*Đọc 9 phút*

Về Thượng Tọa Thích Kiến Như (1934-2020) và Thiền Viện Chơn Như tại Braddock thuộc thành phố Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, chúng tôi tìm được hai bài viết của ký giả M. Ferguson Tinsley đăng trên nhật báo Pittsburgh Post-Gazette năm 2004.

Qua hai bài viết đăng báo Post-Gazette và được đăng lại dưới đây, độc giả được biết vào năm 2004 Thầy Kiến Như đã mua lại một ngôi nhà cũ với giá rẻ trong khu phố tồi tàn gần các hãng xưởng đã đóng cửa sau khi ngành thép bị tàn lụi tại Pittsburgh vào cuối thế kỷ 20.

Thầy Kiến Như xuất gia sau khi tỵ nạn tại Hoa Kỳ, và với tâm nguyện tạo một ngôi chùa ở một nơi mà khi ấy hầu như không có chùa dành cho các Phật tử đồng hương tại Pittsburgh, Thầy Kiến Như đã đến đây để xây dựng Thiền Viện Chơn Như từ năm 2004, tạo một nơi mà các Phật tử có thể đến để kính ngưỡng Phật, được gần với đạo và có nơi thờ cúng hương linh của những thân nhân đã mất. Địa chỉ của thiền viện là 721 Braddock Ave., Braddock, PA 15104. Thầy Kiến Như đã mất ngày 1 tháng 5 và tang lễ đã được cử hành hôm thứ Bảy, 9 tháng 5, 2020 vừa qua.

Vì hiện nay nhóm Tinh Tấn Magazine đang thiếu nhân sự, nên chúng tôi mong rằng có quý đạo hữu nào phát tâm chuyển dịch lại hai bài báo tiếng Anh – bài thứ nhất được giữ nguyên bản, bài thứ nhì được lược bỏ nhiều đoạn – để cống hiến đến quý độc giả đọc tiếng Việt ở mọi nơi được biết thêm về Thượng Tọa Thích Kiến Như và sự khởi đầu của Thiền Viện Chơn Như, một ngôi chùa tuy khiêm tốn về hình thức nhưng lại rất lớn về tấm lòng hoằng pháp của Thầy Viện Chủ Thích Kiến Như.

Quý Phật tử nào có thêm hình ảnh về Chùa Chơn Như cũng như về Thầy Kiến Như, xin gởi cho Tinh Tấn Magazine để chia sẻ với mọi người.

Kính nguyện Thầy Kiến Như sớm cao đăng Phật quốc.

Nam Mô Tây Phương Cực Lạc Thế Giới Tiếp Dẫn Đạo Sư A Di Đà Phật

Bài dịch xin gởi về địa chỉ email:
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Building Braddock: Monk is quietly developing temple

Tuesday, September 28, 2004

By M. Ferguson Tinsley / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

On April 30, 1975, the day the last American helicopter left Saigon, Thich Kien Nhu was hurrying away from the Vietnamese city, too.

Huddled aboard a fishing boat, he was easing out to sea. Nhu’s decision to flee probably saved his freedom, if not his life.

Now, Nhu, a Buddhist monk, leads activities at the religious center for the Buddhist Meditation Society of America in Pittsburgh on Braddock Avenue.

The temple, which is in Braddock, is part of a sangha, or monastic community, that Nhu is quietly developing in a neighborhood where young men pass the workday on street corners, where locked and rusting gates cover many storefronts.

In the next few years, Nhu hopes to add a convent to the sangha. In June, he purchased the Brandywine, a former bar, which is a few doors east of the worship center along Braddock Avenue.

About 1,500 Vietnamese immigrants live throughout the Pittsburgh area, said Nghi Nguyen, a member of the Vietnamese Association of Pittsburgh, based in Natrona Heights. The majority arrived in the late 1970s, like Nhu.

Some 500 of them practice Catholicism, said Nguyen. Most of the rest follow Buddhism.

About two scores attend meetings at the Meditation Society temple Sunday afternoons, said Nhu.

Three decades ago, when he was in his mid-30s, Nhu was an active opponent of Communism in Vietnam. The former teacher and attorney also belonged to the hated intellectual class, which the Viet Cong, who surged into his homeland after the war, targeted.

Nhu’s escape was the first leg of a journey that eventually brought him to Florida.

