ANAHEIM : Buddhist Church Has Western Trappings

In some ways, the Orange County Buddhist Church isn’t much different from its Christian counterparts.

There is a chapel with pews, a gymnasium, a reception hall and classrooms. There are Sunday services, Sunday school classes, Boy Scout and Girl Scout troops and a variety of hobby groups.

But those are just the Western trappings that have been grafted onto a 2,400-year-old religion practiced primarily in Asia, but which is growing in North America.

“What we have tried to do is adopt some of the American ways, because it makes it easier to exist in this country,” said Rev. Marvin Harada, who leads the 900-member congregation.

There are eight Buddhist churches in Orange County. Like Christianity with its various branches such as Catholicism, Lutheranism and Methodism, Buddhism has dozens of sects including Zen, the most widely known branch in this country.

Harada’s church belongs to the Jodo Shinshu sect, a religion practiced primarily in Japan andfounded there 800 years ago. The Orange County congregation was founded 28 years ago by local Japanese-Americans. Most of the congregants today are Japanese-Americans, but Chinese-Americans and whites have joined, Harada said.

Buddhism was founded about 500 BC in India by Nepalese nobleman Siddarta Gautama, who was given the title of Buddha or “The Enlightened One” by his disciples.

At age 29, a series of visions caused him to leave a pampered life and seek enlightenment. For six years, he practiced extreme forms of self-denial and self-punishment, going so far as to subsist some days on a single grain of rice and to pull whiskers from his face one by one.

But he found that abuse did not lead to enlightenment and gave up the practice. Instead, he sat beneath a tree to meditate until he achieved enlightenment.

He taught that people could find a release for their suffering in “nirvana,” a state of complete happiness and peace that can be attained if they follow “The Middle Way,” in which people avoid both uncontrolled satisfaction of desire and extreme self-denial.

“Nirvana is very difficult to attain, but what is important is being on the path,” Harada said. “It’s like the martial arts. Becoming a black belt may be the goal, but it is the training to become a black belt that is important. Reaching out for the goal to try to grab it can sometimes push it further away.”

Buddhists also follow the “Noble Eightfold Path,” a philosophy urging people to strive for knowledge of truth, resist evil, say nothing that will hurt others, hold a job that does not injure others, strive to free one’s mind of evil, control one’s feelings and thoughts, practice proper forms of concentration and respect life, morality and property.

Buddhists do not believe in the Judeo-Christian model of god as a divine universal ruler but rather believe each person must seek the truth within himself or herself. Some Buddhists believe in reincarnation.

Harada said that in his sect, what a person was before birth or will become after death is not of as much concern as present spiritual attributes.

“We try not to speculate about the future, but try to improve the present,” Harada said.