View the print version of this article in PDF format

Socho Koshin Ogui Sensei is an eighteenth-generation priest in the Jodo Shinshu (True Pure Land) tradition, the most commonly practiced form of Buddhism in Japan. A resident of the United States since 1962, he became minister of the Cleveland Buddhist Temple in 1977 and of the Midwest Buddhist Temple in Chicago in 1992. In 2004, he was appointed Socho (Bishop) of the Buddhist Churches of America and has been instrumental in the ongoing revitalization and outreach efforts of that organization. The author of Zen Shin Talks, he now lives in San Francisco. Last fall, Tricycle contributing editor Clark Strand spoke with Socho Ogui about the idea of “practice” in Jodo Shinshu and his experiences in combining a Zen style of meditation with a Jodo Shinshu style of living. Photos ©Michael Endo

Pure Land bishop Socho Ogui in San Francisco
"With our regular clothes, it’s actually more
challenging to be a Jodo Shinshu minister."

The Buddhist Churches of America (BCA) is one of the largest Buddhist organizations in America, is that correct? I think so. We have sixty-five temples and churches in cities around the country.

And yet it hasn’t been very visible on the American Buddhist scene. It doesn’t appear in the media very often or in the various magazines devoted to Buddhism. Why do you think that is? Traditionally, Jodo Shinshu has been practiced by the Japanese or Japanese-American community in the United States, and therefore a racial consciousness has very much affected its development here.

Would it be fair to say that Jodo Shinshu has tended to be somewhat insular? Yes, I think so. Part of it is that after World War II, during which many Japanese-Americans had been held in internment camps, there was some anxiety among our members about being too visibly “Buddhist.”

Is that why the American arm of Jodo Shinshu is called the Buddhist Churches of America? It’s almost as if the organization wanted to assimilate into the traditional American religious scene. Yes. If someone were to ask a BCA member, “Where do you go on Sundays?” instead of saying San Francisco Buddhist Temple, they might say San Francisco Buddhist Church. It reduces the kind of friction people feel when they hear the word “Buddhist.”

But hasn’t that desire to blend in, in part by adopting the outward forms of American religious worship - setting the teachings in the form of hymns, calling your priests ministers, and yourself Bishop - actually made it difficult for Jodo Shinshu to attract converts in America? People like me who went looking for a form of Buddhism to practice in the ’60s and ’70s were, for the most part, looking for something distinctly Asian. Yes, that’s true. A good friend in Chicago who is Catholic said to me recently, “Hey, Koshin, you don’t have to copy from our tradition, you know. There are plenty of bishops already. Why don’t you call yourself something else?” So I started calling myself “Socho,” a term used in Japan. It means something like “chairman” or “director.” My experience has been that our membership is quite happy to call me something other than “Bishop” today.

Nowadays Shinshu practitioners seem much more willing to talk about their practice than when I first encountered them some twenty or thirty years ago, but I think they’re handicapped by the fact that the very idea of practice in the Shinshu tradition is so subtle. If you go to a Zen center, they say, “Okay, do zazen,” and give you very precise instructions on how to sit and quiet your mind, and if you go to a Soka Gakkai meeting, they’ll teach you how to chant Nam-myoho-renge-kyo [the title of the Lotus Sutra]. But the idea of practice in Shin Buddhism seems like a koan in itself. One of the professors at the Jodo Shinshu university I went to used to say, “Instead of going up the mountain, go down. Go to the bar on the corner and talk with the waitress and find out why she has to work so hard every night. Talk to people who are really struggling and suffering in the midst of life itself and find out all about their questions and their problems. That’s the kind of practice that a Jodo Shinshu priest ought to do.” That’s exactly what I mean. A big theme among American converts these days is uniting practice with everyday life, but that very concern just goes to show what a big divide there is between their Buddhism and the rest of their life. In Shinshu there doesn’t seem to be any separation at all - which makes it harder to define what it is. I once said to my teacher, “Wouldn’t it be a form of kindness to offer some distinct form of practice to people just coming into Jodo Shinshu? Because, apart from attending services and listening to talks, Jodo Shinshu doesn’t really have that kind of form.” And my teacher said, “Well, if you’re married, at least say �Bye’ when you go to work in the morning, and when you come home say, �It’s so good to see you again.’”

Apart from its emphasis on compassion and on the doctrine of salvation through faith alone - or, as Shin Buddhists prefer to call it, shinjin, or “true entrusting” to a power beyond the self - what would you say is the most distinctive feature of Shinshu? First of all is the fact that Shinran, the founder of Shinshu, was married 750 years ago - that he lived with a wife and children in the midst of all the ordinary struggles of life, and that he found the significance of Buddha-dharma in that context. As a school of Buddhism, Jodo Shinshu is very family-oriented. You don’t have to leave home or have a shaved head. Those ordinary struggles are the practice, in the midst of which we come to understand and appreciate the meaning of life. Of course, for that very reason Shinran was not officially recognized by the Buddhist authorities of his day. There were no other married priests. A monk who married and had children was considered an outcast in Shinran’s time.

Shunryu Suzuki Roshi once said that he thought Americans weren’t quite priests and yet weren’t quite laymen either. When I first read Suzuki’s words in the early ’70s, I didn’t realize that he was paraphrasing Shinran, who was famous for having said the same thing about himself - that he was neither monk nor layperson. In Shinshu we don’t see any gap between our priests and our members.