Tricycle | Awake in the World

In Memoriam

Masatoshi Nagatomi, born in 1926, a much-respected scholar in the field of Buddhist studies, passed away in his Cambridge, Massachusetts home on June 3. Nagatomi joined the faculty at Harvard University in 1958 as an instructor in Sanskrit and by 1969 had been designated as Harvard’s first professor of Buddhist studies. During the course of his almost 40-year tenure at Harvard, Nagatomi witnessed the flourishing of interest in Buddhism in the West and was a visible and vocal figure in its development. He retired in 1996 after training some of the most important scholars in the United States today, including Robert A. F. Thurman, Jan Nattier, Thomas and Christopher Cleary, Peter Gregory and David Eckel. Nagatomi was greatly respected for his wide knowledge of the canonical traditions - he knew Sanskrit, Tibetan, Pali, Japanese, and Chinese - and beloved by his students for his dedication to teaching. One of his most significant contributions was his role in establishing the Buddhist Studies Forum at Harvard, an organization that explores Buddhist philosophies through the works of scholars from the United States, Europe, Thailand, and Japan. Professor Nagatomi, a priest in the Pure Land tradition, was remarkably supportive of new developments in Buddhism; he encouraged the formation of this magazine and was among our original advisors. A memorial service at Harvard is planned for the fall.

Venerable Ratanasara

The Venerable Havanpola Ratanasara Nayaka Thera, born in 1920, co-founder of the American Buddhist Congress and a leading advocate of interreligious dialogue, died on May 26 in Los Angeles. A native of Sri Lanka, Ven. Ratanasara was a devoted teacher well known in Buddhist circles for his efforts to create what he called a “united Buddhism in America.” He founded the Buddhist Sangha Council of Southern California in 1979, one of the largest regional Buddhist councils in the country, and served until his death as executive-president of the American Buddhist Congress, a national organization that seeks to bring together American Buddhists of all traditions and ethnic backgrounds. Ven. Ratanasara was also a leading figure in interfaith discussions - he served as the Buddhist representative to Pope John Paul II during the pontiff’s visit to Los Angeles in 1987 and was a co-founder of the Los Angeles Buddhist-Catholic Dialogue. A memorial service was held for Ven. Ratanasara in Los Angeles on June 3.

Buddhism at War

As the Sri Lankan army continues to suffer at the hands of rebel fighters, many of the country’s Buddhist monks are urging a more aggressive military response. Beginning in April, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), the Tamil separatist group of northern Sri Lanka, has produced a series of stunning military victories against government forces. The Tigers are fighting on behalf of the Tamil people, a predominantly Hindu minority in a country where Buddhist Sinhalese are the majority. The Tigers now stand on the verge of expelling the Sri Lankan army from the northern capital of Jaffna.

The government is exploring the option of a peace agreement, but some members of the Buddhist sangha, a tremendously influential group in national politics, have recently established the Sinhala Heritage, a political party determined to push for a more hard-line stance in the parliamentary elections this summer. While such hawkish efforts may seem odd coming from a Buddhist lobby, they are hardly unprecedented. According to Sinhalese legend, Sri Lanka is the holy land of the Buddha’s chosen people; thus, with Buddhism and Sinhalese nationalism intertwined, any effort to divide the country politically has been met with virulent protest.

Not every Sri Lankan Buddhist is in favor of accelerating the war effort. As the Los Angeles Times reported, until President Chandrika Kumaratunga issued the Public Security Act in early May, which prohibited political demonstrations, thousands of Sri Lankans were gathering for “public meditations for peace” to protest the war. At one such protest, organized by A. T. Ariyaratne and his Saravodaya Shramadana Movement, a Buddhist-inspired village development program, an estimated 100,000 people were in attendance. In a war that has lasted some 17 years and claimed 60,000 lives, such signs of peace are not entirely convincing - but promising, nonetheless.

