

DeGraff said he is sensitive to these concerns, and, although monks won’t use pesticides, they will not involve themselves with how other farmers work their land.

Furthermore, the Buddhists say they aren’t looking for handouts or converts among their neighbors.

“I can see a lot of Americans being afraid of a Rajneesh-type thing,” DeGraff said, referring to the notorious Indian guru, who was not a Buddhist, and his followers who took over a rural Oregon community.

“We don’t want to impose ourselves. We’re not going to be out in the shopping malls or the post office,” DeGraff said.

Despite their desire to quietly blend in, the Buddhists are also up against a daunting array of county requirements.

Doug Humphrey, vice chairman of the Pala-Pauma Community Sponsor Group, said the citizen’s advisory panel has tentatively urged the county to reject the project because not enough is known about the amount of traffic, how the monastery would receive water and the type of sewage system to be installed.

At a recent county Planning and Environmental Review Board hearing, officials gave the monks and their architects four months to provide that information, as well as grading calculations and the color and design of buildings.

A sewer system must also be designed to serve the far-flung buildings, after the monks were forced to scrap their original idea of using an experimental composting toilet system that is not approved for use in California.

But the county’s main requirement is that the 1.5-mile dirt portion of Muutama Road and Muutama Lane leading to the site be upgraded to county road standards. That would mean grading and possible paving.

The monks must also pave another eight-tenths of a mile section of road located on the monastery property, a project that architect Gregory Crawford figures could cost $75,000 alone. No total project cost has not yet been determined.

Crawford hopes that other nearby property owners will help pay to improve their common road. But the Hollingsheads said they failed when they once tried to get neighbors to chip in for road upgrading.

Richard Empey, a member of the planning and environmental review board, suggested that Buddhists drastically reduce the project’s application to reflect short-term use, and later apply for an expansion. He said that would postpone the need for some costly long-range studies.

But Crawford said he and the monks want to be open about the whole monastery plan from the beginning, avoiding the resentment that a group of yogis faced on Palomar Mountain in 1978.

In that case, the yogis were already running a restaurant and general store when they sought to build a retreat on another parcel. Some residents felt betrayed that the guru and his followers had not told them about the retreat from the beginning.

The monks bought the monastery site for $700,000 in October 1990. The legal owner is the Metta Forest Monastery, a nonprofit religious organization run by a six-member board of directors that includes DeGraff.

In response to concerns, project organizers have already scaled down the project, but it still calls for up to 40 buildings, huts for monks and others, a dining/meditation hall, an ordination hall, kitchen, ceremonial tower, bathhouses, and a parking lot.

All that’s too much for Jay Hollingshead, whose alarm over the profusion of huts and their appearance has prompted him to put his grove up for sale. He had hoped to build a home there, but fears the spot will lose its attraction if the monastery goes through.

“I’m afraid that my dream is going to be looking across to a shantytown,” he said.

Architect Crawford bristled at that characterization and said the monks’ huts would be on the other side of the property, overlooking empty Indian land.

“A group of Buddhist monks living close to nature is pretty benign compared to some of those mansions on top of hills,” he said.

But Hollingshead draws on his experiences watching the population and development explosion in Los Angeles when he concludes, “What people tell you and what happens are two different things.”