Introduction

Located right by the busy intersection of Holland Road and Dam Neck Road in the sprawling suburbs of Virginia Beach, Shakyamuni Buddhist Meditation Monastery invites visitors of all faiths and backgrounds to learn about Buddhism and apply the religion’s teachings to their own lives in order to find “inner peace, happiness, and tranquility.”¹ The monastery is also a vihara, so Buddhist monks of all traditions can live there. At the moment, however, only the abbot monk resides in the monastery.

I had the opportunity to speak with the abbot of the monastery himself in an interview, and he graciously provided me with much of the information you will see in this blog post.

History

The monastery was officially founded by its current abbot and president, Bhante Vivek (also known as the Venerable Bandarawela Seelaviveka), in 2019. However, the true origin of the monastery can actually be traced back to 2017, when Bhante Vivek began living in the Dong Hung Temple, a Vietnamese Pure Land temple, in Virginia Beach.

At the time, the head monk of the temple wanted Vivek to teach Buddhism every Tuesday to the American community in the city, and Vivek accepted this responsibility. Later in 2017, the Sri Lankan community in Virginia Beach learned that Vivek (a Sri Lankan monk) was teaching Buddhism at Dong Hung. Hence, they asked if Vivek could start a Buddhism class for the Sri Lankan people every Saturday. Thus, beginning at Dong Hung, Vivek has held a class teaching Buddhism and meditation to the Sri Lankan community in Virginia Beach every Saturday since 2017.

In 2019, a Sri Lankan family informed Vivek that they had a house and its surrounding property that they were willing to donate so that Vivek could establish a small temple in Virginia Beach. Vivek gladly accepted, and he established Shakyamuni Buddhist Meditation Monastery later that year. He continued his Tuesday and Saturday classes at his new monastery, and when the pandemic hit, he quickly adapted and switched the classes over to a virtual format. During the pandemic, the abbot started an online meditation class every Wednesday for English speakers that were spiritually hungry due to quarantine. Since starting that class, the monastery has seen large, sustained growth, and now, Vivek plans to open the monastery back up for physical visitation next month, in January 2022.

The monastery’s history has been defined by its engagement with both the American and Sri Lankan communities in Virginia Beach. Though these communities practice Buddhism in diverse ways, they attend the same monastery and receive much of the same teachings.

The Abbot’s Story

Bhante Vivek, photo courtesy of vbmeditation.org

The abbot, Bhante Vivek, was born in Sri Lanka in 1988. Being born into a Buddhist family, he spent much of his childhood going to Buddhist temples, meditating, and learning from Buddhist monks. At 14 years old, under his own volition, Vivek decided to become to a monk, simply because he was interested in the “peaceful environment of the temple.” With his father’s permission, he joined the monastic life as a novice monk. Vivek later went on to Buddhist college, where he delved into the “deep” teaching of the Buddha.

After graduating from Buddhist college, Vivek’s master, the Most Venerable Kiribathgoda Gnanananda Thero, instructed Vivek to practice the Forest Tradition of Theravada Buddhism (in contrast to the Temple Tradition).² Vivek’s master wanted him to use what he learned in Buddhist college before he was able to teach. Thus, Vivek began to practice forest meditation, meditating for 8-10 hours every single day.

While we were talking, Vivek nostalgically described his time in the forest:

“When I was in the forest, I met a lot of Buddhist monks who had been living in the forest for a long time, who had a deep, concentrated mind, who had a vast, deep knowledge about life… Actually, they helped me a lot to develop good human qualities, to develop meditation, to develop wisdom… It was such a peaceful time in my life.”

When Vivek was 19, his master acknowledged that Vivek was ready to teach. His master, Kiribathgoda Gnanananda Thero, is the founder of Mahamevnawa Buddhist Monastery, an international organization of Buddhist monasteries. Accordingly, he sent Vivek to one of his organization’s branch locations in Canada to teach meditation. At age 20, Vivek returned to Sri Lanka to become a fully ordained monk, as is standard under Theravada monastic tradition. He then returned to Canada in 2009 to continue teaching.

