Three old posts

In 2012 I used my old blog “Taste of Chicago Buddhism” as a personal journal instead of reporting what was going on at the temple since I was in Texas to care for my terminally ill sister. Here are three posts from that time.

Monday, February 27, 2012

Tripping Over Uncertainty: No Skillful Means

I thought “constant change” (mujo = not-always) would be an inspiring theme for the new year, but impermanence is a big pain in the oshiri when you need to make travel plans. I didn’t want to blog about my personal issues, but my being away from Chicago does affect the people at the temple. I’m scheduled to do a 4-week course “Brief Introduction to Buddhism” in March, but at this point, I’m wondering when I’ll be back in Chicago.

Back in mid-February my sister’s health took a turn for the worse and she asked if I or my brother could come down to Texas to help her settle her affairs (which included setting her up on a hospice program). I paid for a one-week round trip ticket to Austin but it looks like I definitely can’t go home that soon since it’s taking time to set up all the hospice care arrangements. In some moments my sister is busy putzying around and seems able to do most things herself (she expressed that she does not desire the constant company of me and my brother) but other times she’s weak and in pain and I would hate to go away even with a caregiver visiting her daily.

In the daily e-mail I receive from Tricycle magazine, they had a quote from (one of my big idols) Thanissaro Bhikkhu saying we should keep up the intention to be skillful in our every thought, word and deed. It hit home with me in my present situation – I’m pretty clueless and clumsy dealing with all the things my sister needs to have done. I’m so bad at making efforts and so easily distracted by entertaining trivia (like watching the Oscars).

At one of the Maida Center retreats, Rev. Ken Yamada of the Berkeley Higashi Honganji Temple told his story of driving his wife to the hospital when she became critically ill. He was speeding but it seemed like the route was full of traffic jams and aggravations and he was getting more anxious and swearing at all the other drivers. Then Naomi told him, “Whether we make it to the hospital quickly or not – it’s all up to Amida.” To hear her calm settling into true entrusting (shinjin) helped Rev. Ken let go of his anger and drive more sensibly. Everything turned out okay – Naomi received treatment and recovered.

As Amida means the unbounded power of conditions and events beyond our control, then Amida includes the reality of one’s own limitations and inabilities. We can’t will ourselves to suddenly become strong and competent and without years of intense monastic training, even our intention to be skillful goes off track more often than not. I’m finding out that the Namu in “Namu Amida Butsu” doesn’t just mean “bowing down” – sometimes it means tripping over and falling flat on your face.

Friday, March 2, 2012

Forgetting and Remembering - Others as the Buddha

Don't try to be too wise; don't always try to search for something profound to say. You don't have to do or say anything to make things better. Just be there as fully as you can. And if you are feeling a lot of anxiety and fear, and don't know what to do, admit that openly to the dying person and ask his or her help.

From The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying by Sogyal Rinpoche

I was surprised that the “Caregiver’s Guide” pamphlet from the hospice service (providing care to my sister dying of cancer in Texas – see previous blog entry) had two quotes from recognizably Buddhist writers – one was Jack Kornfield and the other Sogyal Rinpoche. The latter’s quote in the pamphlet was short so I Googled it to read a fuller version (link no longer available).

Being here fully is just not happening. I find myself forgetting every little thing, even things that used to be routine with me. I try to write down important things dealing with my sister’s care, but the sheets of paper and sticky notes are all piled here and there in disarray – as the to-do list gets longer. And I’m not talking to my sister about my fears and anxieties, since she lets me know she has enough on her mind and doesn’t want to hear my troubles.

As much as we say we want to be “there” for someone – we are elsewhere a lot of the time. And the internet makes it easy to be other places mentally while you are physically in one place. I’ve been taking care of a lot of temple correspondence by e-mail, mostly about the Buddhism Intro class which I’ve postponed a week. Yesterday my husband e-mailed me a scan of the handwritten note sent to me by a temple member, Mr. J, an elderly Japanese American.

When I read Mr. J’s note I realized I completely forgot about performing a memorial service on the anniversary of his wife’s death as he had requested a month ago. Mr. J had been hospitalized for a while and was not up for the drive from the western suburbs to the temple, so I offered to go to his house to do the memorial service and asked his son to set it up. The son called me later and said his father didn’t want that and so I intended to comply with Mr. J’s original instructions to just do the chanting on the date without his presence.

(Photo by Joanne Kamo)

As it turned out I had to come to Texas to deal with my sister’s declining health and the memorial date of Mr. J’s wife had come and gone. Mr. J wrote the note as a reminder to me of his original request but he began reminiscing about her death twelve years ago: “I took her to the hospital for heart valve replacement. We had never thought it would be the end that night. We made a recovery room for her by the window so she can see birds and squirrels. Never entered our mind of the outcome that day. I thank you for being there that night.”

That night when my husband and I went to the hospital we saw Mrs. J was unconscious and hooked up to a breathing machine. At one point the family said it was getting late for us and nothing much was happening – I wanted to go home and get to bed but my husband said he had a feeling we should stay a little longer. We stayed and maybe it was about an hour or so later when I saw the monitor by Mrs. J’s bed go “flatline” and the alarm went off. It was the first time I was in the presence of a person at the moment of death. After the medical personnel completed their procedures, the family gathered around Mrs. J’s body and I conducted the Makura-gyo (“pillow sutra”) service. [Customarily the service is done within a day after the death since ministers are called after the fact and often end up doing the service at the funeral home.]

After reading Mr. J’s note, I got out the chanting pages I tuck away in my appointment book and I went to a window in my sister’s house that looks out on her back yard, thinking of the recovery room Mrs. J’s family had set up for her. I saw birds landing and flying around the patio with all the plants my sister had cared for. I didn’t have a bell with me, so for the gong-striking parts of the chant, I tapped with my fingers on a metallic angel figure that was by the window. A couple days late, but I performed the memorial service for Mrs. J – grateful to be reminded of what I had forgotten: tariki, the power beyond self.

