Tranquil Temples Nettle O.C. Neighbors

Everything about the Lien Hoa Temple evokes sublime tranquillity.

There are huge, shady jacaranda and fig trees whose knotty trunks are stakes for two low-slung hammocks. Leafy trees heavy with unripe persimmons, grapefruits, tangerines, guavas and cherimoyas fill the garden. A sloping concrete bridge graces the man-made lotus pond. A statue of the Buddha Goddess sits at the center of the verdant courtyard.

“A place this like gives real meaning to the word ‘peaceful,’ ” said Serge Lenestour, visiting the temple one afternoon during a lunch break to pray and meditate. “I come here and I just enjoy the quietness. I feel like all my troubles are gone.”

Yet it hasn’t always been so serene in the neighborhood around the temple, a salmon-hued structure the size of a double-car garage in a most unlikely place: the backyard of a four-bedroom house on Bixby Avenue.

Cities in Orange County increasingly are cracking down on “home temples” that are located in residential areas or that operate without proper permits. Lien Hoa is but one of many such temples, maintained primarily by Vietnamese monks, that in the last several years have faced complaints from neighbors and city inspectors about noise, litter, traffic and zoning violations.

To some of the monks, it never occurred to check out zoning laws when they bought their property.

“It’s not that complicated to explain,” said Thu Van Nguyen, the head monk at Lien Hoa Temple, which was cited recently because ceremonies drew more than the 64 people allowed on his property under city codes. “In Vietnam, we can build a temple, big or small, anywhere. So, many of us just automatically assumed in the beginning that we can have our houses also be temples.

“Zoning ordinance? We only learn about them later.”

Generally, private homes are not allowed to operate as places of worship without conditional-use permits, which are issued only if the property meets safety requirements such as adequate parking, building space and emergency exits. But enforcing the law can be problematic because officials must weigh individuals’ constitutional right to assembly.

“It’s a gray area,” said Don Anderson, community development director of Westminster, which has several Vietnamese temples in the city but has seen few complaints at City Hall. “If somebody says, ‘It’s my home and I will have an occasional religious gathering,’ do you define that as . . . a place of worship? And then, of course, there’s a question of how occasional is occasional?”

There are 44 Vietnamese Buddhist temples from San Diego to Sacramento--most of them in Garden Grove and Santa Ana--listed in the 1996 Nguoi Viet Yearbook, a directory of Vietnamese businesses and organizations in California. No statistics are available for the number of private homes that also function as places of worship, but according to local monks there are at least a dozen in Orange County.

A Vietnamese Communist government crackdown on religion in the early 1980s caused many Buddhist monks to join the wave of refugees who fled to the West by boat. The majority came to Orange County, now home to at least 100,000 Vietnamese expatriates, the largest such population outside Southeast Asia.

Many of the monks recalled arriving literally with just the robes and sandals they had on. They rebuilt their already ascetic lives with the help and kindness of compatriots who welcomed them into their homes.

Vietnamese Buddhists in the community pooled their resources to buy houses for the monks, who then converted them into religious temples. They had no choice, the monks said. They had no money to buy or build structures that were up to code.

In the beginning, the home temples were more a curiosity than anything else. City officials were vaguely aware of their existence, but in respect to cultural differences generally left the monks and their worshipers alone. But as the crowds grew, so did residents’ complaints.

Usually it is during Tet, the celebration of the new year on the lunar calendar, when neighborhood complaints rise. Thousands of Buddhists flock to their temples at this time to pray and pay respect to their ancestors.

But even during normal times, some residents object to the temples because of the steady flow of traffic during services, which primarily take place on Saturdays and Sundays but also sometimes during the week.

“I don’t want to stop anyone from worshiping, but there just are so many people and they block my driveway, make a lot of noise and just come and go at all hours,” said Betty Parker, who lives three houses from Thanh Tung Duong, a monk who was sued in April by Garden Grove city officials on grounds of holding religious services at his home on Magnolia Street without a permit.