In 2010, Vivek moved to the United States and resided at several monasteries. From Canada, he went to New Jersey, California, and Maryland in that order. Indeed, before coming to Virginia Beach, he worked as the abbot monk of the Mahamevnawa Monasteries in California and Maryland.² Finally, in 2017, he came to Virginia Beach in order to practice his English language skills, and he chose to live in the city’s Dong Hung Temple. (Check out the blog post for the Dong Hung Temple!)

Beliefs & Practices

What stuck out to me while talking with Mr. Vivek was his dedication to the interfaith nature of his monastery. He never seeks to “convert” anyone to Buddhism, because in his own mind, “Buddhism is not a religion, it is a way of life.” The abbot adapts his teachings to practitioners of all faiths and backgrounds, whether they are traditionally Buddhist, Muslim, Hindu, Christian, atheist, etc. A Christian, for example, who wants to practice Buddhism at his monastery will learn how to apply Buddhist teachings and meditate as a Christian. Above all, Vivek wants to teach Buddhism and meditation practice in such a way that allows everyone to apply Buddhist teachings to their daily lives.

Vivek, the main teacher at the monastery, was taught under the Theravada tradition, which recognizes only the beliefs espoused by the Buddha himself. Hence, he mainly provides teachings from the “ancient scriptures of the Pali Canon.”¹ However, it would not be accurate to say that the monastery falls under the Theravada tradition as well. Because of the monastery’s interfaith nature, not every practitioner at the monastery completely follows the Theravada belief system. What is more, in the abbot’s opinion, the distinctions between the different traditions do not matter in terms of how he teaches Buddhism. In fact, Vivek believes that the Theravada, Mahayana, and Vajrayana traditions share about 95% of the same teachings. Vivek goes on to point out that, although he was taught under Theravada Buddhism and the Vietnamese monks at Dong Hung under a form of Mahayana Buddhism, they worked and lived together despite the differences in their beliefs. In Vivek’s words, “Even though we have different traditions … we are one group.” Again, what matters to the abbot is not what tradition his teachings fall under, but whether his teachings can be applied by his monastery’s visitors.

Coming from this topic of traditions and beliefs, I asked Mr. Vivek if he teaches concepts like karma and reincarnation to his visitors. He explains that he teaches Buddhist concepts like these to visitors who already have a deep knowledge of Buddhism. If such people ask the abbot about these concepts, then he is happy to provide explanations to them. Otherwise, he simply gives people Buddhist practices and techniques that they can immediately use in their own lives. This desire to give applicable teachings is why Vivek focuses heavily on meditation practice, especially for the American community at the monastery.

Though the Sri Lankan visitors participate heavily in meditation as well, they put a lot of emphasis on other practices as well. Vivek mentioned in the interview that Sri Lankan visitors like to put flowers and candles on the large altar for the Buddha that resides in the main meeting area of the building. They do this, Vivek asserts, to show their respect for the Buddha. Additionally, the Sri Lankan community comes by every day to the monastery to provide Mr. Vivek with food and other necessary resources, just as laypeople in Asia will come to temples and monasteries to donate such things to the monks there. Moreover, the Sri Lankan people in Virginia Beach also volunteer their time to do tasks such as cleaning up the yard and the inside of the monastery.

Events

During the pandemic, Shakyamuni Buddhist Meditation Monastery has held two weekly evening events, both in virtual format: a Wednesday evening class for English speakers, and a Saturday evening event for Sinhala speakers. To clarify, Sinhala is an official language of Sri Lanka, spoken by the majority of the country’s population.³ Vivek, being the main (and only) teacher here, led the events. (Earlier, I also mentioned a Tuesday English-speaking class that Vivek continued to teach at the start of the pandemic. He stopped this class in December 2020 to focus on his new Wednesday meditation class.)

