My First Buddhist Pilgrimage — to Atlanta

This past weekend, I was in Atlanta to visit my boyfriend, and before the visit had mentioned to another friend that I would be up, and was hoping we could get together. In trying to arrange our mutually conflicting schedules, I mentioned that my boyfriend and I were planning on one morning to go to the Atlanta Zen Center. That sparked a recollection for my friend, that a friend of his had described seeing “some kind of Buddhist Temple or something” near the junction of I-675 and I-285. This obviously piqued my interest, so when I arrived at the boyfriend’s house Friday evening, I mentioned that I’d like to go look for this place.

Saturday afternoon we piled into the car to run some errands, find some food, and wend our way up to Midtown for maybe some good food and nightlife. After getting the errands out of the way, we headed out to find this temple thing. Being on the Jonesboro for the errands, we then took I-75 up to 285, then east to 675, and headed south. We drove and never saw anything remotely looking like a temple. Myself, I was looking for a chedi (the bell-shaped monuments common in some parts of Asia). We finally decided we’d gone far enough, and turned around.

A few moments later, from the northbound lane of 675, I spotted the temple on the west side of the interstate. How we missed it was a puzzle, because it was big and up high overlooking the highway. We resolved then that we wanted to get closer.

Since it was on the west side of 675, we headed back to 285 west, and took the first exit, Moreland Ave. The first major intersection came upon us pretty quickly, and we thought we needed to go a little further south. The second light was in just the right location it seemed, but there was a train running parallel to Moreland, blocking us from turning left back towards 675. We went a little farther, deciding we were too far (and still blocked by the train). We went back to where we originally wanted to turn, and waited for a very slow train to finally pass.

As we drove on, the boyfriend asked where I thought the temple was. Just as we were about to pass under 675, I said, “There it is!” We made a quick left turn, and up the hill was the grand temple

The sign read, “Wat Lao Buddha Phothisaram.”

At the bottom of the hill was what appeared to be a house converted into worship space — the roof fascias had been adorned with plywood cut in the traditional shapes found on Thai temples. It looked a bit disheveled overall, and though there was an SUV in the carport, it appeared no one was there. Up the hill a sort was was a steel building, then just below the crest of the hill was the temple. We drove up, and got out.

It looked like the temple was being enhanced with new landscaping — there were flats of pansies waiting to be planted, and stacks of inexpensive hollowed facing brick, some of which had already been placed as pavers around the temple. It definitely looked to be a labor of love, not one with a deep pocketbook. Behind the temple was a chedi made of plywood, and behind that what looked like a performance stage.

All of this was completely deserted, and the temple was padlocked. I wanted badly to see a monk come out of one of the buildings, offering to show us inside. Alas, it didn’t happen. We took a few pictures, one of which you see above, and after a few minutes headed further towards downtown Atlanta. We both felt a warmth knowing that a beautiful Buddhist temple is relatively close at hand — one that almost appears to have been transported magically from southeast Asia.

Since the picture from the cameraphone isn’t so good, here are some others I found:

This one is from Annie at Metroblogging Atlanta, who has been wondering about the temple since last year, and just got an answer last week!

That last one is from dennysmagicland’s flikr photostream.