Ep. 7: Backyard Buddhists

Hi everyone, this is Chenxing, and you’re listening to Cha-Tea Circle. In the audio essay that follows, my narration is interspersed with sound clips recorded during multiple visits to various Buddhist temples in the Merrimack Valley of Massachusetts between March 2022 and May 2024. To learn more about Listening to the Buddhists in Our Backyard, visit www.l2bb.org.

I can think of two instances when social media radically changed my life. In 2021, I received a Twitter message from a high school teacher twelve days after the publication of my first book, Be the Refuge: Raising the Voices of Asian American Buddhists. In 2007, I sent a Facebook message to a college classmate.

That classmate, Trent, is now my husband. The high school teacher, Andy, has become a close collaborator and dear friend. The three of us, along with Andy’s spouse and two young children, would participate in a refuge-taking ceremony together at Chùa Tường Vân Temple in Lowell, Massachusetts, three years and three months after Andy’s message.

This audio essay tells the story of how a Twitter DM led to a project that would challenge and change our methods of learning, our approaches to teaching, and our understandings of Buddhism—a life-changing, refuge-making project called Listening to the Buddhists in Our Backyard.

[Sound Clip #1: Amitabha chant at Chùa Tường Vân temple in Lowell, MA]

In February 2021, during the peak of the U.S. COVID-19 pandemic, I receive a message on my largely neglected Twitter account: 

[Sound Clip #2: Andy Housiaux’s voice, at Phillips Academy Andover in Andover, MA] “My name is Andy Housiaux and I teach Philosophy and Religious Studies at Phillips Academy, a high school in Andover, MA. Currently I am teaching an Asian Religions course to a group of 10th graders—we just began our study of Buddhism last week and will engage with it for the next month, until the end of the term. I will assign part of your book for sure!”

Andy invites me to a speak with his students, who are Zooming in from all over the globe—Hong Kong, Shanghai, Seoul, New Jersey, Massachusetts, California, and elsewhere. 

[Sound Clip #3: Andy Housiaux’s voice, at Phillips Academy Andover] “I realize twitter DMs are not the ideal place for such exchanges, so please feel free to email me. Thank you so much for your consideration, and congratulations again on the publication of your book! Warmly, Andy”

From the first interview I conducted—out of 89 total—until the book’s publication, it took Be the Refuge almost a decade to make its way into the world. During that time, I hoped that Be the Refuge might someday be read on college campuses, but never imagined it would resonate in high school classrooms. 

Andy’s tenth graders show me the limits of my imagination. I’m wowed to see high school students from around the world engaging so energetically with the themes in Be the Refuge. Our conversation covers Buddhist teachings, race and religion, ecological justice, writing as spiritual practice, and the sharing of merit.

In the fall of 2021, Andy sends a follow-up email:

[Sound Clip #4: Andy Housiaux’s voice, at Phillips Academy Andover] “I'm writing to see if you might be interested in working with some Andover students again. This time the project would potentially be a bit longer-term. 

“This spring, I'll be working with a group of teachers and 22 seniors in an experimental school-within-a-school at Andover. The students will drop all their typical classes and instead work only on interdisciplinary projects with the faculty and each other. Students are able to spend significant time off campus, in nature, and in deep work because they are freed from the 45-minute, 5-class schedule of high school. 

“My hope is to work with a group of students on a project that would be deeply inspired by your work in Be The Refuge. In particular, I want to engage the students with a set of questions: Who are the Buddhists in Boston? What are their voices? What can we learn about Buddhism—and Boston—from this inquiry? This kind of learning is really only possible in this experimental schedule: students could visit dharma centers and temples, interview a range of people, and come to an understanding of the tradition that is not limited to a discussion of texts and artwork in classrooms.”

I’m intrigued. “The project you’re proposing sounds meaningful and fun,” I write back. “I would be excited to see how I could support the students’ research and learning (though I suspect I would learn more from them than they would from me).” 

I couldn’t have known how true that prediction would be—and how much all of us would learn from the Buddhists we’d be meeting beyond the classroom walls.

