BERKELEY, Calif. -- This hotbed of philosophical debate since the 1960s has a new question to ponder: Can brunch be a protected religious activity?
Every Sunday for nearly two decades, Berkeley's Thai Buddhist temple, Wat Mongkolratanaram, has dished up one of the most popular brunches in town. Starting at 10 a.m., hundreds line up outside the suburban temple, carrying away plates of curry and mango with sticky rice to eat at picnic tables or on the nearby lawn of the city's "tool-lending library."
But last spring, some of the temple's neighbors decided they'd had their fill. They asked the city's zoning board to shut down what they call a "commercial enterprise" operating in a residential zone. At a public hearing, a dozen neighborhood opponents sounded off: Some said they couldn't stand the "offensive odors" of Thai food being prepared; others objected to litter, traffic and clanging pots early in the morning. One compared the temple to a McDonald's.
At a hearing in September, neighbor Carolyn Shoulders complained: "If anybody whose neighbor on the other side of their backyard fence had a thousand people over every weekend, they would really get tired of it."
In a recent interview, she said she has lived on the street behind the temple for 10 years. "They don't have to, in essence, run a restaurant in our backyard," she said. "You want to relax on the weekend."
Berkeley, a city where a group of protesters recently lived in trees for nearly two years, now is weighing whether zoning laws ought to be sensitive to karma.
Temple volunteers say they're not operating a restaurant -- they're preparing a "Sunday food offering." Diners don't pay for the food directly: They buy special tin coins for $1 apiece, then exchange the "donation coupons" for food served from steam trays.
Abbot Tahn Manas, who has lived at the temple for 22 years, says the event is critical to the Buddhist religious practice of "earning merit." Monks are forbidden by their religion from earning money or accumulating earthly goods on their own. Providing for monks and temples is the religious duty of Buddhists of the Theravada school; it helps them build goodwill for later in life or for the next life. In Thailand, they earn merit by giving money to monks in the street. Berkeley Buddhists earn merit by volunteering at brunch, thereby serving the temple.
"Our Sunday activity is pretty much like Christians going to church every Sunday," says Abbot Manas. "Without it, it would be very difficult for us to continue merit making."
The Sunday brunch service, he argues, is "our religious activity." As such, the temple argues it is protected by a federal law signed by President Bill Clinton that contains a provision to protect "religious exercise in land use."
"We aren't your usual neighborhood church," says temple outreach coordinator Virada Chatikul, 26 years old. But "we have to move people outside of the box of how we frame religious practice."
Abbot Manas says he is sympathetic to the complaints in Berkeley, but "this is really not a universal concern around the neighborhood." The temple, he says, has made efforts to make the event less obtrusive.
The Thai brunch has become a rallying point for lovers of cheap Thai food and civil-rights activists alike. The University of California at Berkeley's student senate passed a bill in support of it. More than 2,000 people signed a petition to "save Sundays" at the temple.
At the suggestion of the city, the two sides have met six times with a mediator from Seeds Community Resolution Center. But mediator Victor Herbert, who has overseen some 200 conflicts, reported to the city last week that "there was no agreement (nor near-agreement)" on whether or how the temple should reduce its brunch service. The issue is now expected to go back to the zoning board for a hearing Thursday.
Tensions boiled over last year after Wat Mongkolratanaram applied to the city to build a 44-foot-high sanctuary to house its images of Buddha. Neighbors objected to the zoning board about the scale of that structure and about plans to expand parking and other buildings on the temple's land.
Those complaints brought attention to the temple's zoning permit, dated 1993, which stipulates that it is only allowed to serve food to the public three times a year. That discovery galvanized some neighbors. "We believe we have a right to reside in peace, to enjoy our residential neighborhood without a large commercial restaurant in our midst," said neighbor Yoram Shay at the April hearing. Mr. Shay didn't respond to an interview request.
The food service expanded gradually from a small gathering of Thai families to a must-eat event, as word spread among local residents and college students. As brunch has grown, so has the temple. Today it houses five to eight monks from Thailand and offers Thai language classes, dance performances and other cultural activities.
Opponents in the neighborhood have argued that the temple doesn't need all of the money generated by weekly brunch to support its activities. Chinda Blaschczyk, a volunteer who maintains the temple donation box on Sundays, says that the temple nets about $150,000 a year from brunch -- about 75% of its regular income. (The temple is a registered nonprofit, but as a religious institution, it doesn't have to report financial data.) "We barely cover our costs," says Ms. Blaschczyk. "We're not business people, and food costs are high."
In an effort to appease neighbors, the temple agreed during mediation sessions to cut the hours for brunch service in half, to secure a small exclusive parking lot for patrons, and to shift cooking time from 6 a.m. to 8 a.m. Volunteers also now pick up trash left by diners in the neighborhood.
Veena Dubal, a temple adviser from San Francisco's nonprofit Asian Law Caucus, says she is particularly bothered by accusations about the odors wafting from the temple. "Thai food smells like coconut milk. On a very objective basis, that is not an unpleasant smell," she says. "Berkeley is changing. It has this reputation for being a haven for pacifists and for tolerance, but this is one way to see that's not what Berkeley stands for any more."
Several of the most active neighborhood opponents declined to be interviewed, citing the ongoing mediation, and what they see as intolerance toward their view.
"We have no opposition to Buddhism," says Ms. Shoulders, the neighbor. "We have no problem with Thai culture. We even actually like Thai food." All she is seeking, she says, is changes in the temple's operations.
Most of the people who dine at the temple are unaware of the religious overtones. Karma Sawyer, 27, a non-Buddhist who is a researcher at the University of California, says she has been coming to the brunch since 2003 -- and had no idea of its religious significance.
"I've never been inside the temple," she said one recent Sunday, over a plate of pad Thai and curry. "It is nice to see the religious organization interact with the community. It's like the best-run spaghetti dinner you've ever seen."
Ms. Chatikul, the outreach coordinator, suggests that Ms. Sawyer may be sating more than just her appetite. "From the Thai Buddhist perspective, anybody who comes out and helps out a temple is making merit for themselves, whether or not that is the belief that they hold."