Saturday, May 20th

On Questions of Moral Conscience


When (and how) does a Nembutsu practicer exercise moral conscience in light of a "theology" that says the evil person even more the subject of Amida´s Vow than the good person? How can a moral philosophy of Life be developed in such a context in light of recent events such as war? Are there areas within the Pure Land tradition(s) that counsel us to be more than passive bystanders or suppliant congregants waiting for shinjin or death? What models do we have that might assist us in ethically and morally responding to social controversies and political challenges? What role might the vision contained in Chapters 31-41 in The Larger Sutra play in answering these questions? What can be learned from other spiritual traditions that have certain affinities with ours, such as Quakerism?

These are my thoughts during this sad and dangerous period we live in. Any takers?

Jose Tirado on 05.20.06 [link] [No Comments]




Wednesday, March 29th

Why?


The last time I used these pages, I ranted about the enormous coverage the war was getting within communities across the US that was causing real deep debate amonst the members of those communities. I mentioned how religious leaders from across the spectrum were lending their voices to the growing opposition to the war. To this date we know even more about the deception, the lies, the constant barrage of fearful propaganda designed to scare an intimidated public into once again donating their support (and their children) to an immoral war. Once again, almost year later we have seen vigorous debates: http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0328-07.htm

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Mar06/Rahkonen28.htm

and once again nothing, absolutely nothing from the Pure Land Buddhist community or leadership as a whole. Nothing.

What relevance can we possibly have when, as the whole world now recognizes, Americans are participating in an imperial venture that has caused hundreds of thousands of deaths in a region where our President now says we will remain for years, whose only resource we can see is oil? When the whole world looks in disgust at a country that now allows torture as a legitimate foreign policy, spies regularly on its own citizens without court order, continues to kill civilians with impunity and threatens near police state laws to subdue a growing and uneasy public; what is the Jodo Shinshu community as a whole doing? What, I ask? Christians and Muslims, Jews and atheists regularly gather to reclaim our moral grounding as a country but we seem to sit on our hands, passively doing nothing. Where are the moral voices opposed to war and aggression, against fascist tendencies that are noted everywhere I go (except in the United States) and are poised to retake our government from the abusers who lie and kill in our name?

Where indeed?
I am a Jodo Shinshu priest, living in Europe, seeing my country fall apart internally, watching it get discredited externally, and seeing my faith fading into ever irrelevant depths. I have written literally hundreds of letters, a dozen or so articles and regularly discuss this with expat Americans and others who are worried as well. I continue to receive letters from people around the world concerned about these very issues. The only ones who haven’t written back, the only ones who remain in some closeted dark, seemingly unwilling to take a stand, are my own faith community.

Why?










Jose Tirado on 03.29.06 [link]




Tuesday, September 27th

Where is the Outrage?


Where is the outrage? Lately I have been following the anger (http://www.counterpunch.org/mcgovern09272005.html), the anguish, (http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts09202005.html) and the angst inspiring: (http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0924-25.html) and I am distressed by the deafening silence from across the Atlantic. What is happening over there?

When war rages in our name across the earth and resources are constantly being squandered to enrich the already wealthy criminals who run our country, when we still stick to the Talmudic tightness of doctrine rather than a Pan Pure Landism which might offer some succor to the enormous suffering we are witness to, then we have abandoned any claim to relevance and deserve the obscurity we live in and the dwindling influence we have on the Buddhist world in particular and the religious world in general.

What will take to wake up and declare ourselves opposed to any action that is not conducted for the “benefit of all sentient beings?” We may quibble over some of the particulars but the general guidance must be that we provide and support peace, help the needy, educate all children, comfort the sick and dying by making medical care a right that our over-bloated State machinery should pay for and begin the only moral task possible when speaking of a military and that is to cut it back. There is a madness taking place and it appears that Americans are the last to realize this and the first to deny it.

What role do our religious leaders play? What role should our religious institutions play? Well look at who we put on trial: http://www.counterpunch.org/saavedra09192005.html, rather than the murderers who live in luxury and in the seats of government. Look at the debates raging within the mainstream churches, mosques, synagogues thoughout the US, (http://www.counterpunch.org/alberts09192005.html) and you will see the rising up of other religious people to face the reality of our collective life here on earth and the awesome and sometimes fearful discussions on how to bring about peace and contribute to the Good rather than shirk in the shadows and allow the nation we love to behave immorally and in our silence to accede to it.