He came to Pittsburgh four years ago, after living in the Washington, D.C., area for nearly three decades. A special celebration with lay Buddhists in Homestead brought him to Braddock’s neighboring borough.

“When I came, I saw that many [of the Homestead Buddhists] are getting old, dying, that they need a monk here,” he said. He decided to stay and began looking for a place to live and practice his faith.

He settled in Braddock, where Nhu said officials welcomed him. Since the area is zoned commercial, locating the temple there was uncomplicated by variances.

Braddock seemed a surprising location for the temple. Since the steel mills closed in the late 1980s, it has lost nearly half of its population. Although the median household income rose slightly from $17,340 to $18,473 between 1989 and 1999, the number of employed residents over the age of 16 went from 1,857 to 985 in the same span of time.

Nhu said he looked at locations near Downtown Pittsburgh but found they were too expensive. Buildings on the South Side were less so, but Nhu said the hills were daunting, especially for the older people.

He settled on the building along the main drag in Braddock because “the price was as low as I could afford.”

According to the Allegheny County assessment Web site, the building sold for $1.

The granite-fronted building once housed a financial institution. Nhu said the interior needed little renovation before it was ready for services. The second floor has an area large enough for nearly 50 adults to sit cross-legged on the floor. Behind the meeting space are Nhu’s living quarters.

On the first floor, there are four rooms. Two are sleeping rooms set aside for people on religious retreats. One is where a Vietnamese-speaking doctor maintains an office. In the last, language instruction is offered.

During religious services, flowers and food are arranged on a simple altar. Nearby, a statue of the Buddha sits in serenity. While the group of believers turns toward him, Nhu speaks of following a peaceful way of life and following Buddhism’s Four Noble Truths:

– Life is suffering;

– Suffering is due to attachment;

– Attachment can be overcome;

– There is a path to accomplish this.

Buddhism began in India in the fifth century B.C. The title Buddha means “the enlightened one” and refers to Siddhartha Gautama, a prince who left his home and family in a quest to understand the causes of suffering and how to live free of that burden.

According to the Encyclopedia Britannica Almanac 2003, the religion teaches that by adhering to the Buddha’s wisdom, one “can alleviate suffering through an understanding of the transitory nature of existence, in hopes of achieving enlightenment.” The transitory nature of life is embodied in a belief in reincarnation.

Nhu grew up in a Buddhist family of seven children, two of whom as adults were imprisoned by the Communists. But it was not until he had lived in the United States for four years that he began to study the philosophy with intensity.

Nhu said the teachings adhere to a strict code of morality and ethics.

“Teach [people] how to treat each other; how to treat themselves; a routine for living,” he said. “No stealing. No telling lies. No drinking. No drugs. … If you [do] something wrong; you get something wrong [done to you].”

He said he studied the writings of Buddha for 14 years before taking monastic vows in 1994.

“What I have is better than what I had in a previous life,” Nhu said, referring to the Buddhist doctrine of reincarnation. “You see a person right now, you know how he was in a previous life. We believe that.”

Recalling his open opposition to Communism in wartime Vietnam, Nhu said, “Before, I had enemies.” His life in Buddhism has changed that. “Now all are friends. Then, when someone hit me, I hit back. No more.”

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Building Braddock: Buddhists turning bar into convent

Wednesday, September 29, 2004

By M. Ferguson Tinsley / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

The Brandywine Bar and Grille was a 47-year-old fixture with a dubious reputation.

But soon the former Braddock hangout will be part of a sangha, a monastic community for Buddhists.

That’s because God intervened, says Valerie Perkins, 49, who lives in the borough. Two years ago, when she was a drug-addicted streetwalker, Perkins said she often went to the Brandywine.

Today, she credits her faith in Jesus Christ for cleaning up her life and for closing the Brandywine.

Others say God didn’t do it. They contend the former owner’s age, condition and need for money, along with pressure from borough officials, shut the bar down earlier this year.

Either way, residents, some local business owners and the head of a drug and alcohol treatment center say good riddance.

“The Brandywine should’ve been closed down a long time ago,” said Renee Johnson-Hoots, 50, a lifelong Braddock resident.

“It was a nuisance bar; it was a drug bar. Everybody knew it. Anything that was illegal went on up there.”

[…]

Edward Gurne, 71, of North Versailles, said he and Irwin [Gurne] opened the bar right after he returned from the Korean War.

