This particular street in central Berlin looks as if it has been overlooked by the gentrification elsewhere in the district. A few rather shabby apartment buildings, a car repair shop, a high-rise at the end of a cul-de-sac with a daycare center. A place where construction waste, smashed toilet bowls, empty paint buckets, and other junk are regularly and illegally dumped at night.

Yet this section of Ackerstrasse, barely two kilometers (1.2 miles) from Olaf Scholz's chancellery, is also home to a new building, seven years in construction, that happens to be one of the most remarkable religious buildings in the German capital: A modern Buddhist temple.

Miaoshiang Shih is the master of the Fo Guang Shan Community Temple. Born in Taiwan, she has been living in Berlin for decades, and for over 30 years has been meditating at the same place on Ackerstrasse with two or three other nuns in a wooden shack that used to be an auto parts factory. The nuns lived in an apartment next door.

The friendly Buddhist with the shaved head leads a tour through the new building, showing off the rooms with pride: The main hall of the temple, where morning and evening meditation will be held in front of the three golden Buddhas, plus the kitchen, the guest rooms, the dining room, rooms for art exhibitions or small concerts, and a small memorial hall for the deceased.

The master elaborates on the artfully crafted metal structure in front of........

© Deutsche Welle