A core tenet of Buddhism is “everyone comes with us.” In other words, personal liberation cannot be
attained “until every being comes with you,” said
Rev. Karen Do'on Weik of the Buddhist Temple of Toledo.
The April 22 dedication and renaming of the temple reflects the growing number of people who are flocking to the former Toledo Zen Center and the teachings of Weik and her husband, Rev. Jay Rinsen Weik.
“We started 10 years ago in what is now the front reception area with a small handful of people,” said Jay. “But we have expanded into the next space, and it only took us a couple of years before that space was too small. This meditation hall here is as big as anything you’ll see on the East or West Coast in terms of how many people you can seat.”
The region’s first Buddhist temple, known now as Daishin Koku – Ji, which translates to Great Heart Land Temple, has about 100 members and an active core of about 50.
The temple is located at 6537 Angola Road in Holland. It shares space with Shobu Aikido of Ohio, a martial arts school founded by Weik who, in 2006, was awarded a Fourth Degree Black Belt.
The Weiks met in Boston, where Toledo native Jay went to study music. Both were practicing Aikido
and studying Zen, and came from similar Christian
backgrounds.
“There are many people here who maintain a relationship to the faith tradition of their birth,” Jay said. “Some may be Jewish or Christian or Catholic. The main thing is to make the teachings of Buddhism available to anyone who cares about them.”
In the mid-1800s, people would go to Japan or Korea or Sri Lanka to be ordained as monks, “but they often languished when they came back,” Karen said.
There were a lot of people who “were sort of closet contemplatives,” Jay said. “But tradition has shown that you really need guides who have experience with contemplative practice."
“You need the teachings to be available in a way so that you can understand them,” he said, citing the creed’s “three jewels”—the teachers, the teachings and the community.
The temple membership ranges in age from four-year-olds to people well past retirement age. “There are no fees, no price barriers,” Jay said.
Today, “stories of superiority, certainty and assuredness have kind of been blown away,” he said. People are compelled now “to look beyond the things they heard when they were ten.”
Older people who are drawn to the temple “find out that they are not alone and not crazy” in questioning long-held beliefs, he said. Younger people “are the ones really in the hot spot — they’re trying to cultivate this contemplative process in a very demanding time.”
Buddhism, he said, is well-suited to the times because it is not a belief-based tradition, but rather a practice that is verified by one’s own experience. The temple offers weekly, two-hour services Wednesdays at 7:15 p.m. and a service with Dharma School for Kids at 10:30 a.m. Sundays. Newcomers are always welcome, the Weiks said.
Buddhist education classes that explore core Buddhist teachings are offered on occasion. Yoga classes may be offered in the future.
Education classes at the temple teach that, while Buddhism is not a theistic religion, it is a rich belief system and much more than what it is sometimes perceived to be. “Some people think of Zen as an aesthetic …some kind of a Asian-esque, calm thing, or a massage place,” Jay said. “People don’t realize this is a 2,600-year-old religion.”
For more information, visit www.buddhisttempleoftoledo.org
or call 419-861-1163.