Sunday, March 11, 2012

Cowgirl All Dressed in White Linen

You would think any seriously practicing Buddhist would have their ojuzu (meditation beads) in their hands at least some time every day, especially if they’re a minister. But during my stay in Texas to take care of my sister, I only took my beads out of my purse twice. The first time was for the improvised memorial service at the request of a temple member (see previous blog entry). The second time was last night – as the two mortuary workers, a young woman and man, carried my sister’s body wrapped in a white sheet from the bedroom to the gurney set up in the hallway. My brother didn’t want to see it. He had just arrived that afternoon and was able to spend several hours with our sister while she was still conscious.

He went to the front door to hold it open as the two workers wheeled the gurney out of the house. With my hands in gassho (palms together) and the ojuzu around them, I walked behind in the same manner as a minister following the coffin in a funeral recessional.

I wanted to keep my hands in gassho, but before leaving the house, the woman from the mortuary extended her hands to me. I let her take my one hand in hers. “Sorry for your loss,” she said. Then she did the same with my brother.

Namu Amida Butsu. Sorry – loss – ours.

Self-Doubt as the Gate to Awakening

From “Taste of Chicago Buddhism” July 2018

Although I have taken refuge in Shin Buddhism,

There is no truthful mind in me at all.

Since my being is false, vain, and insincere,

I have not even a fragment of pure mind.

As for my appearance to everyone,

I show the façade of a wise, good, and serious man.

Because I have abundant greed, anger, perversion, and lies,

My being is filled with evil schemes.

My evil nature is difficult to stop.

My mind is just like snakes and lizards.

My religious practice, being mixed with the poison of self-love,

Is called the practice of falseness and vanity.

            --Shinran Shonin, Gutoku Hitan Jikkai (translated by

            Nobuo Haneda in The Evil Person: Essays on Shin Buddhism

            By Shuichi Maida)

A few years ago I was reading an article about Frank McCourt, author of Angela’s Ashes, where he said during the time he taught school in New York he felt like such a fake speaking at the front of the classroom. But he found that students he encountered years later would tell him he was one of their best teachers, sincerely helping them in their learning. It made me think of Shinran – continually calling himself a fake (as in the passages above), yet he was and still is able to compassionately convey to people the truth they need to hear.

I was reminded of the Frank McCourt article recently because of the recent suicide of celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain and the PBS Newshour story on Robin Williams. Both men confided to friends and family that they felt full of self-doubt, feeling that their public image as a good guy was fake. I know how crushing that feeling can be, yet the saving grace is always hearing the voice of Shinran, “Yeah, I’m a fake but it makes me awaken to the nembutsu as true. The delusion of thinking I’m purely good and wise is a barrier to realizing how much goodness and wisdom I receive from others.”

The paradox of the true teacher being the one who says “I’m a fake” is conversely true – the false teacher is the one who keeps insisting on his authenticity. One sign of a group based on a false idea of their teacher is that they don’t recognize the teacher had teachers and those teachers had teachers. In the Pure Land tradition of Honen and Shinran, even the historical Buddha had to have teachers. To them it was obvious from reading the Mahayana sutras that the Buddha was frequently expressing his appreciation of the Buddhas of the past – and in the Larger Sukhavativyuha Sutra, these past guides are represented in the archetype of Dharmakara/Amida.

[Five-kalpas contemplation]

It’s sad to think of great people such as Bourdain and Williams who felt so weighed down by self-doubt that they were driven to end their lives. It makes me grateful to teachers such as Rev. Gyoko Saito who showed me that no matter how awful one’s personal life can get, “the nembutsu is here,” as Rev. Saito quoted Akegarasu when he was forced into retiring. The nembutsu reminds us that self-doubt doesn’t have to be a life-destroying thing. By seeing how fake our surface personality is, the grip of self-attachment is loosened and we can awaken to the dynamic truth that is all around and deep within us.

What’s Wrong With Saying “Namo Amida Butsu”

from "Taste of Chicago Buddhism" October 2017

[Note: Since the 1990s, Nishi Honganji prefers to use the spelling “Namo Amida Butsu” while Higashi Honganji continues using “Namu.”]

I need to explain what I was trying to say for my Dharmathon talk titled “STFU” recorded this past week (Sept. 27, 2017). I don’t think I am the first or will be the last person to complain about those individuals who have to burst out with frequent shouts of “Namo Amida Butsu!” causing a disturbance for those of us trying to listen to what is going on at the time, such as a minister giving a Dharma talk.

Actually it’s not just the rudeness of old men loudly demonstrating their piety that I’m questioning, but whether there are any reasons for saying that string of syllables aloud. I can think of two – cultural and ritual. For centuries “Namo Amida Butsu” has been a part of Japanese Buddhist culture (and in the cultures of other East Asian countries with the phrase spelled out differently). Way before Honen and Shinran, it was heard in the cities and countryside of Japan, in and outside of Buddhist sites – spread by hijiri, wandering monks, such as Kuya. So despite the wide range of how to interpret the phrase (magic mantra, plea for the afterlife, expression of inner peace, etc.), it is a familiar sound that Japanese people can voice comfortably.

As in any religious tradition, it helps to have some stock phrases that everyone can chime in on at the start and finish of certain sections of the service (readings, meditation, chanting). So saying “Namo Amida Butsu” together and in response to the leader during a weekly Sunday service, memorial/funeral, wedding etc. serves as punctuation in the flow of ritual routines.

But outside of those two contexts, is there a need to say “Namo Amida Butsu” out loud? I used to think Shinran specified oral recitation when he used the verb sho-suru but then Dr. Haneda pointed out that the original meaning of sho (tonaeru) was to “carefully consider.” As is described in Japanese dictionary sources, the Chinese character is a stylized picture of the scales of balance. Maybe when the person doing the weighing announced when the object was in balance, the verb came to have the meaning of “vocalizing.”

The great Higashi lineage teachers such as Kiyozawa and Maida don’t write about “Namu Amida Butsu” very much and for all the times I’ve heard Rev. Gyoko Saito speak in services and lectures, he seldom inserted “Namu Amida Butsu.” But what all the great teachers do talk about is the nembutsu. For certain persons at particular times, the nembutsu could take the form of saying “Namo Amida Butsu.” But the nembutsu that the great teachers describe is too profound and universal to be restricted to a specific kind of action.

