By Arjanyai
The Temple of Chicago has much in common with the Temple of New York. Located in a big crowded city with a large number of Thai people, it is frequented by devotees and visitors, busy with day-to-day ceremonies, and large numbers gather for religious and cultural celebrations. Although younger in years, the Temple is mature in its program initiatives. Several programs of creative Buddhist activities have been conceived and only time and ecclesiastical personnel are needed to bring them to bloom.
Buddhist Sunday school classes are now the principal regular activity of the Temple. They were inaugurated on the Visakha Puja Day of 2520/1977 as a program of teaching Thai language and culture and Buddhism to children of Thai origin between the ages of four and twelve. The total enrollment of students in its first school year was about forty. In the long and extremely harsh winter of 1977-1978, however, the number of students present at school on each Sunday seldom reached a dozen.
Towards the end of 2520/1977, with the help of a visiting monk, the Temple initiated two more programmes of significance. One was the setting up of the Temple Library with emphasis on Buddhist and Thai studies. The other was a Dharma-study class held about two or three hours a week for adults of any profession and occupation in their spare time.
On July 16, 2520/1977, a ceremony for the inauguration of the Temple was held. Four high-ranking monks from Thailand came as representatives of the Buddhist Order of Thailand. Presidents and abbots of all the other four Thai Buddhist temples in the United States, a number of other Thai monks such as one from London and one from Singapore, a Ceylonese monk and a representative of the Department of Religious Affairs of Thailand also came to participate. About a thousand people, over ninety per cent of whom were Thai, attended. It was presided over, on the ecclesiastical side, by a high-ranking Venerable, a Somdech, who headed the party of monks from Thailand and, on the lay side, by His Excellency the Thailand Ambassador to the United States. The number of twenty Thai monks that took part and the number of about a thousand Thai lay people that attended were the largest gatherings, of Thai monks and of Thai people respectively, ever held in the United States. The ceremony itself marked the completion of the major and essential parts of the work of founding the Temple both in its legal and in practical aspects, that is, the incorporation of the Temple under the law of the State and the location of the Temple at a suitable site with religious buildings and other facilities modified and improved to suit Buddhist purposes. Thus, it was prepared to move forward in the direction of its set objectives. This state of preparedness led even further to another big, a so-called final, step of founding a Thai Buddhist temple, the acquisition of full status of a temple-monastery according to the Theravada tradition based on canonical discipline through the Sangha formal act establishing the boundary of the Uposatha or the consecrated assembly hall. In possession of a sacred hall-building, the former church, already granted a zoning permit for the performance of religious services and separated from the living quarters for monks, the Temple could readily achieve that status. For this reason, the ceremony of establishing the consecrated boundary was carried out, making the inauguration that followed on one and the same day a more meaningful event. The Thai Buddhist Temple in Chicago claims to be the first Thai Buddhist temple in the United States and in the whole Occident that is fully developed whether regarded from the viewpoint of Thai ecclesiastical law or of Theravada disciplinary practices.
In a later development, towards the end of the year 2526/1983, Wat Dhammaram moved again to the new and present site at the 75th Street, also in Chicago, a former public school on a large 10-acre plot of land. It is hoped that this very spacious new site will be able to accommodate all the ever-growing activities of the temple during the many years to come.
The Thai Buddhist Temple issues a journal for propagating Buddhist teachings and practices and publicizing its activities called ‘Dhammobhas', and a newsletter called ‘Buddhasasana-sarn'. Booklets and pamphlets on different aspects of Buddhism are also published from time to time.
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