The Wednesday evening English class focuses more on meditation practice, spending about an hour on three meditation practices: breathing meditation, insight meditation, and “music meditation.” (In music mediation, Vivek plays calming music, and the class tries to focus their attention on the music and truly enjoy it.) After meditation, the abbot spends some time at the end giving a small talk on how to apply Buddhist teachings to everyday life. The topics he discusses may range from more emotional topics, like how to forgive and how to deal with the loss of a loved one, to more mundane (but important!) topics, like how to handle money. All in all, the English meditation class lasts about an hour and a half.

Vivek handles the Saturday evening Sinhalese event differently. The first hour is dedicated to chanting in the Pali language (the original language of Theravada Buddhist scriptures) and meditation. As Vivek told me, Sri Lankans like to chant in their practice of Buddhism, as they are a traditionally Buddhist people. Naturally, they spend much more time chanting than the students do in the English class. After the first hour, the abbot then teaches a sutra from the Buddha for the next hour and a half. According to Vivek, there are 18,000 different sutras by the Buddha, and his goal is to go one by one and teach a different one every week to the Sri Lankan community. So, the Sinhalese event in total takes about two and a half hours.

Before the pandemic, the monastery held a monthly day-long Buddhist retreat for Sinhalese speakers, where they chanted, meditated, and held dharma talks throughout the day. Vivek told me that he is thinking about starting the retreat again next year, but he plans on holding it only every three months. The monastery also used to have monthly Buddhist meditation classes for children, but these classes also had to stop due to the pandemic. Much like the retreats, he plans to restart these classes next year, in 2022.

As for special events for holidays, the monastery holds a few throughout the year that are mainly attended by the Sri Lankan community. The monastery holds a special service on New Year’s Day and celebrates the Buddha’s birthday on the day of the full moon in May. Specifically, on the New Year’s Day service, they light a lot of candles, chant sacred Buddhist sutras, talk about how to spend the new year in a meaningful way, and do blessings. The monastery also celebrates the Kathina festival in October, in which laypeople offer robes to the resident monks.

All of the monastery’s events are free of charge. Further, the monastery relies solely on donations for its survival. Despite this, the abbot never asks for donations from the monastery’s visitors. “All of our services are free. We don’t charge,” Vivek bluntly declared. “That doesn’t mean we are rich – we are poor people! But we do our services with our heart, without accepting anything.”

Constituency

Most of the visitors to the monastery are in the age range of 25 to 50 years old. That is to say, although there is a children’s meditation class, there are not many children who attend the monastery. Additionally, depending on the day, there are about 15-25 attendees per week to the Wednesday English-speaking class. For the Saturday Sinhalese-speaking event, there are about 30-40 attendees per week.

In the end, it is a small community here at Shakyamuni Buddhist Monastery. And yet, the community here at the monastery provides a perfect representation of the far-reaching spread of Buddhism across the world. Not only is there a Sri Lankan community here, hailing from the country where Buddhist scriptures were preserved many hundreds of years ago, but there is also an American community, whose many members are likely learning about Buddhism for the first time. Additionally, despite the differences between the two communities here, there is not a simple divide between “immigrant” and “convert” Buddhism at the monastery. The Sri Lankan community has more ritualistic practices, sure, but they also utilize the same meditation techniques that the abbot teaches to his American students. By the same token, American visitors deeply interested in Buddhism can get more traditionally Buddhist answers to concepts such as karma and reincarnation if they simply ask. The two communities may initially come for different reasons, but at the end of the day, both Sri Lankans and Americans leave with a desire to learn how to achieve peace and happiness in their lifetimes through the life-changing power of Buddhism.

I would like to thank the abbot of Shakyamuni Buddhist Meditation Monastery, Bhante Vivek, for sitting down to talk with me and patiently answering my questions. He gave me deep insights on not only his monastery, but also Buddhism itself, and for that, I am very grateful.