The title of this post is a statement, not a question. Here are three general categories of why I refer to the saying “Namo Amida Butsu” as the seven-syllable barrier.

It perpetuates the impression that Jodo Shinshu is an exclusive group that identifies as Japanese.

The saying of “Namo Amida Butsu” seems like a special phrase that the insiders say to each other like members of some old men’s lodge. And in Jodo Shinshu no matter what country you are in and what language you speak, you are required to say the phrase in Japanese pronunciation – an indication of the primacy of Japan and its culture.

It makes Buddhism into hocus-pocus incantation rather than teachings of self-examination and awakening to reality.

Just as Zen in the West played into the American cultural streak of anti-intellectualism (“You don’t have to know what Buddha or anyone else said, just sit on this here cushion until I hit the gong”), too many Jodo Shinshu ministers get to play the part of the Wise Master, “Just keep saying Namo Amida Butsu and don’t worry about what it means,” instead of making the effort to explain anything that smacks of scholarship (sutras, history etc.). What’s lost is the opportunity to hear the essence of the Buddha-Dharma which is what Shinran dedicated his life to bringing to us through his many written works.

It becomes a “required practice” which contradicts the ultimate Mahayana principle of unconditional access to awakening for all beings.

To hear the strained speech of the current Otani-ha abbot, a deaf-mute, should be a reminder to us all that saying “Namo Amida Butsu” is not an “easy practice” for anyone with physical or mental disabilities. Recitation becomes a forced custom divorced from what “Namo Amida Butsu” was meant to express. Suppose Shinran had a laugh that was a high-pitched “Tee hee hee” and everyone thought they had to copy it exactly in order to attain his level of bliss. That recitation ignores what made Shinran laugh in the first place and the fact that laughter is a spontaneous expression of enjoyment with each person having their own unique way of laughing. Instead of enjoying a good laugh, the imitators are stuck joylessly repeating “Tee hee hee, tee hee hee.”

What “Namo Amida Butsu” expresses is the voice of hongan, the deepest aspiration, the universal wish to awaken to the interconnected oneness of all life, liberated from the delusion of self. At the recent Dharmathon, I would say the story that Rev. Fred Brenion told was an example of the nembutsu. In his job working at a prison for the criminally insane, he encountered a woman who had murdered her children. He couldn’t help feeling a sense of revulsion about her crime, yet he felt enabled to say to her, “There is no pit too deep for God’s hand to reach into.” Knowing she was a Christian, Rev. Fred felt it was better to tell her that instead of trying to convert her with talk of Amida’s Light. To me, hearing that story was to hear the nembutsu, the voice of hongan, the universal wish – the voice that makes us contemplate and remember (nem-) what awakening (-butsu) is.

Ten Thousand Nien-fo

From "Taste of Chicago Buddhism" November 2017

Though I was living in Los Angeles when the Hsi Lai Temple opened in 1988, I hadn’t had an opportunity to visit there until this past weekend. I happened to be in the LA area for my aunt’s funeral and on Facebook I heard about the service for Aaron Lee at Hsi Lai.

The service was held at the Memorial Pagoda, a building out of sight for tourists since it is behind the majestic Main Hall. Inside the pagoda there is a round room with seating for about 100 people (during the service the doors were kept open for the seated and standing overflow crowd). At the start of the service, a nun who looked and sounded like a teenager, explained the program. Each person was handed a pamphlet with the chanting in Chinese characters and romanized pronunciation (they used the Wade-Giles spelling, so this post uses nien-fo rather than the Pinyin spelling nianfo). The nun asked us all to chant with the handful of monks and nuns leading the service. She said the chanting was for Aaron to hear, “and he is more familiar with your voices than ours.” I was prepared to fold my legs under me to sit seiza on the cushioned row-bench but she asked us all to stand.

[behind the Main Hall, no photos were allowed at the Memorial Pagoda]

The crowd which consisted overwhelmingly of Chinese Americans of Aaron’s age (late 20s to early 30s) seemed to have no trouble following the shifting melodies and pronunciation of the chants. During the Heart Sutra, I fell into chanting in Japanese since it was easier than reading the romanized syllables for the Chinese. Then during the chanting of Namo Omito Fo (which the pamphlet said to do a hundred times), the nuns distributed cut flower blooms and directed us to go row by row to offer up the flowers to a tray on the altar.

During this chanting, I let my tears flow with the tears of those around me. The calling of the name of Namo Amita(-abha/ayus) Buddha was the music of mourning, seemingly endless but not feeling tiredly repetitious. I started out singing loudly but then had to do it sporadically as I felt weak and light-headed from the hecticness of the weekend and anemia (side effect from chemotherapy). It took bouts of concentration to keep myself from losing consciousness.

When the nuns and monks saw the lines for the flower offering coming to an end, they switched to the shorter “Omito fo” and a swifter melody. The chanting was brought to a close, then the service continued with the Dharma talk (the young priest gave one of those “I didn’t know the guy, but here’s what you better know about Buddhism” sermons), some moving personal tributes and a slide show. Although reference was made to Aaron’s “be the refuge” essay, it would’ve been nice in that setting if someone could have riffed on that.

It is difficult for me to even think of being a refuge for anyone or anything at this time. For me to follow Aaron’s example of helping and encouraging others, I’ll need quite a few more hyakumanben (100 x 10,000) of nien-fo (remembrance of what awakening is). Yet if I contemplate the “ultimate refuge” that Shinran sings about in his verses (Jodo Wasan), I see Aaron Lee has been a part of that refuge, or rather, he has become that refuge. As I keep pointing out – the working of Namu Amida Butsu comes to us in very concrete ways, not as giant magic fingers from the sky. Aaron Lee – his life activities and his words – are the manifestation of Amita(-ayus/-abha) for me and hundreds of others, showing us the path of ego-transcendence.

The young nun at Hsi Lai told us to chant so Aaron would hear our voices, but in the hundred-fold repetitions of nien-fo it was Aaron calling to us by the names of our true selves.

