Japanese Buddhist priest discusses spiritual toll of nuclear crisis
In Japan, where nature is believed to cleanse spirits, how do people cope when treasured mountains and oceans are tainted by leaks of radiation from a nuclear power plant?
Sokyu Genyu, a Buddhist priest from a temple just 45 km (28 miles) west of the damaged Fukushima Daiichi plant in northeast Japan, is drawing attention to the less visible scars from the world’s worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl in 1986. As a member of a government panel to come up with a blueprint for rebuilding after the deadly earthquake and tsunami on March 11, Genyu is adding the people’s voice — and a different view — to debate on dealing with the loss of homes, jobs and communities.
“We need to treat the situation in areas affected by radiation separately,” said Genyu, head priest of the Fukujuji Temple and also an award-winning author, told Reuters. “It’s not just about getting compensation.”
His small town of Miharu has welcomed thousands of residents who have evacuated from around the nuclear plant, still leaking radiation after being struck by the tsunami.
Damage to the environment has been especially hard on local communities, where farmers and fishermen have traditionally associated nature with god, building shrines to pray for rich harvests and to ward off accidents at sea, Genyu said. “God is the symbol of nature, what people worship as a natural force that can be violent and is uncontrollable,” he said.
“Mountains and oceans have purified us but now those mountains and oceans are contaminated,” he said. “We could see the very foundation for our religious beliefs break down, because it is no longer able to purify us.”
A Buddhist burial in the rain for Japanese tsunami victims
Ten flimsy wooden coffins were laid on two sturdy rails at a hastily prepared cemetery of mostly mud as Keseunnuma began burying its dead from the tsunami that ripped apart the Japanese coastal city. Desperate municipalities such as Kesennuma have been digging mass graves, unthinkable in a nation where the deceased are almost always cremated and their ashes placed in stone family tombs near Buddhist temples. Local regulations often prohibit burial of bodies.
The number of dead in Kesennuma was 551 as of Saturday, far too many for local crematoriums that can typically manage about 10 bodies a day but are now facing shortages of kerosene. Another 1,448 in the city of about 74,000 are missing from the tsunami two weeks ago that has left more than 27,500 people dead or missing across Japan.
“This disaster has created a tsunami of tears,” said Shuko Kakayama, master of the Jifukuji Buddhist temple, which lost 300 members to the tsunami that also heavily damaged temple grounds.
Kakayama, who presided over the funeral of one temple member and prayed for all souls laid to rest, said there was a time when Japan permitted burials. But the government has for decades sought cremations due to a lack of cemetery space in the densely populated country.
“If we are returning to the earth, then we are returning to nature,” Kakayama said.
Read the full story by Jon Herskovitz here.
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JAPAN – BEACON OF CORRECT SPIRIT
“Tsunami Survivor Adoption Program”
A tsunami slammed into Japan’s northeast coast on March 11, killing well over 10,000 people. The 1,000’s of survivors huddle in makeshift shelters. Food, clean water, medicine, toiletries, warmth, comfort, medical and trauma care and other essential supports for survival are in scant supply, in some places non-existent. They are in the darkest of dreams from which they cannot awake, haunted by the loss of loved ones, their familiar home which is in a pile of rubble scattered across a six-mile signature of ravaging horror…Whole generations of family have become tortured ghosts wandering the coastline of the Northwest, evaporating until the sun sets and rises again. At all times, survivors demonstrate impeccable conduct to the shocked world looking on – reminding them of their failings by contrast, inspiring them with new insight on the potential nobility of the human spirit…
It’s true: the government, the survivors, the ninky? dantai who provide disaster relief services faster than the government, the indescribably self-sacrificing workers (Tsun Tzu is the only name appropriate) combating the nuclear plant shambles to protect Mother Japan, and faint smatterings of the outside world community lend a helping hand. After all, in any confrontation to the reminder that we will each face a “final moment”, we are all members of the same family, the frail, evil but simultaneously wondrous and inspiring specie, Homo sapiens.
The code of jingi (justice and duty – where loyalty and respect are a way of life) is the essence of the Japanese people. Worldwide, nothing resembles it.
The multiple, escalating, compound disasters Japan faces are incomparable to any in history. They will survive, rebuild, even fortify beyond their past dignity as a people.
New strategies are needed, which is why I pen this blog. I ask every able-bodied Japanese citizen to reach out their individual hand and home to a survivor. Bring them into your home. Within your means, care for one or more survivors. Work collectively to establish a network of such volunteer homes, a transportation network to bring those survivors to their new “adopting home”. Greet them with love and kindness and nurturing support as you can. Do this as immediately as possible. New and great risk will beset them unless you act with aggressive action to make this possible and tangible. I beg you as a previous Japanese life which memory is alive within me, Kotoamatsukami. Blessings and hope and love and respect for you…
Dominic.MacCormac@MedstrataSystems.com
from Environment Forum:
Are whales and dolphins smart enough to get special rights?
Some conservationists and experts on philosophy and ethics reckon that whales and dolphins are so intelligent that they should be given rights to life like humans. That could mean extra pressure on whalers in Japan, Norway and Iceland to end their hunts.
The focus on rights is a shift after conservationists successfully won a ban on almost all whale hunts from 1986, arguing that they had been harpooned close to extinction.
And in recent years (with evidence that some stocks are big enough to withstand hunts), many opponents say the moratorium should stay in place, arguing that shooting grenade-tipped harpoons at whales can mean a long, cruel death.
