Buddha’s Is the Life of the Party

For Hieu Tran, Sunday’s gathering of more than 5,000 Vietnamese Buddhists at Rancho Santiago College was more than a colorful ceremony honoring the 2,541st birthday of Buddha.

“Buddha has taught me to solve problems in my family,” said Tran, 26, of Westminster. “We’ve learned a lot of his goodness and have tried to apply that to our lives.”

Tran and his companion, Anthony Dinh, 22, were among the thousands of Vietnamese and Vietnamese Americans who came from as far away as San Diego and in the case of singer Son Ca, Australia, to celebrate the birthday with prayer and musical performances.

Tran, who carried a U.S. flag, and Dinh, who bore the Buddhist flag, led a procession of temple floats with their small but elaborate altars to Buddha. On the sides of each float were dozens of young girls, some who chanted and others who tossed flower petals before the floats as they passed before a contingent of 50 Buddhist monks.

The occasion marks the birth of Gautama Buddha, a prince born in northeast India, near the Nepalese border, whose philosophy and teachings are as influential to Buddhists as Jesus Christ’s are to Christians.

Buddha, a title that means “enlightened one” or “awakened one,” did not consider himself a god, but rather a teacher whose beliefs are now followed by more than 300 million people worldwide.

“When Buddha was born, he pointed one finger up to the sky and said that is ‘divine’ and that is the ‘supreme God,’ ” said Le Khac Ly, a spokesman for the Tustin-based General Assn. of Vietnamese Buddhist Laymen in the United States. The group organized the event. “With his other hand, he pointed down, to symbolize earth and he said that he is in the middle, neither a god nor of the earth.”

For devout followers, organizers had placed several large altars in the college’s quad area allowing them an opportunity to pray. It is said that when you pray before Buddha you gain his blessings, Ly said.

“This is the first time the Laymen’s group has organized the event. Usually the monks have been the organizers. Each year it gets bigger,” said Le Tam Huynh, president of the Buddhist association’s executive council. The association has about 100 laymen such as Huynh, a Santa Ana resident, and they represent Buddhist temples in Los Angeles, San Diego, Riverside and Orange counties, he said.

Followers from about 30 temples, including Cambodian and Burmese, attended Sunday’s festivities, which served as a blending of religious beliefs from diverse Buddhist sects, Huynh said.

One of the most popular exhibits was an elaborate garden depicting the birth of Buddha and seven lotus blossoms that included a water-filled pool rimmed with trees and other shrubbery, and two large open-mouthed dragons that served as fountains, spraying water into the pool.

“This is a Lam Ty Ni garden,” Ly explained. “Legend says that after [Buddha] was born, he stepped upon the lotus blossoms.”

Many followers waited in line to pray on a mat in front of the garden and also to have relatives or friends snap pictures of them for a keepsake.

Among the invited guests were Vivian Blevins, chancellor of Rancho Santiago College District and several non-Buddhist religious leaders, including Roman Catholic Msgr. Nguyen Duc Tien.

“These events are exactly what a community college needs to be doing,” Blevins said. “We have to encourage Asians to appreciate and share their culture and they then can feel ownership in their college. It’s not the trustees’ or faculty’s college, it’s the community’s. And we want them to feel comfortable here.”