The Oakland Buddha

A Neighborhood’s Problem

Right across the street from Dan Stevenson’s modest home in Oakland, California, was a concrete median.

And for whatever reason, that median was a magnet for trouble.

It started with trash—mattresses, broken furniture, bags of garbage. You name it, people dumped it there.

Dan would call the city to complain. They’d send a crew with a dump truck weeks later, and the garbage would disappear—only for the pile to start growing again almost immediately.

But it wasn’t just the trash. The median became a symbol of neglect. And in its shadow, trouble grew. Drug dealers started to gather. Cars would pull up at all hours, quick exchanges would happen, and the cars would speed off.

Dan wasn’t a city official or a neighborhood organizer. He was just a guy—a working-class neighbor watching from his window as the median across the street became a glaring reminder of everything wrong with his little corner of the world.

It was a source of frustration, even shame, for everyone living nearby.

The trash outside of Dan Stevenson’s home was more than just an eyesore. It was a glaring symbol of the city’s neglect.

A Simple Act of Hope

Dan decided that he needed try something different.

He wasn’t religious, but he’d always thought of the Buddha as a calm, peaceful symbol. Neutral. Uncontroversial. “Everybody loves the Buddha,” he figured.

So, he went to the hardware store and bought a small concrete Buddha statue – the kind you’d put in your garden.

When he got home, he spray-painted it gold.

And then, late one night, he carried it across the street, drilled holes in the concrete, and bolted it down to the median.

At first, nothing happened. The Buddha sat there, surrounded by trash and sketchy activity.

But then, something unexpected began to unfold.

Big change often starts small. Dan started with a trip to his local hardware store.

The Birth of the Oakland Buddha

A few days after Dan installed the statue, someone placed flowers at its base.

A few weeks later, a wooden shelter appeared – carefully built and painted in bright colors.

Incense began to burn. Fruit was left as an offering.

People began to visit – not just to look, but to pray, to meditate, to care for the space.

And suddenly, everything else began to change.

The trash stopped piling up. The drug dealers stopped coming around. The median was swept clean every day, tended to by people who believed this wasn’t just a statue anymore – this was sacred ground.

Dan watched from his front window as the transformation unfolded.

FROM THE SPIRITUAL EDGE – Members of the local Vietnamese community building a shelter around Dan’s statue.

A Community Transformed

Before long, the city noticed the Buddha too.

In 2012, city officials announced plans to remove it.

But by then, it wasn’t just Dan’s Buddha anymore. It belonged to the neighborhood.

People rallied to defend it. They wrote letters. They made calls. They protested.

And the city backed down.

The Buddha stayed.

Today, if you visit Dan Stevenson’s street in Oakland, the shrine is still there—surrounded by flowers, adorned with offerings, cherished by the community.

And there’s not a single piece of litter or a drug dealer in sight.

It all started with one man, sitting in his window, asking himself what he could do.

He didn’t try to fix the whole world. He just put a Buddha in the median across from his house.

And that small act sparked something bigger than he ever could have imagined.

If you visit Dan’s street today, you would find his statue still there and not a piece of litter in sight.

What Good Can You Do?

John the Baptist’s advice to the crowds in Luke 3:10–14 echoes across the centuries:

*”What should we do then?” the crowd asked. John answered, “Anyone who has two shirts should share with the one who has none, and anyone who has food should do the same.”

Some tax collectors asked him, “What should we do?”

“Don’t collect any more than you are required to,” he told them.

Then some soldiers asked him, “And what should we do?”

He replied, “Don’t extort money and don’t accuse people falsely – be content with your pay.”*

John doesn’t call for grand, unattainable gestures or sweeping reforms. He calls for specific, simple acts of justice, kindness, and integrity – things that any of us, regardless of our role in life, can do to make the world better.

Dan Stevenson wasn’t a community leader or activist. He wasn’t trying to save the world. He simply bolted a Buddha statue to a median in a moment of frustration and hope. But, like the crowd who came to John, his small act had transformative power. Just as the tax collectors and soldiers were called to do good in the situations they were already in, Dan did good in the context of his own neighborhood.

Transformation doesn’t always begin with sweeping plans – it often begins with one faithful step. Whether it’s sharing a meal, refusing to exploit others, or, in Dan’s case, turning a dumping ground into sacred ground, these small, faithful actions have the power to change the world.