News Writing

Below are samples of my hard news and feature writing.

News Writing

Below are samples of my news writing and photography with IowaWatch (now Investigate Midwest).

Buddhist monastery finds home near Decorah

In the rolling hills of northeast Iowa, amid fields of cattle and corn, sits a simple, cream-colored building.

The gravel road leading to the dwelling climbs an incline. A weathered wooden sign surrounded by flowers and tall grass reads “Ryumonji Zen Monastery.”

A Buddhist monastery, the only one of its kind in the state.

Buddhism, an Eastern religion that began in India, follows the teachings of the Buddha Siddhartha Gautama. It focuses on participating in good to reach enlightenment. The religion has grown in Iowa, reflected by an increasing number of temples or centers, an IowaWatch review found.

Outside of Decorah, the monastery, this rural cohort of Eastern spirituality, began its first round of construction in 2000 and the first building, the temple, was completed in 2004. More than 180 students have come through since.

The idea for it began in, of all places, Minnesota, Iowa’s northern and larger neighbor. Shoken Winecoff was in Minnesota and intended to build a center in Iowa, he said. After a decade though, the original site sat empty, untouched. Winecoff went off to Japan to train.

“The priest there that I was connected with said, ‘If you can’t build there, you know, build it someplace else,’” Winecoff said.

The name “Ryumonji” comes from the three Japanese characters meaning “dragon gate and temple” and has ties to the Chinese legend of fish overcoming the waves of life to become fearless dragons. A poster detailing the story lines the walls of the monastery dining room, where communal meals and conversations are held.

The practice of Soto Zen Buddhism revolves around the practice of meditation and balance within oneself. Winecoff recalled his ties to Christanity and how others he had studied with remained Christian while also practicing Buddhism. He came to Buddhism during a divorce and re-evaluation of his life.

“My theology was really changing to a more incarnational theology. Buddhism doesn’t talk about God or no God. When asked, the Buddha said neither God nor no God. He was more into seeing oneness with each other. And the focusing on whole life is interwoven, interconnected,” he said.

The Ryumonji Zen Monastery near Decorah is the only Buddhist monastery in the state, an IowaWatch review found. (Photo by Silvia Oakland)

Sustainable, purposeful building

The monastery itself displays interconnectedness.

Back in 2000 after the advice from the priest, Winecoff wanted to build the kitchen and living quarters first to reassure people who came that they would have a place to eat and sleep. But his teacher encouraged him to build the temple first.

The monastery at the time began as a zen center in a house in Decorah until Winecoff had found the 40 acres of land that would be donated to help establish the monastery.

After having conversations with people attending the zen center, Winecoff found a donor who wanted the land to be used for sustainable and purposeful uses.

“This building was all built on recycled lumber, so we were constantly scraping things together,” Winecoff said.

In addition to the lumber, the monastery uses geothermal heating and cooling and solar panels.

The dining room features tables and chairs along with couches and a small table with tea, sugar, honey and hot water.

Two black and white cats greet visitors and make their way to the kitchen, where monks and trainees can be found in the afternoon making snacks before their afternoon sessions in the other wings of the monastery.

The layout of the monastery resembles the traditional layout of those in Japan, including the use of wooden nails to connect and support the beams of the building. Buddha Hall, the place where lectures, services and ceremonies are held, features a traditional altar to the Buddha that has incense and other offerings. Next to the door leading to the Soto building there is a bell to signify when it’s time to enter or leave.

In the Soto building, raised beds also serve as a place of meditation during public sittings and for the monks in training. Another altar remains in the center of the Soto building with a Buddha that watches over the room.

Outside of the Soto building is an entry gate, which symbolizes the transition from one’s life to monastery living. The bell tower that is rung to announce the different times of day neighbors this gate and overlooks the valleys.

Training center

Ryumonji is the only Buddhist monastery in Iowa and has allowed over 15 monks to achieve dharma transmission, meaning their teachers have seen they have the ability to carry on the tradition of zen.

Myoko Laura Demuth is one of the monks who studied at Ryumonji and achieved dharma transmission in 2016. She serves as the co-director, alongside Lee Ekai Zook, of the Decorah Zen Center in Decorah, Iowa, and works along with Winecoff and the rest of the monastery staff to host Soto Zen sessions.

Demuth described what her typical schedule at the monastery looked like: long days of studying, following a rigorous schedule and fulfilling needed roles. That means waking at 4:30 a.m., nine meditation sittings, an afternoon work period, and other duties.

