OAKLAND, Calif.—Fed up with crime, rather than turning to despair, one Oakland resident remained hopeful. Through a small gesture, he sought to bring tranquility to his neighborhood by installing a Buddha statue.
The story of the Oakland Buddha started in 2009, when Dan Stevenson and his wife, Lu, got tired of the drug dealing, prostitution, and garbage in their neighborhood. Wanting to change the negative energy of the neighborhood, they came up with the idea of placing a Buddha statue on the corner of 11th Avenue and 19th Street near their home.
They bought a concrete Buddha statue from a local Ace Hardware store. To install it, Mr. Stevenson used a piece of steel rebar and epoxy to fasten the statue to a rock on the median strip on the corner.
Since the installation, the shrine has grown to be larger than life.
“It turned the whole place totally around. The prostitution has moved out, drugs stopped, garbage stopped,” Mr. Stevenson told The Epoch Times. “I was pleasantly surprised, but kind of astonished, honestly.”
Over time, what started as a Buddha statue turned into an elaborate structure with multiple statues, burning incense, candles, and food offerings. Among the statues added were Guan Yin and, about a year ago, St. Jude, added to the back of the shrine. St. Jude is known to help with lost causes.
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Mr. Stevenson said the shrine was built by a Vietnamese couple, Henry and Vina, who made it their duty to maintain the shrine for people to come chant and pray. He said they have since moved, but other neighbors now maintain the shrine.
“Anywhere from 50 to 75 people a day hit that place and sometimes more, because if a tour bus comes through or something—and I don’t know who’s running that—but people get out, take pictures … and then they all jump back in and off they go. … We had no, even, inkling of what would transpire in this like 15 years or whatever it’s been now. It’s grown and it’s grown internationally as well,” Mr. Stevenson said. “And whatever it does for them, they seem happier leaving than when they showed up. It’s got to be something good.”
In 2014, SF Chronicle reporter Chip Johnson asked the Oakland Police to check the crime statistics in the Eastlake neighborhood and found crime was down 82 percent between 2012 and 2014. The police noted that they could not definitively state that the Buddha statue was the cause. Since then, police reports have shown crime consistently decreasing in the area with only a small uptick between 2018 and 2020.
Mr. Stevenson said there was an attempt in 2012 by the city to remove the Buddha statue. He said somebody made a complaint to remove the statue, citing the separation of church and state, since the statue was on public property.
Mr. Stevenson said since now “there’s no garbage … you got to complain about something; why don’t we pick Buddha. … I didn’t hear anybody complaining about the garbage.”
He said it was a big thing; a city worker came to his door and told him they were going to jackhammer the statue out.
So Mr. Stevenson got online and alerted the surrounding neighbors to the proposed removal. He said the city got so much backlash and protest to keep the statue that a city official called him and asked him to “tone it down.”
Mr. Stevenson said the city ended up putting the situation in “review” and has since seemed to have forgotten.
Mr. Stevenson is not a Buddhist, but chose the Buddha because he finds him neutral and non-controversial.
“I really like contemplation. Quiet contemplation is impressive to me, and he does that very well,” he said.
Mr. Stevenson used to teach Asian Studies and said he resonates with Taoism and tends to be cynical, but what has transpired over the years, he said, has been a pleasant surprise.
Jesse, a neighborhood resident and real estate investor, moved to the neighborhood a few years ago because he saw the structure with the statues while driving by and checking out the area, and he thought it would be a good idea to buy a house near the shrine. He told The Epoch Times why he likes to stop by once a week to give a prayer.
“It feels relevant to maintain well-being, more so than seeking to climb some peak,” Jesse said.
Another resident, Laura Gerard, told The Epoch Times, “I feel like it brings beauty to the neighborhood, peace; it’s a spiritual place.”
Ms. Gerard said she was asked by Henry and Vina to help maintain the shrine. Now, along with her husband and other neighbors, they share the duties of locking and unlocking the gates and taking care of the shrine.
She said: “There’s a lot of people who visit that structure, a lot of people take care of it, have small events there at different holidays and different celebrations. So it’s really nice to see that kind of activity in the neighborhood.”
Having survived two attempts of removal, once by criminals early on who were thwarted by the rebar and epoxy, and once by the city, the Buddha statue remains peaceful and here to stay.
Evolution of the Shrine
Mr. Stevenson said that the corner of 11th Avenue and 19th Street used to look like a dump, literally. He said people would dump couches, mattresses, and anything else that they didn’t want.
He said he would call the city, and after two or three calls, finally they’d show up and clean it all up. He said he called so many times they knew his name.
He said that soon after it was cleaned up, more garbage would be dumped.
“Every morning, we’re waking up to this pile of garbage,” he said.
He said he installed the Buddha statue during the summer, and it was surrounded by foliage, so nobody really saw it, which was intentional.
“Because I’m working with energy,” he said.
Then autumn came, and all of a sudden the Buddha statue was exposed because the leaves had fallen.
Since nobody had really known it was there, it seemed like the Buddha statue had instantaneously showed up, but it had been there about two months, he said.
Then one day, Mr, Stevenson noticed that somebody came along and painted the Buddha white.
“I didn’t expect that,” he said. “Then a little while later, there started to appear these little offerings, like pears and oranges
, or peanuts, or a Coke, or whatever. And I thought, ‘Hmm, that’s interesting. Yeah. I guess somebody likes them.’”
Mr. Stevenson said pretty soon after that the Vietnamese family, Henry and Vina, came knocking on his door and asked if they could take care of the site.
“It’s yours; take care of it. ... It’s for everybody; it’s a community thing,” Mr. Stevenson said. “I hadn’t even thought about the ramifications of that at all.”
He said Henry built all the buildings that you can see today, and about 20 families are connected to the shrine.
“I mean, literally, it was a rock with Buddha sitting on it; that’s it; that’s all I’ve done. Yeah, that’s all I thought we needed,” he said.
