Hot!

It's been quite hot and humid for the past few days. The Meteorological Agency has not declared the end of the rainy season for Kansai area, but it is likely to get more and more unpleasant. It is no use complaining about the hot weather, but we might be expressing our sympathy and care for each other by repeating such meaningless phrases as "How hot it is!" or "The weather is just unbearable, isn't it?"

Still this heat makes it difficult for us to concentrate on anything and makes us tired whether we are "going, staying, sitting or lying down." What shall we do? As long as we are in good health, we should try to do what we ought to do now one by one. To escape from what we must do does not give us any solution.

Today I went to Ryukoku University and taught my class on "Propagation of Shin Buddhism." Today was the last day of instruction before the summer vacation. I had about ten students and some of them were interested in the subject, others looked uninterested, and still others were engaged in "unlawful" acts like sending email messages with their mobile phones or doing homework from last week. Students are almost the same all over. They think their teachers are somewhat stupid or senile and don't know what they are doing secretely.

However, they liked to participate in discussion on the material. We used a printed Dharma talk by Rev. Hanayama Shoshin entitled "The role of Buddhism in the 21st century" on the June 2007 issue of the monthly Wheel of Dharma published by Buddhist Churches of America at Berkeley. It compared Japanese Buddhism with American Buddhism and criticized Japanese Buddhism as "Funeral Service Buddhism." By it he meant that most Japanese Buddhist priests are engaged in funeral services, forgetting their role as propagators of the Dharma. He also pointed out the fact that American Buddhist temples are losing young members. At the end, he concluded by saying, "I would like to thank my father, grandfather and ancestors for their heritage and carry on the tradition that they have left with me. Even though the basic teaching of Buddhism has not changed in the past 2500 years, it is important to work out a new way to propagate the Dharma that suits the changing times. Only by being able to adapt to the new era, can Buddhism survive. This is the law of nature."

Re-creating a new tradition well adapted to the new environemtn while preserving the core of its basic teaching has been a recurring issue in the history of Buddhism. That is the imporant task to which we who live in the 21th century are assigned.