California Buddhists
California buddhists have been a pet peeve of mine for awhile now.
You know what I mean - white people, usually baby boomers, who affect an interest in an exotic religion. They often use a shallow understanding of Buddhism as an excuse to go outside what they see as the too-narrow moral restrictions of Christianity. There's no sin! There are no boundaries! They have names like Dharma and hang lots of Tibetan prayer flags outside their doors and stuff. I'm not sure about now, but it seemed really fashionable about 10 years ago. Something like it was definitely part of the whole hippie thing and way farther back to European orientalism.
Now I'm totally not an expert on Buddhism.
lived in Japan for four years
went to a LOT of temples
My interest in Buddhism and all Japanese things artistic was encouraged by a professor of mine at Waseda named Lloyd Fulton.
Traditional Japanese architecture.
Studied different template layouts, Zen gardens, Japanese wood joinery, but focused mostly on the architecture associated with the tea ceremony.
One time, on the train on the way home from an outing someplace on the outskirts of Tokyo, he turned to me and said, "Geoff, I'd like to introduce you to Zen". I brushed him off then, but later I see how deeply his teaching reached into me.
the priest who comforted my best friends the Sakurais after the early death of their mother.
shojin-ryori
journeyed through Wakayama and rode the little creaky train up to Kooyasan to walk among the cedars and gaze at the art in the temples.
regained my faith, learned a lot about prayer
lived in Nara prefecture, the cradle of Japanese Buddhism, a mile or two away from Hooryuuji.
used to ride over there after school
spent days hiking around Toodaiji and the Nigatsudoo, and
Sarusawa-soo (Pond) has a special place in my heart along with the Old Nara-machi neighborhood to the south.
Sanjuusangendo
Jinrakuji, the little Zen temple that my boss/friend Mr. Fujikawa sometimes took me to, and where I first really learned to quiet myself and pray.
Among the teachers there (I'd call them "my fellow teachers", but I didn't work nearly hard enough there to earn that title) were sons and daughters of local priests.
I hardly ever asked about their beliefs and experience of Buddhism.
I think I was afraid of losing my faith; now I understand that I was going through a period in which new information and influences with swirling around and I was in a process of integrating them.
Now I wish I had taken that opportunity.
Tucker Callaway
back in the mists of time before the Internet
some echoes of him online
If I wasn't a Christian, I'd be a Buddhist.
work for a Japanese American non-profit, with its mix of agnostics, atheists, Christians, and Buddhists.
These Buddhists grew up in their faith.
Their amazing story
great stories of their Christian faith helping them get through it, but also Buddhist.
California Buddhists
often seem to be exploring it as a way to thumb their nose at Christianity
as an excuse ("there are none of those silly moral constraints you Christians have") to indulge
I haven't known any serious Buddhists who were carousers or promiscuous.
The ones that were the most enlightened also didn't make coarse jokes about my own Christian faith.
I found a lot to admire about them.
In the end, maybe I'm not criticizing California Buddhists, but myself.
I think it puts me in mind of dabblers in Anabaptism
This dabbling in Buddhism makes me think of how it's fashionable for liberal (or to be more trendy, "emergant") Christian seminarians to dabble in Anabaptism
a shallow Anabaptism
without being rooted in the soil and hard work of farming,
or the kept-alive memories of distant persecution
ancestral echoes of burnings at the stake, taking communion in the forest,
of humble, uneducated people with nothing but the Text itself disputing with Clerics and proclaiming their faith before being dragged off to the stake.
There's nothing about license here.
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California Buddists
