Memorial Day Weekend

Some members (and many guests) assume that closing the temple on Memorial Day weekend is so we can enjoy the holiday weekend with family and friends.

In fact, although the temple door is closed and locked, we’re open for the business of expressing our gratitude—particularly for those who have gone before us, making our temple and our very lives possible.  We’ve just moved ourselves to a nearby cemetery and mortuary where many of our original pioneer members are interred.  Most Shin Buddhist Temples in America take the opportunity of Memorial Day weekend to memorialize our past members with a graveside service – a chant and a short dharma message usually – and we have been doing so since our founding.

If parades are the secular and civic way to celebrate Memorial Day, this graveside service is our tradition’s way of celebrating and honoring our past.

Buddhists consider memorial services to be a significant occasion to remember their deceased with feelings of gratitude and love.  It is not held for the sake of the deceased but for the living.  We have many opportunities for these family memorial services (hoji), as well as temple-wide opportunities at Obon and, in some temples, in monthly memorials (shotsuki hoyo).   Our Memorial Day weekend service is not like our family memorials, but it’s a wonderful way to practice gratitude and remembering during an American holiday celebrating those virtues.

Gotan-E: Birth of Shinran Shonin

If you are keeping count, the rhythm of a year in our temple life includes three celebrations related to the life and death of the historical Buddha (we have celebrated two of these so far), and two special services commemorating the founder of Shin Buddhism, Shinran Shonin.  Gotan-E is the second of these two celebrations we encounter this year.

Gotan-e means “coming-down-birthday-gathering”.  Another name for the occasion is Fujimatsuri (wisteria festival).  The double-wisteria crest is the emblem of Nishi Hongwanji, our mother temple in Kyoto, Japan.  The pendant wisteria is a vine that needs the support of a structure in order to bloom, symbolically representing humans who need the support of others.  The downward-hanging wisteria flower suggests humility and sincere reverence to Amida Buddha, our symbol of compassion and wisdom.

Shinran’s life and teachings represent one of the most significant developments in the history of Buddhism.  Before then only the privileged and priests received spiritual instruction.  Shinran Shonin taught that even the poor rice farmer is embraced by the Buddha’s infinite light and compassion, and the truth of the Dharma and shinjin (awakening) are accessible to everyone without discrimination.

Shinran was born in 1173 CE and lived a life of profound spiritual depth.  Although we call him Shonin (great teacher), he called himself Gutoku, meaning “unshaven ignorant one”.  He looked deeply into his heart and mind n his search for truth.  He said, “I know truly how grievous it is that I, Gutoku Shinran, am sinking in an immense ocean of desires and attachments and am lost in vast mountains of fame and advantage.”

Through his understanding of the Dharma, Shinran awakened to a deep appreciation of life’s wisdom and compassion that embraces each of us here and now, just as we are.  In this realization he experienced freedom from life’s sufferings and set out a path that all of us can follow.  He said, “May your spiritual journey allow you to accept whatever is happening in your life.  This gift of life is your practice.  Life itself is your teaching.”

At the mother temple in Kyoto, in addition to Gotan-E service, a tea ceremony is held in the Pavilion of the Flying Cloud—a building given to Nishi Hongwanji that was owned by the Emperor Hidyoshi in the 1600s.  A classic Noh performance is also delivered on the oldest Noh stage in the world.

We will be a little less formal in our celebration after the service (think “potluck”) but we will be no less sincere in our gratitude for our teacher who sacrificed and suffered so much to attain the understanding he spent the rest of his long life sharing with ordinary people like us.

Filial Piety Sutra

If it’s May, it must be when we celebrate Mother’s Day.  Mother’s Day in Japan (haha-no-hi) is celebrated on the same second Sunday in May as the rest of the globe.  In the US, Mother’s Day officially goes back to 1914, while in Japan it dates to the Showa period (beginning in 1926) when all mothers were celebrated on the birthday of the Empress Kojun, mother of Emperor Akihito. Since World War II, it has been celebrated with flowers such as carnations as gifts, and is one of the busiest days of the year for restaurants.

Although it is not a Buddhist celebration, nor even a Confucian celebration, it was Confucius who codified filial piety as one of the highest virtues to exercise.  And there is a Buddhist sutra called The Filial Piety Sutra – about the deep kindness of parents and the difficulty of repaying that kindness.  Although this sutra is not one we focus on (we chant the three Pure Land sutras), for this month, it seemed appropriate to reproduce a part of the Filial Piety Sutra.

Ananda, the Buddha’s personal attendant, asked the Buddha, “How can one repay one’s mother’s kindness and virtues?”  The Buddha responded with a description of the relationship between the mother and embryo, and continuing through the birth of a child and continuing through its entire life.

“There are ten types of kindnesses bestowed by the mother on the child,” said the Buddha in this sutra:

The first is the kindness of providing protection and care while the child is in the womb.

