I feel compelled to write something here at least, even if I can't get my head wholly around this experience.
I met a guy in my town a number of weeks ago named Chandana who is from Sri Lanka. I had seen him once before, and kind of did the double take as a biked by, so the second time I saw him I had to stop. I asked him if he spoke English, and he said no, only a tiny bit, so I struggled on in Japanese. At that time he had invited me to come to some kind of international discussion group (so I thought) and so I said of course, and we exchanged phone numbers. Well, last week didn't work out, so this week I had made a plan to meet him after going to JOY Fellowship church in Yokodai. Eri, my Japanese friend, asked if she could come too, and I said sure, and so she drove us. It was raining hard and traffic was really bad so we were a good 30 minutes late (I felt really bad) and upon arrival at the station (where we were meeting) we discovered what the plan was. Chandana was there with a Kiwi named Kevin, and his Japanese wife Misa who was waiting in the car. They were all set to head off to a Buddhist Temple. It turned out there was a problem, because the temple, while being perfectly open to "gaijin" (foreigners) onlookers and observers, did not allow Japanese people who were not members. (Or maybe they did - I didn't exactly understand the exchange, but at the very least they had to pay an expensive entrance fee, like around $25). So, we dropped Eri off at a mall and proceeded on to the Temple.
I'm used to seeing temples from the outside, the kind that are old and where priests live and do who knows what else. However, at this temple, it was very, very different. This temple is for the religion "Shinnyo-en" which is a type of Buddhism that has quite a number of followers in Japan (probably around 500 or more temples nation wide) and temples in California and a few European and Asian nations. It was founded by a lady who was born in 1912. I wasn't allowed to take any of the literature home with me, but I looked up some stuff on Wikipedia to refresh my memory. This particular sect was founded by a man and his wife, Shinjo Ito and Tomoji Ito.
The temple itself was very much like any large, modern American church. It was a new building with a couple of large parking garages as people came from as far as a 3 hour drive to attend Sunday services. The entrance way had a window to sign in guests, and the foyer was filled with shoe and coat lockers where you could leave your stuff. (Hmm...funny thing - I guess I was walking around the whole time in my socks, but I didn't realize that fact until just now because that's so normal here in Japan.) There was an information desk where I picked up a visitor's nametag, and in the basement was an eating area with several vending machines and a kitchen. We proceeded to a classroom of sorts that had chairs arranged in a way that gave some space for kneeling on the floor to chant and bow, which we all did once most people arrived. (I didn't do the bowing and chanting stuff - someone gave me a book with the English translations, so I kind of just read to see what they were doing.) They were saying a lot of mystical sounding things, and calling on the spirits of this and that, and the one-syllable golden wheel to give them insight, and some other things that weren't translated but involved lots of bowing.
I apologize if I don't give all of today's events in order because a lot happened, and I never got a succinct description of the religion, but rather pieced together a few parts based on all of my observations. On the way over in the car, Kevin was telling me about the "Mediums" (Priests who do "sesshin" which literally translated means "touch the heart") and how they stand infront of you and observe the spirits that are behind you and tell you about your life and your struggles and what you need to do to get back onto the right path. Kevin said told me that in the past he has seen spirits and totally understands that there is a spiritual realm, actually a spiritual reality and that everything physical is basically an illusion of the spiritual truth, and in Shinnyo-en he found the religion that agrees with what he has experienced. I told him I agreed - there definitely is a very active spiritual realm, and literally, the forces of good and evil are battling in a dimension that most of us don't see but are surrounded by constantly. Kevin also said he was a Christian, which was a common iteration from several of the other people I met in the Temple.
