I wanted to share a special moment from the Dharma Propagation Tour we did in 2008-2009 to promote the Big Blue Treasure Book H.H. Dorje Chang Buddha III.
This stop was in Biloxi, Mississippi, a town that had been almost destroyed by Katrina. We gave several copies of the treasure book to their devastated libraries. Even three years later, the impact of Hurricane Katrina could still be felt in Biloxi with boarded up buildings and rubble. However, one bright note was the charming Chau Van Duc Vietnamese Temple in Biloxi. I had read the plight of this small Vietnamese Temple right after the hurricane hit and wanted to see their fate first hand.
It had just held its grand opening, with 53 visitors from around the country, on August 28, 2005. More than 1,000 families arrived to join the celebration the day before Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast community. A day later, the out-of-town visitors including 30 monks, survived Katrina’s blows by punching a hole in the ceiling of the temple’s storage closet and crouching in the crawl space under the roof. Ven. Thich Thien Tri, one of the resident monks who was there during the hurricane, told us that the water reached within one inch of the ceiling and that they only had 30 minutes to reach the attic. The monk asked his master, Venerable Thich Dao Quang from Garden Grove, California, if they were going to die, but the wise master only said, “Later, later.” The monks, lay people, and their neighbors prayed as the winds roared. They could hear the waves crashing around the temple. While most of the buildings and casinos surrounding the temple were uprooted, the statue to Quan Am (Guan Yin or Avalokiteshvara) and the temple did not collapse. Three years later, the beautiful Mahayana temple has been restored, but many of the other structures in the neighborhood have not. Very many brilliant dharma wheel mandalas appeared in the photos taken of the smiling and charming monk as shown above.
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