[Sound Clip #5: Recitation of Tibetan Buddhist prayers at Kurukulla Center for Tibetan Studies in Medford, MA]

Though based in California at the time, Trent and I have plans to be in Massachusetts right before spring term to lead Story and Song, a four-day retreat focused on Cambodian Buddhist chant and storytelling. We decide to stay in Massachusetts for a few extra days after Story and Song to check out some Boston-area Buddhist temples—and to ask if they’d be open to having high school students visit next month.

[Sound Clip #6: Cambodian Dharma song by members of Glory Buddhist Temple in Lowell, MA]

I’d lived for few months in Somerville right after college, so I know of a few Buddhist temples and meditation centers in Boston and nearby Cambridge. But I’d never been to Andover, which Google Maps tells me is forty minutes north of Boston, if I’m lucky enough to avoid traffic. 

Another Google Maps search reveals a dozen Buddhist temples within a half-hour drive from Phillips Andover, including a Chinese temple, a Thai temple, and multiple Cambodian, Lao, and Vietnamese temples. Andy, who has taught religion and philosophy at Andover for a dozen years, is just as surprised as I am. We won’t need to sit in traffic for hours. The closest Buddhist temple is ten minutes from school. Places to learn more about Buddhism are all around us in the Merrimack Valley. A new name for our project is born: Listening to the Buddhists in Our Backyard, or L2BB for short. 

[Sound Clip #7: Chinese sutra chanting at American Wisdom Association in Billerica, MA]

How can strangers come to feel like kin? I’ve been asking this question for as long as I can remember. I arrived in the U.S. as a young child in the early 90s. Except for my parents, all my family remained in China. If I limit my definition of kinship to blood relatives I see on a regular basis, I won’t experience much of it in this lifetime. 

After four days, the intergenerational group of people at Story and Song come to feel like kin. It’s hard not to feel a sense of relatedness after chanting and eating and sharing stories together in a sacred setting. Among the group members are Kim and Priscilla, a mother-daughter pair who signed up for the retreat together and whose palpable love for each other moves many of us to tears. Priscilla proudly identifies as a Kampuchea Krom American woman; her mother Kim is a regular at several Cambodian and Vietnamese Buddhist temples in the Merrimack Valley. 

In this spirit of connecting across cultures, traditions, and nationalities—and with Kim’s generous introduction to several local temples—Trent and I spend three days in our rental car traversing the snowy roads connecting Andover with Lawrence, Haverhill, Lowell, North Chelmsford, and Billerica. Between Trent’s Khmer, Thai, Lao, and Vietnamese and my Chinese, we’re able to explain L2BB to someone at each of the ten temples we visit. One hundred percent of the temples warmly welcome the high school students. We have to opt out of visiting the remaining temples, because the students are already booked up with invitations across eight consecutive days! 

[Sound Clip #8: Vietnamese chanting by Thich Tham Hy at Chùa Tường Vân Lowell]

The six high school seniors of L2BB’s inaugural cohort are nervous about embarking on eight straight days of temple visits. Spring term has just started. None of them know much about Buddhism. Freed from their usual schedule of fifty-minute classes, the ten weeks ahead are full of possibility—and uncertainty. 

How long will we spend at the temples? What will we be doing? How should we behave? What if we make fools of ourselves?

As they grapple with these questions, the students come up with a guiding principle that remains written in pink marker on the glass whiteboard in Andy’s office at the Tang Institute three years later: Group Normz: Be Comfortable Saying “I Don’t Know”

We don’t know that our first temple visit will last more than two hours. Arriving at Chùa Tường Vân, a Vietnamese Buddhist temple in Lowell established in 2010, Dr. Tham Tran, the founder of the temple’s youth group, greets us with a warm smile and ushers us in from the cold. We take off our shoes and hang up our coats. 

[Sound Clip #9: Tham Tran’s voice, at Chùa Tường Vân temple] “I am Tham Tran. I am the director of Buddhist youth education at Tuong Van Buddhsit temple, a Vietnamese Buddhist temple in Lowell, Massachusetts.”

The students don’t know how to bow or meditate, but Tham—as she insists we call her—guides us in both. Her patience, friendliness, and care puts us all at ease.