We cannot pretend relevance when we have no voice in these times and especially if that voice is not against death and for life, against selfishness and for community, against the militarization of all aspects of our society and for the creation of a country that cares. Jodo Shinshu Buddhism has no place at the table if it can´t—through all our voices—rise up and preach a gospel of peace now, not just in some distant future, in some distant Pure land.

Jose Tirado on 09.27.05 [link] [No Comments]




Monday, May 23rd

What to do?


Both Abe and Jeff have followed through on this recent thread about the war and I hope this presages a deeper debate within the Shin community in the US about how we are to look at our role as spiritual people. Several things seem important to me and I thought I would add a bit here.

First as far as history is concerned, especially the Vietnam War, it is only in the US that there is such “debate”. Or better put, that there can be any serious contention otherwise that the US engaged in massive illegal and unwarranted war making that destroyed an ancient society that had beaten the Chinese, the French and now the US. Everywhere I go people of all ages know about the fake Gulf of Tonkin “incident” which LBJ used as a pretext to go in Vietnam (which by the way, we invaded South Vietnam, an wholly artificial creation safer the US cancelled free elections which were to be held because the US government knew Ho Chi Minh-who kept a copy of the Declaration of Independence on his wall—would win easily). Its remarkable that Americans know so little about the continual American interventions abroad: we invaded the Dominican Republic in 1965, Grenada during Reagan, mined the harbors of Nicaragua (an act of war for which the US was condemned in the World Court for) and of course supported every petty dictator from those countries then deposed them when the people desired real democracy. However, even high school kids here in Iceland know about these things. The record is easily available.

My suggestions are for Americans to begin a crash course in what Noam Chomsky calls “intellectual self-defense” by reading Howard Zinn, Michael Parenti, Chomsky, Michael Albert and others. Websites of particular use are CounterPunch (whose issue today-May 23-is first rate), Z Net, Black Commentator, and commondreams.

But what we are here for is to bring life into the Shin community, to challenge it as part of our “family” to reach into our consciences do what people are doing around the world: organize to stop the constant stream of war, imperial adventurism, corporate domination of our lives, impoverishment of whole sections of society and the steady erosion of individual liberties through media consolidation and outright propaganda. This was the agenda of Dr. King and his allies and I believe we can play a significant role. What are some of the things you can do? Now? That will be the subject of my next entry.
Namo Amida Butsu...

Jose Tirado on 05.23.05 [link] [No Comments]




Tuesday, May 10th

The Great Divide


One of the first lessons in civil discourse I learned in life was to never talk religion and politics. However, I never listened to that advice because I found people were most animated when they discussed the things they really believed in and religion and politics seemed to occupy an important place in the hearts of most people I met. So I always ended up being the instigator of controversial discussions in my household, prodding people for their views on the things that mattered to them most, for any other conversation I felt irrelevant. As I got older, I ended up uniting these two strands of my life as an “engaged Buddhist” and cultivated as best I could, a committed stance on issues I felt of most importance such as war, ecological preservation and radical democracy. These stances have rarely made me popular and I resigned myself long ago, during the Vietnam War in fact, to being on the outside.

It seems that as we continue our personal reflections on this site, about Jodo Shinshu and the pressing issues of the day that once again, politics opens up the great divide between people. Jeff Wilson wrote recently that my own piece contended that the leadership of Shin Buddhism has opened up slightly in presenting the piece by Rev. Dr. martin Luther King, Jr., still posted on this site. I said no such thing. Jeff also drew what he thought is a contrast between his own view of this site and what he thinks mine are. Again, he is not representing my position accurately. I will answer briefly these questions but move this discussion on towards what I feel the most important reason why I continue to share my views here, the future of Jodo Shinshu Buddhism in the West.

First some history. During the Vietnam War our country was divided not into two factions but many factions of varying degrees, gradually a majority coalesced around opposition to the war and Americans left. However there were many debates and many people said exactly what Jeff said about not to “cut and run”, that we had an obligation to stay and help the South Vietnamese since we started things. Well it was called “Vietnamization” in those days and it not only didn’t work, it ended up continuing a war that killed about 3,000,000 people. Thats´worth repeating. 3,000,000 people died as a result of our policies, millions were displaced and affected and countless thousands continue to die or are brutally affected yearly due to unexploded ordinance and birth defects due to American use of Agent Orange. This is not a model worth repeating. We are not wanted in Iraq (except perhaps by those hand picked inheritors of American handouts who seem to sprout up everywhere Americans need resources), have already killed more than 100,000 civilians, have left a ruinous and poisoned swath of land due to use of depleted uranium and will be remembered for first helping install Saddam Hussein’s murderous regime, then turning on him when he was no longer convenient, instigating brutal sanctions that killed 500,000 children despite his insulated position then invaded and expected flowers. American deaths are close to 2,000 with thousands of soldiers affected. It must stop. Period.