Dharma Lesson from Yuri Kochiyama

From “Taste of Chicago Buddhism” March 2017

When I talked up the showing of the film, “Yuri Kochiyama: Passion for Justice,” I thought half the Japanese American community would be filling up the auditorium at the Block Museum on the Northwestern University campus last month. But only a handful of the folks I knew showed up and the total audience for the film showing was pretty thin.

Maybe just as well – it wasn’t a well made film (it seemed like in the mid-1990s sound recording for film must’ve been pretty primitive). But for me, the life of Yuri Kochiyama (1921-2014) illustrated the Dharma lesson I try to impart at every memorial service – “That feeling of respect and gratitude you feel for your deceased loved one should carry over to a widening circle of compassion for the lives around you.”

Yuri Kochiyama lost her father to the World War II hysteria against the ethnic Japanese in America (after Pearl Harbor he was jailed despite his poor health and died the day after he was released). Her passion for justice is a directing of her outrage over her father’s loss into the energy to fight for all people in the United States who are mistreated by the majority white society and the government.

Her story is a rare exception among Japanese Americans. While she raised her family in Harlem and got involved in the parents’ group which led her to activism with the black and Latino liberation movements, most Japanese Americans followed the white flight out of the inner cities to more affluent neighborhoods. They left the south side in the mid-1950s to move to the north side during the time of real estate fear-mongering and redlining. And in the 1970s, there was a strong push to get away from the black, brown and red people of city neighborhoods such as Uptown and relocate to the suburbs.

Right now there are a lot of young Japanese Americans saying they’re against the “Muslim registry” (such as my cousin’s daughter http://www.facebook.com/nationalcouncilofasianpacificamericans/photos/a.532706786770092.122765.532675646773206/1527469653960462/?type=3&theater), but I don’t hear many calling for reparations for African Americans as Yuri Kochiyama did. It’s good that young JAs relate to the recent immigrants, such as those from Muslim countries, but I wish more Asian Americans would relate to those whose ancestors were brought to the U.S. as slaves, to those who were here first and saw their lands taken away from them and to those vast numbers of descendants of Europeans who are in or near poverty due to shifts in the economy.

For many Americans, Yuri Kochiyama is seen as unpatriotic for her anti-government remarks (see the furor over the May 19, 2016 Google doodle), but she reminds us that the mindset of powerful interests that incarcerated the ethnic Japanese during World War II is still prevailing in policies and procedures that violate the rights of people of color and lower-income whites and deny them the opportunities easily accessed by residents of affluent areas. Yuri Kochiyama’s life reminds me of the Dharma teachings of considering myself and all beings as “we” - not to be divided into us (“we work hard and have morals”) versus them (“they’re lazy and just want to kill and rob”). My hope is that the Japanese Americans at Buddhist temples can become Dharma friends with diverse ethnicities and those of differing socio-economic statuses and that we categorize less and emphasize more with all the lives around us. That is, genuinely hearing the call of Namu Amida Butsu instead of just giving it lip-service.

“Vertigo” and the Thirty-Fifth Vow

from “Taste of Chicago Buddhism” December 2016

[This article assumes the reader is familiar with the Alfred Hitchcock film “Vertigo.”] The 35^th vow from the Larger Sutra has been problematic for Jodo Shinshu but the inaccuracy of the existing English translations has led to a lot of misunderstanding about the Pure Land teachings. One example of this is found in Rita M. Gross’ book Buddhism After Patriarchy where she relied on information from the scholar Diana Y. Paul. Dr. Paul strikes me as one of those Japanese Americans such as Rich Dad author Robert Kiyosaki who seem disconnected from their cultural heritage, especially from the energetic Buddhism of the common people (as opposed to the austere Zen of the samurai). Back in the 1990s, if Dr. Gross had done an internet search instead of researching academic papers, she might have come across my article (which I recommend to those who aren’t familiar with the 35^th vow). 

 https://www.urbandharma.org/udharma/womenbuddhist.html

(in 2018 the original link to LivingDharma.net isn't working)

I saw the movie “Vertigo” a long time ago and I remember it left me with a sour feeling about the story. I thought it showed the Kim Novak character as an evil woman who deserved to be punished. When the temple’s movie club group announced they would be showing “Vertigo,” I looked up some feminist analysis of the movie to prepare myself for watching it again.

What I found is that the story can be seen as the depiction of the James Stewart character’s devolving view of women. Then it hit me – the three women in the story could be correlated to the three terms in the 35^th vow: nyo-nin, nyo-shin and nyo-zo, which are all rendered as “women” in the English translations.

In an early scene of “Vertigo,” the James Stewart character Scottie is with his good friend and former fiancée Midge. She is nyo-nin, the female person – a whole personality who relates as an equal to Scottie and maybe a bit maternally. Then Scottie becomes obsessed with Madeleine – not as a person but for the perfection of her surface beauty. She is nyo-shin, the female body, for him to look at and possess. After he believes he’s lost Madeleine, he finds Judy and despite her protests, he proceeds to mold her into a copy of Madeleine. Judy to him is only a nyo-zo, a female image, a reproduction of what he once possessed.

In the 35^th vow, it is nyo-nin, the female person, who hears Namu Amida Butsu and awakens bodhi-citta, the heart/mind aspiring for awakening. Those female-persons then “renounce the state of being” nyo-shin, female bodies for males to gaze at and possess. They also refuse to be reborn – reconfigured by men – as nyo-zo, female images.

In the film “Vertigo,” Judy has a chance to assert her personhood and confess to Scottie her involvement in the scheme with Madeleine’s husband, but she throws it away in order to win his love by becoming his reproduction of Madeleine. To me, this is her real sin – to throw away her own life to satisfy her selfish craving for “acceptance” by someone who claims to be her superior. It speaks to the dilemma of women from Buddha’s time, from Shinran’s time and even our mothers’ time – we put ourselves one lifetime away from awakening by handing over our lives to those we believe are necessary for our validation.

Jodo Shinshu is not a teaching that says women are inferior because they must be reborn as men to gain Buddhahood. Instead, the 35^th vow in the Larger Sutra is a warning to women that they lose their chance for Buddhahood in their lifetime if they succumb to the dominant male view of women to be only nyo-shin (bodies) or nyo-zo (images). All persons can be reborn in the Pure Land – but historically women didn’t get to see themselves as persons during their lifetimes and had to wait for that after-life liberation from gender.