“I couldn’t find a job, so I thought I’d go into business for myself,” he said.

During its early years, the bar’s patrons were white mill workers who slung pig iron at local steel plants and stopped by after work. Racial divisions were clear, socially and in the Gurnes’ understanding.

In those days, “[blacks] had their own bars on Sixth Street,” Gurne recalled.

In the last 15 years, black customers began coming to the Brandywine, something neither Edward Gurne nor his brother anticipated.

“I never had a gambling machine,” he said. “I never had a jukebox, and blacks love music.”

Irwin Gurne exited the business.

“When blacks started coming in, he said he wanted to get out before he got killed,” his brother recalled.

But fights in the bar were usually petty skirmishes, although Gurne said he once had to wrest away a gun. Any talk connecting the Brandywine with drug sales, prostitution or thievery is false, he said.

“They thought that all the dope was coming out of my place because of all the people standing outside,” Gurne said of authorities. “They said the people standing outside of my place were robbing [people]. Everybody loafs outside. I couldn’t do nothing about that. They stood outside because I sold the cheapest beer in Pittsburgh.”

A can went for 50 cents; a bottle $1.25, he said.

[…]

Perkins says God began to turn things around.

Several months before Gurne closed, Perkins was cooking for an after-school program at the Braddock library. She had left a rehabilitation program about a year before and was starting her new life.

One day in April 2003, two school-age girls came in telling workers that their mother had nearly been killed in a nearby shooting.

The tale of drug-related violence recalled Perkins’ past to her mind.

For much of her adult life, the Braddock native had been a crack cocaine addict. A few years ago, she’d sunk so low — no income, no home — she prostituted herself to survive. She ended up at the Peniel Ministries in Johnstown, where she received treatment and counseling and finally got clean.

“When I was in my addiction, I had actually gone [to the Brandywine] and bought drugs,” she said. “So I knew what was going on.”

When the girls’ mother was shot, Perkins became angry. She believed her town was not trying to change.

Perkins said she believed that God told her to pray for the area. For several weeks in the spring and summer of 2003, she met with local church members, survivors of violence, community activists and workers from the halfway house where Perkins lived. They walked near the bar and prayed. When the others stopped coming, she kept praying.

By late fall, the Brandywine had shut down. Gurne said he had had surgery on his foot and could not work. The LCB notified him that while the bar remained closed, his license must be held in “safekeeping” at the liquor board.

By then, Gurne said, he planned to sell the building and the license to another owner who would reopen the Brandywine as an “entertainment” spot.

Perkins said she kept praying.

A new direction

She also wrote to the director of licensing at the LCB. She circulated a petition. Judy Monahan, executive director at Turtle Creek Mental Health/Mental Retardation, signed it. The MH/MR halfway house, where Perkins lived, was too close to the Brandywine for comfort.

“I had an interest in closing the bar because of the safety of the people who work in the facility and the people that come in for service,” Monahan said.

The LCB responded that their hands were tied. Unless the new owner had a shaky reputation, the sale of the building may include the license, David Martin, LCB director of licensing wrote to Perkins on March 4.

But the potential buyer bowed out when he was denied an occupancy permit, Gurne said.

He then sold the building to Thich Kien Nhu, a Buddhist monk, for $9,500. Nhu plans to make it a residence for Buddhist nuns who will come from Vietnam.

A soft-spoken man clad in ankle-length brown robes, sandals and wearing wire-rimmed glasses, Nhu, 70, speaks with a thick Vietnamese accent.

He said he purchased the red brick building without realizing it needed tens of thousands of dollars in repairs. It needed a new roof. The second-floor ceiling had caved in. The wall were crumbling. The dingy barroom on the first floor reeked of beer, mold and human sweat.

Nhu said when he asked for his money back, Gurne returned only $1,000.

“Man who live there [next door] tell me I stupid to buy,” the monk said with a wry smile. “Say he cheat me. … But I come here for the people, to serve them.”

Perkins said since the building won’t be used for alcohol sales again, God answered her prayers.

Jones agreed that “God works in mysterious ways.” But, she said Perkins’ efforts and prayers had little to do with the outcome.

“We all worked very hard,” Jones said of borough officials. “The reason [the Brandywine is] closed now is that Mr. Gurne was ill and wanted to close the bar.”