Roanoke Valley Buddhists' Goal Is New Temple: 'Many Trees Form a High Peak'

For three hours on Sunday, some 200 people, most of Vietnamese heritage, gathered under a huge white tent and faced an altar covered in flowers and fruit, tea and incense, a statue of Buddha at its center.

They watched as children processed in, a choir of women dressed in emerald and sapphire-colored tunics sang, and monks — visiting from India, Houston, Massachusetts, Manassas — prayed, taught, and appealed for future funds.

The ground-breaking ceremony in Roanoke County ended with supporters walking over to a nine-foot jagged stone, with the name “Buddha Mountain Center” painted in red in English, Vietnamese and Chinese. Four shovels adorned with red bows were passed between monks and members as they symbolically scattered dirt from the construction site to the chrysanthemums at the foot of a Buddha statue. In the final act of the event, sand collected from a mandala created by visiting Tibetan monks was sprinkled amid the soil as a blessing for the new temple.

Roanoke’s Vietnamese Buddhists have long wished for a place where they could meet, worship, teach their children, preserve their culture, and share their beliefs with a larger community. This day marked a milestone on the journey to build Roanoke’s first full-scale Buddhist temple. But there is still a long and winding road ahead.

Midway through the morning, Buddha Mountain Center’s senior monk Thich Chuc Do, dressed in a saffron robe, said: “Our temple will not only be a place of worship, it will be a true spiritual home, a light of dharma in Roanoke, where people of every background may find peace, where children may learn their roots, and where the bodhisattva [spiritually advanced beings] will see honor for generations to come.”

Thich Chuc Do’s voice took a somber turn when he explained that the project needs $1.7 million more to reach completion. 

“Our heart struggles with both concern and faith,” he said. “Concern because the burden is very heavy. Faith because we know that one tree cannot make a mountain, but together many trees form a high peak.”

A steep climb for more funds

Thich Chuc Do’s vision is ambitious: 9,000 square feet, which includes a meeting hall, monastic residence, dining room, kitchen, and classroom space, all sited on 2.6 acres just off Hershberger Road in north Roanoke County. A design rendering shows a two-story building with red trim and flared rooflines, in the style of Buddhist temples in Vietnam.

Buddha Mountain Center worshippers have been gathering since 2018 at a small commercial building less than two miles from the future new temple they envision. They purchased the land in 2022 and Roanoke County unanimously approved the project in 2023. Bowman Excavating cleared the previously wooded lot and started on the infrastructure: preparing for gas lines and electricity as well as pouring a parking lot and building a retention pond. According to Thich Chuc Do, Phase 1 of the project is 40 percent complete.

Thich Chuc Do said the cost of the project has risen to just over $2 million, with site improvement alone costing $773,000. Buddha Mountain Center has raised $200,000 in donations and $160,000 through the group’s monthly sales of Vietnamese food, he said.

Thich Chuc Do’s fundraising efforts include traveling to Vietnamese communities across the U.S. to ask for money, kicking off a local fundraising campaign, as well as hosting local events, such as a yard sale that will be held at their current worship space on Sept. 20.

“I have every confidence that Thay can do this,” says Tom Willard, the English language liaison at Buddha Mountain Center.

In Vietnam, “Thich” and “Thay” are titles used by Buddhist monks. “Thay” means “teacher.” “Chuc” denotes Thich Chuc Do’s Buddhist disciple lineage and “Do” is his given name.

Willard said he began attending Vietnamese-language services about two years ago and worked with Thich Chuc Do to establish English-language services in April 2024. Thich Chuc Do was interested in adding services in English both to extend the temple’s outreach to the larger Roanoke community and to cater to younger Vietnamese who may not speak their parents’ language, Willard said. Today, 15 to 20 English speakers regularly attend a Buddhist worship service on Sundays at 8:30 am. Services in Vietnamese are held Sundays at 10:30 am.

Other Buddhist communities in Roanoke include Dharmapala Kadampa Buddhist Center located in a storefront on Brambleton Road; Stone Mountain Zendo that meets in the basement of Christ Episcopal Church; and Heart of the Blue Ridge Sangha, a mindfulness meditation group that gathers weekly at 5 Points Music Sanctuary.

The seeds for Buddha Mountain Center were planted decades ago, when a group of Vietnamese Buddhists in Roanoke reached out to their connections in Virginia Beach. It wasn’t until 2017 that Thich Chuc Do, then a visiting monk from Virginia Beach, led the first service in a Roanoke hotel meeting room. By 2018 the community was gathering regularly and purchased a former accountant’s office on Florist Road to be their temple. 

But even as members worked to renovate the space and build a sculpture garden with statues, including a 14-foot-tall marble depiction of Kwan-yin, a goddess of compassion, mercy and kindness, they knew they were outgrowing their place of worship.

