Buddhism and Healthcare in Multiethnic Philadelphia

Embodied Experience

Option 1:

Are there any Buddhist temples in your area that you could visit? If so, find out when you can attend a public ceremony. Bring a notebook and record your experience during the event. Pay attention to all five of your senses: what do you see, hear, feel, smell, and taste?

Option 2:

How do health and/or healing play a role in your own religious, cultural, or family traditions? You might, for example, think about rituals, home remedies, and other practices. Make a short film using your phone or other technology you have available to you that explains these connections to other people. Think about how you can convey sensory experiences in your video.

Meditation & Healing

This film highlights two Dharma teachers from Philadelphia, a hospital chaplain and a Zen teacher. Both speakers draw attention to the health benefits of meditation; however, they introduce meditation within a wider range of Buddhist practices, including chanting the Heart Sūtra, as well as within a social and ethical context. More info.

Study questions for this film:

• What are some ways that the practice of meditation can help with health and wellbeing?
• Describe the role of a Buddhist chaplain, and how they help both patients and healthcare practitioners in hospital settings.
• What other kinds of supports are practiced alongside meditation? Do you think meditation would be as beneficial without them?
• The practice of meditation is often aimed at achieving enlightenment,  but what other Buddhist values are at play in the descriptions of meditation in this film?

Healing Rituals

This film focuses on a major ceremony held each year at the lunar new year in the Thiền Viện Minh Đăng Quang temple in Telford, in exurban northwest Philadelphia. It is a ritual calling on the Medicine Buddha to bring health, good luck, longevity, and freedom from suffering to the community and the whole world. The film focuses on the main ritual activity during the ceremony, the chanting of the Medicine Buddha Sūtra, which is the principal text associated with this deity. It is chanted in the Vietnamese language, in a distinctly Vietnamese style of intonation. Aside from emphasis on the aural experience of the ritual, the film also lingers on visual details of the material culture of the temple, the altars, as well as preparations taking place in the kitchen. More info.

Study questions for this film:

• What is the meaning or purpose behind the ritual seen in the video?
• Who is included in these rituals? Who appears not to be part of this community?
• What do you think the purpose of the food is for this holiday?
• How does community play a role in Buddhist holidays, and how might this help with healing?

Food & Health

This film focuses on food! The camera lingers on scenes of preparing food, serving food, and eating food, and emphasizes the hustle and bustle of a major festival day at a large Thai temple. Interviewees speak of the importance of food to both the religious and social context, as well as the medicinal qualities of foods donated to the monks.

Study questions for this film:

• What are some of the ways that Thai people celebrate Songkran (Thai New Year) at the temple? 
• What kinds of foods and food practices help to bring Thai Buddhists together as a community? Why might this be especially important for immigrants and/or refugees?
• How do volunteering and/or donations help people to connect with Buddhist values?
• How does the atmosphere of the Buddhist temple during Songkran differ from what you were expecting a Buddhist temple to look and sound like?

Traditional Medicine

This film focuses on the activities of the Won Buddhist community, which is more formally involved in the practice of traditional Asian medicine than any other in the area through the Won Institute of Graduate Studies. This is a separate legal entity founded by the temple community in order to forward Won Buddhism’s mission of education in traditional Asian medicine. Serving a primarily English-speaking non-Asian student body, the school is an accredited grantor of master’s degrees in acupuncture and Buddhist studies, as well as certificates in Chinese herbal medicine. They also run clinics and special events where members of the public can receive treatments. Interviews with the director and other leaders of the Institute provide an overview of the Institute’s activities, and how these fit into the mission of the founder of Won Buddhism. More info.

Study questions for this film:

• How is traditional medicine an integral part of Won Buddhism, and why is that the case?
• Why might someone want to consider using forms of Asian traditional medicine instead of or in addition to modern biomedicine?
• What kinds of people and communities are being served by the temple’s acupuncture clinic?
• How does contributing to community healthcare help the temple to enact Buddhist values?

Social Dimensions of Health

Social Dimensions of Health. This film focuses on Seabrook Buddhist Temple, a Buddhist Churches of America branch founded in 1945 in rural New Jersey, an hour east of Philadelphia. About 500 Japanese American families were relocated to this area after being released from WWII internment camps in order to work at the local Seabrook Farms food processing operation. During our interviews with some of the original members of the Japanese-American community as well as their descendants, they report that the temple was a valuable cultural center that provided the community with a place to come together socially, as well as a doctrinal framework through which to come to terms with the tumultuous events that they had experienced. Today, the temple community includes Caucasian members and those of mixed ancestry; however, the temple continues to serve as a touchstone for Japanese Americans both locally and regionally. More info.

Study questions for this film:

• Describe how this Japanese American community wound up relocating from California to the Philadelphia area.
• Do you believe that the Japanese American community’s healing would have been as successful without the temple? Why or why not?
• How does this temple represent a blend of Japanese and American cultures?
• What role do you think religious practices and communities can play in healing traumas of various kinds?

Intersections with Mainstream Healthcare

This film showcases the intersections of three Buddhist organizations with mainstream healthcare services and institutions in Philadelphia. We interview leaders of Buddhist Tzu Chi Foundation Philadelphia Service Center  (the Philly chapter of a transnational NGO based in Taiwan) and Won Community Services Center (a local non-profit run out out of the basement of the Won Temple), in order to find out how these organizations are bringing healthcare services to their communities. We also hear from a monk at Wat Mongkoltepmunee about how members of the temple’s lay community help to keep the monks healthy. More info.

Study questions for this film:

• Discuss some ways that Buddhist charitable activities promote good health.
• Discuss why it might be that the Won Community Services Center transitioned from helping Koreans to helping refugees and immigrants from other parts of the world. What does this say about the goals of the organization?
• Why are Buddhist temples getting involved with mainstream healthcare or heath education? What gaps in social services exist that make this necessary?

Reading Assignments

Further Resources

Additional videos and learning materials to accompany these films are available on the Jivaka Project Philadelphia website. This represents the first comprehensive survey of Buddhist healers and healing in any major American city. This project records a wide range of information about Buddhist temples, meditation centers, and community centers around the Greater Philadelphia area between 2015 and 2020. The project highlights the religious and medical pluralism of multiethnic Philadelphia. 

Cite This Module

C. Pierce Salguero. 2022. “Buddhism and Healthcare in Multiethnic Philadelphia.” In Stephanie Balkwill and Amy Langenberg (eds.), Buddhist Bodies Collective. https://buddhistbodies.com/378-2/practice-bodies/buddhism-and-healthcare-in-multiethnic-philadelphia/

Author Bio: Pierce Salguero

I am an author, scholar, teacher, critic, and fan of Buddhism and Asian medicine. I come from a bilingual and transnational Latino family with roots in Colombia, Uruguay, Spain, England, and the US. Having spent my early childhood in Canada and Paraguay, and moving to the US during elementary school, my scholarly interests in crosscultural exchange, translation, and global movements of ideas came to me quite naturally. Recently, I have gotten into ethnography and documentary filmmaking as well, primarily as ways of promoting inclusivity and engagement in the classroom. I also regularly publish books, magazine articles, blog posts, and other works for broader audiences. When I’m not working, you might find me traveling the world with my wife and kids, making huge batches of homemade Sichuan chili sauce, or out on my back porch meditating on my cup of tippy Yunnan.