Drawing on Faith : Buddhist Temple to Host Monthly Bingo Games in Effort to Raise Revenue

The Buddhist temple here has sat quietly on an out-of-the-way corner of town for four years, as subtle and solemn as a statue of Buddha himself.

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But that is about to change.

The small Shin Buddhist congregation, which recently broke off from its parent temple in Los Angeles, needs to raise money and draw in more people. To do so, it is trying a strategy long used as a revenue source by Christian churches but almost unheard of in Buddhism: monthly bingo games.

The first game, today, will herald the only regular bingo session in Costa Mesa and only the second ever offered by a Buddhist temple in California.

“A lot of people think that because we are Buddhists we can’t gamble, but it is not at all incongruous with the religion,” said the Rev. Tsuyoshi Hirosumi, minister of the Newport Higashi Honganji Buddhist Temple.

The proceeds from the game and from selling curry rice and chicken teriyaki to the players will go to support the temple, which is no longer subsidized by the Los Angeles congregation. Its survival is important to the local Japanese American community, for whom it has become more than a place of worship.

The congregation is mostly Issei--people born in Japan who immigrated to the United States. The temple, they say, helps them bridge the gap between their Japanese heritage and their new Western lifestyle.

“I will never forget the first time I went to the temple,” said Kyoko Kent, a Tokyo native who now lives in Huntington Beach. “When the reverend gave the service in Japanese, I cried the whole time. I realized that this is a part of my heritage. This is so much a part of who I am, and I had lost touch with it.”

The congregation, founded about 15 years ago, has grown steadily as Japanese Americans have moved to Orange County to escape congestion and crime in Los Angeles and as Japanese companies have opened operations here, sending executives and managers to run them.

The children of many members, however, have not formed ties with the temple, Hirosumi said. Many have gone off to college and never returned, moved away or simply dropped out. Most of the new faces that appear for Sunday services are whites drawn to the temple out of curiosity, he said.

But Hirosumi hopes the added income from bingo will give the congregation the wherewithal to develop recreational activities, and maybe even invest in a karaoke machine, that might help draw a more youthful following.

He would also like to make better use of the temple’s tea ceremony room, complete with tatami mats, which is used infrequently because of a lack of funds. Hirosumi said he would like to be able to teach the art to younger generations of Japanese Americans.

Showing a visitor around the temple, Hirosumi pointed out several other improvements he would like to make to the building, which was formerly an athletic club. Upstairs are eight empty classrooms that might be used for religious study classes if funds allowed.

Hirosumi also hopes that one day there will be enough money to build a facade like that of an Old World temple. Until members donated plants and rocks for a small Japanese garden in front, he said, there was nothing to distinguish the long, rectangular building from others on the block.

In fact, the Newport Higashi Honganji temple shares few of the architectural characteristics of typical Japanese Buddhist temples, known for their sloping tiled roofs, gongs, gardens and elaborate entryways. Here, the roof is flat and the walls stuccoed, and with the exception of a lone golden peony above the door, there is no decoration.

“Maybe someday,” Hirosumi said, there will be enough money for a tiled roof.

Once inside the chapel, however, there is no mistaking the facility for anything other than a Buddhist temple. Enclosed on three sides by shoji blinds, the room is fragrant with fresh flowers and the scent of incense burned in memory of the dead.

A golden Buddha, the centerpiece of the gilded altar, gazes serenely across the chapel.

“You know, it is all gold,” Hirosumi whispered, “because Buddha’s teachings never tarnish.”