Well I’m back from my break during which time I traveled to the United States for a vacation and to see friends. As Gerald mentioned over at Level 8 Buddhist; whilst I was there I had the opportunity to meet up with him and attend a service at his home temple in Seattle.

Gerald was really welcoming and gave me a tour of the temple which is quite large with a number of sub-shrines, offices and classrooms in addition to the main honzan. People were very friendly and given this I wasn’t surprised to discover there were about ten other first-time visitors attending the service too. I was particularly interested that on entering the Buddha Hall everyone who didn’t have an o-keza with them was given one to wear for the duration. Whatever the actual reasons for this I thought it was a good symbol for the open atmosphere of the betsuin community.

The Buddha Hall was a pretty standard Jodo Shinshu layout (though with pews and considerably larger than our little Three Wheels dojo) but the service I attended was significantly different from what I am used to. I should clarify however that the format at the betsuin was that of a mixed language service (incorporating a family/children’s element) followed by a separate Japanese language service. I attended the former only. Anyway unlike our services at Three Wheels there was no Amida Kyo or Shoshinge but rather a great many gathas both ancient and modern - some sung in accompaniment to piano music - and the Jusiege which was chanted to a very slow, even beat. There were two Dharma talks; one aimed at the children present and one for the adults after the childen left to attend Sunday school.

The latter talk was by Rev. Don Castro who is extremely passionate about environmental issues and who made the contention that “to be a Buddhist is necessarily to be an ecologist”. He talked at length about both this conviction and also practical things that the sangha can and are doing about reducing their environmental impact. One thing that stuck in my mind was his comment that the Nintendo company, a giant money-making corporation, has a better environmental strategy than most Buddhist temples! Overall I found Rev. Castro’s talk very interesting and refreshing though I am unused to such matters being raised in Dharma talks and perhaps would have liked him to have linked his concerns more deeply to Buddhist thought and practice.

After the service a large part of the sangha adjourned to a chapel/meeting room in the basement for donuts, coffee and conversation and Gerald put me on the spot by getting me to introduce myself! :-) Luckily I have a fair amount of experience of public speaking as several of the older and very feisty sangha members threw some challenging questions my way about the state of Jodo Shinshu in Europe. One gentleman in particular also reminded me of a number of Nishi Honganji Jodo Shinshu priests who lived in the UK in the past and contributed to the transmission of the Pure Land Dharma to these shores prior to the arrival of the lineage to which I belong.

I also got the chance to talk to Rev. Don Castro at length and he told me about his vision of a global ‘EcoSangha’. You can checkout his website here; but essentially he is hoping to encourage Buddhists of all denominations to unite and do their part for the environment. As a symbol of this he suggests that Buddhists, of whatever tradition, could all enshrine a statue or image of Shakyamuni Buddha making the earth-touching mudra in a secondary position in their shrines. We also discussed the taya system which we have in our Shogyoji tradition and he was very interested as Seattle Betsuin has some land that they hope to develop in the future and could possibly form temporary residences for sangha members.

Speaking to both Gerald and Rev. Castro I got a sense of the Seattle BCA as confronted by the multiple and difficult challenges inherent in any large multi-cultural community, but also as possessed of a very strong sangha-spirit that will hopefully enable them to overcome these and continue to develop positively as new generations - including Gerald’s little girl - grow up.

If I was a prospective new member of the betsuin my only reservation would be (based purely on my fleeting visit) that there was a slight lack of vigour to the services; particularly in regard to people seeming reluctant to raise their voices. This is something I’ve noticed even in Honganji head temples in Japan and tends to bother me. Of course loud voices do not inherently indicate faith and may be the result of pride but generally speaking I think that the joy of anjin lends a certain energy to gongyo which is very discernable. Overall a lack of energy in services makes me think that people lack confidence and are taking their lead too much from the priesthood. I wonder if they have small study groups or chanting practice groups at the betsuin so that individuals can gain confidence in the teachings and practice through mutual encouragement and closer inter-action with priests and fellow devotees (a question for you Gerald)?

That said Seattle Betsuin and the BCA have decades more experience of the challenges of sangha development and social integration than our little dojo here in the UK and I think there is a great deal we can learn from them. I’m really grateful to Gerald and everyone at Seattle Betsuin for making me so welcome and I hope that I will be able to develop my encounter with them in the future.

I hope you have all been keeping well. Namuamidabutsu, K