Now I can appreciate the film “Vertigo” as a feminist teaching lesson. As much as society pressures us to be the perfect embodiment of physical beauty, we will only end up with the misery Judy suffers if we dedicate our lives to pleasing the male gaze. Just as the Jodo Shinshu teachings freed the working classes from feeling subservient to the ruling class, the teachings also are for waking up women to their own personhood, to not let ourselves be ruled by the devolving view that some men will have of us as their objects to possess and control.

Singing to the Skies: Imagery of the Afterlife

From “Taste of Chicago Buddhism” September 2016

At this year’s Eastern Buddhist League conference hosted by the Seabrook Buddhist Temple (in Bridgeton, New Jersey), one of the most enjoyable workshops I’ve ever attended was the gatha singing presentation. Music professor Kimie Carrie Tanaka was fantastic in teaching us the songs, able to explain the melody lines even to those who don’t read music or who haven’t heard the songs before. Her husband, Buddhism researcher Rev. Kenneth Tanaka, commented on the lyrics. Of the five songs we covered, two were established gathas (“hymns” we sing at Sunday services), two were gathas by the late Linda Castro and one song was a surprise to me. It was “Yuyake Koyake” (“sunset skies”) which we usually consider a Japanese children’s song, but Rev. Ken’s description of the lyrics as imagery of “going to the Pure Land” gave the song a poignancy for me.

[Rev. Kenneth Tanaka lecturing at 2016 EBL conference]

Now I hear the song as helping us accept the death of loved ones. Currently I’m reading Mircea Eliade’s The Myth of The Eternal Return and it’s making me see our Buddhist memorial rituals as expressing the transcendence of historical time (the fact of each life’s finite existence) by connecting to a sacred sense of time (eternity in the now).

The first verse describes seeing our loved one in the process of dying. Realizing their death is near, we see them first as a blazing sunset (yuyake), then an afterglow (koyake). The sound of the temple bell is the calling to leave the finite life and so the children in the song “take each other by the hand and go home.” It reminds me that in the case of my mother-in-law, my husband said in the hospital the moment before she died, she looked up as if there was someone coming for her. It was like someone in her past, such as her dearest sister, was coming to take her hand and lead her “home.” The last line of the verse says “Let’s go home together with the crows” – so to the sound of nature’s cries and the sight of wings in the sky, our loved one leaves their worldly life to return to the origin of all life.

The second verse is how we see our loved one after they have “returned home” (as I said in an earlier post, how we see them is their “afterlife.”) There is a great round moon glowing in the night sky – we see the brilliance of their whole life. Then as we go back to our ordinary lives carrying out the whims of our deluded ego-selves (“when the little birds are dreaming”), we are reminded of the continual inspiration of our loved ones, seeing the stars twinkling in the sky.

Now I’m thinking it’s a song we can sing at memorial services. Here’s the whole song in Japanese:

Yuyake koyake de, hi ga kurete / Yama no o-tera no kane ga naru

Otete tsunaide, mina kaero / Karasu to issho ni kaerimasho

Kodomo ga kaetta, ato kara wa / Marui ookina o-tsuki sama

Kotori ga yume o miru koro wa / Sora ni wa kira-kira kin no hoshi

Tsunagari: Reality is Community

From “Taste of Chicago Buddhism” August 2016

At the international convention of Higashi Honganji (Otani-ha) temple members called “World Dobo Gathering” held this past weekend (August 27-28) in the Los Angeles area, there was only one talk that struck me even though there were many talks given by a wide variety of speakers, some I highly respect (and some, not so much). That talk, early on the first day, was part of a “young scholars” presentation, to show the general membership that there are some up and coming scholars of Buddhism interested in the Higashi sub-sect of Jodo Shinshu. Melissa Anne-Marie Curley, assistant professor at Ohio State University, was the first of the three to speak. 

[photo taken at WDG 2016]

What Melissa said really captured the essence of Buddhism, that essential message that gets lost in the presentation of Buddhism in the West by the more high profile groups, Zen, Tibetan and Theravadin (the original three wheels that Tricycle magazine referred to in its early years). It is not enough for Buddhists to learn that the individual sense of ego-self is a delusion – there has to be the experience of living as “no-self.” That direct experience of reality is found in community with all beings, which Melissa said is what the philosopher Tanabe Hajime referred to as “Amida Buddha, not a One or Many,” but beyond such categories. She said while Mahayana groups hold up the “virtuoso bodhisattva” as the model to strive for, in Jodo Shinshu, we are inspired by Shinran who honored all beings as his siblings, feeling closely related to all of them. He didn’t just call them his fellow travellers on the spiritual journey, but his esteemed (using the prefix “on-“) fellow travellers (ondobo, ondogyo).

If there is no sense of connection (tsunagari, in Japanese) to all lives, then there is no experience of reality. It’s easy for monks and certified meditation adepts to claim they are unattached to the ego-self, but if they guiltlessly look down on others as “ignorant,” “needing to be awakened,” “shallow and unskilled” etc. etc., they are the ones trapped within walls of delusion. Shinran’s teachings remind me that there is no justification for considering myself superior to anyone else, but too many other presentations of Buddhism tell people it’s okay to put others down and feel you’ve earned your perch above the unwashed masses.

The very busy two-day event had poignant moments of reality as community for me. Although as I said, I didn’t think much of some speakers’ talks, I was touched that one speaker I was very critical of gave me a lovely souvenir (omiyage, product of your home area that you give to people you visit) and it reminded me how indebted I am to him because of all the help he gave me. I always complain that these big gatherings don’t give us much time to listen to and discuss the Dharma, but this time I felt it was a Dharma lesson about the sense of community to be chanting, singing and dancing (yes, we did Tanko Bushi) with all the three hundred or so attendees that I may never know well, agree with or see again. We can’t help but feel connected by coming together. Just to eat together is literally sharing life, as the words in our before and after meal recitations remind us that we take in the nourishing substances of other living beings.