As they relax into not-knowing, the students allow themselves to ask about anything and everything, from the statues to the colors to the snacks. When they ask how the drum and bell are used, the abbot of the temple, Ven. Thích Tâm Hỷ—whom we address as Thầy—demonstrates for us. When our students notice a container of sayings that look like fortunes, Tham translates one of the new year’s blessings on the spot. The message seems to hit home.  

[Sound Clip #10: Tham Tran’s voice, at Chùa Tường Vân temple] [Initially speaking in Vietnamese before changing to English] “You have the great peace. When you have peace inside, the world is going to be at peace as well. If you nurture the inner peace, and control your anger, you can [laughter] overcome your ignorance, and you get understanding. You get the insight. So by that way, you can attain your inner happiness, and get a lot of accomplishments. It is as worth as chanting millions of sutra, like that merit, the merit of nurturing inner peace, and control your anger, and then you can get the insight a bit.” [student’s voice] “Wow, thank you!” [Tham Tran’s voice] “You’re welcome.”

The next day, we spend another two-plus hours at American Wisdom Association in Billerica. Established in 2013, AWA is also known by its Chinese name of般若寺. Our feet creak against the wood floorboards as we admire the three magnificent Buddhas on the elaborate altar, modeled after Tang dynasty dry-lacquer statues. After bowing and offering incense, we sit in rapt attention as one of the resident monastics, the formidable Ven. Manzhong, answers our questions with vivid stories and lively explanations. Those of us who speak Mandarin interpret for the rest of the L2BB team. 

[Sound Clip #11: Ven. Manzhong’s voice] [Speaking in Mandarin]

On the third day, we spend nearly three hours at Wat Boston Buddha Vararam in Bedford, founded in 1998 as the first Thai temple in Massachusetts. Once more, we meet an unforgettable Buddhist woman whose uncensored humor and unabashed hugs make us feel like we’re family. Amy has been an integral part of the temple pretty much from its inception over two decades ago; it’s hard to imagine the community functioning without her forceful presence and immense labor. She leads us to the main hall where we make prostrations and offerings, then shows us the upstairs room with the King Bhumibol posters where we take a group photo in front of the seated Buddha statue. Impervious to the biting wind, Amy gives us a tour of the temple grounds. We stop in front of a reclining Buddha statue that was donated to the temple.

[Sound Clip #12: Amy’s voice, at Wat Boston Buddha Vararam in Bedford, MA] “…out of granite. The lady, she married a guy from here, New Hampshire. So he don’t know, it is a Buddha, but lying down Buddha. He put in the garden on the floor.”

This inauspicious placement started causing problems for the Thai woman who owned the statue. She was plagued with illness and bad dreams.

[Sound Clip #13: Amy’s voice, at Wat Boston Buddha Vararam] “And then one day, she dreamt that you had to do something about it. So she came here. She said, can… I said, yeah! You’re not supposed to—first of all, you’re not supposed to put Buddha on the floor, you walk over. She said yeah, I have bad dream every day. [laughter] I tell her to get… So, I’m here, so I clean it. And it’s so green, she put it in the garden. So this one, they donated for us too, that one, belong to a Thai guy. He moved back to Thailand, so he give all the elephant to us.” 

The next day, we continue delving into Theravada Buddhism at two Cambodian temples in North Chelmsford: Trairatanaram, founded in 1985, and Wat Samaki Santikaram, established in 2014. The resident monks at both wats graciously answer our many questions, weaving Dharma lessons into their responses.

[Sound Clip #14: Resident monk’s voice at Wat Samaki Santikaram in North Chelmford, MA] “So this is the three basics of Buddhism. First is not to cultivate unwholesome. Second is to minimize because we are a human being, you know. We have to minimize it, we have to minimize the mistake. And the last one, to purify one’s mind. Or, you can say, be in mindfulness.”

The remaining eight days fly by. We meet the community of Vietnamese nuns at Tinh Vien An Pagoda in Haverhill and a dynamic young monk at Lumbini Buddhist Temple in Lawrence. Beyond the Merrimack Valley, we spend time at Harvard Divinity School, the Pluralism Project, the Cambridge Insight Meditation Center, the Kurukulla Center for Tibetan Buddhist Studies, and even the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, where a Guanyin chant plays in front of a stunning Song-dynasty sculpture of the Bodhisattva of Compassion.