The second is the kindness of bearing suffering during the birth.
The third is the kindness of forgetting all the pain once the child has been born.

The fourth is the kindness of eating the bitter herself and saving the sweet for the child.

The fifth is the kindness of moving the child to a dry place and lying in the wet herself.

The sixth is the kindness of suckling the child at her breast, nourishing and bringing up the child.

The seventh is the kindness of washing away the unclean.

The eight is the kindness of always thinking of the child when it has traveled far.

The ninth is the kindness of deep care and devotion.

The tenth is the kindness of ultimate pity and sympathy.

At that time, upon hearing the Buddha speak about the kindness and virtue of parents, everyone in the Great Assembly wept silent tears and felt searing pain in their hearts. They reflected deeply, simultaneously brought forth shame and said to the Buddha, "World Honored One, how can we repay the deep kindness of our parents?"

The Buddha replied, "Disciples of the Buddha, if you wish to repay your parents' kindness, write out this Sutra on their behalf. Recite this Sutra on their behalf. Repent of transgressions and offenses on their behalf. For the sake of your parents, make offerings to the Triple Gem. For the sake of your parents, hold the precept of pure eating. For the sake of your parents, practice giving and cultivate blessings. If you are able to do these things, you are being a filial child."

May we all remember with deep gratitude our own mothers, mothers everywhere, and our Mother Earth, not just on Mother’s Day, but every day of our lives.

Meditation: Practice

As noted in the previous post, meditation has not traditionally associated with Shin Buddhist practice in this country, but is beginning to be incorporated into some temple practices, including ours. 
Socho Ogui, retired bishop of the Buddhist Churches of America gave his thoughts on meditation in Shin Buddhism as well as other experiences of Zen and Shin Buddhist ways of thoughts.  “Having done the Zen style of practice and the Jodo Shinshu style of living,” he said, “they just seem to meld together so that I don’t see any conflict.”

When he was a Shin Buddhist minister in Cleveland, he remembers:  “six out of every ten people who telephoned the temple inquired about learning to meditate.  At first I was a little hesitant.  I didn’t have experience teaching meditation.”  So he would express his regrets and suggest they try someplace else.  Eventually he realized:  “if you keep going like this, losing six out of ten people interested in Buddhism, you’ll bankrupt your store.”  If meditation was the door people wanted to use to explore Buddhism, why not? 

Socho Ogui had been born the son of a Jodo Shinshu priest in Japan, but his father was very good friends with the local Zen priest and they both went around the local village to request donations for the poor.  His father sent him to the Zen temple to live for a summer, perhaps to expose him to the zen life.  And when he visited Shunryu Suzuki Roshi, the zen priest said, “You know, there’s nothing wrong with coming to practice meditation.”  So he did, and it felt like recalling his childhood. 


While Shin Buddhism in this country hasn’t traditionally included meditation practice, in Japan Shin and Zen are sometimes considered different sides of the same coin.  Some Zen masters die with the words Namu Amida Butsu on their lips.  Some Shin Buddhist ministers and temple members sit and meditate at temple weekly or monthly.  Socho Ogui feels that the founders of the various Japanese schools of Buddhism had to identify their uniqueness in order to be recognized by the government in medieval days.  So they made a special effort to establish unique traditions.  But for us, a zen style of practice and a Jodo Shinshu style of living just seem to meld together.

Meditation Service

Twice a month in the evening, we offer a meditation service at our temple.  Meditation is not a practice historically associated with Shin Buddhism the way it is with other forms (particularly Zen).  Historically our practice is listening to the Dharma, and reciting or chanting the Nembutsu, (Namo Amida Butsu).

But, particularly in the United States and especially with members who were not born into the practice, meditation is not only accepted but expected.  So we offer this service two nights a month, inviting the community to join us as well.

The meditation service consists of the same components as our Sunday service—burning incense, sitting meditation, standing meditation, chanting, dharma message, discussion afterwards—but the greater emphasis and time is spent in meditation.  Participants bring their own meditation cushion, use the ones provided by the temple or (more usually) sit in the hondo pews.  No previous meditation experience is required—simple guidelines are given at the beginning of the service, and the actual sitting meditation is just two ten-minute periods between a five minute standing meditation.

Before the meditation service, we offer a 20-minute yoga stretching session in the temple foyer.  These 20 minutes help prepare your body and mind for meditation with simple yoga-style stretching, calming and focusing techniques.  Again, no previous experience is necessary.  Techniques are first demonstrated and then performed either standing or sitting on yoga mats, or using chairs.  No special clothing is required.

You do not have to attend yoga stretching to attend the meditation service any more than you have to practice meditation!  “It’s all good” as the expression goes, and all of these practices are gateways to receiving the Dharma, the teachings we accept and live by.