Secondly, what is the relevance for Shin Buddhists and their leadership? In my previous posting, I said “if” the posting of the MLK, Jr. was representative of a change in Shin leaders attitudes then it was welcome though puzzling since it was an old speech and never directly addressed the present situation. I will plead ignorance about the ABSC´s leadership role in American Shin, I presumed more than what Jeff suggests. But yet we are leaders, all of us in attempting to find a place for Shin outside of our hearts and potentially into our society. It is our responsibility to resist aggression and war, even if (and perhaps most importantly if) it comes from our own government. But we can move past the present war and relate this to Shin’s role in general.

Our society has a long history of religious institutions being as divided as our people and yet we have seen that many spiritual people were at the forefront of the great movements of change that have benefited our nation. One can say with great certainty that little would have changed with regard to the Civil Rights struggle were it not for the religious leaders of the Black churches. (And not just the “leaders” but the many thousands of brave people who put their lives on the line to resist oppression and demand a rightful place within our society). When Dr. King was murdered, it was at a time in his life when he was not just advocating for Black civil rights but he was calling for an end to American aggression and militarism saying that “any nation that spends more on its military than on social programs is a society approaching spiritual death.” He was not only right then, he is right for today. He was murdered when he was about to lead a Poor People’s March on Washington, DC, tying in America’s social inequities, which affected Americans of all races, to this vast military machine. It was for those reasons that he was killed and his brave and brilliant example of publicly saying that our “spiritual death” is resulting from our militaristic policies abroad, which is impoverishing our people at home, has not been repeated since.

So what does this mean for us as Pure Land Buddhists? I have suggested that part of our potential resurgence lies in standing up as Dr. King did to fight against the very same forces that have descended upon our country once again like some dark cloud presaging disaster. In Japan Shin Buddhism is widely derided as “funeral Buddhism” with little relevance for youth and for the future. It may not be a wholly accurate picture, but the perception remains. We here in the West (I currently live in Iceland) have a responsibility to not only share our faith, but to stand within the august Buddhist tradition of being peacemakers, resisting war and standing for peace. Only then will we be considered more than just a quietistic faith of personal salvation and part of a greater tradition of spirituality working for the greater social good. That is something I believe in with all my heart and will work for till the day I die. Anybody with me?
Namo Amida Butsu




Jose Tirado on 05.10.05 [link] [No Comments]




Friday, April 22nd

Dr. King, War and the Jodo Shinshu Establishment


I have been absent from these “pages” for a few months due to surgery, my return to gradaute school and several trips abroad. I have followed, however, the various postings on Shin boards and these pages here and was pleasantly surprised to see Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.´s seminal piece on the Vietnam War. It pleases me that quite openly the authors of this site have chosen fit to address war as an issue upfront and publicly. That they chose a 38 year old speech to do it is unfortunately, regrettable.

For we are in the midst of an illegal war, having destroyed once again one of the oldest societies on earth which after 10 years of brutally punishing sanctions caused the deaths of upwards of 500,000 children and many thousands of adults, now suffers the loss of perhaps 100,000 civilians and the daily oppressive life under occupation by the world´s only superpower. As people of faith, I believe we are obligated to stop war, to prevent our own leaders from taking us there for any reason and to resist with everything we have once such a mad decision has been taken. Might we now assume that the leadership of Jodo Shinshu in the States is making tiny, baby steps in that direction by tacitly approving the placement of this speech by Rev. King? For if so it is a welcome but oddly ambiguous way to enter into this discussion.

Dr. King was opposed to imperial war, and he understood that America´s war in Vietnam (like this war now in Iraq) was an imperial one. Dr. King understood that any society that spends as much as we do on war making materiel is “approaching spiritual death.” Dr. King advocated nonviolent resistance against his own government to force it to acknowledge its injustices at home and to cease from creating injustice abroad. Is this the message that the Jodo Shinshu establishment, at least within the American Buddhist Study Center, is reaching? If so, then it is a most welcome and heartening step in the right direction.

