Buddhist Thoughts is the SLC Buddhist Temple newsletter which is mailed to Temple members each month. Here we provide excerpts from archival Buddhist Thoughts.

2003 November

Thanksgiving and Family
by J.K. Hirano

Many things occur in human lives. But, whatever difficulties or sadness that we may have experienced, if we can look upon our lives as being rare and wondrous events, then we will truly have lived. If we are able to realize this realm of gratitude, in which we are able to live and die in gassho, then what else could we need.

-- Rev. Jitsuen Kakehashi

Since I was a child, Thanksgiving has been one of my favorite holidays. It was a time of our family getting together and laughing, eating and enjoying ourselves. In many ways, those were the times that have helped form my personal feelings about family. Over the years, where and even whom I have celebrated Thanksgiving with has changed.

When I was young, it was just the Hirano and Furubayashi families that would get together at our home. My immediate family, Jichan, Bachan, Furubayashi family, six adults and six kids, would all some how fit into our very small home. When we get together now, we laugh at how we were all able to fit together with the kids eating on a blue door converted into a short table, set up in the living room and Jichan, Bachan and our parents eating in the kitchen. Looking at this from our family's current circumstances and perspective, it may seem a little meager and cramped. However, as a child, I thought it was like a banquet table set for royalty. It was from these times together, that I learned the importance of family's enjoying life together.

While I was in Japan studying, there was no national Thanksgiving holiday. We students began having our own Thanksgiving dinners at Rev. Dennis and Yoko Yoshikawa's temple in Kyoto. It was quite an interesting and very enjoyable time. With the small kitchens and ovens in Japan, it was sometimes difficult to make the same things we had all grown accustomed to in the United States. Rev. Dennis and Yoko would cook one small turkey in their oven. Rev. Marvin and Gail Harada would cook another one in their toaster sized oven in their apartment. Rev. David Matsumoto would take the train to Kobe to get pumpkin pies at the one Marie Callendar's restaurant in the Kansai area. At my family's Thanksgiving in the U.S. we always had ham to go along with our turkey, so I would go to the food department of Takashimaya department store and buy a big ham. The Japanese aren't used to selling ham other than in slices, so when I would order the ham, they remembered me from year to year. The strange Japanese looking gaijin that would buy 20,000 yen worth of ham every November.

Any other Sansei or American students that we knew studying in the Kyoto area was invited. It was a wondrous amalgam of foods that we would enjoy. Some one would make chili or buy root beer, things not readily available in Japan. I even tried to make peach pies one year. The friendships and feeling of family that we developed in Japan, remain to this day. Family wasn't just about blood relations. It was about individuals sharing our lives with one another, coming together in mutual support for one another's well being. Although Rev. Dennis Yoshikawa passed away a few years ago, that spirit of generosity for us foreign students will never be forgotten. It is something we all try to continue, wherever we are.

Now we have Thanksgiving at my home. Jichan, Bachan, my mom are no longer physically with us, yet they remain a part of our gathering in spirit. Our family has grown, to where there are now about 30 of us that get together. The cousins have married and now have children of their own. Every year, I am grateful for the good things that have blessed my family and friends. Yet it is often the difficult events in our lives that I am the most grateful for. All human beings have their up and downs. Each family experiences, death, sickness, separation from loved ones. It is a part of human life. However, through it all, we have each remained together. It is the foundation that was set so many years ago, in a little house on second east. As we say Namo Amida Butsu, Itadakimasu, we will remember the good times as well as difficulties, that have allowed us to come together once again. Laying the foundations of family for the next generation. I hope that each of you will do the same.

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