Charlotte True Buddha Temple was founded in 1991 by current President Pauline Lee.  It is affiliated with the True Buddha School. a Vajrayana organization whose members are primarily Chinese and Chinese-American.  Services are held in Chinese, though members are often fluent in English.

The old temple location on East 4th Street was located next to a Chinese laundry; it had a roughly 12x20 foot main shrine room, a dining/gathering space, and several smaller offices and storage rooms.  The altar room was dominated by a large altar covered with scores of Buddhist dieties, lamas, Buddhas, and bodhisattvas, including Shakyamuni, Amitabha, Guanyin, Dizhang, Guan Gong, Yamantaka, and statues of Grand Master Sheng-yen Lu, founder of the True Buddha School.  Among the colorful statues were candles, fruit and other offerings, lanterns, incense, drums, and brocade cloths with auspicious designs.  The walls of the room were festooned with paintings and pictures, including various popular Chinese bodhisattvas, calligraphy scrolls, and an esoteric mandala on the ceiling.  A site visit to the new Monroe Road location has not yet been undertaken, but the altar and furnishings are likely somewhat similar.

Members gather weekly on Sunday mornings at 11:00 a.m. for services in the shrine room.  Services consist mainly of chanting prayers to numerous Buddhist holy figures in Chinese, accompanied by frequent full-body prostrations and symbolic hand gestures known as mudras.  Members wearrobes signifying their level of commitment to the Dharma: yellow for those who have formally taken refuge, and brown for those who have also taken the more advanced bodhisattva vows.  President Lee manipulates various ritual implements during the service and acts as its de facto leader, but is not herself a lama or ordained nun.  When services are finished, the congregation moves outside to the parking lot, where they burn stacks of paper prayers in metal trashcans.  This is believed to honor the ancestors and relieve the sufferings of hungry ghosts and souls in the hellish realms.  The typical service last forty-five minutes, and draws twenty-five to thirty people, most of them women and nearly all of Chinese descent.  Once a month a longer ninety minute service is held.

The temple has more than two hundred members, most of whom live around Charlotte, though some come from as far away as Fayetteville.  Popular events such as teachings by traveling senior monks in the True Buddha School can draw as many as six hundred people.

Members of the Charlotte True Buddha temple have shown a willingness to engage with the wider community, inviting speakers from other Buddhist sects to speak and creating prison ministries at correctional facilities in Butner and Salisbury.

JW
(last updated 4/2/06)