The thing we must not forget whether we gather with three hundred people from around the world at a classy hotel or attend a Sunday service at our local temple is that we are just as connected to those outside the building as we are to those inside with us. At all these Jodo Shinshu gatherings in North America, we keep hearing the refrain of “the teachings aren’t just for the ethnic Japanese – somehow we have to reach those outside the Japanese community.” If ever the karmic effects of our thoughts have power, we should be envisioning all kinds of people as our spiritual siblings. Not that we can use telepathy to draw people to our temples and make them join, but if we ourselves can feel the connection to everyone, regardless of their religion or lack of it, we are experiencing the reality of community.

So I’m very grateful to Melissa Curley for bringing out that essential message of Buddhism and pointing out the way for us to live it.

Transforming the Summer of Sorrows

From “Taste of Chicago Buddhism” July 2016

When religion cannot find a meaning for human suffering, human beings far too often become cynical, bitter, negative, and blaming. Healthy religion, almost without realizing it, shows us what to do with our pain, with the absurd, the tragic, the nonsensical, the unjust. If we do not transform our pain, we will most assuredly transmit it.
                                    -- Richard Rohr, Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality

This summer it seems like we hear of one terrible tragedy after another in the news – here in the U.S. and around the world. I wonder what can any of us do to transform the painful sadness we feel over events such as the shooting in Orlando, the killing of police officers in Dallas and Baton Rouge, the killings by police of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, the massacre in Nice, France, the crackdown on dissidents in Turkey etc. Some people believe we need to be more politically involved but I personally don’t have much faith in the two-party system right now.

As someone involved in religion, I want to talk about how our religious traditions, particularly Shin Buddhism, give us the guidance for transforming our pain, but I must dig deeply and widely to get beyond the fuzzy platitudes and find the sharp wisdom I need to hear.

In presentations on Shoshinge, I’ve said the translations of Shinran’s verses about Honen are all way off. So I tried my hand at putting into English what the words say to me:

My teacher Genku [Honen], who clarified the Buddha’s teachings,

Identified and empathized with the “good” and “evil” foolish ordinary beings.

He established in this remote [from the continent] land, the true essence from the great Teaching [Practice, Shinjin] to Realization [i.e. kyogyoshinsho]

For the spreading of the selected Primal Vow [aspiration to awaken to oneness] in this defiled world.

 [paraphrase of Honen’s Senchaku-shu:]

“The repeated return to the [stifling little] house of turning around in birth-and-death is decidedly caused by getting stuck in feelings of doubt [distrust].

The swift entrance into the [expansive] community of tranquility and unforced joy is inevitably brought about by shinjin [entrusting heart/mind].”

[photo from the Tent City Love picnic earlier this month]

What I think Shinran heard from Honen is how we must be continually opening our hearts to others and catching ourselves when the ego tries to erect any kind of barrier. In the killings, injuries and incarcerations in the news (and for many folks, it’s happening to their own families and communities), our sorrow should remind us to open our hearts wider and not hunker down in our exclusive tribe, blaming the outsiders.

Buddhism for some people becomes that gated community to keep out the riff-raff with their evil influences. Honen realized the “refuge” of the monastery was actually an encampment in denial of our interdependence with other lives, especially those who are judged as inferior. Like Prince Siddhartha leaving his family’s palace, Honen had to leave the fortress of aristocratic priests and seek out the truth that the Buddha awakened to – the truth of life as it really is: a flow of myriad elements, diverse outlooks and behaviors, a kaleidoscope of bodies and hearts/minds shifting, stumbling and soaring.

In each “Namu Amida Butsu,” we hear the scolding for our divisiveness and the insistent invitation to become more aware of the unbounded life that embraces all. How this will play out in concrete detail for me is yet to be seen.

Interfaith: Benefitting Others and Self

From “Taste of Chicago Buddhism” May 2016

One benefit of interfaith discussion is finding out how others see your religion. At the recent Universal Muslim Association of America gathering after our interfaith panel, I was sitting at dinner with one of the UMAA Chicago leaders. I told him I liked his speech about being close to God and the Quran, and he said, “I visited your temple a couple years ago in the Sacred Spaces tour.” I told him it was a different temple that was a part of that tour, not our temple. He said the visit left him with an uneasy feeling about Buddhism. “It seems to be a religion that each person comes up with his own ideas along the way. The person explaining Buddhism to the tour group kept saying, ‘In Buddhism, we listen to our inner self and follow that.’”

I told him that’s not how I see Buddhism – it’s not a “Do-it-yourself, make it up as you go along” religion. In our sect, Jodo Shinshu, we recognize there is a power beyond our ego-self and there are teachings to help us become aware of that power. I hate to speculate on who gave the explanation to the Sacred Spaces tour, but I know there are many people (including ministers) at Jodo Shinshu temples who would say the same thing, “We don’t need texts or external experts – it’s our inner voice that guides us.”

[from UMAA conference goodie-bag, a souvenir magnet]

In fact, I think a lot of people who identify as Buddhist feel that same way – that somehow Shakyamuni Buddha turned on the green light for each person to do their own thing and call it “Buddhism,” free of the restrictions of any organized form of religion. But anyone who bothers to read any bit of the sutras knows that Shakyamuni wasn’t just flapping his jaws and saying, “Don't accept what I say – go find out for yourself what the truth is.” On the contrary he was pointing out for us the pitfalls of relying on our deluded judgments and challenging us to test our fixed ideas against the flux of real life.

In addition to the oft-heard Western Buddhist rejection of “book learning,” there is the tendency to characterize Buddhism as pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps to enlightenment. In the 1990s my father was chauffeur in Minneapolis to Dr. Alfred Bloom on a lecture tour in the Midwest. At one public lecture, a man stood up and asked Dr. Bloom, “Do Buddhists believe in God?” My father said Dr. Bloom simply gave an emphatic, “No!” and the questioner promptly left the room. My father told me this story in a chuckling “What the heck!” way – but my impression is that my father and most of the people present would’ve preferred to see Dr. Bloom engage the questioner in discussion.

