Buddhist Thoughts Newsletter
Dear Taylor, Kacie and all the daughters and sons of BCA,
Taylor, the question you asked me the other day, “How does my generation live with all the hate which my government seems to be espousing and the anger my generation and I feel as a result? Does Buddhism have an answer?” That was a great question, Tay, and I have struggled with how to answer you. In many ways, these questions are similar to the questions I had when I was your age, during the civil rights movement of the 60s and 70s.
My first encounter with “Shodo” or “Shu-ji,” Japanese calligraphy was in March, 1937, when I joined the “Shugakudan (Young Study Group) to study Japanese language and culture in Tokyo for two years with 14 teenagers from Colorado and Nebraska. Rev. Kozen Tsunemitsu was the central figure in the educational program. We trained in classrooms at Nichi-bei Home, our dormitory in Nakano-ku under special teachers, including four times per week lessons from judo and kendo masters.
Recently I was asked about the Jodo Shinshu view of salvation: “Is Salvation based upon good works or is it grace?” This is a very important religious question. Not only is this a Jodo Shinshu question, it is a question asked within Christianity and Islam. I am not a religious scholar by any measure, but I have begun this article with three examples of religious verse regarding salvation. Within Jodo Shinshu, I have quoted Tannisho Chapter 1. Without question Jodo Shinshu falls into the category of salvation by grace. There are many Buddhists that don’t like the term “salvation” and will ask, “who/what are we saved from?” The answer is quite simple; “we are saved from ourselves!”
As a result of “Executive Order 9066”, approximately 120,000 persons of Japanese ancestry were forcibly moved off the West Coast of the United States into concentration camps, mostly to remote areas of the country. Of those 120,000 individuals, roughly two thirds were American citizens. In one of those concentration camps, called “Topaz”, in a desert area near Delta, Utah, near the Nevada border, the Buddhist Churches of America (BCA) was formed.
During the past few weeks with all the snow, we finally seemed to break through some of the drought that has afflicted our state for the past few years. Whenever the snows fall, I get to plow the snow that covers my driveways and the sidewalk in front of my house. I get a strange pleasure from plowing with my large 13 horsepower snow thrower that can cut a 30” swath through the snow.