[Sound Clip #15: Guanyin chant at Museum of Fine Arts Boston: 伽蓝圣众菩萨南无，伽蓝圣众菩萨南无，伽蓝圣众菩萨南无]

After each visit, the six students and Andy and I debrief as a group, feeling like an eight-headed anthropologist. Our animated conversations, at local cafes and back at school, last almost as long as the temple visits. There is so much to remember, wonder about, and follow up on. 

By design, no one receives a grade for their participation in L2BB. As the recipients of so much generosity over the past eight days, the students want to give back in some way. Citing a concept they learned from the divinity students—relational accountability—they vow to share their learning with a public audience at the end of the term, less than two months away. 

But how to get there? The prospect is daunting. What our students have now is a mountain of notes, photos, sketches, and voice recordings. It has been overwhelming to visit so many temples in such a short period of time. How can they organize their thinking and conduct further research? What will be a meaningful way to share their learning?

It would have been easy to stick to the familiar: write a research paper for the teacher that would be grading them. But nobody in L2BB is getting a grade, and producing a research paper for an audience of one is hardly a rousing embodiment of relational accountability. 

How they process the mountain of notes and journey past that period of overwhelm is a story the students end up telling at the end of the spring term, to an audience of over a hundred people during the online conference and in-person symposium that they organize and host. By then, they’ve taken the initiative to create temple profiles for the Pluralism Project, blog posts for the Tang Institute and Buddhistdoor Global, and even a website for L2BB (using tech and design skills that Andy and I totally lack). They’ve interviewed scholars and local temple leaders, participated in temple services and meditation sessions, played games with Buddhist youth members, and delved into research topics inspired by their temple visits. 

The students share their learning with poise and humility. They’ve spent many hours preparing for and refining their presentations—and they also know that learning about Buddhism is an endeavor of countless hours over the span of a lifetime, even multiple lifetimes. There was no need to bluff their way into impressing the professors, K–12 educators, journalists, school administrators, monastics, youth group members, and other honored guests who showed up for the conference and symposium. Far more important than the urge to impress is the desire to connect: to sow the seeds of generosity, gratitude, compassion, and wisdom, the fruits of which our L2BB octet had enjoyed in plenitude all spring.

[Sound Clip #16: High school student Lesley Tan’s voice, at Phillips Academy Andover] “In echoing the previous reflections surrounding community and generosity, I was particularly struck by the kindness that I consistently experienced at each of the temples, which contrasts greatly with the more competitive and individualistic culture I often experience with my peers at Andover. 

“During Thai New Year at Boston Buddha Vararam temple, the large crowd gathered that day formed a massive circle directly outside the main hall, where the monks walked around with their alms bowls to collect sustenance. We brought fruit and packaged ramen noodles to place into their bowls. I was very moved by the hordes of people gathered together to participate in this ritual as an act of generosity and making merit. Since the monks had just finished leading chanting in the temple, the alms round was a powerful representation of reciprocity and giving, which strengthens relationships and communities. 

“These embodied experiences of being surrounded by a culture of generosity at these temples really impacted me to become more thoughtful and kind in my own life, and incorporate these values in the work I am creating, especially when considering that our work is seen by communities, not just a singular teacher. 

“I know that I'm still working on becoming more intentionally kind in my everyday life. But the very act of gifting fruit or providing monetary donations to these temples has served as a reminder of my commitment to generosity and giving back to communities that have so kindly welcomed us into their spaces.”

The first cohort of L2BB students graduate. Andy continues to visit several of the local temples with his family, which has expanded with the addition of a baby daughter. Before working with the second cohort of high school students, Andy and I co-lead a six-day immersive with a small group of graduate students and administrators from The Klingenstein Center for Independent and International School Leadership at Columbia University’s Teachers College. Trent is also in town for some author events for his newly released book of translations, Until Nirvana’s Time: Buddhist Songs from Cambodia. 

