When the resident monk, the Most Venerable Thich Thien Tam, arrived in 1995 to nurture Vietnamese refugees at Chua Vanh Hanh the local devotees met for their weekly communal ritual in a modest red brick house on a quiet street in northern Raleigh. The community has since built a small red and yellow temple and acquired nine acres of surrounding land. The temple's membership and attendance also has expanded. Chua Van Hanh (Temple of a Thousand Steps) now has a membership of 150 Vietnamese Americans, from acculturated children who attend local public schools to elderly grandparents who speak little English and long for the homeland they fled during the 1970s. Between seventy-five and one hundred devotees attend the weekly rituals at 11:30 on Sunday mornings, and several hundred gather for Buddhist holidays such as the Buddha's birthday. Those services, and all others, are conducted in Vietnamese, and the chanting of sacred texts is the central practice. However, members sometimes gather to meditate too, as more than thirty did after the Buddha's Birthday celebration in 1999. 

In many ways, Chua Van Hanh is a typical Vietnamese American Buddhist temple, and the contours of its history are mirrored in countless communities across the state and the nation. It began in November 1986, when the North Carolina Buddhist Association officially incorporated. The core members, who were all Vietnamese refugees, then arranged to convert a modest home into a temple. They vigorously sought a resident monk, and after Thich Thien Tam arrived the community began to gain members and visibility. 
But if the story of its growth is familiar, Chua Van Hanh is distinctive in another way.At the urging of the resident monk, who served two temples in Vietnam before coming to Raleigh, the community has been at work on a long-term project they started in 1998. They are building a sculpture garden depicting the life of the Buddha. When it is finished in several years, it will include five main statues, and several others, including one image that already has been put in place--a twelve-foot concrete Buddha seated on a white lotus petal. That sculptural garden already has attracted local notice, including a story in the Raleigh newspaper, and the temple might be even more visible in the years ahead if the community follows through on its plan to construct a larger temple on the grounds.        
TT, DP