Watt Munisotaram

Watt Munisotaram—the only Cambodian Buddhist temple in Minnesota and the largest in the US—sits on a forty-acre rural site about thirty minutes south of St. Paul. Although its founding organization, the Minnesota Cambodian Buddhist Society, was established in 1982, it was not until 2007 that members consecrated a temple on forty acres of their own land.

Significant Cambodian immigration to the United States did not begin until 1979. Of the foreign-born Cambodians in the US in 1990, 86 percent arrived after 1980 because of unrest after the Vietnam War, the Cambodian Civil War, and genocide under the oppressive regime of the Khmer Rouge. Because of the country’s politically unsafe environment, most Cambodians arrived in the US with refugee status, affording them the support of refugee organizations and government agencies. Although assimilating to a new country was difficult due to cultural differences and trauma from the horror many had experienced in Cambodia, the US nevertheless provided Cambodians the opportunity to live safely, healthfully, and freely. The influx of refugees slowed around 1985, when Cambodia started to stabilize.

In 1982, a small group of Cambodian refugees to the US gathered with the intention of forming a Buddhist monastery in Minnesota. Seeking assistance, they contacted the main Buddhist temple in Washington, DC. The national organization then sent them a monk, the Venerable Chey Siddhi San, to serve as the first abbot of the watt (temple). The community formed the Minnesota Cambodia Buddhist Society, a nonprofit organization, and the Watt Munisotaram congregation held its first services in a rented house in Minneapolis.

In 1984, the congregation moved to a house in St. Paul in order to be closer to the Cambodian refugees who had settled there. Many of them had struggled to travel to the location in Minneapolis, which was not close to public transportation. After discussion, they chose the St. Paul location based on its proximity to bus routes.

In the summer of 1988, Watt Munisotaram relocated again, this time to a house in the southern Twin Cities suburb of Eagan. The community grew, and attendance at the watt increased, especially during large celebrations and festivals like Khmer New Year. Some neighbors, however, expressed their dismay that the watt's visitors were accidentally parking in the wrong place, or stepping on their lawns. As a result, the community decided to move yet again, this time out of the Twin Cities and its inner suburbs. The migration continued.

Later in the same year, the Minnesota Cambodian Buddhist Society purchased a forty-acre piece of land between the rural towns of Hampton and Farmington, a thirty-minute drive south of downtown St. Paul. At the time of the sale, the only buildings on the property were a rectangular, two-story clapboard house built in 1977 and two barns. The growing community required a larger space and made plans to build dedicated buildings for worship, gathering, and daily life, choosing Cambodian architect Yav Socchea to provide the designs.

In 2002, with funding from the Cambodian Buddhist Society and “the generosity and support of the Buddhist Communities in Minnesota and other U.S. states,” construction of Watt Munisotaram began at 2925 220th Street East in Hampton. In addition to an outdoor shrine and a stupa (a place of meditation where relics of the Buddha and two of his disciples are housed), workers built a two-story, fifty-foot-high, 10,000-square-foot temple intended to serve as the watt’s main worship area and gathering space, as well as the centerpiece of the campus. Its top floor was designed with halls for meditation, chanting and ceremonies, while the lower floor was left open for celebrations attended by large groups.

Workers finished the construction project in 2007, and a sīmā (sacred assembly area) was consecrated in the main temple in the same year. Thousands of people attended the consecration ceremony, signaling the temple’s importance to both Cambodian and non-Cambodian Theravada Buddhists in Minnesota, the Midwest, and the entire United States.

Watt Munisotaram continued to grow into its role as a community hub in the 2010s. The temple hosted benefit parties featuring Cambodian dance; welcomed three new live-in monks; and opened a reflection pond to worshippers. The old temple (the two-story house) remained in use as a year-round residence for monks and priests, and in 2017, the Red Building (the congregation’s old social hall) reopened as a community center.

Editor's note: This article is adapted for MNopedia from a digital exhibit created by ReligionsMN, a project at Carleton College. Its content is available through a Creative Commons license (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0).