Times are changing. Christians have wider choice of beliefs available now. Christians are no longer looking for quick fixes and dogmatic beliefs. Many more are becoming Buddhist monks upon learning the wisdom of the Buddha.
GRAND RAPIDS, MI – Jennifer Sumner didn’t know what she was after a few years ago when she started exploring different religions. Even now as she’s preparing to become a novice Buddhist monk, the Forest Hills mother of two hasn’t necessarily had an epiphany.
But she’s no longer looking.
“I was seeking something and I didn’t know what that was and I literally went to the library and started with Eastern religion,” said Sumner, 35. “There’s nothing really that I found. It’s more being in a place that my life already is.
“We’re constantly seeking for something outside of us, and why? I’ve learned to look within and found out I’m exactly where I was, but now I’m aware of it.”
Sumner, a distribution company quality coordinator by day, will be one of three people ordained as novice monks 10 a.m. Sunday, Dec. 8, at the Grand Rapids Buddhist Temple and Zen Center. It’s the first class of samanera for the temple started in 2011 by the Venerable Deokwun Russell Pitts.
The temple earlier this year moved from 156 E. Fulton St. to 451 S. Division Ave. as the sangha, or congregation, has grown to about 100 people at a typical Sunday service. More than 250 people visit the temple in a given month, Pitts said.
People visit the temple for Sunday services and vegetarian potlucks as well as mid-week meditations in the dharma hall. Here’s a schedule.
“To go from zero to our numbers in three years is a pretty remarkable experience,” said Pitts, 65, the temple's sunim. “I think a lot of people are looking for an alternative to whatever their tradition has been, and we offer that alternative in a way that is not dogmatic.”
RELATED: Grand Rapids Zen Center and Buddist Temple offers formal and drop-in meditation opportunities
Pitts came to Grand Rapids in 2011 to start the temple after being ordained to the Korean Buddhist Taego Order. He is the lone monk, so the addition of three new monks – including two in their 30s – “provides us continuity.”
Sumner and the two other novice monks, Steve Sampson and Ryan Doran-Fisher, have completed three years of study on Buddhist teachings including the four noble truths, the five precepts and the Eightfold Path. They’ve been leading chants, giving dharma talks on Buddhist teaching and teaching classes on Buddhism and meditation.
“I want to have all the tools I can get so I can help someone else,” Sampson said.
Sampson, 60, is a former Catholic brother who left the order after ministering to gay men in a Houston jail, saying he “could no longer parrot the church’s teaching on going to hell because you’re gay.” Sampson, who is gay, started delving into Buddhism after he read the Tibetan Book of Living and Dying while being treated for cancer.
“I had no idea what it was saying, but it made a lot of sense,” said Sampson, a retired writer. “The idea that you didn’t have to box in or create a god really grabbed me. There’s no dogma. There’s no belief.”
The novice monks will make a series of vows during the ordination, get new robes and prostrate themselves before family members and the Buddha to show respect. They then will do three to five more years of study and practice before becoming fully ordained monks, or Bhikkhu, in the Korean Zen tradition.