I feel it’s the Buddhists who close off interfaith discussions by refusing to listen to anything that references “God” with a capital G – “We don’t go that sh*t.” If we get past the label, we find much of what is said in monotheistic religions is a deeply experienced sense of tariki, the power beyond self. For example, one of the imans at the interfaith discussion said he rejects the narrow sectarian views of the militant Wahhabis. He said God’s mind is beyond our human comprehension and that the Quran says that in the diversity of life we see the beauty of creation and that includes the diversity of religious expression. So any group that claims only they follow the true way of God are deludedly believing they know God’s mind.

Humans need to be taken down a notch or ten – we think we have the answers but our attachment to our “rightness” makes us intolerant towards others. Religion, including Buddhism, has the wisdom of the ages, of the transcendent, that makes us humble listeners and more open-hearted towards others.

News of Paris and Sandra Bland

From “Taste of Chicago Buddhism” November 2015

Back in 2002 during what became known as the “Beltway Sniper Attacks,” schools in the suburban Washington D.C. area were under lockdown, keeping the students indoors. I remember hearing on the radio one father said he told his grade-school aged son, “What you are feeling now is not that unusual. There are children in many parts of the world and even here in the United States who everyday live in fear of being shot.” After the two perpetrators were captured, the children in those suburban areas could go back to being carefree playing outdoors, while even now in places around the world and in certain neighborhoods in Chicago, children are well aware that they can become the victims of violence at any moment.

I always recall that father’s words when I hear about tragedies such as the terrorist attacks in Paris – what the media plays up as so extraordinary for “nice neighborhoods” is sadly a frequent occurrence for the many who live in the midst of violent conflict. The people killed and maimed by the terrorists were enjoying typical First World pleasures – sports event in a large arena, concert by an American rock band, eating a gourmet dinner and sipping wine and espresso at a sidewalk café. The victims may not have been wealthy, but they like myself were bourgeoisie, having disposable income to spend on leisure activities. The news of Paris motivated some to bring attention to horrific massacres that had been woefully underreported – such as the April attack at a university in Kenya and the suicide bombings in Beirut. The terrorist killings in the Middle East and Africa usually take place in settings more proletariat (people working long hours to support their families) than bourgeoisie – victims were doing what people in the First, Second (former Soviet countries) and Third World mostly do, gather at the marketplace, at places of worship, at weddings and funerals, and at schools for the not-to-be-taken-for-granted opportunity of education.

With most of the news media focused on Paris, I would have missed the update on Sandra Bland were it not for Father Michael Pfleger (priest at Chicago’s St. Sabina Church) calling attention to it. I spoke about Sandra Bland at this summer’s Maida Center retreat – contrasting her arrest video with the stories of Buddhist seekers meeting their teachers, how the idea of “encounter” between two humans can go right (when one of them is free from ego-concerns) or go so very wrong. Unlike some of the other African Americans noted in news stories who died in police custody, Sandra Bland was from a bourgeois background – she was from Naperville, a suburban area west of Chicago.

What Father Pfleger was outraged about is the official report from the Texas county where Sandra Bland died – the attorneys asked the court to dismiss charges against the jailers because to them it was a clear case of suicide. They somehow read Sandra Bland’s mind and concluded she was despondent because none of her family members or friends would pay for her bail or come help her. Although there’s a possibility that Sandra Bland was suicidal due to physiological conditions, for the officials to paint her family and friends as heartlessly sending her to her death is reason for anyone to be outraged.

You may be wondering what these ramblings have to do with Buddhism. For one, Buddhism teaches us to be wary of what seems to be the truth – any person purportedly “telling the truth” is only giving a biased account of what they thought they perceived. Much of our bias is non-intentional – we are influenced by our upbringing and many internal and external factors. But from the beginning of humankind, people intentionally bend the facts to fit their agenda (I learned a lot about this in the Hebrew Bible course I took at the Pacific School of Religion one summer). So I really don’t give much credence to the news about what caused the Paris attacks – we all know how easily evidence is manipulated. But the Sandra Bland case should be especially troubling to us – anyone (particularly a person of color) can be targeted, incited, confined, possibly drugged and then reported as a suicide by parties who don’t want to admit to any transgression of society’s carefully structured rules of civilized behavior.

The other point is compassion – for the victims and the perpetrators and for many of us who are both at varying times. Shuichi Maida emphasized the Zen phrase “heijo-tei,” which Dr. Haneda translated as “flat-ordinariness.” I think it points to the ultimate equality of all beings. The people who were killed in Paris were no more special than the victims in Beirut or Kenya. The people who carried out the killings were no more evil than any of us – when we’re easily swayed to think some lives are not worthy and can be destroyed for our noble cause (think of the monks in various Asian countries resorting to violent means of “eliminating” the Muslims who don’t fit in their idea of a peaceful Buddhist state). To me “Black Lives Matter” is not a contradiction of “heijo-tei” but it’s a reminder of how much we violate the spirit of “heijo-tei” when one group is abused by those who feel superior. “Black Lives Matter” is Namu Amida Butsu – it’s being hit upsides our privileged judgmental heads and confronting us with the shining dignity of all beings. Despite what they look like, despite what we think they’ve done – they are shining with the truth of the past, present and future which we must aspire to understand with its pain and tears more deeply.

Praising a Priest and Pastor

From “Taste of Chicago Buddhism” August 2015

For studying the Larger Sukhavativyuha Sutra, I hoped to receive a lot of useful material at the all-day symposium on “Shinran and the Sutra of Immeasurable Life” at the Jodo Shinshu Center. There were six speakers with very knowledge-filled presentations but by far the most moving for me was Father Jim Fredericks. The title of his talk doesn’t sound that exciting: “Shinran, the Larger Sutra and the Hermeneutics of Hans-Georg Gadamer.” But unlike the other speakers delivering an exposition, Father Jim was opening his large heart to show us Shinran’s heart and embrace each of ours.