Shinnyo-en is a religion that is accepting of all religions - its purpose is harmony and to free all people through helping them to realize that Buddha lives inside of each of us and that we simply must work to push out the bad things that are dragging us down and causing us to go off the straight path, and uncloud the purity that we each have. (Or something like that.) There was one lady there who spoke (a whole story in itself) about how happy she is to have found Shinnyo-en and how she wished she had found it earlier, and how she wants everyone to know the freedom of Shinnyo-en (at which point I found it very curious that a religion that is trying to convert people would turn away non-members or at least charge them exorbitant prices). It was a little hard to understand everything because a translator was explaining to me what she was saying by throwing in her own (the translator's) opinions and explanation. It was furtherly weird because the lady kept talking about "gaijin" and how it was amazing that the "heathens" were starting to catch on to this amazing religion. There was not a small amount of ethnocentrism in her talk, which was a bit offputting at first until I started thinking, "How often do we Christians in the US talk in our churches about reaching "Africa" and having a heart for "Africa" (can you get any more ambiguous verging on the condescending than that???) and thinking about how great it is that people outside the US believe in Jesus, and how "God works in mysterious ways" in the point that people worship God in languages other than English, completely missing fact that as 21st-century Americans we are in the far-reaches of the definition of the word "Gentiles."
So anyway, it came to me acutely in this discussion, the perplexing question of just how Shinnyo-en Buddhists are able to accept all religions when they have mutually exclusive tenets. I asked this question, cutting right to the point, by saying, "How do you accept Christianity which says that there is one God and that Jesus is his son and the only way to be saved is by Jesus alone, and other religions that say there are many Gods and that Jesus was just a man. How do you reconcile those mutually exclusive beliefs?" The answer I got was that, there is one-truth and anywhere in any religion, a mutually exclusive statement or belief or tenet is simply a human invention. When I mentioned that the Bible and the Quran present mutually exclusive worldviews, I was told that the Bible is not Christianity and the Quran is not Islam.
That really confused me, because we have no other way of defining them. Once your tenets begin to deviate from the Bible, you are no longer talking about Christianity; you are now creating a new religion. It's like the Mitch Hedberg joke about the number of bedrooms in a house. "...And this is 4th bedroom. It just happens to have a refridgerator, a microwave, a sink, a guy eating cereal...oh, and there's no bed." When Christ is no longer the sole Savior and Lord, it's no longer Christianity.
I found myself sitting there really wondering how to reach these people. I realized that 99% of my experiences with sharing the gospel are with people who are either atheists, agnostics or have had some dabblings in Christianity. I really don't know where to begin talking with people who have very strong professed beliefs in a well established religion, especially a religion I know literally nothing about. (I mean, c'mon - I was wikipedia-ing it 30 minutes ago...) At least the people there are seeking truth, and I do know that some of them are hitting on part of the truth of the universe, but it's just that - they're only seeing a part. They're experiencing spirits, but what spirits is the question...it freaked me out a bit to be quite honest. I was praying, a bit scared, and was reminded by God that yes, He is everywhere, that he's promised to be with me to the end of the age, that I, Luther Flagstad have been crucified and it's no longer I that lives but Christ in me, so Christ was there, and my body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, so he was there with me too.
There's quite assuredly more to tell about this whole experience and hopefully I can reconnect with people again. Chandana is not a Buddhist either, and I don't think he's anything, he's just interested in making connections of the heart with people all over the world. He was orphaned at a very early age by the (now ending) Tamil/Sri Lankan government war, and his life has been greatly shaped by the atrocities that war produce. He was explaining to everyone (I heard it through a tanslator) how he met me, and how he was attracted to my shining smile, and he knew that he had to introduce me to the people at the temple. He very much is interested in coming to my church and learning about Christianity and meeting the people there and sharing hearts together. I'm curious to see how that goes and am excited to welcome him.
Whew.
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The Guy:
- Luther Flagstad
- Kyzyl Dobo, Naryn, Kyrgyzstan
- Disclaimer: The contents of this website are mine personally and do not reflect any position of the Peace Corps or U.S. Government.
3 comments:
I was directed to your blog by my own research into Shinnyo-en and Google Alerts. While your work is decent, there are several probable errors in it that I would like to clarify.
My degree in religious studies (and study of them) could tell you that all of the following information is to clarify what was inaccurate.
