This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Well, good morning, members of Green Gulch and anyone who is gathered today. I'm so glad to join you. And, well, I would like to say some things about... I was instructed, I think, to say some things about myself, to self-introduce, but also some of the upcoming activities that are surrounding this moment in our nation's history when... these issues around race and religion have been coming to the fore.

[01:04]

So I hope I can say a few words from kind of Dharma or Buddhist perspective about these subjects. And I'm also very curious to hear from all of you in our kind of Dharma exchange during question and answer. So first, I wanted to start with... A little bit of who am I? And that to me is actually a very Buddhist question. I think because all of us are in Soto Zen tradition, we know Zen Master Dogen's own words on this matter. He says to study the way, a Buddhist way, Buddha way is to study the self. He follows that with to study the self is to forget the self. And to forget the self is to be actualized by the 10,000 things. And to be actualized by 10,000 things is to drop off the body and mind of oneself and body and mind of others.

[02:06]

And that no trace of enlightenment remains. And this no trace continues continuously or endlessly. And so this is a very beautiful... verses from uh or stanzas from uh the writing of uh zemas dogen and when i was growing up this question of who am i uh to study myself and to study buddhism uh kind of came together uh when uh in my own family background uh my mother's side of the family japanese side was a very buddhist family and my grandfather very like a buddhist leader and then On my father's side, he's from the UK and he has now lived in Japan for over 60 years, I guess. But, you know, he's British and so Anglican or the Church of England. So I would, growing up, go both to Buddhist temple and also to St.

[03:10]

Albans Church in Tokyo, which is an Anglican church. And so fairly soon, you know, in teenage kind of years, I think it's not uncommon for people who come from a multi-racial or multi-ethnic or multi-religious family to question like, who am I? Am I Japanese or am I British? Am I Buddhist or am I Christian? This kind of question of identity. And so for me, more than Christianity, When I was a teenager, I became very drawn to the Buddhist tradition, in part because, you know, sometimes in Japanese way we call it chudo, or middle way. But somehow I felt that on this question of identity, Buddhism had a very flexible way that somehow, how should we say, respected in-betweenness.

[04:14]

or respected not having to have only one essential identity. And so I would come to learn, I think my entry into Buddhism was through learning about, oh, okay, the self is neither permanent nor independent from everything else, but it's actually interdependent and always dynamically shifting and changing. And that felt more in line. with my own experience growing up. And so I became to be more drawn to the Buddhist tradition and then to the Christian tradition. And eventually I came to meet my teacher. I was maybe 20 years old and I met the person who'd be my ordination teacher. And... I grew up in Tokyo, but partially in some parts of the area in a place called Nagano, Nagano Prefecture. They had the Japanese Alps kind of mountainous place.

[05:18]

They had the Winter Olympics there many years ago. So this is a place I grew up in. My small town in Nagano, I think population is about 9,000 people. So small town and then big city, Tokyo. That was my life. And in Nagano, my teacher has a temple called Kotakuji Temple. I remember when I was first meeting with him, he said, you know, you're interested in Buddhism and interested in pursuing more deeply. One thing you should recall is that to be the Buddhist person, you should be free. Free person. Your mind should not have to get stuck anywhere. So if you think you are... British, or if you are stuck on the idea, I am Japanese, then that's like getting stuck in some, attached to one side or another side. And he said, we, in Buddhism, we do something called Jijyuzanma, like a samadhi of the mind that is freely moving.

[06:24]

And can you do that? Or would you like to enter that? So I said, yes, I'd like to try. And... A few, maybe two years later, I finally got the courage to say, I would like to become, you know, pursue more and become a Buddhist priest. And then I think many of you, you know, this type of situation where Zen teacher says something like this, like, well, you have been saying you want to become Buddhist priest. And do you even, in fact, know what it means to become a Buddhist priest? This kind of question, you know, you don't want to answer strangely. So I just said, I don't know. Please tell me. So now he has to tell me something. And so he said, well, when you become a Buddhist priest, you will have no more holidays. That was the first and main thing he said to me.

