NEWS UPDATES

December 1999: Finding Peace Within the Quiet Practice of  Buddhism Grows as People Seek to Satisfy Their Spiritual Hunger   

THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER 
* Story appeared in the ACCENT section on page E01 
* ID: 1999361005
* Edition: MORNING 
* Correction: FINDING PEACE WITHIN THE QUIET PRACTICE OF BUDDHISM GROWS AS PEOPLE SEEK TO SATISFY THEIR SPIRITUAL HUNGER. 

Monday, December 27, 1999 

Byline: 
Credit: BARBARA KINGSLEY: The Orange County Register 

After Lehnert Riegel's wife died of breast cancer more than a year ago, he started to ask questions. Not of doctors, of fate. He found himself wondering why this had happened to her, to him. He worried about his future and longed for life as it was in the past, wiped clean of grief.

The "moderately inactive" Episcopalian began searching for a way to make peace with unanswerable questions. His seeking led him to Buddhism. Now, he doesn't ask questions; he doesn't worry. He meditates.

"It kept me from asking the question that shouldn't be asked, like, `Why me? ' " says Riegel, 61, a Fountain Valley husband and father. "Only a little child believes that, because they ask the question, there should be an answer." More and more Americans are lighting incense and sitting in zazen, especially in Southern California, where increasing numbers of Internet-cruising, cell phone-toting, world-weary people are finding the peace they seek in the quiet practice of Buddhism.

"There's an ever-greater number of opportunities to be taken away from the present," says James Shaheen, publisher of Tricycle: The Buddhist Review. "You feel like an errant pinball. The faster pace, the fewer the opportunities one has to think." Eastern spiritual paths like Buddhism, and its cousin Zen, urge adherents to focus deeply on their daily activities through meditation and "mindful action." "When people have gotten everything they want and they're still not happy, which happens a lot in Orange County," says Deborah Barrett of the Zen Center of Orange County, "they'll come to Zen." Buddhism and Zen, once seen as foreign and cult-like, draw followers who may risk scorn from friends and family as they question their own Christian upbringing.

"My grandfather would roll under his tombstone thinking of me going to a Buddhist temple," says Cheryl Svensson, 52, of Corona del Mar. Many use Buddhism, which emphasizes the mind, to gird their own traditional religious practice.

Buddhism by design has no hierarchy, so few numbers are available. But signs of growth are clear: The number of English-language Buddhist teaching centers nationwide has grown from 429 to more than 1,166 in the past decade. New York-based Tricycle has grown from 5,000 readers in 1991 to 65,000 today. The number of practicing Buddhists is small compared with other religions, but sociologists estimate that as many as 1 million Americans who grew up Jewish or Christian use Buddhist practices.

Hsi Lai Temple, in Hacienda Heights, draws predominantly Chinese-speaking people, but classes in English have grown from six in 1997 to 100 today. The Zen Center of Orange County in Costa Mesa has grown every year since it was established in 1995, and the largely Japanese-American Orange County Buddhist Church adds Western worshippers every year.

Certainly, a rash of celebrity Buddhists, such as actor Richard Gere, have helped place the religion in Americans' field of vision.

Newly practicing Buddhists say they crave community and inner peace and are reaching for spirituality that's new to them. THE PRACTICE Buddhism doesn't claim a deity like God or Allah. Instead, Buddhists see spirituality in all things. But all Buddhism turns on meditation _ the practice of stilling the mind and quieting churning thoughts, the better to see clearly.

It is the primary vehicle for achieving enlightenment.

Buddhists compare the active mind to a muddy river. The water must be stilled to allow the mud to sink and the water to become clear. That takes time. People's attention spans are short. Minds wander. They might be thinking about fighting traffic, or calling the baby sitter, or what to wear to work.

"We tend to run on automatic, and we tend to run habitually," says Harry Moock, 82, a Fullerton resident who attends Hsi Lai.

"One Buddhist told me that your mental process is like a place full of drunken monkeys. You have to work on that to slow down and get into that marvelous lake (of meditation). You see marvelous things that are hard to describe. I see rivers and lakes. I see my grandchildren in a different light. I see myself in a different light." THE CONGREGATION

One recent Sunday morning, Moock and about 70 or so nascent Buddhists chant prayers before three massive gold Buddhas in the main hall at Hsi Lai Temple. They close by bowing three times: For the conditions of past and present lifetimes that contribute to this moment, for the teacher of the order and for the Buddha awaiting to be awakened in all beings.

Later, adherents break into groups for `Dharma' classes on Buddhist teachings. The uninvestigated mind, or Samsara, students learn, is the cause of all suffering. Every day must be seen as a precious opportunity to embark down a new path, to reveal the Buddha mind.

Gordon Gibb and wife Madelon Wheeler-Gibb lead the classes. The pair from Monrovia were longtime ministers with the United Church of Christ before devoting their lives to Buddhism. The couple say they found a deeper spirituality in the Eastern practices and came to question the "one true faith" doctrine preached in some Christian churches.

