Weekend at the Temple (Feb ‘08)

I had a busy and invigorating time at the temple this weekend; doing gardening, helping with translation and liturgical projects, participating in the twice daily services and faith meetings, talking with friends, and - on Sunday - attending the February Eza meeting.

It was the first time I had seen Sensei since his most recent trip to Japan and he brought me up to date on various news including the fact that an agreement has finally been reached whereby the publication of many of D.T. Suzuki’s out-of-print or unpublished English-language writings will be undertaken by the London Buddhist Society. Excitingly the materials apparently include a wealth of writings on Shin Buddhism. On which topic; at the weekend I also watched a documentary about D. T. Suzuki (featuring Sensei a couple of times) which is now available to buy on DVD.

At the Sunday meeting Professor JW, one of the trustees of the temple, gave a talk about Buddhism, Science and Education in which he suggested that a better understanding of the scientifically explicable basis of much human behaviour may serve as a support to both spiritual introspection and also such matters as parenting. For example he described how the discovery that people have different circadian rhythms throughout their lives has helped teachers to re-structure school timetables so that students are learning when they are at their peak potential for it in the course of a day. Given that Prof. JW is an art historian and not a scientist I was impressed by his level of research, and another trustee who was present and is a geneticist raised no objections to anything he said. For myself, whilst I didn’t agree with all Prof. JW said, finding some of his illustrations from nature to be tainted by anthropomorphism, his basic point was I think a good one. An actual example of Prof. JW’s thesis in action might be seen in a post by ‘Gerald’ at Level 8th Buddhist who wrote recently about how a combination of mindfulness practice and scientific understanding of the metabolism helped him losing weight.

During my stay I also met a Japanese couple who were visiting the temple to pay their respects to their son who died in the UK whilst he was a student over a decade ago. I was moved, as always, by the living relationship that continues to exist between members of our sangha and other people regardless of the alteration that the veil of death makes to the actual form of that dynamic. Both of these people are also accomplished in various arts such as cooking and painting, neither of which were their main occupations before they retired, but which they have pursued with such enthusiasm and dedication as to become veritable masters of what they humbly term their ‘hobbies’. In short they were very inspiring individuals!

The main and most significant part of my weekend though was a lively discussion that several of us - English, American and Japanese – got into around issues such as culture, freedom, human rights, and ideals. I’m going to mull it over for a while and will hope to post about it here fairly soon but suffice it to say that it has raised many questions in my mind about to what extent I hold many Western assumptions and/or perspectives which are not shared by my Japanese friends. Similarly whilst I no longer subscribe to the existence of the deity in which I was raised to believe, I still appear to hold quite firmly to some Christian and European philosophical values which I am not convinced my Japanese Shin Buddhist friends do. Lots to think about …

 

Weekend at the Temple (Jan ‘08)

Well I’m back from a brief two night visit to the temple. Sensei is away at the moment but I had a good time talking to Jishin, Rev. KI, and other Dharma friends. I also took the opportunity to make use of Sensei’s extensive and chaotic library and have quite a few interesting quotes and resources to post here over the next week.

In my home gongyo recently I’ve been trying hard to improve my wasan chanting and kept stumbling over a couple of parts that didn’t sound right. When I spoke to Jishin he knew the parts I meant and we concluded that our temple must follow somekind of oral tradition which diverges slightly from what is written in the sūtra book. Later I had the chance to raise this with Rev. KI and he looked positively shocked and told me that we follow the traditional Higashi Honganji liturgy to the letter. Oops! It turned out in the end that it all came down to the notation used in the Otani Gongyo Shu. What I was reading as the hiragana for ‘gu’ was really an almost identical symbol meaning ‘repeat previous two syllables again but with a ‘g’ sound’. Anyways it just goes to show that it always pays to consult the experts!

A strange thing; spiritual, psychological … perhaps both …. I found that chanting with Jishin listening to me it came very naturally and I remembered more easily how the wasan should sound. This in contrast to often times when I chant on my own. The awareness of another … an Other … brings out the heart of the chanting. It is an interesting thing to think about and reflect on. The variations in daily gongyo are of course reflective of the interplay of the Light and the clouds of our hindrances. A book I read at the temple was called Monshin: Hearing/Faith but one tends to think of hearing on our part rather than our being heard. That’s not quite right though …. its more that beyond the cacophany of the ego-dialogue there is a receptive, patient silence … like that of a parent or a music teacher perhaps. A silence that encourages and teaches, that speaks volumes …

Jishin is really busy at work at the moment but hopes to be free to start blogging here in the near future. Apparently he has lots of notes and scraps of paper hoarded away!

I hope you all had a good weekend too …

(First posted 20/01/08 and edited and updated 21/01/08)

 

Maintaining the Temple

Living Pure Land Buddhism can be called dynamic symbolism because it always involves people in creative activities such as building stupas or temples and in purifying or cleaning them as part of their daily lives. Their pure, living faith, the innermost spirituality underpinning such creative activities, does not allow them to stagnate or to become attached to anything anywhere, instead it drives them on in a quest to benefit both themselves and others.” (Rev. Kemmyo T Sato)

On re-launching this blog I wanted to try to make it as much rooted in down-to-earth everyday realities as in doctrinal discussion. I don’t know whether I’ve managed that or not. Right now though our temple is gearing up for the final major sangha meeting of the year, and it reminded me of the incredible amount of hard work it takes to keep the temple clean and pure, and a conducive environment to Dharma practice. Most of this heavy burden falls on the two resident priests and their families, and any lay-people resident or staying in the taya. Local followers and neighbours also provide a lot of support, and then members from further away help when they are visiting, or offer other kinds of assistance such as translating materials, writing reports and so on.

When I first started attending the temple, many years ago, I took the wonderful qualities of the temple very much for granted. Gradually though I have come to realise that not only are they the result of great effort, but they are in fact a dynamic expression of the faith of each and every person involved. In that sense the preparation and maintenance of the temple is an act of gratitude of each member of the sangha towards the Buddha, the saying of namuamidabutsu, and conversely for the person enjoying that environment they are all the hearing of namuamidabutsu. Looked at in this way every element of the temple becomes more than the sum of its parts and transports one’s awareness. Each polished shrine ornament, the offerings of flowers, the garden, the food people bring … all direct one’s attention to the Infinite Light and Life. Namuamidabutsu.