Yasutani:

An Apology

In the wake of disclosures about Japanese Zen Master Yasutani’s (1885�1973) anti-Semitism (see Brian Victoria’s Zen At War, Weatherhill, 1997, and Victoria’s article in Tricycle, Fall 1999) a public apology was recently offered by Jiun Kubata Roshi for what Yasutani “said and did during World War II.” Kubata Roshi is a former student and dharma successor of Yasutani and the current head of a Zen community in Kamakura, Japan. Kubata Roshi’s apology, which appeared in the Japanese magazine Kyosho, includes the following statement:

“I personally became Haku-un Roshi’s disciple at the age of 17 and kept receiving his instructions until his death. So I know very well that Yasutani Roshi did foster strongly right-winged and anti-Semitic ideology during as well as after World War II, just as Mr. [Brian] Victoria points out in his book. If Yasutani Roshi’s words and deeds, now disclosed in the book, have deeply shocked anyone who practices in the Zen line of the Sanbo-kyodan and, consequently, caused him or her to abhor or abandon the practice of Zen, it is a great pity indeed. For the offense caused by these errant words and actions of the past master, I, the present patriarch of the Sanbo-kyodan, cannot but express my heartfelt regret.

“If I may speak as an insider, however, during the 25 years of my practice under him I never saw Yasutani Roshi ever force his students to accept his political ideology. . . . On this occasion, the Sanbo-kyodan solemnly vows never to lose the origin point of Shakyamuni and to follow persistently and energetically the path of realizing the essence of our self in this world of phenomena through our zazen practice.”

For the complete text of Kubata Roshi’s apology see “Yasutani: The Hardest Koan” on www.tricycle.com. This site also includes the Brian Victoria article published in Tricycle, responses to that article by Bernie Glassman, Lawrence Shainberg, Robert Aitken, and Bodhin Kjolhede, letters to the editor concerning the Yasutani material that were published in the two subsequent issues of Tricycle, and Josh Baran’s complete review of Zen At War, an edited version of which originally appeared in Tricycle.

Mixed Blessings

Since its founding in the early 1930s, Chi Lin Nunnery in Hong Kong has somehow managed to distance itself from the burgeoning metropolis that surrounds it. Constructed on a tract of woodland at the base of Diamond Hill, the nunnery was built to provide religious and social services for the surrounding community and to offer a quiet retreat space for spiritual seekers. That quiet space is now being threatened.

As reported by the Associated Press, after a 10-year redevelopment project costing nearly $90 million and its recent designation as a heritage site by the Hong Kong Tourist Association, the nunnery has been overwhelmed by a deluge of visitors - reportedly, a phenomenal 36,000 in the first two days! For the 60 Buddhist nuns who live at Chi Lin, the sheer number of visitors is proving to be an unmanageable distraction. Evidence of vandalism - broken handcrafted bronze lights and a series of defaced columns - has the nuns concerned that the nunnery won’t be able to withstand the attention. “The nunnery has been always open to the public,” a Chi Lin spokeswoman told the AP, “but only for worship. We don’t have the experience dealing with a large amount of them.” The Hong Kong government has no plans to limit public access to the site, so the Chi Lin nuns are trying to make the best of a difficult situation. Videos “introducing the nunnery’s architecture to the public” recently went on sale at the nunnery - proceeds are earmarked for vandalism repairs.

TibeT: Here and There

California was the site of two marches to support Tibetan independence earlier this summer. Sponsored by the International Tibet Independence Movement based in Fishers, Indiana, one march left from San Francisco and the other from San Diego to converge on Los Angeles for a rally on June 20. Combined, the marches took two months and covered nearly 700 miles. The San Francisco march was led by Ani Pachen Dolma (see Tricycle, Summer 2000), and the San Diego march by Ven. Palden Gyatso.

Pema Lhundup, general secretary of the Tibetan Youth Congress, met the group in San Francisco, and Chinese dissident Harry Wu, who spent 19 years in Chinese prisons, joined the march in San Diego. Participants ranging in age from 12 to 70 walked an average of 10 miles a day. Julie Crow, an organizer from Indianapolis who has participated in similar marches for the last five years, told the Los Angeles Times: “For people who don’t know anything about Tibet, the march builds awareness in an immediate way.” The meeting of the two groups at the end of their walk was timed to coincide with a visit by His Holiness the Dalai Lama to Los Angeles.