“It’s a different life when you don’t pick and choose always what you’re going to do with your time. You do what the schedule is, is telling you to do, but you’re also enacting this with the whole song or the community so you’re upholding one another’s practice,” Demuth said.

It’s not lost on the monastery leaders the irony of being located near a strong Christian community. Winecoff lived in Decorah a few years before the monastery opened and is well-known, Demuth said.

“I think Decorah identifies pretty strongly with being Norwegian. I think they also, because of Luther College, and so many different people and ideas coming through the college, I think it’s really an open-minded community,” Demuth said. “I think the monastery has been very welcomed.”

Silvia Oakland is a 2021 Wartburg College graduate and a summer 2021 reporting intern for IowaWatch – the Iowa Center for Public Affairs Journalism. While at Wartburg, Oakland served as editor of the Wartburg Trumpet for two years and is the 2021 Pat Pisarik Journalist of the Year. She is currently on a year of service in Washington, D.C.

Buddhist communities increasing across Iowa

Iowa’s Buddhist population grew in the last several decades with new places to practice — Cedar Rapids, Clive, Decorah. Now Indianola.

The latest is in Warren County’s county seat of Indianola, where the former Saint Thomas Aquinas Church, built in 1958, will become a Buddhist temple. The Board of Adjustment approved a special work permit at a November meeting.

“Mostly, this would be a place of peaceful contemplation,” the Karen Buddhist Association wrote in its application to the city.

The Karen Buddhist Association of Iowa is made up of about 50 families. The goal is for the Indianola temple to serve as a place of worship and as a home for their monk.

No other Buddhist place of worship is in the area, said Charlie Dissell, the city’s community and economic development director

These temples have become more common in Iowa in the last few decades as populations numbers have changed. In Iowa the Asian American Pacific Islander population has grown 134%, an increase of 49,073 people over the last two decades, according to the State Data Center of Iowa.

Globally, there are 500 million Buddhists population. About 1% live in North America, according to the Pew Research Center in 2019.

There are approximately 20 Buddhist temples and zen centers in the state, along with one Buddhist monastery in the northeast corner near the Minnesota border, a three-month IowaWatch project on Buddhism found. Many start small and grow into larger centers.

Cedar Rapids Zen Center starts

For more than 18 years Zuiko Redding, an ordained Soto Zen tradition Buddhist teacher, has taught services in a two-story house known to members as the Cedar Rapids Zen Center. Through morning meditations and evening Dharma talks, Zuiko has taught the way of the Buddha. The Sangha, a group similar to a Christian congregation, attended the center to listen to Zuiko and learn from other members.

But before this following of nearly 70 members, the Sangha was small and new to Cedar Rapids.

“We started out with about four or five people in a little two-bedroom apartment,” Zuiko of Cedar Rapids said. “I lived there and one bedroom was our Zendo [meditation space] and the living room was the office.”

After a year in the apartment and an increase from five people to about 10 members, the Sangha got the opportunity to purchase the two story-house for a new location in 2001.

The mortgage of the house was paid off a decade later through donations from the Sangha. The upstairs served as an office space and downstairs as a Zendo, the parlor as a library and the kitchen and dining room as a place of hospitality.

Clive center blossoms

Those at the Pure Land Temple in Clive, Iowa, had a similar story to the Cedar Rapids Zen Center.

They started in 2005 in a small apartment with few members. Helen Liu and Evelina Chen, both Pure Land practitioners, are sisters who saw the need for a larger temple after an increase in their membership from five or six to 20.

Liu’s home originally served as the first temple with meditations held on Sundays. In 2016, Chen was able to purchase the current building that features three different areas for worship that they have named Wisdom Hall, Pureland Hall and Earth Treasury Home, a hall for children to sit and learn when their parents attend their teachings.

Liu and Chen had been practicing Buddhism for 20 years, and their main teacher Khenpo Paljor Gyatso began his life in the monastery when he was 9. Khenpo is the highest level in Buddhist learning that one can obtain and also serves as the title members use to refer to Paljor.

Gyatso had been traveling through North America and was lecturing in California where a member of Pure Land was also present. After a conversation with the member, Gyatso visited Iowa and knew he was meant to stay to teach.

Gyatso is from Tibet. The population of the Pure Land Temple in Clive is diverse, consisting of Asian-Americans and Caucasians.

“We’re mostly a white temple. We do have a Burmese family who are members, we’ve had Koreans, Chinese and Vietnamese, but we have about 70 members and they’re predominantly white American converts, and they’re raising their children as well. I think across the country we’re getting a second generation who are reared as Buddhists,” Zuiko said.