We return to American Wisdom Association and Lumbini Temple, and make new friends at two Lao temples: Wat Buddhabhavana in Westford, and Wat Lao Mixayaram in Lowell. At Wat Buddhabhavana, Ajahn Dylan, whose parents founded the temple two decades earlier, cheerfully gives us a tour. At Wat Lao Mixayaram, originally established in 1996, the abbot beckons us to receive string prayer bracelets. We kneel before him one by one as he recites blessing chants.

[Sound Clip #17: Blessing chants by the abbot at Wat Loa Mixayaram in Lowell, MA]

With COVID restrictions lifted, bigger gatherings at temples are possible again. At a Sunday ceremony doubling as a temple fundraiser at Wat Samaki, we’re invited to light the candles on the altar and to ladle rice into the alms bowls of the monks alongside the rest of the community members. Any trepidation we might feel as non-Cambodians in this Khmer Buddhist temple melts away into a sense of belonging.

While the monks eat, Trent is asked to perform Cambodian Dharma chants in both English and Khmer. We sit on the velvety rug, worn smooth by the passage of feet and knees and years, and listen to the songs. 

[Sound Clip #18: Trent Walker performs “Lullaby of the Gods” in Khmer and English at Wat Samaki Santikaram” in North Chelmsford, MA]

Discussing the experience afterwards, one of the Klingenstein students reflects on how the simple tool of “See, Think Wonder”—developed by Project Zero at the Harvard Graduate School of Education—helps us differentiate our observations from our thoughts from our questions.

[Sound Clip #19: Graduate student Megan Farrell’s voice] “what did you notice? Like what—go back to that sense, noticing, wondering.”

In L2BB, we spend a lot of time looking, hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching while also noting the thoughts, assumptions, and memories that these embodied, sensory experiences are evoking for us. This in turn ignites our curiosity, leading to a wealth of questions. Instead of going into the temples and measuring them against a standard of “authentic Buddhism” that we’ve constructed in our heads based on textbook reading, our engagement at the temples embraces the lived, living, reality that we ourselves are witnessing and shaping in every moment.

With the second cohort of L2BB high school students, our relationship with neighboring Buddhists deepens and widens. We return to Chùa Tường Vân Lowell, the MFA, Wat Lao Mixayaram, the Pluralism Project, Wat Boston Buddha Vararam. Offering meals to the monks at the Thai temple becomes an L2BB tradition.

[Sound Clip #20: Monks chanting at Wat Boston Buddha Vararam] 

Auds Jenkins, a student at Harvard Divinity School, arranges for us to meet local Cambodian leaders in Lowell, including community elder Pere Pan and young dance troupe founder Kennis Mor.

[Sound Clip #21: Music and Cambodian dance demonstration at Harvard Divinity School in Cambridge, MA with Kennis Mor’s voice in the background] 

The staff at the Buddhist Digital Resource Center in Boston demonstrate for us the profound efforts that have gone into collecting, preserving, and disseminating Buddhist texts. On a trip to Quincy to visit Thousand Buddha Temple—a trip made possible by a connection with Ven. Xianfeng, whom the inaugural cohort of L2BB students had met at Harvard Divinity School—we discover a smaller Kuan Yin Temple just a mile away. Even though we haven’t made an appointment, we’re invited in, then sent home with oranges and Pringles. Everywhere we turn, the generosity is inescapable, as is the sense of kinship. 

When the third cohort of L2BB high students return to Wat Buddhabhavana, they ask about a set of paintings at the Lao temple. Ajahn Dylan explains that these are images of the Vessantara Jataka, a famous past-life tale of the Buddha from when he was a prince set on perfecting the virtue of generosity. His generosity is so great—or so excessive, depending on how you view it—that he ends up giving away his kingdom’s rain-bestowing elephant, his royal riches, and eventually his two young children and wife. They’re all reunited at the end of the jataka tale, whose multiple twists and turns are often rendered in multiple-panel murals. Wat Buddhabhavana’s Vessantara Jataka painting set isn’t entirely complete, though, Ajahn Dylan laughingly confesses.