[07:26]

Initially, he said in Japanese, you will have no holidays. And he explained, you know, When you put the robes on, when you become Buddhist priest and you have robes and you take on that identity, it means how can I help you to everyone else? And so when you are at the temple, especially this temple in Nagano, it's a parish temple, has about 800 family members. And if one of the parish or temple membership... people come to you, let's say 8 p.m. at night, and they're very worried about their child in junior high school who's been anxious about passing their exam. Whatever the consultation is, he's like, you can't say our temple closes at this hour and it's too late for you to talk to me. So he said, you will have no more of something called your time. You will have no more holiday.

[08:29]

Everyone else gets Sunday off or weekends, you know, Obom period in Japan or New Year's, holiday for everyone. It's the busiest time at the temple. So he said, given all of this, would you still like to become a Buddhist priest? So I said, yes, I would still like to become a Buddhist priest. Then his answer was, well, then you must make every day a holiday. And that part he said it in English. And I think what he meant, you know, over the years I had to mull that over, but I think he said it in English because, you know, on the one hand, it means there is no day that is not a holy day or sacred day. It's not like a Christian way of like what you set aside one day or Islam, you know, Friday prayer, like every day. is a holy day. But also, it means also, I think, however busy you are, you become in your life, if you have the right mindset, you know, when we were growing up as kids in Japan, there was a cartoon, TV cartoon show called Ikkyu-san.

[09:40]

It's about the famous medieval Rinzai Zen master Ikkyu. Ikkyu means one ikkyu, rest. It's like one big holiday. So that's the kind of mind we need for the to become Buddhist priest. Very busy, but in that busyness, we have some very still point and also kind of free mind where we can be on holiday, relaxed in the most busy, stressful times. That's our type of practice for the priests. And so that's how I became. I was 22, I guess, when I became. I'm 50 almost this year. So about 30 years ago, I became involved in Buddhist way. And, you know, over the years, I've thought about this question of identity.

[10:45]

And there is a question inside of people who study religion. these type of topics from a, say, multiracial perspective, people who have two languages, background, or cultures, or something like that. And they say there are four main patterns that people who have this type of thing, situation in their karmic makeup have to deal with, or tend to lean towards. So they say some people lean towards essentialist identity. So that's the idea that, you know, I may be all these things, but essentially or foundationally, I'm X. And so people kind of pick and choose one thing to kind of, that's one way that some people deal with multiplicity. Other people deal with it situationally. So sometimes we call it code switching. But like when I'm in Japan, I think I may act a little bit differently when I'm in the United States.

[11:46]

Even though my wife is always making fun of me, I'm on the phone with some people in Japan and apparently I'm bowing on the phone and like my voice modulates and according to the honorific, and then she's like, they can't see you during the phone call. But somehow I'm kind of like situationally, my identity, my manners, et cetera, shifts and changes. I think this is a fairly common situation. thing too. And then integrational, like a third way is people say, well, I don't like to have a different kind of self I present in different situations and circumstances. I'd like to just be myself or have a self that is fully integrated and I present one integrated thing in any kind of, so that's another kind of way to think about it. And then fourth one is transcendentalist, you know, like to transcend, like Buddhist, Japanese, Buddhist, like these are all artificial categories.

[12:50]

So I'm going to identify with something more transcendent, like I'm a human being or something like that. What I realized that is all kind of different ways of leading into this question of who am I? And somehow I used to think very much like, oh, the Buddhist one is... because, you know, we have a free mind. We can adapt and be free, you know. But then I was like, oh, but, you know, we are also very hybrid. We know the multiplicity and hybridity and kind of integrating that and not being worried or afraid. Oh, so maybe that's the Buddhist. Oh, but no, maybe it's... I think over the years I've come to know, now that I've lived five decades... we can live all of these in different moments of our, phases of our life, and not be so stuck on anything like this either.

[13:52]

And somehow this is also, how should we say, if we study like Tozan's five ranks or anything in our tradition in Soto Zen Buddhism, we also know things about positions and... And not that one is higher than the other, but these are all kind of ways of being in the world and become a little bit less worried about these type of questions of identity. But, and now I want to shift over to more, less about my personal history and more about where we are as a nation in America today. Because I think there is a big question of identity of our nation that we are facing today. There is one vision that says America is essentially, foundationally, a white and Christian nation. That it therefore has a kind of singular or even supremacist kind of, you know, there's only one way to salvation, one way, one identity of that kind of idea.