Parker, in her 70s, said that for two months after Tet, which this year fell on Feb. 19, she took photographs of religious goings-on at the dwelling and handed them over to the city as proof of the magnitude of the problem. Before the lawsuit, she added, Duong’s home had hosted religious ceremonies for about two years.

Parker said that she still sees a lot of activity around the temple, but that things have quieted down since the city of Garden Grove settled the case against Duong, who agreed to limit the number of worshipers at his home.

The city also settled a case against Lien Hoa Temple last spring after it too promised to keep down the number of people there.

The monks say they are the victims of unfortunate circumstances: They can’t afford to build temples outside of residential areas, but at the same time they must find a place to minister to their flocks.

Most monks are self-employed, living off donations and offerings from the community and members of their temples. Their homes--or temples--are subsidized by supporters in the community and Vietnamese Buddhist groups nationwide.

“Monks are poor. We don’t have money,” said Dao Van Bach, the head monk at the Vietnam Temple, whose Garden Grove house in 1989 became the first home temple to be sued in Orange County for a zoning violation. Bach is known in the Vietnamese community by his honorific Buddhist title, Thich Phap Chau. (All Vietnamese Buddhist monks have honorific titles beginning with “Thich.”) Bach has since razed his house and in its place has built what he and other monks maintain is among the largest Vietnamese Buddhist temples in size in the U.S.

“But what can we do?” Bach asked. “The people in the community need and want temples where they could go and worship.”

Some monks say they do not use their homes as temples but acknowledge they have religious artifacts often found in temples and occasionally invite over many guests for prayer.

“This is where I work and live, where monks come to pray or live,” said Duong (Thich Quang Thanh), one of the two monks sued by Garden Grove officials earlier this year. “Yes, it has an altar, but I am a monk, so my home will have one.”

When Duong applied for a permit last year to renovate his home to build a patio and raise his ceiling to accommodate a 30-foot altar for the Buddha, city officials asked if his home would be used as a place of worship. “I said no,” the monk recalled. “I meant it then, and I mean it now: This is the home of a monk and not a temple.”

There was never a debate as to whether Lien Hoa is a temple or not. Its sign in front--”Lien Hoa Temple”--is as plain as day.

But Nguyen, the head monk, says he has inadvertently violated his permit allowing up to 64 worshipers many times since 1987, when the temple opened. The last violation occurred on the eve of Tet when hundreds of Vietnamese Buddhists flitted in and out of the temple from morning till night. Their prayers and chants filled the air, already thickened with incense smoke. Their parked cars virtually plugged the streets.

“I test and test to see to what degree I can push . . . and what I can get away with,” said Nguyen (Thich Chon Thanh). “When they took me to court this year after Tet, I knew I couldn’t push any more.”

Like Nguyen, other monks whose temples have been cited said they also have tested their city officials over time--and found them generally patient and accommodating.

“I think the city just looks the other way most of the times,” said Bach, the Vietnam Temple monk. “They just have to respond to complaints, we know that. But they have given us much leeway.”

Bach said Garden Grove officials, who could not be reached for comment, have yet to carry out threats to jail him for repeated code violations. By allowing him to continue to hold services, he reasons, they indirectly gave him time to appeal to his 2,000-family membership for the $2.6 million necessary to build his temple into what it is today: the Vietnam Temple, an imposing pagoda whose size rivals many of the bigger churches.

Vietnam Temple still has more upgrading to do--the latest inspection required that Bach fix the parking drainage system, improve lighting and build a fence. But the monk is certain that by its opening early next year, the temple, which can hold up to 1,000 people, will meet city codes.

Meantime, even though the temple hasn’t met all zoning requirements, Bach said he continues to hold regular weekly ceremonies on the property--as he has since 1983.

“We just need to do everything we can to meet their standards if we want to continue our services,” Bach said. “Or else, we can just hide--hide and continue them illegally. Most of the monks here do that anyway.”