"Many times, Christians claim exclusivity, that Jesus Christ is the exclusive way to attain eternal life," Wheeler-Gibb said. "In an international and culturally diverse community, that just doesn't make sense to everyone." Some Hsi Lai devotees drive hours to the Sunday services. While some Buddhists shake their heads at the high ceremony of Hsi Lai, with its gleaming Buddhas and emphasis on ritual, many find it comforting. To Craig Brandau, 43, a Venice High history teacher, the ceremony helps make the abstract real.

"It feels good coming here," he says and adds with a smile: "The big Buddhas in the front are pretty cool." Many are stirred by Buddhism's insistence that individuals are responsible for their own bliss. "People talk about dysfunctional families or victimization; that won't work with Buddhism," Wheeler-Gibb said. "People find it tremendously empowering, knowing they themselves are responsible. " That's what drew Harry Moock to the practice. Moock discovered Hsi Lai and Buddhism when he was looking for a speaker for the "Body, Mind and Spirit Connection" senior education class that he teaches at California State University, Fullerton.

Moock, a World War II veteran, saw his first Buddhist Temple in Burma when he drove up in his jeep. "The ancient cults of the Indians and the Chinese, it's not all foolishness," Moock says.

"They have derived practices and rituals that we would be smart to do." Moock only recently found the time to shine a light on his soul.

"You open yourself up to an inner dialogue. Not chatter. I realize I am not alone. I have helpers, tranquil inner thoughts.

"When you're busy going down the river in that kayak, jockeying left and right, you don't have time. You got to answer that phone.

Life goes by, and you have not developed the internal skills." Cheryl Svensson, 52, married and with four children, started practicing yoga in the 1970s. Her yoga dovetailed into an appreciation for Buddhism that contrasts with her Lutheran upbringing.

"I don't have to believe in Jesus Christ to be saved," Svensson says. "But I have no problem going to a Lutheran service. I believe in the basic principals. I don't get caught up in the finer details. It doesn't hurt bowing three times to Buddha; it's more a reflection of who I am and who I can be. My older brother would say, `You're bowing to an idol. ' But we all are the same." ZEN FOR LIFE. The Zen Center of Orange County in Costa Mesa is austere. One Sunday evening, about 20 gathered on cushioned mats in a room bare except for Chinese calligraphy on the wall. The students had been sitting virtually all day in zazen kai, or prolonged meditation.

Their purpose: to mark the anniversary of the Buddha's enlightenment by trying to further their own.

Zen Buddhism, the Japanese derivative of the Chinese practice of Cha'an, is more a practice than a belief system. "It doesn't have anything to do with belief in God or Buddha," says Deborah Barrett, who runs the Zen Center. A hospice chaplain, she has been practicing Zen for 20 years.

"That throws people," she says. "We're used to religious rules where everything is defined. One reason Buddhism is growing is that it has fluidity." Zen Buddhists use meditation to help them to be "present" and attentive with the same heightened awareness they would have watching a spectacular sunset, or talking with a dear friend for the first time in years.

"We know what it's like to be in the moment," Barrett says.

"It's not forced. But it's not so easy that we can just say, `be here and now. ' ... Many people don't want to spend that kind of time and energy to learn that. It takes time. But that's like saying, `I want to be a concert pianist, but I don't want to practice. ' "

Each morning, Lehnert Riegel sits down to meditate in his late wife's old room in his Fountain Valley townhouse.

He drives twice a week to the Zen Center of Orange County for lectures and meditation sittings. The practice has changed his life.

"Buddhism offers me the chance to be spiritual without being nonmaterial," Riegel says. "The here and now is very much here and now. It doesn't go away and it's not an illusion. That's how Buddhism treats life: It is real. It's about life as I'm living it on the spot: What is happening right now, not what I wished happened 10 months ago or what I hope will happen next year." Buddhism, he says, helped him realize suffering has a purpose, and his suffering has helped him discover a more loving nature.

"I feel more compassion with what is happening with other people," Riegel says. "It goes beyond compassion. I can feel another person's suffering." (SIDEBAR)

TENETS OFBUDDHISM Buddhism maintains that life is filled with suffering _ illness, old age, fear of death, separation from love, being saddled with something one hates.

Buddhists hold that our selfish desires bring dissatisfaction and may be obtained at the expense of others. People tend to see life through the narrow prism of the self: "How does this affect me?" Buddhism teaches that people can free themselves of the demands of the ego by following the "eightfold path" of right knowledge, aspiration, speech, behavior, livelihood, effort, mindfulness and absorption.

This path can lead to peace, and ultimately, for some, Nirvana, an exalted state of enlightenment.

When Buddha appeared to followers after six years of fasting, study and meditation, he didn't declare himself a god or a prophet; he merely told his followers, "I am awake." Buddhists emphasize focusing the mind through meditation.

Meditation and "mindful action," they say, help us eliminate the demands of the self and to see our interconnectedness with other creatures.

Buddhists believe the following, printed in Tricycle: The Buddhist Review: To study the way of the Buddha is to study oneself.

To study oneself is to forget oneself.

To forget oneself is to be enlightened by everything.