[15:01]

It's a certain kind of vision that we see throughout the course of our nation's history, and we hear about it to this day. But there's a different vision of America, which I think is a more Buddhist one, which says that America is multiple, that we're a multi-ethnic nation, and religiously plural one. And quite frankly, to be a religiously free nation, to actually and actualize the notion of religious freedom written into the U.S. Constitution, we actually have to presume multiplicity. And so I want to talk a little bit about that, the idea of multiplicity and what can we say about who we are as a nation, our identity from a Buddhist point of view. And I say this in the context of the ceremony that I'm trying to help put together for

[16:03]

May the 4th, it's the 49th day, I'm sorry, yeah, May the 4th is 49 days since the March Atlanta shooting. Unfortunate incident, eight people dying in a mass shooting, targeting Asian massage parlors, and six of the people that died were Asian women. And I think of young Ayue who is one of the women who passed away, a very devout Korean Buddhist practitioner, and who, I should say, it was a very sudden, unexpected way to pass away. And her two sons are very much in mourning right now. And so... we would like to do something for the family on the 49th day.

[17:05]

You know, in Buddhist tradition, 49th day is the day we believe Shijukunji, where the deceased person kind of transitions or journeys to a different realm. And so we mark that for the person, but also for those remaining. That's the tradition of 49 days memorial service. But it's also in the context You know, not just of that death, but I think because you all live in San Francisco Bay Area, early this year, you must have known in the news, there was also, you know, security camera footage of a kind of video of Vita Ratanapakti, who was Thai, you know, Buddhist immigrant in this country, who just walking, taking a daily walk. Yeah. and on the streets of San Francisco. And he was just very senseless, unprovoked, just assault on him.

[18:06]

And he unfortunately died of brain hemorrhage shortly thereafter. And the Thai community, Thai Buddhist community kind of rallied around the family and helped with that. But these type of incidents, and of course, in my own neighborhood here in Los Angeles, you know my temple Zenshuji is one of several temples in Buddhist temples in little Tokyo in downtown Los Angeles and one of our neighbor temples Higashonganji Buddhist temple was vandalized stone lanterns outside were destroyed somebody tried to set the temple on fire and this follows on the heel of last you know November there was a one month period a spate of six incidents at six different vietnamese buddhist temples in orange county vandalized where for example some of the statues were black you know spray paint and graffiti some people put jesus on the back of the statue and things like this so you know sometimes it's race and sometimes it's religion but there is a there is a vision of america sometimes

[19:26]

that excludes the people on this type of basis. And it's not just exclusion in terms of law or policy, but exclusion in terms of, you know, just community manners, verbal harassment, physical assault, desecration of houses of worship. It's just a very unfortunate times we live in and what's happening to, you know, or grandparents, you know, the elders, Asian American people, just being able to go outside and take a walk, these type of things are very worrying. And it's also a time when, you know, we just had Derek Chauvin trial and Dante, you know, there's so many incidents, unfortunate, in African American communities, all these different communities where sometimes things, stereotypes that people inherit or... the type of racial trauma and racial karma that we inherit in our very own minds and bodies, whoever we are, sometimes just because they're unattended to come out.

[20:44]

And I've been thinking a lot about how to repair this type of, you know, it's one thing to try to do some fundraising for Higashi Honganji and repair the stone lanterns. But how do we repair our hearts and minds, our bodies in America? Because it doesn't matter how many laws are passed. If we do not deal with this very deep karmic seeds that in different kinds of bodies persist and do the deep kind of work of racial reparation, that kind of repair, deep work of repair. Unfortunately, we're going to see these type of incidents occur again and again and again. Judy mentioned I wrote a book called American Sutra about what happened to the Japanese American community back in World War II. The Buddhist priests were targeted by the FBI.

