Buddha seems to bring tranquility to Oakland neighborhood [View all]

[KamaAina]

http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/johnson/article/Buddha-seems-to-bring-tranquillity-to-Oakland-5757592.php

The 11th Avenue resident in Oakland's Eastlake neighborhood was simply feeling hopeful in 2009 when he went to an Ace hardware store, purchased a 2-foot-high stone Buddha and installed it on a median strip in a residential area at 11th Avenue and 19th Street.

He hoped that just maybe his small gesture would bring tranquillity to a neighborhood marred by crime: dumping, graffiti, drug dealing, prostitution, robberies, aggravated assault and burglaries.

What happened next was nothing short of stunning. Area residents began to leave offerings at the base of the Buddha: flowers, food, candles. A group of Vietnamese women in prayer robes began to gather at the statue to pray.

And the neighborhood changed. People stopped dumping garbage. They stopped vandalizing walls with graffiti. And the drug dealers stopped using that area to deal. The prostitutes went away.

In that case, Ukiah in Mendocino County must have no crime at all!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_Ten_Thousand_Buddhas

The City Of Ten Thousand Buddhas (Chinese: 萬佛聖城; pinyin: Wànfó Shèngchéng, Vietnamese: Chùa Vạn Phật Thánh Thành) is an international Buddhist community and monastery founded by Hsuan Hua, an important figure in Western Buddhism. It is one of the first Chinese Zen Buddhist temples in the United States, and one of the largest Buddhist communities in the Western Hemisphere.

The city is situated in Talmage, Mendocino County, California about 2 miles (3.2 km) east of Ukiah, and 110 miles (180 km) north of San Francisco. It was one of the first Buddhist monasteries built in the United States. The temple follows the Guiyang Ch'an School, one of the five houses of classical Chinese Ch'an. The city is noted for their close adherence to the vinaya, the austere traditional Buddhist monastic code.