Monastery runs near Decorah

The Ryumonji Zen Monastery, located in Dorchester, Iowa, is the only Buddhist monastery in the state. With 40 acres of land, the monastery has rooms for practicing and training, living quarters, a kitchen, dining room and small office space.

Throughout a six-week training period, people from various parts of Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin have visited the monastery to become a monk, according to Shoken Winecoff, founder of the Ryumonji Zen Monastery.

“The number of students increases pretty steadily,” Winecoff said. “For this particular ango, which means dwelling together in peace and harmony, we have eight people.”

Winecoff helped establish and build the monastery, beginning construction on donated land in 2000 and ending in 2013. At Ryumonji, Winecoff has ordained at least 15 monks who have gone on to Dharma transmission, a high ability to carry on the Zen lineage. The monks serve in states across the Midwest, including Iowa.

With Ryumonji being near the borders of Minnesota and Wisconsin, Winecoff interacts with people from multiple states who may be both a practicing Christian and Buddhist hoping to become monks.

“If you have a Christian background, Jewish background, Hindu, you’re welcome to come in,” Winecoff said.

Religion or philosophy, or both?

“This is a path that really will help you function in the world. And you will be in the midst of a support group that will honor you and help you do whatever you want to do in your life,” Zuiko said.

Growing up, Zuiko had an interesting relationship with religion. Both her parents encouraged her to explore her faith and find which path aligned best with what Zuiko wanted. Her mother had worked as a nurse in World War II in a Jewish hospital where she took care of people who had survived concentration camps, living in the forest or those who were ill and near death.

“She had this notion of a God who sees me and takes care of me, and if there was a God who could let these people die like that, she didn’t want to have anything to do with him,” Zuiko said. “My father had felt that the priests, and not so much about the nuns, but he felt that the priests, really did not practice their religion, and they were really rigid and cruel.”

After this discussion with her parents, she began exploring religion and found herself being pulled toward Buddhism. The Buddhist community allowed her to combine religion, philosophy and science together to create a holistic experience.

“There are a lot of things that we study. We understand a little bit of basic science concepts and philosophy, and then also some way there is prayer devotion to the Buddha,” Zuiko said.

Similar to Christianity, there are different paths of Buddhism people choose to follow. The Cedar Rapids Zen Center focuses on zen Buddhism and the art of meditation whereas the Pure Land Temple of Iowa follows the Pure Land path, allowing teachings of the Buddha and meditation to be held.

“I think Buddhism is a kind of a teaching to teach us how to find how to avoid suffering and how to find what happens to the better life to benefit ourselves and other other sentient beings. I think it’s, for me it’s a kind of education,” Liu said.

COVID-19 hinders worship

Much like other religious organizations, the Buddhist community has also felt the impact of COVID-19 in similar and different ways.

“We are, of course, number one, always concerned for the safety of people. We decided to reopen after May 26, if really people wanted a vaccine, and they got it. We wanted to wait because we didn’t want people to say ‘the temple is open too early and we got the virus from there,’” Kenpo said.

At Pure Land of Iowa and the Cedar Rapids Zen Center meditation sessions and classes have both been held via Zoom. Zuiko said the method of online and in-person has been popular and has allowed people to adjust their schedules to practice.

“I’m trying to figure out how we can integrate the whole thing together. We now have noon zazen rather than early morning, which has proved to be popular, especially on Zoom because people can Zoom in. Sometimes a person or two will come to the center with their vaccine cards and we all sit together and then on Sundays we use Zoom to have Zen, Dharma talk and discussion,” Zuiko said.

Indianola another sign of growth

Back in Indianola, the hope is for the Buddhist temple there to open before the end of the year.

Most Karen refugees arrived in the U.S. in 2006 and 2007. Those in Iowa often work at meat packing plants.

The application to Indianola leader promises the new temple will change the neighborhood little. “The Karen people have an affinity with nature and treasure the land,” their application to the adjustment board said.

Encountering Asian harassment

The Pure Land Temple and Cedar Rapids Zen Center have been cautious because of harassment known as Asian hate movements. Both said they had not experienced any harassment, but are still vigilant.

“It doesn’t mean that you know we’re not being careful, because in addition to the, the people who hate Asians, they’re the people who just hate anybody different. We have some plans already in place, we have barriers you can hide behind and if somebody comes in the door with a gun, you can easily get through and these doors. But it’s on our minds, all of us around the country,” Zuiko Redding said.