They are more than willing to let you leave with *some* literature. Some if it is for followers only, like the monthly newsletter, etc. Please keep in mind that as an esoteric school, they have to be mindful of the misuse of teachings. That's also why there was a heavy dose of mysticism that you saw. All Shingon based schools are, and have been that way for the past 1200 years.
That said, I have never come across a fee to come in, especially if you are coming in with a follower (I'd be guessing the Kiwi or his wife). Even for Japanese, there is no "fee" of any sort to enter their temples. So it sounds like that was something that the specific follower was looking for on their own accord.
The history is that it was founded in the 1930's by Shinjo Ito after undergoing Shingon monastic training and deciding to leave the secular life.
naturally, after starting his own temple, there were some issues. Japanese people, especially in the post-war period have a major thing against any of the so-called New Religions and the New-New Religions (those sects founded either during or after the Meiji era, so from the 1860's on). Japanese tend to lump all such followers into the category of "shameful/bad" without even looking at how much good they accomplish. It's like saying "all followers of the New Religions are crazy like those Aum guys or the Panawave people". It's also quite similar to the thing that most Japanese have against Christians. So, Shinnyo-en experienced some early persecutions and hardships following a scandal in which they seem to have been exploited by a former follower (whose transgressions eventually got the founder thrown in jail for a brief period). The truth of the matter got him acquitted, but the long-term memory of the Japanese kept the association alive, causing lots of Japanese people to have a negative connotation (as the other commenter very probably does) of Shinnyo-en and new religions in general. It would be little different if it were Tenrikyo, Omoto Kyo, Soka Gakkai, Pentacostalism, Christian Scientists, Mormons, or something else along those lines.
I also ran into the ethnocentrism there, but clearly saw that the ethnocentrism came from the Japanese culture, and not from Shinnyo-en specifically. Live in Japan long enough and you'll understand this. Shinnyo-en is one of the few teachings to really have a global outreach and dialogue function built into their teachings. SGI, Jodo Shin-shu Buddhism, and perhaps a few others have made such efforts. This, of course, flies in the face of the Japanese mindset.
That brings me to my advice for you if you plan on missionary efforts in Japan. First, know that the Japanese are not religiously exclusive. You can be a Buddhist, Muslim, Hindu, Shinto practitioner all at the same time and the Japanese will not think twice about it. Most follow at least two religions while claiming to follow none. so to properly work as a missionary in Japan, one must completely erase any concept of exclusivism from one's teachings, or they won't take hold. That's a big part of why less than 2% of Japanese people follow Christianity after 400 years of missionary efforts. Forget the state sponsored persecutions in the 1600's, it was entirely enabled and helped by the ordinary Japanese themselves.
Beyond that, the Christian missionary in Japan must be willing to understand that the Japanese are a collective people, rather than an individual people. To them, everything is interconnected, and the connections between people matter more than the individual. So notions of the individual undergoing persecution for their faith, the idea that one person on their own (aka personal salvation) does anything is foreign. Also the Christian concept of the spiritual realm, even for those who understand the Japanese concept, is beyond simply foreign.
It is in a state of anathema to Japanese religious sensibilities. The missionary in Japan must overcome this fact before even considering missionary work. The missionary must realize that by saying that their religion is wrong, you are flat-out insulting most Japanese. It doesn't help that the few Japanese Christians of any prominence have hurt their cause greatly simply by being Christian. Take PM Taro Aso for example. Catholic, and viewed as unfavorably as they come by most Japanese. If they voted for their PM, he never would have gotten the job. They see him as a freak for his religion (amongst other things), but the LDP likes his sort of conservatism.
But those tendencies and characteristics are very difficult to get around. That's why the Jesuits sent their wayward/problem priests and monks to Japan - it was punishment. Good luck in japan.
Thanks for your comment, Chris. Just to be clear, this post wasn't meant to be a "work" or a discussion about the religion, it is simply the experience I had in my one visit to the Shinnyo-en Temple in Shizuoka City. (Thanks for thinking it was decent though...) Unfortunately (and this is for any religion) the actions of a religion's believers have a much stronger affect on how non-believers view that religion. So, the actions of the followers become the definition of the religion, even if it's inaccurate.
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