[Sound Clip #22: Ajahn Dylan’s voice at Wat Buddhabhavana in Westford, MA] “About Vessantara, about Buddhists, about monks. The Buddha himself, what he had been through before he became a monk. There’s different stages. There’s a couple [paintings] that’s missing because nothing is permanent.” [laughter] 

All things are, indeed, impermanent. When Andy tells the abbot of Chùa Tường Vân that he and his family are moving out of state at the end of the school year, Thay remarks, echoing the Buddha’s last words: “All conditioned things come to an end.”

And so, spring 2024 marks the third and final year of Listening to the Buddhists in Our Backyard at Phillips Andover. Andy and his family will be missed not only at the schools where they teach and learn, but also at the nearby temples where they’ve become regulars. 

Having moved from California to Michigan the previous summer, Trent and I are now 2,300 miles closer to Andover. The relative proximity opens up new possibilities. In the previous two years, I’ve done longer residencies in person at Andover, with Zoom calls during the interim. This time, there will still be the regular Zoom calls, but my residencies can be shorter and more frequent. Over a span of eight weeks, I spend 24 days in Massachusetts over four separate trips. 

We kick off this year’s Listening to the Buddhists in Our Backyard projects with a trip to Chùa Tường Vân. This time, we rent a school bus, because it’s not just the six L2BB students who go, but all twenty high school students who are part of their school-within-a-school program. They meet Tham, Thay, and the temple cat Micky. Reflecting on the visit afterwards, the students marvel at how quickly they felt at home there.

During the four weekends that I’m in town, our eight-person L2BB team listens and chants and eats and learns at American Wisdom Association, Wat Buddha Bhavana, Wat Lao Mixayaram, Wat Samaki, and Kururkulla. We take our first L2BB trip to Glory, a Cambodian Buddhist temple in Lowell that was founded in 1989 and that we connected to after Andy struck up an unexpected friendship with Lowell’s mayor, Sokhary Chau. 

We attend ceremonies at Wat Boston Buddha Vararam.

We return to the Pluralism Project and reconnect with Auds at Harvard Divinity School for an astonishing Khmer dance workshop hosted by Kennis Mor and his dance troupe.

We celebrate Lao New Year at Wat Lao Mixayaram, bathing a statue of the baby Buddha inside the temple before heading to the windy outdoors to place colorful flags into sand stupas while a row of seated monks recites blessing chants.

[Sound Clip #23: Monks chanting during Lao New Year at Wat Lao Mixayaram] 

Thanks to Ven. Xianfeng’s kind invitation, we get a chance to celebrate the Buddha’s birthday at Thousand Buddha Temple, chanting and bowing and bathing the baby Buddha, then chanting and bowing some more before the delicious vegetarian lunch. Afterwards, Jason, a devoted regular at 千佛寺, gives us an in-depth tour of the thirty-four-year-old temple. 

[Sound Clip #24: Jason’s voice at Thousand Buddha Temple in Quincy, MA as Buddhist music plays in the background] “So this is the Guanyin Hall. So this is the Guanyin bodhisattva. So, just now, as I was mentioning, if you can see the main figure, there are a lot of hands, correct? And there are also, every single hand, there’s actually an eye. So Guanyin bodhisattva have many, many forms that he can actually transform into, to teach Dharma and to help people. But in one of the sutras, its says that Guanyin has eighty-four manifestations of form, and one of the forms is a thousand-arm, thousand-eye, eleven-heads Guanyin bodhisattva.”

The nonagenarian abbess of the temple, Ven. Sik Kuan Yen, shares about the 千佛寺’s tenacious origins during a time when Pure Land Buddhists in the area took five-hour bus rides to New York to find spiritual refuge. Before we leave, she presses braided red blessing bracelets into each of our hands.

The six students of L2BB 2024 seem humbled to receive this level of care and welcome. What Andy and I don’t anticipate is that they will end up visiting local temples even on the weekends when we don’t accompany them. They return to 般若寺 to chant and chop vegetables. They spend multiple Saturday afternoons at Chùa Tường Vân with the youth group that Tham founded, joining the elementary- to high school–age members in a four-hour stretch of bowing, chanting, meditating, learning Vietnamese, discussing the Dharma, eating snacks, singing songs, and playing games. 

