May is a month where we will have a Memorial Day where we will pray for our ancestors and our loved ones who are deceased.
This month, I would like to explain a little bit more about memorial services. There was a time when I wanted to go back to Japan. One of the members in Los Angeles was able to understand my true feelings of wanting to go back to Japan because I thought that I would be able to live a better life there. My master had told me to come back to Japan to help his temple. However, I denied my master’s order. I had promised before that I would go back to Japan after having stayed in the United States for about three to four years. Because of this, my master no longer accepted me as his disciple and therefore the connection between the master and the disciple was broken.
During that time, the temple that I was in charge of in San Francisco was forced to shut down because another temple was going to be built jn the Bay Area. No other ministers would lend me a hand after the temple was closed. I could not leave the United States, however, because I had many members in Los Angeles and San Francisco who needed me. If I left, then they would no longer have a temple that they could go to. I was also forced to think about the reason why I became a minister. One of the reasons that I wanted to know why human beings were born into this world.
After death, we lose everything along with our body including knowledge, inheritance, and pride. Thinking about going back to Japan contradicted my general reason of why I wanted to become a minister. That moment I decided that it was my duty to work with the members to accomplish my goal. We were not born into this world just to have fun. The main reason why we were born into this world has to do with cultivating and purifying our spirit, using our body as a place where the spirit can reside. Buddhism is different from other religions in ways that we do not wait for a God to save us, yet we work hard to obtain Enlightenment. Even when we lose our body, our spirit continues to live on in the universe and nature.
Among many Americans, there are those who question the importance of chanting the sutra. As many of you may know, Buddhism is the teaching of the Buddha. Therefore, there are many words that cannot be translated into English. We humans have a body, and we think with our brain and make decisions through remembering our previous actions or experiences that we have had in the past. It is impossible for us to understand things that we have not experienced. If we were only able to understand things with our head, then why do Buddhists chant the sutra during memorial services for deceased people? When we die, we lose all of that knowledge and experience that we have gained throughout our life. Therefore, we Buddhists believe in a spiritual world and the fact that our spirit lives on after death. We are taught that all sorts of life such as the ten realms as well as the universe exist in our mind especially through the Lotus Sutra. This means that also of our knowledge exists within our spirit as well. Even without our body, our spirit is able to understand the Lotus Sutra, the supreme teaching of Śākyamuni Buddha. The Lotus Sutra is not a teaching where one asks someone to save them; however, Śākyamuni Buddha states, “The purpose of my teaching is to lead everyone to enlightenment.”
Ven. Kenjo Igarashi
May / June 2021