Asian monks have been around for more than two-thousand years. While the tradition hasn't been present in New York City for anywhere near that long you may be surprised to know they do have a long history here. This week on NY1, we're celebrating Asian American history by taking a look at the Asian monks who maintain their ancient traditions even while living in a fast-paced world. NY1’s Erin Clarke filed this report.
Inside this seemingly ordinary house on Marion Avenue in the Bronx is a sliver of Southeast Asia.
At Wat Jotanaram, a Buddhist temple, Cambodian women talk among themselves while preparing food as the head monk readies himself for a ceremony that night.
"This temple is like my home or my country and my people is like my family," says the temple’s head monk, Sophouns Kandaar Pheach.
Two monks live at the temple which opened in 1985, established by Cambodians who settled in the Bronx after escaping the oppressive Khmer Rouge regime in their native country.
Today, the borough is home to about 1,000 Cambodians and Cambodian Americans, many who have found a home among the Asian community in the Bedford Park neighborhood.
"Chinese, Cambodian, Vietnamese. There's a lot over here," says Sohka San of Phnom Penh – Nha Trang Market.
While Buddhist from other countries are welcomed at Wat Jotanaram, Cambodians visit to study the religion, pray, meditate and also get a sense of home.
"I think that Buddhism and Cambodian culture is the source of Cambodian people," says Pheach.
That source, however, is getting lost.
Most of the temple's members are seniors and there aren't many followers in line to succeed them.
Many young Cambodians have a limited grasp of their traditional language and feel disconnected at the temple where many of the ceremonies are performed in the native tongue of Khmer.
"I don't think they like to come here because they don't know a lot about the culture, even if their parents teach them. They just, they don't really care at all," says Wat Jotanaram member Sopheaktevy Virak.
That apathy worries the head monk who says when he meets young people, he tries to explain the importance of maintaining the Cambodian culture and the Buddhist religion to them.
"If there is no young generation to care about the temple, how can the temple can exist?" Pheach says.
Still Wat Jotanaram caters to about 300 families, mostly from the Bronx, New Jersey, Connecticut and even Philadelphia.
Not everyone visits daily, or even weekly—but the temple remains a beacon, one its members hope to keep going for years.