[Sound Clip #25: Youth group members listen to a Vietnamese Buddhist song at Chùa Tường Vân temple] [Tham Tran’s voice] “Now, let’s listen to the song.” [Youth group members’ voices and laughter] Victoria, nostalgia? Lan, Lan, Lan, do you remember this song? We love this song! Listen!”

Though Tham may be the youth group’s founder, she is also a participant alongside the younger members. For her, Chùa Tường Vân’s youth group is a place to cultivate the joy, love, and care that are essential to the intertwined practices of learning and teaching.

[Sound Clip #26: Tham Tran’s voice, at Chùa Tường Vân temple] “My family is Buddhist, and I’m lucky and fortunate to be raised in a Buddhist tradition, tradition. Especially my parents, they used to be the Buddhist youth leaders as well. So they ingrained in me the love for youth, and serving youth is my joy and my aspiration.

“It is my path of developing, developing and learning. I never consider myself as a teacher, but I consider myself as the, you know, like, lifelong learner, and I'm open to learn, right, from even a young kid, from adults, from anybody who come to our temple. 

“You know, cultivating your peace, your inner peace is very important. If you want to change the world, first challenge yourself, right? Like, if you're joyful, if you are peace, you can influence that energy to others. And I found like, yes, it is really helpful. And it was really great. You know, it's also helped me to make some transformation of my own life, right, like my habit energy.”

Chùa Tường Vân’s youth group members are simultaneously learners and teachers as they support each other in cultivating these habit energies of joy and peace.

[Sound Clip #27: Youth group member leads meditation Chùa Tường Vân temple] [bell rings] “Dear sangha, brothers and sisters, now we will start our practice today with a sitting meditation session. Please sit on your cushion, cross your legs, and put your right hand on top of your left hand. Keep your back upright, relax your shoulders, and close your eyes slightly. Sitting meditation is a way of returning home to give full attention and care to ourselves. Like the image of Buddha on the altar, we too can radiant peace and stability. The purpose of sitting meditation is to enjoy it, so please relax. 

[bell rings] “Feeling joy, I breathe in, feeling happy I breathe out. In, feeling joy. Out, feeling happy.” 

[bell rings] “Dwelling in the present moment, I breathe in, enjoying the present moment, I breathe out. In, being present. Out, enjoying the present.”

In one of our many post–temple visit van-ride debriefs, Andy highlights the transformative potential of learning when it is rooted in joy and connection.

[Sound Clip #28: Andy Housiaux’s voice, in the van after a visit to Chùa Tường Vân temple] “this idea of joy and enjoyment in meditation. Sometimes meditation can be presented or take on in such extremely serious or severe, intense ways, as opposed to this practice of friendship, or self friendship.”

In Tham’s view, this practice of joyful spiritual kinship realizes the highest potential in each and every one of us.

[Sound Clip #29: Tham Tran’s voice, at Chùa Tường Vân temple] “For the youth, we teach them by example, we guide them by love and care. We call each other brother and sister or spiritual brothers and sisters. And, and they find joy. You know, for the kids, if somebody just lectures, they would, quit, or they would give up on, you know, like, going to the temple. 

“So it is really a place for them to, you know, like, bond with each other. And they call this place their second home.

“It took us time to, to prove to them that over here, we don't just only teach Vietnamese language. We also provide the kids with many other skills or help them to form a healthy and wholesome lifestyles that could help you navigate life. How to take care of their emotional storms, or, take care of their internal conflicts and even external conflicts in a family in school, and things like that, you know, based on a Buddha teaching, and” 

[Chenxing Han’s voice] The parents are not necessarily devout Buddhists? 

[Tham Tran’s voice] “Right, right. They are not necessarily to be. And some of them, the parents became more devout Buddhists thanks to their children. 

“So, you don't have to be a Buddhist to find the joy or to practice the Buddha teaching. Because Buddha say everybody has the Buddha nature or everybody is the Buddha to be. So, if we recognize that, and then we can cultivate those seeds, the Buddhahood, within ourself.”

