Boston Temple Gets Facelift in Time for Vietnamese Mother’s Day

Dorchester's Chua Luc Hoa Center renovating grounds in time for Aug. 28 Mother’s Day celebration

By Adam Smith, English Editor, Sampan

Boston - Aug. 19, 2005 - Renovations of the Chua Luc Hoa Buddhist Cultural Center in Dorchester are on schedule and just in time for the center’s Vietnamese Mother’s Day celebration on August 28.

The renovations include the installation of outdoor statues and a front gate. This month, the center finished installing two marble statues, one a towering depiction of “Quan The Bo Tat,” also known an “Kuan Yin,” or the Buddhist god of mercy, and the other a depiction of a resting Sakyamuni, the sage of the Sakyas tribe of Buddha.

Earlier, the center installed a yellow concrete gate that resembles a traditional Vietnamese-style building entrance.

“We feel very excited,” said the center’s board secretary, Cam Van Tran, of the renovations. He said that having them completed by Vietnamese Mother’s Day was his “dream.”

The celebration, which will include a Vietnamese monk from California, typically draws hundreds of visitors to the temple.

“It was a muddy garden (before), so we’re trying to make everything new,” said Tran.

The renovations, which began in May, cost about $22,000.

One of the biggest tasks of the project was purchasing the two statues. Each weighs several tons, costs about $6,000 and had to be shipped by boat from Vietnam, taking several months to arrive in the U.S.

“I was nervous,” said Tran. “If you buy something from someplace like Sears, you know you can return it (if there’s a problem). But not if you buy it from Vietnam.”

Chua Luc Hoa is located in a triple-decker home on Greenwood Park, off of Dorchester Avenue. The center was founded in the early 1990s, but didn’t have a permanent site until it purchased the triple-decker in 1994 after it was destroyed in a fire.

“We tried to develop it to look like a temple. It doesn’t really look like a temple, but inside it’s a real temple,” said Tran.

Scented with strong incense smoke, the temple’s first floor is an area for prayers and chanting and a shrine to remember the dead. About 30 to 50 Vietnamese Americans living in Dorchester and other parts of Massachusetts attend the center’s Sunday service.

One role of Chua Luc Hoa, said Tran, is to help improve the community around it.

“This building was a burned out building. And this was considered a very dark area – people were scared to walk by when it was dark out. But after seeing our temple build up, the sky got clearer and people became much more confident to walk by. The area got better and better everyday.”