“Before we had a temple, people in the Vietnamese community didn’t have a connection,” Thich Chuc Do said. “Once we had a temple, people started getting together. And now we’re getting two beautiful communities together.”

A monk who has walked this road before

Thich Chuc Do hails from a long line of Buddhist monks from Vietnam’s countryside. His parents served in their local Buddhist temple. His sister is a Buddhist nun in Vietnam.

Thich Chuc Do was 12 when he began his training as a monk. He completed his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in linguistics at the University of Social Sciences and Humanities in Saigon. In 2005, he moved from Vietnam to Virginia Beach, following his Buddhist master.

When Thich Chuc Do arrived in Virginia Beach, he and his fellow monks made plans to grow with their community from a temporary space into a more established temple. They bought land and began renovations. But the Dong Hung Temple was opposed by neighbors, stymied by zoning rules, and set back by financial difficulties. In 2009, lenders foreclosed on the temple’s property and Dong Hung Temple declared bankruptcy. 

The Dong Hung community rose from the ashes, finding a new location in 2011, expanding membership, and renovating or building structures on the property to create a new Dong Hung Temple.

Thich Chuc Do first visited Roanoke in 2013; he said he felt a connection with the place and the people. Since 2018, he has divided his time between Virginia Beach and Roanoke. In addition to his role as senior monk at Buddha Mountain Center, Thich Chuc Do also serves as one of three monks with the Dong Hung community. He estimates that he spends 90 percent of his time serving the Roanoke community and 10 percent serving in Virginia Beach.

Thich Chuc Do said he took valuable lessons from his experiences with Dong Hung that he is now implementing in Roanoke. 

“I learned how to operate a temple in the U.S.,” he said. During his time in Virginia Beach, he also realized he would need to learn and use many practical skills he hadn’t needed in Vietnam, from how to build websites to how to create a teahouse from scratch.

“I had to become a handyman,” Thich Chuc Do said, with a smile. “Construction, electricity, plumbing – I can do it all.”

Thich Chuc Do plans to save money by completing as much of the work himself as he can and by tapping into the skills of his temple’s members and reaching out to volunteers.

Buddha Mountain Center must finish the site improvement work within the next two years or face steep fines. But Thich Chuc Do said later phases of construction, including the building of the temple, might be delayed. His community is on board with this approach.

“We’ll probably have to be patient,” said Kevin Cashman, another English-speaking member of Buddha Mountain Center. “I think it’s going to take a long time to realize the full vision of the rendering.”

When asked if he felt worried about reaching his funding goals, Thich Chuc Do responded: “To be honest? Yes, a little. In Buddhism we practice … that when a challenge is in front of you, you learn how to deal with it.”

An invitation to the community

Last week, the Buddha Mountain Center on Florist Road was a busy place.

Buddhist nuns, including Thich Chuc Do’s sister, had flown in from Vietnam, Indianapolis and Dallas to support the community in advance of Sunday’s ground-breaking ceremony. Members of Virginia Beach’s Dong Hung Temple had also traveled to Roanoke to help.

Starting Monday, eight monks exiled from Tibet spent five days creating a brightly colored sand mandala on the floor of Buddha Mountain Center’s meeting hall.

Each morning the monks began with prayer, then spent two hours meticulously scooping sand into a metal tool and releasing it atop an intricate design, as if they were piping icing onto a cake. As the monks worked, they meditated on the meaning behind the symbols, according to Geshe Khenrap Chaedon, the monk designated to answer questions explaining the purpose behind the art. He said the monks believe their meditation brings them closer to enlightenment, and that the creation of the mandala ushers positivity into the world.

The group has been traveling for two years throughout the United States to share their practices, their story, and their beliefs with all kinds of hosts: Buddhist temples, universities, and other interested organizations. They travel to raise awareness and funds for the Drepung Gomang Monastery in India, their home since their community fled repression in Chinese-controlled Tibet.

On Saturday, the mandala was destroyed, an act that reminds followers of the impermanence of all material things and experiences. Some of the sand was carried to the construction site for the ground-breaking ceremony. Geshe Khenrap Chaedon explained that the monks believe that their many hours of intentions and meditations confer blessing to the land where Buddha Mountain Center’s new temple is planned.

Bringing the Tibetan monks to Roanoke is an example of the cultural exchange that an expanded Buddhist presence might have in the region, Thich Chuc Do said.

“In Buddhism, we don’t worry about where people come from or what they believe. We don’t require you to convert in order to participate,” he said. “It’s not about religion, it’s about humanity.”

For the Vietnamese community, events like the Sacred Arts Tour and the ground-breaking ceremony help unify an immigrant group that has, in the past, felt scattered and isolated.

On Sunday, Camha Tran, a founding member of the Buddha Mountain Center, prepared long tables of Vietnamese food that would be shared with event-goers after the ceremony. Standing under a tent in an ankle-length purple dress, she said: “To us, this temple is not just about our religion. It’s a place we gather. It’s our community.”