Buddhist Nuns’ Temple a Success

The people who live at Duoc Su Temple look like ordinary Buddhist monks, with their shaved heads and their simple, loose gray garb and saffron-colored robes.

But look closer at the master chanting with the worshipers who are sitting on the floor of the rug-lined praying room.

The master is a woman.

So are the rest of the temple keepers.

“We’ve surprised many people because, I guess, when they see a temple, they think of monks,” said 46-year-old Dung Thi Truong, who with her master, the Venerable Loan Kim Le, established Duoc Su Temple, Southern California’s first all-women Vietnamese Buddhist temple, in 1982.

The temple, now on Magnolia Street, had its first incarnation in a rented two-bedroom house a couple of miles away on Hope Street, where it drew the ire of neighbors who complained about noise and traffic. The new temple--a high-ceiling, white and green pagoda with a five-bedroom house in the back serving as living quarters for the 10 nuns there--has been rebuilt to meet city zoning codes.

The temple’s grand opening is scheduled May 3 and 4, and about 30 Buddhist dignitaries from around the world, along with city officials and local monks, are expected to attend.

Younger Vietnamese Americans and temple neighbors are still surprised upon learning that only nuns live at Duoc Su. But in Vietnam and other parts of Asia, Buddhist monks and nuns live and worship in separate temples.

As they immigrated to the West in the early 1980s when the Vietnamese government cracked down on religion, Buddhist nuns and monks began worshiping together at temples run by monks and their male followers. In those holy places, nuns mostly keep to themselves and have no major responsibilities.

It was the intention of Le, when she immigrated to the United States in 1982, to reintroduce to the Vietnamese community here the custom of women worshiping on their own grounds. Le, like all Vietnamese Buddhist monks and nuns, is known in the community by an honorific title bestowed upon her to signify her spiritual identity. Hers is Thich Nu Nhu Hoa.

“I wanted to establish an all Buddhist nuns temple,” she said, “so that there is a place for those who want to enter the monastery and carry out the religion with the support, care and teaching of other women.”

Duoc Su was believed to be the first all-women Vietnamese Buddhist temple in the state. Now there are others in San Jose, Sacramento and San Diego.

At Duoc Su, Le and her acolytes have power that nuns do not have at monk-run temples. Le and Truong oversee the day-to-day operation. The eight younger nuns--the youngest is 14--attend high school and college during the week and help guide the faithful in prayers, meditations, confessions and ceremonies, which include weddings and funerals.

When Le and Truong moved to Garden Grove in 1982, they did not join any of the existing Vietnamese temples because both had been schooled at and worshiped in an all-women pagoda in Vietnam, also named Duoc Su Temple.

“The rules of living in a temple for monks and nuns are different,” said 54-year-old Le, a smiling, soft-spoken woman who often covers her shaved head with a hand-knitted cap. “The differences are so many and distinct that it’s not as comfortable for women to practice the religion under one roof with the men.

“It’s better that we follow our own set,” she said, “but with each other so that the acknowledged and accepted differences are not glaring.”

Monks and nuns worship the same way. All take vows of celibacy and live ascetic lives, forsaking material goods. Further, they have to shave their heads, give up meat, live in a temple and obey the hundreds of rules of the dharma, the Buddhist’s guide to living.

What sets nuns apart is that they must accept that they are inferior to monks, even if the monk is but a boy who has just entered the monastery.

In this regard, the nuns at Duoc Su are no different from Buddhist nuns elsewhere.

But not all Buddhists accept the order of nuns.

According to Ananda Guruge, who teaches Buddhism at Cal State Fullerton, the order is not accepted by religious leaders in countries in the Southern school of Buddhism--Thailand, Sri Lanka, Cambodia, Laos, Bangladesh and India, the birthplace of the religion.

Today, the order flourishes in countries belonging to the Northern school of Buddhism, he added, which are represented by China, Japan, Korea and Vietnam, and those groups have temples in the United States.

Truong, whose religious name is Thich Nu Nhu Thong, earned her bachelor’s degree in sociology at Cal State Fullerton in 1990. She acknowledges that her Western education challenges the status of women in her religion.

“Based upon what we know here, it is a little bit unfair especially since we nuns do the same things as monks,” she said, adding that feminism holds no sway over Buddhist nuns.

“In the teaching of the Buddha,” Truong said, “the rules are clear.”

They are rules 21-year-old Linh My Tu, known as Thich Nu Hue Nguyet accepted when she had her head shaved and took her vow of chastity and obedience upon entering the nunnery four years ago.

At Duoc Su, Tu considers the nuns to be her sisters, friends and advisors.

“I am comfortable here because it’s a peaceful place,” she said. “And yes, I like the fact that we women can worship at a place we can call our own.”