This article was first published in the Winter 1993 edition of the Journal of Buddhist Contemplatives. It is republished here with the authors kind permission.
Buddhist temple is the external expression of our spiritual intent. There are many types of temples –large and small, simple and complex, chiefly monastic and chiefly congregational, city and rural. Some temples have magnificent buildings, altars, statues and gardens; some may comprise no more than a monk’s simple hut. Some temples draw people from great distances and are very busy. Others may be hidden away from the world in remote places. Yet every true temple has in common with all other true temples the spiritual intent, which alone makes a temple what it is.
The temple springs up continuously out of the training of those who take refuge within it. Temples come into existence and are sustained through our resolve to act upon our longing to complete the return flowing of our wandering karma to its Unborn Source. In turn, the temple provides us with a physical refuge, which mirrors our True Refuge, which is our wonderful Unborn Nature.
In the beginning of training we may feel considerable resistance to coming to a temple. Later we feel any visit to a temple as a kind of homecoming. Similarly, the coming into existence of a temple is concomitant with the focusing of sufficient merit of training to overcome certain externalized karmic resistance’s. These externalized resistance’s can manifest in many ways: as resistance from neighbors or government officials; as a seemingly accidental and meaningless series of mishaps; as financial and other material difficulties; as intuitively apprehended resistance of some unconverted karmic entity. These forms of resistance together constitute a kind of gauntlet that must be run by those who would train within the temple. Each obstacle must be dealt with in some practical way, and that way must be guided by faith, compassion and wisdom.
The temple is far more than a place in which to do training. It is the living opportunity to actualize the six paramitas of generosity, preceptual practice, patience, effort, meditation and wisdom. The temple is a vehicle for manifesting merit. Even the most humble temple thus embodies something magnificent. We sense this when our heart is serene and content.
When beings cease to manifest a real spiritual purpose in relation to a temple, the temple relapses into quiet waiting. Something of what was remains, but where there was spiritual life there is now only a shadow, which evokes a sad longing. The life of a temple is the expression of the active spiritual life of those who take refuge within it. As long as this life is bright, the temple will be a beacon that draws to itself those who are ready to make use of it.
The journey to the temple, it is said, is half the training. The journey to the temple includes all the seeming false starts, disappointments and sometimes-bizarre misunderstandings that arise out of the confused longings of living beings. But one day we can all truly enter the temple, and there we find That which in fact we had never lost in all our wandering.