Wat Mongkolratanaram

1

Wat Mongkolratanaram is a small Thai Buddhist temple located in Berkeley, California. A wat, it mainly attracts Thai American Buddhists, many of whom are students at the University of California, Berkeley, but it also draws in many local, non-Buddhists who come searching for the authentic Thai food public brunch on Sundays or attend its frequent cultural events. The temple is home to a Thai school for San Francisco Bay Area youth, as well as Berkeley's Thai Cultural Center. In 2001, it marked 25 years of being a temple by completing renovations to its Victorian-era building to adapt the architecture to temple style. In February 2009, a group of neighbors sought to shut down the Sunday public brunch, citing litter and traffic. The Zoning Adjustments Board of Berkeley voted 8 to 1 to keep the Sunday brunch, and the board chair "praised the temple for being a positive influence" in the neighborhood. The brunch runs on donations; visitors pay for tokens and exchange them for dishes. The Thai-born Ajahn Manat is the current abbot of Wat Mongkolratanaram. In 1997, the temple was home to the East Bay chapter of the Cypherpunks.

This article is derived from Wikipedia and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. View the original article.

Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
Bliptext is not affiliated with or endorsed by Wikipedia or the Wikimedia Foundation.

Edit article