In Asia, the Chinese government appears to have redoubled its efforts to secure the Tibet-Nepal border and to crack down on dissension in the wake of the 17th Karmapa’s dramatic escape from Tibet last December. Reports of mass arrests along the border have increased in recent months. According to the Tibet Information Network (TIN), some 60 Tibetans were detained while trying to cross the border in February, and the news agency for the government of Tibet reported that more than 50 Tibetan teenagers were arrested at the border in April. There are also reports that many monks from Reting Monastery have been arrested and that the prison terms of nine Tibetans who were arrested during a mass demonstration last October have been lengthened.

Meanwhile, in a recent public statement, the Dalai Lama said the plight of the Tibetan people in Chinese-occupied Tibet is “desperate.” “If we look at the situation locally in Tibet, there is hopelessness and a feeling that things are getting worse,” he said during a week-long visit to Japan in late April. For its part, China continued its now commonplace verbal assaults on the Dalai Lama, accusing the exiled spiritual leader of “rape, cannibalism, and murder” in a June report by the state-sponsored Xinhua news agency.

A Holy Return

New York was the first stop on a summer-long teaching tour of the United States and Canada by His Holiness the Sakya Trizin. Head of the second-oldest school of Tibetan Buddhism, the Sakyas, His Holiness gave a weeklong series of teachings in New York called “The Dynamics of Spirituality: Key to an Enlightened Way of Living.” Traveling with his wife and two sons, he was visiting America for the first time in nine years.

A welcoming reception at New York’s Harvard Club was filled with students and well-wishers. His Holiness reflected on the growth of Buddhism in the West, saying that at the time of his earlier visits the seeds of Buddhism had been planted. Now, he says, it is time for dharma to be put into practice: “In the 21st century people are looking for better times. In the last century there was so much tragedy, so we learned a great lesson [about] the misery of mankind. Now we must learn how not to repeat mistakes and how to find real harmony and peace, and the way to this is the dharma.”

In 1959, the Sakya Trizin, the then-14-year-old head of the Sakya lineage, fled Chinese-occupied Tibet shortly after His Holiness the Dalai Lama. A member of the royal Khon family, one of the “holy” families of Tibetan Buddhism, the Sakya Trizin is the forty-first descendant in a line of spiritual masters dating to the eighth century. He is patron to the Vikramasila Foundation in New York, whose director is Lama Pema Wangdak. The foundation was created in 1989, and in the last five years it has established two institutions - one in Nepal and one in southern India - which combine traditional teachings and modern education. Architectural models of both institutions were shown at the reception for His Holiness. He concludes his American tour in Los Angeles in late August.

Vietnamese Buddhists Gather

Vietnamese monks from around the world will gather in Seattle from September 1 through 4 for the second annual meeting of the Unified Buddhist Congregation. Nearly 1,000 monks, nuns, and lay Buddhist leaders are expected at the event, hosted by the Co Lam Temple in Seattle. The recently completed temple, among the largest Vietnamese Buddhist buildings on the West Coast, will be consecrated during the proceedings.

The United Buddhist Congregation was organized in 1992 at the request of senior Buddhist monks still in Vietnam. The two elderly leaders of the movement are Thich Huyen Quang, who has been in prison or house arrest most of the time since 1975, and Thich Quang Do, who is currently under house arrest in Ho Chi Minh City, formerly Saigon. The purpose of the meeting is to preserve Buddhism in Vietnam and to protect individual Buddhist leaders who are held in prisons by the Communist government, said Minh Chanh, spokesman for the Co Lam Temple. “We will set the way for our whole organization for four or five years to come,” he said, adding that officers also will be elected.

Construction of the 12,000-square-foot temple was started in 1995 and has proceeded gradually as funds have been raised. Built on two levels, the temple includes a main Dharma hall, social hall, and quarters for monastics. It was founded by Ven. Thich Nguyen An, who took robes at 16. As Communist persecution escalated, he escaped Vietnam in a small boat in 1980 and moved to the United States that same year.

Dharma Bites

Given the Thais’ great love of soccer, it is little wonder they have now immortalized British soccer god David Beckham right alongside the Buddha and assorted deities. A gold-leafed, one-foot-high sculpture of Beckham was recently installed at the Buddha’s feet in Bangkok’s Pariwas Temple. It is intended to memorialize Beckham for the next thousand years.