A new beginning

Renovations are complete at a south side traditional Buddhist temple

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After nearly seven years of construction, Lansing’s Vietnamese community finally has a religious and cultural center to call its own.

It’s been a long road, but after its christening celebration on Sunday, the temple at 3015 S. Washington Ave. south of REO Town stands as a true-to-form, traditional Vietnamese Buddhist temple. The character is in the angles, shapes and furnishings of the place — including a traditional bell, rack and drum all imported from Vietnam. According to the Vietnamese American Buddhist Association of Lansing, it’s the only such temple in Michigan.

And the temple was built almost entirely by the community’s own hands. Hoan Doan, president of VABAL, said everyone pitched in throughout the various stages of construction. Only the air-conditioning and heating system was built by outside labor, he said. 

The story of VABAL members dates as far back as 1975, after the fall of Saigon and the end of the Vietnam War. It was then that Vietnamese refugees began resettling throughout various parts of Michigan, and Doan was among them. 

Many headed to Lansing specifically in the 1990s, following the release of former government officials and soldiers from communist “re-education camps,” Doan said. 

“Many were imprisoned for seven to 12 years before they came here,” he said.

Together with their families, many of these refugees saw Michigan as an opportunity for new life — but it lacked a formal Buddhist foundation.

In response, the community formed VABAL as an ecclesiastic nonprofit organization in 1995.

“VABAL’s mission is to preserve and promote Buddhism,” Doan said. “Buddhism was in our tradition for thousands of years. In Vietnam, 85 percent would identify themselves as Buddhist. It’s very engrained in our culture.”

Yet even after organizing, VABAL members were still without a place of worship.

“We kept moving house to house until 1998,” Doan said. “Then five of us co-signed to buy a house on Bishop Road.” 

The property included three-and-a-half acres and a home they intended to use as a prayer hall, but unfortunately, zoning and spacing issues kept them from reworking it into a usable temple. Though they labored and petitioned for years, VABAL finally sold the property in 2004. Within a matter of days, Doan said, they had bought up a small Baptist church on Washington Avenue with hopes of converting it.

It hardly suffices to say the old Baptist church has come a long way. When VABAL purchased the church, Doan described a building with window frames riddled with rot, a ceiling that was only eight feet high in places and floors of solid concrete. So they took the concrete out, replaced the windows and raised the ceiling. Nothing remains of the old building, he added, save its bare frame.

While some funds came through charities, most were individual donations by the active 15-family community that make up the congregation. 

Since 2004, that community has also gained a nun to perform Buddhist rituals, and to teach Dharma. Four times a year, they also invite high-ranking monks from abroad to preside over holy ceremonies. 

But for its members, the new temple is more than that — it’s a community center and a classroom. Children of the congregation also are welcome to attend classes in the back of the temple each week, to learn Vietnamese and to participate in group activities. 

It is not the home many left behind in Vietnam, but outside the temple on Washington Avenue, a small garden stands in monument to the birth of the Buddha. It, like the surrounding community, is still growing, still nourishing — but it has taken root, and new life lies ahead.

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