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Buddhist statues arrive from Vietnam
By WAVENEY ANN MOORE
© St. Petersburg Times, ST. PETERSBURG -- Fang Fang Wilson, on a futile job hunt for the past seven months, knelt before the altar of the lady Buddha, believed to bestow miracles. The 20-year-old Indonesian woman was making her weekly pilgrimage from her New Port Richey home to a Buddhist temple in St. Petersburg, tucked away on a rough, narrow road off Gandy Boulevard. Her husband, Earl, who met his wife over the Internet and brought her to the United States less than a year ago, waited patiently as she prayed before the ornate altar on which sat a statue of the lady Buddha, candles and offerings of food. "Every Thursday I bring her," Wilson, a Baptist, said last week. "Sometimes I pray to Quan Am outside too," his wife said, pointing to the temple's courtyard with its abundance of plants and towering statues. That morning several new statues, recent arrivals from Vietnam, were being painstakingly unloaded from a truck in front of Chua Phat Phap, the Buddhist temple Mrs. Wilson was visiting at 1085 Plaza Commercio Drive NE. Among the new hand-carved marble pieces being unloaded was one of a sitting Buddha. There was another of Buddha's mother. During the delicate exercise, the Venerable Thich Giac Chanh, the temple's sole monk, bustled back and forth, alternately taking photographs and talking on a portable telephone. He smiled often. "It took 10 months from the time he ordered the statues until they came to St. Petersburg," said Dr. Dieu Hoang, a retired dentist who has been a member of the temple since its founding in the early 1980s. The statues weigh several tons each. The one of Buddha's mother rises 12 feet, and the statue of Buddha, with its lotus flower pedestal, is about the same height. They have joined several other marble monuments in the serene courtyard. A smiling, larger-than-life reclining Buddha has been installed near the front, but a seated Buddha surrounded by smaller statues of his disciples has been given center stage. These statues arrived from Vietnam earlier this year, Dr. Hoang said. The cost of the entire body of work, including the latest pieces, was $24,000, Dr. Hoang said. Shipment from Vietnam to the United States cost another $24,000. The courtyard, with its traditional lotus plant that is both practical and symbolic, and the huge bell and drum that herald holidays, probably now has all the outdoor statues it can accommodate, Dr. Hoang said. In fact, Thursday afternoon a new platform was being hurriedly built near the entrance after it had become clear that there would be no room to navigate the mother of Buddha statue into its designated place near the back of the courtyard. Statues play an important role in the Buddhist religion, Dr. Hoang said. They generally represent the different phases of Buddha, she said. "Actually, we pray to the statues, but the statues are just a physical presence, a representation. We are not exactly worshiping the statues," she said. Buddhism began with Siddhartha Gautama, the Enlightened One, who is believed to have lived between the fourth and sixth centuries. Tradition says he was born into a noble family in India but abandoned his luxurious life to search for spiritual enlightenment. After wandering for several years, he found enlightenment while meditating under a fig tree and became a Buddha, or awakened one. The Buddha spent the rest of his life wandering India, teaching that anyone, regardless of gender or social standing, could gain enlightenment. The Buddha's insight about the suffering of humans, caught up in what he saw as the endless cycle of birth and death, is presented in his Four Noble Truths. These truths acknowledge that pain exists and tell what causes it, what ends it and how to end it. The remedy is outlined in the Noble Eightfold Path, which requires, among other disciplines, right speech, right action and right intention. There are two main schools of Buddhism. Chua Phat Phap's congregation, which consists of about 6,000 members of mostly Vietnamese heritage, belongs to the Theravada school. The temple's members are among the Asian immigrants who have brought their own regional and cultural forms of Buddhism to the United States. On Thursday, though, as several men and a woman with cameras recorded the historic arrival of the new statues, Anne McEwen, who is often at the temple, watched intently. She had taken a week's vacation, she said. "For this."
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