When the Rev. Tenku Ruff, a Soto Zen Buddhist priest, took over as the pastoral care director at Phelps Hospital Northwell Health in Sleepy Hollow in June, she knew she was entering uncharted territory: She was taking on the hospital-based position in the middle of a pandemic.

As she spoke to doctors and other staff, she heard about Chaplain Cyril Owambo, who early in the pandemic, was asked to counsel a family whose loved one had just died of COVID-19.

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A saffron-robed monk, seated cross-legged at the front of a hall at Dhamagosnaram Buddhist Temple, chanted in Pali — a Buddhist liturgical language — as Ananda Neou and Yindy Duong, placed plates of food and money before him Sunday morning.

The couple clasped their hands together as the monk blessed the food for Pchum Ben — a 15-day celebration in honor of a person’s deceased antecedents held annually by Cambodians.

But with the novel coronavirus on the loose, the holiday took on a new urgency for the living at area wats (Buddhist temples).

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Biloxi’s Buddhist temple, Chua Van Duc, was crowded for the first time in months on Sunday.

Dozens of people from as far away as Pensacola gathered to celebrate Le Vu Lan, a festival that honors parents and ancestors, especially mothers, and is sometimes called Vietnamese Mother’s Day.

Tanya Kennedy, the temple’s president, smiled after the ceremony as she surveyed the room where 60 or 70 masked people had gathered to pray and honor their parents. On recent Sunday mornings, only about 10 people had come to the temple for regular services, kept away by fears of the...

Out of the corner of your eye as you round a curve on Yelm Highway S.E. just after it splits with State Route 510, you might notice what appear to be a pair of pink lotus-flower statues on either side of a concrete-block wall adjoined by a black, wrought-iron gate.

If you turn your head quickly enough, you’ll see through the fence several bright yellow wooden buildings that resemble typical single-family Yelm homes. You might also notice a legion of statues standing erect throughout the property and a glass-and-wood enclosed shrine a bit further back called a “stupa,” which...