WOODSTOCK, Ill. (RNS) — It’s just before 10 on the Saturday morning before Labor Day and the Dharma Hall at the Blue Lotus Temple is beginning to fill up.
At the front of the room, practitioners sit or kneel on maroon-colored cushions while others begin to fill in the rows of chairs behind them. Nearby, in the social hall, small groups of twos and threes gather to chat or catch up before the meditation.
The group for this morning’s meeting is a mix of folks — many in their 30s and 40s, along with some older practitioners. A few wore black shirts or hoodies adorned with the message “Choose Loving Kindness,” the motto of Bhante Sujatha, a Sri Lankan monk and head abbot of the temple, who is leading this morning’s meditation.
With the smell of incense in the air and a hush falling over the room, practitioners first bowed to the Sri Lankan Buddha at the front of the hall, then sat or kneeled with their eyes closed, breathing slowly and relaxing.
“May you be well, may you be happy, may you be peaceful,” Sujatha told the group as they began meditation.
A 20-foot-tall statue of Kwan Yin, a female version of the Buddha, at Blue Lotus Temple in Woodstock, Ill. (RNS photo/Bob Smietana)
For more than two decades, Sujatha has been leading meditation here at the former Unitarian church just off the historic square in Woodstock, a small town about an hour northwest of Chicago. For the first decade, the group met in the church basement. Then in 2012, they bought the building from the Unitarians and moved up to the former church sanctuary where stained-glass windows depicting Jesus, Mary and angels remain in place.
Those stained-glass windows now overlook a new outside meditation space, which was dedicated on Saturday (Sept. 7). The new space features a 20-foot-tall statue of Kwan Yin, a female version of the Buddha, as well as a new Medicine Buddha statue from Vietnam, which was installed earlier this week.
The new outdoor space — known as the “Healing, Unity, Garden” or “HUG” for short — is the latest outreach effort by the Blue Lotus, aimed at furthering Sujatha’s mission of bringing a little more peace and kindness into the world.
The idea of the outdoor meditation space, he said, is to make the teachings of the Buddha a little more accessible to people who are skeptical of organized religion or who may be anxious about entering a temple.
“People need a place to sit down and process and reflect,” said Sujatha, a Theravada Buddhist monk dressed in a simple burgundy robe, during an interview a week before the new Buddha’s unveiling. “People feel helpless. People don’t know who to talk to. People cannot trust other people. So, therefore, they need a place like a sanctuary.”
Sujatha, who mixes spiritual teaching with self-deprecating humor — as a young man, he said, he was “a very annoying Buddhist monk — first purchased the Buddha for the temple about 18 months ago, during a visit to Vietnam. But getting the Buddha to Woodstock, and getting it installed, proved a challenge.
Along with arranging transport by boat, tractor-trailer and eventually a moving van, members of the Temple board also had to find a contractor with the expertise needed to install the 8,000-pound marble statue in the outdoor space.
“I gave a talk the other day here, and I said, ‘You know, Rome wasn’t built in a day, but this took even longer,’” said Tyler Lewke, board president of the Blue Lotus Temple.
Setting up the outdoor meditation space also meant dealing with some deferred maintenance in the 118-year-old building that the temple calls home, including replacing a concrete set of stairs leading into the building, which had begun to fall from the side entrance, as well as shoring up a foundation wall by the garden.
“I quickly realized this might be an opportunity for us to do some other things,” Lewke said. “We want to be noble stewards of this building, and it’s a challenge.” That deferred maintenance, he said, boosted the cost of the project from $40,000 to about $150,000.
The temple’s leadership also had to get permission from the local city council as well as Woodstock’s historic commission to install the outdoor meditation space — all of which went smoothly, he said.
New Buddha unveiled in Woodstock, Sept. 8, 2024. (Photo by Mark Regan)
“Not a single objection, just totally gracious, open arms and welcoming,” he said, which contrasted with the Blue Lotus’ early years two decades ago, he said, when neighbors viewed the meditation services with some suspicion.
Lewke grew up attending services at the Unitarian church — “I’ve been in this building since I was 11,” he said with a smile — and has been part of the Blue Lotus community since about 2004. He met Sujatha when the monk was teaching meditation at a local art center.
The two became friends, and together, have helped build up the Blue Lotus Temple in Woodstock, while also helping start temples in Pennsylvania and Baton Rouge, Louisiana, using the same spiritual but not religious approach to meditation.
“Our approach is entirely attraction — all we do is just show up, do our thing, and if people gravitate to it and it grows and they want to support it, that’s wonderful,” he said.
That spiritual but not religious approach to Buddhism often is found in Buddhist communities that attract converts, rather than immigrant communities, said Ann Gleig, associate professor of religion and cultural studies at the University of Central Florida. Gleig, author of “American Dharma,” a book about Buddhist convert communities in the United States, said those communities are often found in larger urban areas such as Boston or San Francisco and are often led by converts.
That makes the Blue Lotus a bit unique, she said.
Blue Lotus Temple in Woodstock, Ill. (RNS photo/Bob Smietana)
Lewke, who also helps lead Refuge Recovery, a 12-step program based on Buddhist principles, said the garden was supposed to open in 2023, but necessary maintenance delayed the project.
Still, he said, that is a good thing, in that the meditation space opened during a tumultuous time in American culture.
“We were supposed to open a year ago,” he said. “But honestly, the idea of offering up a space of unity in our current climate feels profound.”
In an interview, Sujatha said that the newly unveiled Bhaisajyaguru statue — also known as the Medicine Buddha — can be a symbol of spiritual healing. That kind of healing is needed at a time when people seem addicted to conflict and strife, he said.
“I think people love suffering more than the peace,” Sujatha said. “Peace is so boring to people. When you are quiet and practicing noble silence or something, it’s so boring to people.”
The Medicine Buddha is seated and holds a jar in his hands that represents the Buddha’s teaching, which can bring spiritual healing, said Sujatha, The temple, he said, is a kind of a spiritual hospital, aimed at helping people find a better way of living.
“I can call the Blue Lotus a hospital,” he said. “People come to get some treatment from here — then you go home and live according to those treatments and make your life better and peaceful.”
During a meditation service a week before the new Buddha — which had been covered by a tarp — was unveiled, Sujatha told the gathering not to look to him or outside circumstances for happiness. Instead, he said, they should focus on finding inner contentment — something no one can take away from them.
At the end of the service, he invited temple members to join a group of volunteers who would be preparing the temple for that weekend’s unveiling event later that week.
“We will do the deep cleaning meditation,” he said, with a smile.