So here I’m not going to explain who Hans-Georg Gadamer was, but in that scholar’s hermeneutics framework, a reader approaches a classic text with many things in his background called “presuppositions” which affects how he interprets the text. In listing seven presuppositions that Shinran had in his mind as he read the Larger Sutra, Father Jim touched on Shinran the person and why he speaks to us so poignantly. The first four dealt with Shinran’s time and place and his training as a Tendai monk. But then in the fifth presupposition Father Jim pointed out that Shinran spent almost as many years as a “pastor” as he spent in the Mt. Hiei monastery. For some of us “pastor” doesn’t seem an appropriate term for Buddhist teachers, but Father Jim explained that what Shinran did in eastern Japan was pastoral work – “the care of souls,” using skillful means “to let truth arise.” He said Shinran wasn’t dumbing-down the Dharma for the uneducated farmers, but was conveying the full meaning of the Larger Sutra to them. So for any of us who are touched by the Buddhist teachings, it’s not a matter of learning them for benefitting only our own lives, but learning the universal application of those teachings through our sharing them with others.

The sixth presupposition was what Father Jim called “the metanoia at Rokkaku-do,” Shinran’s “existential realization of Dharma” in his dream of Avalokitesvara. In the seventh presupposition, Honen’s teachings are what made explicit what was implicit in Shinran’s Rokkaku-do experience – “grasped never to be abandoned.”

[photo by Janis H.]

Maybe it’s just my personal history of being rejected that made that phrase so striking to me throughout my study of Jodo Shinshu – “grasped never to be abandoned.” Now I heard it from a Catholic priest in Berkeley but then I found myself remembering being back in Kyoto (during my time at Otani University in the mid-1980s) making a pilgrimage to the Rokkaku-do after a disturbing dream about being condemned for my defiled longing for the one who had rejected me. I was brought back to the moment when Father Jim called me by name to translate “hakarai.” Before I realized he was addressing me (since I was one of the few people in the audience he was familiar with), other people in the room responded “Calculation!” Such is my hakarai – yet despite my deserving to be condemned (for that one old defilement and many, many new ones), I am grateful for being led to hear “grasped never to be abandoned” in the hongan, innermost aspiration described in the Larger Sutra.

The upcoming three days is the conference on “Subjectivity in Pure Land Buddhism” but yesterday I couldn’t escape my own subjectivity. Yet in witnessing Father Jim’s humility and open-mindedness, I am made aware of the great power of that which takes in all and excludes none. Who says a European-descent male Catholic can’t be one of the buddhas who enable us to hear the Name of Namu Amida Butsu?

Sharing Merit and Material

From “Taste of Chicago Buddhism” July 2015

What did Rev. Kobata of the Buddhist Church of San Francisco say in his presentation at the “Buddhist-Catholic Dialogue on Suffering, Liberation, and Fraternity” (June 23-27, Rome)? Pretty much what he covered in his Dharmathon talk in April - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Bulb3IHGgI

Since I was at the Jodo Shinshu Center in Berkeley for the Dharmathon, I heard Rev. Kobata’s talk live, so hearing him give a very similar talk in Rome was a disappointment to me. But it was well received by the Catholic delegates – I heard the priests call it a “great homily” and my roommate Sister Anne McCarthy said everyone was buzzing about it at lunch. Later I was grateful for Rev. Kobata’s talk because it gave me material I could use in translating the eko-mon “merit-transference verse.”

Ministers “steal” each other’s material all the time – it’s all part of sharing the Dharma. There’s no need for me to feel flattered when younger ministers tell me they’ve used stories from my presentations in their Dharma talks – it wasn’t really my material to begin with but what I received from Kiyozawa Manshi, Akegarasu Haya and Maida Shuichi in their modern interpretations of Shinran and Shakyamuni Buddha.

During the dialogue we enjoyed hearing songs and chants from various Buddhist and Catholic traditions. Before going to Rome, some of us decided Bishop Noriaki Ito would lead our “Japanese chanting” group. We had the slot right before meditation on Friday morning, so we decided Rev. Alan Senauke would introduce the meditation portion. He said the meditation should be closed with a reading of a “merit-transference” verse but Rev. Nori said that the eko-mon was already included in our chanting. So I said we could read the English translation of the eko-mon. I didn’t have one handy with me so Rev. Nori told me to go ahead and give my own translation.

The term that hung me up in the eko-mon is “o-jo.” I have explained it to newcomers to Jodo Shinshu that “go to be born into the land of peace” doesn’t have to mean you die and get reincarnated in some afterlife paradise. So for this group of Catholics who believe in heaven and Buddhists who mostly believe in reincarnation, I wanted to put forth the modern Jodo Shinshu presentation.

Then it occurred to me to use something from Rev. Kobata’s talk that the whole group had heard the day before – his acronym for ALIVE. He had quoted Howard Thurman, “Don't ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive and then go do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” And Rev. Kobata said that we come ALIVE: Aware, Loving, Inspired, Valued and Engaged. So this is how my translation of the eko-mon came out:

            I aspire to share these virtues

            Equally with all beings

            And in all of us together

              The heart of awakening arises

            And we go forth, coming alive

              That is, as Rev. Kobata told us, we become A.L.I.V.E.

              --Aware, Loving, Inspired, Valuing, and Engaged--

            Coming ALIVE in the realm of peace and joy

I was fortunate to meet the real life example of Rev. Kobata’s acronym – Papa Francesco. Even though he spoke and moved with weariness, in the meeting with our group of 50-some people, Pope Francis was very much aware and loving. He’s definitely inspired by Jesus Christ and all the great saints, particularly the enlightened St. Francis of Assisi. And besides making each of us feel valued (he took a moment to read my name tag before shaking my hand), in his Loudato Sii he reminds us to appreciate all the lives that comprise the planet earth. And finally, you can’t ask for a more engaged pope – how easy it has been for popes (and Buddhist lamas, gomonshus, roshis et al) to act aloof and above everyone else, but Francis uses his high profile position to call us into interaction, across races, countries and religions. And although he has yet to promote the ordination of women, at least he called off the Vatican attack dogs on the American nuns, so I believe in time he’ll set the stage for women to take a more leading role in Catholicism. He definitely showed no sign of discriminating against anyone in our group for their gender, skin color or status (lay or clerical). Unlike some of the Buddhist monks at our conference who were blatantly sexist, the Pope showed each one of us his utmost respect.