Interviewing Tham at Chùa Tường Vân during the week of our third-year L2BB students’ online and in-person presentations, I ask for her reflections on the project as an indispensable member of the L2BB team over the past three years.

[Sound Clip #30: Tham Tran’s voice, at Chùa Tường Vân temple] “At the beginning, I was surprised that the high schoolers could have this kind of course, right? Especially deep learning, deep learning in Buddhism, especially through their experiences. And, and I was so impressed, yeah. I was impressed with the way that you and Andy provided to the kids so that they could come and experience a lot of Buddhist communities in the Merrimack Valley. 

“When they came here when the students came here and the teachers came here, I remember that I prayed. I invited everybody to practice mindful breathing. Do you remember that? And it was so great. I found the serene energy and positive energy right away after one or two mindful breathing with you all. 

“The second thing is I am really impressed with the way that the students work, like work really hard. Students of L2BB who came here, they were so dedicated in, you know, practicing, in interviewing, working, listening to people and working with people, like they join our practice on Wednesday or on Saturday. And they prepare very profound questions to ask me, and to ask the abbot monk and some Buddhist members here. That was really inspiring. And thanks to that, I found that, wow, you could, you know, like, provide your students with knowledge. But like not just knowledge. The motivation for them to learn, and deepen their learning, deepen their understanding of Buddhism, right? 

“I really admire you and Andy honestly, because of your guidance, because of your insights. When I came to attend the presentation of the students, I was impressed. I was so grateful as well, for the professionalism and positive vibe that the students provided to us in these presentations

“Yeah, a lot of great memories, now are lively, coming back in my mind. Like the trip, the field trip that I joined you all, to Harvard University School of Divinity. Also some other temples as well, that was very beautiful, very beautiful. 

“And I saw that from you, like I saw that from Andy. You’re really patient with your students and very flexible. Yeah, you're the facilitators, and real facilitators, and also great advisors. You don't impose your opinion on your students, but you let them think, and choose their way of expressing themself. And that is very important thing that I've learned from you, and Andy, the teachers of L2BB. 

“From the students, I really admire them the way that they work hard. And they take responsibilities in their role as a student who would love to learn and experience, through this course. So that is really inspiring to me and I apply something into my teaching and also into my youth program as well that I love to provide them more opportunities for them to express themselves in the project.”

Humble as always, Tham doesn’t mention the ways that her steady and joyful guidance of the L2BB students has expanded their understandings of Buddhism, their relationship to learning, and their aspirations for the future.  

[Sound Clip #31: High school student Chris Wong’s voice, at Phillips Academy Andover] “Personally, Buddha’s teaching of the 84,000 Dharma doors is becoming clearer to me through cooking and food. I see now that the upstairs practice that we do—meditating, Dharma talks, chanting—can help support how we approach Dharma in the rest of our lives. Master Sheng Yan said it the best: 百鸟在树不如一鸟在手 bainiao zaishu buru yiniao zaishou, which means that a hundred birds in the tree is not worth one bird in your hand. So while trying to chase the Buddhist practices that might seem normative, like meditation, we forget about the Dharma doors that we perhaps are more attuned to. Meditation is very hard for most—it is very hard for me personally!—and eventually the Dharma path leads to the same place. So why take the long way there? As I conclude this presentation, I’d like to implore you all to consider your own Dharma doors in life. Whether you’re familiar with Buddhism or not, maybe try to notice the activities in your life that give you the ability to empty out all emotions and attachments and take refuge in them, because in chasing the Dharma doors that seem flashing, we perhaps will lose sight of the ones that we have.”

In 2021, I published Be the Refuge: Raising the Voices of Asians American Buddhists, hoping that university students and scholars might use the book in their classes. But it was high schoolers who taught me that refuge, like learning, cannot be confined within classroom walls—and can connect people of all ages and backgrounds. 

The day after the final L2BB student presentation in May 2024, Trent, Andy, his family, and I met at Chùa Tường Vân temple to take refuge under the guidance of Thay and Tham. 

May all of us find the doorways to liberation that we seek. May we cultivate kinship wherever we go, with gladness and gratitude.

[Sound Clip #32: Chants from refuge-taking ceremony at Chùa Tường Vân Temple]