Akemashite Omedetou Gozaimasu –
(Happy Year).
This is the year (2025) of the Wood Snake.
According to East Asian astrology 2025 will be a mix of opportunity, difficulties, potential and renewal. Snakes shed their skin and emerge anew. In a similar fashion we should shed our old habits and fixed ideas. This will be a good year to explore new possibilities and start new projects
According to the astrologic indicators challenges may arise by people trying to take advantage and attempting to manipulate us. Therefore, it is important that we set objective, realistic goals, plan strategically and act with determination.
Using the Snake’s wisdom and intuition, coupled with the inspirational and flexible nature of the Wood element, we can anticipate a year full of both uncertainties, and opportunities. Be adaptable and flexible as inevitable change occurs. Try to worry less and act optimistically more. Gambatte (Do your best and keep your focus)!
Story of Tendai Buddhist Institute: Part II
Tendai Buddhist Institute exists due to Rev. Shoshin Masao Ichishima. The first part of the Tendai Buddhist Institute narrative provided a glimpse of how Karuna Tendai Dharma Center was established almost thirty years ago. If we take a step back it started with Ichishima sensei.
Ichishima sensei (85 years old), was born into the Ichishima lineage. He is the Jushoku (abbot) of Senzo-ji temple in Chiba, Japan and Professor Emeritus of Taisho Daigaku (university) in Tokyo, Japan. After receiving his graduate degree from Taisho University, he was a temple assistant to the Hawaii Tendai Betsuin, adjunct professor at the University of Hawaii and Berkley University. After several years living and working abroad he moved back to Japan to assist his father with the temple and taught at Taisho Daigaku until his recent retirement from the university.
Within Tendai he is considered one of the most learned soryo (monk/priest), holding the rank of Kangaku. This is a status held by only a handful of soryo, it is the highest scholarly rank accorded in Japan. His English is excellent, and he is gifted in the Tibetan language as well as Sanskrit and Classical Chinese and Japanese. He has translated all these languages.
He has a number of non-Japanese deshi, this is where his influence outside Japan is without equal in Tendai. Both Shumon and I are honored to be his deshi.
Herein is why he is acknowledged as the force behind Tendai Buddhist Institute.
Shumon and I moved to Japan in 1989 after living a short time in Brazil. Our stay in Japan was intended to be short-term, perhaps six months at the outside, with the intention of returning to Bahia, on the Northeast coast of Brazil, to continue research that I had started there.
Within weeks of our arriving in Japan I sought out Zen temples, both Soto and Rinzai, at which to sit meditation and continue my Buddhist practice of 20 plus years. These were the days before the Internet. Information about various activities was available in the English language newspapers, It was in one of these that I saw a public service announcement for a ‘Zen and Tantric Meeting’ at Zenyo-ji temple in North Tokyo. I had no idea what that would be.
The title of the meeting interested me and I attended the Tuesday evening meeting. It was here that I met Ichishima sensei. The temple is distinct and very different than the other Buddhist Otera (temple) I had visited in Japan. The meeting was similar in some ways, but very different in other ways. I was further intrigued.
Sensei presented a short discussion, followed by Shikan meditation and the evening concluded with all the participants being taken out to dinner at a local izakaya (similar to a tapas bar). After the evening with the group ended, I was asked by Ichishima sensei to meet a number of other Tendai soryo when I accompanied him to another gathering of priests, mostly from Taisho University, who were meeting with an America scholar, Dr. Paul Groner, for drinks and conversation.
That evening, Ichishima sensei asked if I would like to attend a class he was teaching, starting the next day at Taisho University. Though I had a full day of research grant writing ahead of me I dropped everything and showed up at the main gate of Taisho Daigaku to meet sensei. That was the start of three years of study at Taisho University.
Not long after that politics in Brazil intervened and Shumon and I would not be returning to Brazil. I would go on to attain a position at the University of Tokyo as a Research Scholar. Shumon gained positions as a professional interpreter for several prestigious companies, and I had an agent who provided me with various positions to earn money. We stayed in Japan for almost six years.
As the saying goes, ‘life is what happens when you are planning something else’. So it was that I became a deshi (disciple) of Ichishima sensei.
After several years of study at Taisho University I was interested in the practices I had been studying in the classroom. Sensei suggested that Shumon and I move to one of the Ichishima family temples, Tamonin, in Inzai-machi, Chiba, Japan. This is a two-hour commuter train ride from downtown Tokyo. I could then study with him. Shumon and I were still working, doing research, etc.I never had the intention of being ordained. However, if I were to study esoteric (J. mikkyo) practices it would be necessary to take tokudo (Tendai Buddhist ordination). I thought this was a formality and would have little or nothing to do with the course of our lives, for both Shumon and me. Wrong!
Once at Tamonin, where we lived for about 2 ½ years, we became part of the Matsuzaki Tamonin community and became responsible for assisting in many of the daily activities of the temple, as well as assisting sensei in ecclesiastical duties.
My studies involved meeting with sensei at 5– 7 AM every morning to translate the liturgy and further my studies. I also completed the 35 days of shido-kegyo (the esoteric training) in an ascetic setting and assisted sensei in continuing the monthly ‘Zen and Tantric Meetings’ in Tokyo and other activities too numerous to mention here. We also hosted Tendai retreats as well as making it possible for Kagyu Tibetan practitioners to hold retreats there.
When it became time for Shumon and I to leave Japan we recognized that Ichishima’s influence and our stay at Tamonin had transformed us and we had a new vision of what the next chapter of our lives would be.
After a visit to China we returned to the States in the autumn of 1994 specifically to establish what would become Tendai Buddhist Institute.
Sensei visited the Karuna Tendai Dharma Center in 1998, as Tendai Buddhist Institute was known at that time. While here he named the hondo, Jiunzan Tendai-ji (Compassionate Mountain-Cloud Tendai Temple). This was before we renovated the horse barn into the serene and sacred building it is now. He was taken by how close the clouds seemed to be caressing the tops of the hills that are part of and surround the temple complex. Ichishima sensei is the reason that Tendai Buddhist Institute exists, and his presence is integral to the spreading of the dharma.
Stay tuned for more of the ‘Story of Tendai Buddhist Institute’ in future editions of the Shingi.
Love and Gassho . . . Shumon & Monshin