[21:46]

Temples were under surveillance. Priests got picked up. You know, today we don't think of Buddhism as a, un-American or anti-American. At that time, it was literally thought of as a threat to national security or religion. And so temples were vandalized then. Priests were put into special internment and concentration camps. The entire community was eventually rounded up and put into different camps. They were told when they entered these camps that they could only take what they could carry. So if you can imagine, if your government suddenly tells you you're deemed a threat to national security because of your race or religion, and then you have to head to a place for a destination unknown, for a time indefinite, and you're allowed to take one suitcase, what do you take? And when people arrived, you know, with what they could carry, those suitcases, they were told, it's like entering a prison, they searched for contraband, and they deemed anything written in Japanese, like a sutra book, would be considered a

[22:51]

You'd think maybe like, okay, guns are understood, maybe because they worry about time of war and espionage and sabotage, like maybe cameras. But why would a book of haiku poetry or a sutra book be considered such a threat? What they allowed was if you had an English-Japanese dictionary, that was permissible when you went into these camps. even if it had Japanese language in it. And then the second exception was if you had a Japanese language Christian Bible, that was also okay. So what is the message that people received back then when they went into these camps, horse stables, and other places that were suddenly their new homes? The message, I think, was that foundationally, America is an Anglo-Christian nation. you know, Anglo both in the sense of whiteness, but also in the sense of English only, and a Christian, you know, essential nation.

[23:59]

And that if they intended to convert to Christianity or learn English, that was deemed more acceptable. But for those of us who may be bilingual or who are immigrants and have a culture and so forth, and a religious faith that is not Christian, that was deemed at that time not only un-American but anti-American. And so I think about these things, about how that past is connected to today. You know, how, for example, our first Asian-Americans... When they arrived, the Chinese arrived in large numbers in the middle of the 19th century, and they set up temples. The first Buddhist temples in America was this community's temples. And they were also vandalized and burnt to the ground. And there are many incidents of massacres of Chinese miners at Buddhist temples in Wyoming.

[25:07]

This is all happening in the 19th century. It's part of our history. And they were called the heathen qini. It was like a slur word. The qini being like a racially unassimilable group and heathen, meaning of a non-Christian, uncivilized religion. That's what was used in debates and testimony in the United States Senate when they were passing the 1881 Chinese Exclusion Act, which was the first immigration, federal immigration law. Up until that time, people came to America from every part of the world. They didn't need visas or they didn't need any kind of special. People just came and America was welcoming to different people of different backgrounds. But this is the first law that began the whole process to target one group of people because of their religion, because of their race and national origin as unwelcome.

[26:13]

in America. And I think, as you know, in recent years, we have similar kind of, you know, the travel ban. It doesn't hurt, you know, just like the World War II internment executive order, 9066, doesn't have the word Japan or Japanese American anywhere in the executive order. Everyone knows that there was no mass roundup of German Americans or Italian Americans in America during World War II, despite being at war. It only targeted Japanese. Same thing with travel ban. It was a way to target one group, the Muslim kind of religion, as being unwelcome. And on the southern border, talk of a wall to keep out this kind of almost like an invading caravan of migrants. It was a very similar language as back in 1881 when that first immigration law, the Chinese Exclusion Act, was held. literally talked about building a symbolic wall on the Pacific to keep the Chinese out.

[27:20]

So this is our legacy in our country, unfortunately. We have all of these things that in different generations our ancestors are involved in, and we unfortunately, we receive everything. all the wonderful things from our ancestors, but all of the imperfections too. And last year in June, I became a US citizen. I came to this country when I was 17 years old and for 30 years, You know, three years or more, I remained a Japanese national. But somehow I felt this is time to become a citizen. And I went in my robes to the naturalization oath ceremony. Somehow I wanted to remember all of the people, Chinese people, Japanese people, during all these different decades of our American history.

[28:28]

Buddhist history, who persevered and struggled, found in their own teachings of Buddhism and their practices some way to be resilient. And I remember thinking, it's good to do the naturalization of, to defend the Constitution of the United States. The first, you know, amendment, such an important... statement of the values of what it means to be a citizen of this country uh you know especially due process equality and the law and religious freedom that it would be honored to my ancestors adama ancestors and others who who you know persisted in in in their faith not only in buddhism but in in the promise of america and so I wanted to do something like that and become a citizen in that manner.