As an expatriate American who watches from abroad the remarkable complacency of “average” Americans against a viscious onslaught of Christian fanaticism, jingoistic militarism and increasing isolation in the international community over its bullying foreign policy, I have said it many times that we as “spiritual” people must begin to resist this now, or risk the very loss of the freedom to dissent which is being chipped away daily. I have suggested that we in the Pure Land denominations take the lead, cultivating our own Berrigan brothers, our own Dolores Huerta and Cesar Chavez´s and our own Rev. King´s. Should we do so, it will not come without a price in shaking up our ecclesiatical hierarchy and possibly our own faith communities at home. But it is the right thing to do. THAT is what Dr. King was speaking about so eloquently almost 40 years ago.
Namo Amida Butsu

Jose Tirado on 04.22.05 [link] [No Comments]




Tuesday, January 11th

The Place of Tears


Tears are the Ground of Amida´s Being.

What tears Dharmakara must have shed seeing all the suffering in all the worlds to spur him on to countless eons of determined practice, finally establishing a place for all those who wish to attain Buddhahood?

And our tears, those of us who yearn to Awaken and can’t, who struggle to live in this world and yet still desire to rise above our limited selves, only to find that we are too weak to travel that road on our own. We who are lost, who are unable to support the aspirations to Enlightenment, we who are the forgotten ones in Buddhism’s promise of deliverance, we are those whose oceans of tears create the constantly evolving need to deliver us, in the Mysterious, ever-flowing current of Compassion. Our tears and Amida´s tears for us are the very sustenance that keeps the working of Boundless Compassion in a dynamic of suffering and comfort that is beyond comprehension.

The Infinite—for Amida´s very Name refers to limitless Life and Light—regards us tenderly and our cries are always heard. We are not alone, nor ever forsaken, for the tears which flow upward in our cries for help, and downward from the Heart of Compassionate concern, form the Ground that makes up Amida´s very Being.

As I watch with awful pain the images coming from Asia and the devastation wrought by the tsunami-caused floods, or the interminable suffering caused by invasion and warfare in Iraq, I know in those moments of clarity, that those twin rivers of tears merge somewhere in an embrace that will provide, at some Grand and Mysterious level, relief from all suffering, for all Time.
Namo Amida Butsu...

Jose Tirado on 01.11.05 [link] [No Comments]




Saturday, January 1st

New Year´s Aspirations


Instead of the usual New Year´s “resolutions” (implying a “resolve”—deep shades of Self-Power-- few of us can maintain!) I would like to share a few of my own New Year “Aspirations,” that is, things I aspire to. [Note: aspire is from the Latin, ad + spirare, to breathe upon; a most appropriate Buddhist concept.]

First, I aspire to the continued development of faith, the cultivation of shinjin which, paradoxically is something that is beyond “cultivating” or any other kind of “calculation” on my part. So I aspire to being able to get out of the way, so to speak, and to allow the Compassionate embrace of Immeasurable Light and Life to illuminate and permeate my life.

I also aspire to awaken the deepest impulses of concern, to continue my efforts to live a life doing all I can to assist others in their times of need, and to work even more assiduously when I despair that I have not done enough or when I presume I have done more than I can.

I aspire to become a better husband and parent, though I am sadly bad at both.

I aspire to instill in those whom I teach a committment to embracing the unknown, for when we think we know something, we are usually quite far from real “knowing.”

I aspire to stay in contact with with those near-forgotten friends and colleagues who, for politically charged reasons in that politically-charged year, I stayed away from.

I aspire to write more, and write better articles in as many different venues as I can, for I believe what I have to say is occasionally worth hearing and reflecting upon.

I aspire to learn more from Life itself and work less vigorously at gaining “learning” from books or other sources away from my own direct experience.

I aspire to put into practice at least half of what I learn this year—thus probably doubling the number of things I do positively.

I aspire to no longer suffer the foolishness of my own well-defined views any more than I suffer those of my “enemies”, which, being numerous these days, means I will have plenty of work to do.

I aspire to listen more and talk less, thus doubling my insecurities at being misunderstood but probably doubling as well the number of people who feel they have been heard from me.

And lastly I aspire to hold in my heart the deep quiet I cultivate every morning before my altar and share it with as many people as I come in contact with that day, and every day this coming year.

Happy New Year, everybody!

Namo Amida Butsu...

Jose Tirado on 01.01.05 [link] [No Comments]