[29:30]

And so in a few days, we have this 49th day service. And we will be doing a part of the ceremony. You know, it's like a regular memorial service. We have memorial tablets and we'll be recalling names and, you know, typical... where I think you must do also chant the sutras, we have echo or dedication verse, so we name names, right? So we transfer any kind of positive merit that comes from our sutra recitation to our ancestors, and then they in turn become present and I think teach us something. And I think what they teach us is something about repair. And I think I want to kind of talk a little bit about that. We're going to have a beautiful ceramic lotus flower, but one that has some cracks in it.

[30:34]

In the Japanese kind of ceramic tradition, maybe some of you may be already familiar, but we have a repair practice called kintsugi. Kin means gold, and tsugi comes from the verb tsugu, to join. And so in... classic tradition, if you have a beautiful tea ceremony cup and you drop it and breaks or a plate that, instead of throwing it away, you can repair it with a lacquer resin and join it back together. And then you add a king or gold kind of paint on top of those crack lines. And what does that mean? It's a type of record of the history of this teacup, a history of some breakage fissure. And in our nation, we have this too. And we're going to symbolize it with this ceramic lotus flower. And we're going to take a note of who we are as a nation, the various traumas and hurts and suffering and these fractures that have unfortunately happened in our communities.

[31:51]

And we're going to note them, fix them, heal them, and mark them in such a manner where we can do it not, how should we say, individually, but as a sangha. And so our event is called May We Gather. It's a call for sangha because when we are in mourning or when we are hurting, I think the Buddha taught us, and this is kind of going back to identity, you know, when you learn who you are, you can let go, forget, you know, the self, you can let go and be actualized by the 10,000 things. 10,000 things is a code word for everything, right? We are interlinked together, interlinked with all of our ancestors, and... And when we come together as Sangha, it's such an important treasure, three treasure, you know, such an important treasure for us because we don't suffer alone, but we also don't get the freedom alone.

[33:07]

We need to do it together. So maybe I will end with... I started with Dogen, so I should probably end with something from Dogen too, about what we need to come together as a Sangha. I sometimes think of Dogen's text, Tenzo Kyokun. I'm sure many have read this one, instructions to the monastic cook. And... There's so many, you know, practical teachings and things, attitudes that the person serving in the position of Tenzo or the head cook of the temple should be aware of. You know, things like don't waste anything of, you know, the foods and so forth. But I think maybe big picture, it's a cook should know what is, what's in the,

[34:15]

What's the ingredients that we have available? And then you make a meal, not just for yourself, for all the Sangha members, all the trainee monks, etc. And then you make it not just for physical nourishment, but for their practice, you know, to do the practice well. We have that kind of spirit to join the cooking ingredients to help the people. So, you know, the kitchen, of course, is ourselves. We have to look. Who are we? And we have to see the ingredients, even the rotting cabbage or something. You know, we all have parts of our personality, parts of our things that, you know, our ancestors didn't resolve. So we have it in our own mind and body. But it is... We have to embrace, you have to know it all, right?

[35:18]

And then good cooks can cook the things, you know, with nice ingredients. But Zen cooks, we have to cook with even not nice ingredients. We have to still cook something that is worthy. And so it is, I think, with our nation. We have to kind of embrace it all. We have to have a reckoning with even the most difficult or traumatic or ugly parts of our history and figure out a way as sangha to transform it. As I said, I don't think we can do it alone. It's going to require everybody. And that's how we alleviate the mountain of suffering. It's such a big mountain, ocean of tears, but we need to do it together. And I think that is the meaning of sangha. And I hope on this 49th day moment for thinking about Atlanta and everything else that's been happening, we can come together as one big American sangha to do the liberation together, alleviation of suffering together.

[36:41]

So Maybe I'll end there and then have, I know there's closing verses and then very happy to be in the Dharma exchange or dialogue with all of you. Question and answer, anything is fine. So thank you so much. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our programs are made possible by the donations we receive. Please help us to continue to realize and actualize the practice of giving by offering your financial support. For more information, visit sfzc.org and click giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[37:32]

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