A conference in Helsinki starting today is called "Cetacean Rights" and is about "fostering moral and legal change". The experts hope to come up with a declaration during the weekend -- if the idea of special rights for marine mammals catches on, it could also limit the ability of marine parks to keep the mammals in captivity.
"We need a shift of values," said Nicholas Entrup, head of the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society in Germany and Austria. The WDCS is organising the conference.
But would governments listen?
Many favour protection for whales and dolphins but opening the door to non-human rights might also lead to demands for more rights for other mammals, such as elephants, chimpanzees or maybe even your pet dog.
Religion has been dumbing down societies for ages. When are people going to stop looking at bible for all of our answers? The earth is not the center of the universe and man was not created from a rib or simply created in a day. The bible offers good moral stories and christian mythologies — however, it was never meant to be used for scientific purposes. We need to understand that other animals are very special too. Instead of spending billions on finding extra-terrestial life how about we spent money on intelligent life here on earth? Imagine what we could learn from the dolphins. They were once land animals just like us who decided to go back to the ocean. Not a bad idea. We are the only species who foul their own nests and we are ruining the entire planet. If you care about this issue I encourage you to visit – http://www.takepart.com/thecove.
Japanese monk gets down with the beat for Buddhism
He raps. He chants. And this month, Japan’s famed hip-hop loving monk, better known as MC Happiness, will tap dance on stage, in the name of Buddhism.
Kansho Tagai heads the 400-year-old Kyoouji Temple in central Tokyo, offering softly chanted prayers throughout the day amid traditional bell chimes and wafts of incense.
But once in a while, he raises the volume, and the tempo, of these prayers, going before an audience to rap Buddhist sutra, or teachings, to hip hop beats and in modern Japanese.
“When I listened to rap music for the first time, it was in English so I couldn’t understand a word,” Tagai told Reuters.
“I realised that the same can be said for Buddhist sutras because most people can’t understand a word. And the thing is, listening to rap music makes you feel good even though it may be incomprehensible.”
All of creation is music. And rhythm is your guide. The monk gets it.
Top Japan pol calls Christianity self-righteous, Islam hardly better
A top politician in Japan’s ruling Democratic Party has praised Buddhism while calling Christianity “exclusive and self-righteous” and Islam only somewhat better. Secretary-General Ichiro Ozawa made the remarks after meeting the head of the Japan Buddhist Federation, a group traditionally close to the rival Liberal Democratic Party, which was trounced by the Democrats in an August election.
Christianity “is an exclusive and self-righteous religion. And society in the United States and Europe, which are based on Christianity, are at a dead end,” the Nikkei newspaper quoted Ozawa as telling reporters after the meeting. “Islam is better, but it is also exclusive.”
Ozawa, seen by some as the mastermind behind the Democrats’ election win, had kinder words for Buddhism, which along with Shinto is the dominant religion in Japan, although many people take a mostly secular and eclectic view. Christians are a tiny minority and Muslims are few in Japan.
“Buddhism teaches us from the starting point of how human beings should be, their state of mind and way of life,” he said.
Religious organisations can pack clout in Japanese politics because of their ability to mobilise voters, but politicians tend to shun public remarks about people’s beliefs.
Then-prime minister Yoshiro Mori caused a furore in 2000 when he referred to Japan as a “divine nation with the emperor at its centre”, stirring memories of the state Shintoism that helped to mobilise support for Japan’s wartime military aggression. He later apologised publicly.
As far as these statements are concerned (being an American who was raised Catholic) there is absolutely no denying the fact that Abrahamic religions ARE 100% exclusivist. It’s not even debatable! It may be true that not all Christians or Muslims feel this way, but institutionally, it is, without a doubt, the dogma of western religion, with the exception of some of the more mystic and esoteric branches. Some of the current attempts by Rome to be more “open”, are nothing more than an attempt at survival in a modern culture where exclusion is becoming less acceptable and political-correctness holds authority. In studying Buddhism and other dharmic ideas, I’ve also seen some exclusivist ideas, but not nearly as aggressive and intolerant as the western counterpart. While I don’t feel this was the most ‘diplomatic’ thing for an official to say, I can’t deny the truth in it, and I suppose the only people that will are the same types that make his statement true.
from Raw Japan:
Where’s the holy water?
My young son and I were heading into Catholic church on Sunday in Tokyo when we noticed something odd: There was no holy water at the entrance.
It felt strange. What could be more Catholic than crossing yourself with a dab of holy water as you race into Mass to find a pew?
At least that's my image from as far back as childhood, along with all the standing-sitting-kneeling action and kids squirming in their seats anxious to grab a pastry in the basement lounge area after the service.
But we were told on Sunday that the Franciscan Chapel Center was emptying and covering the holy water basins to help prevent the spread of swine flu.
The chapel center, which caters mostly to expats in a country where less than half a percent of the population is Catholic, is also requesting that parishioners greet each other by bowing -- not shaking hands -- among other steps.
Matchmaking gets divine touch at Japanese shrine
Rie Suzuki has exhausted most earthly means to find Mr. Right, so now she, and dozens of singles in Japan where marriage has recently gone out of fashion, are turning to the gods for help.
Forty-year-old Suzuki was one of 14 women and 14 men gathered on a recent Saturday at Imado shrine in Tokyo, which honors Japan’s indigenous Shinto gods of marriage. Participants had varied backgrounds, but one common goal — to find a partner.
“We said it’s up to the gods now. If we go on as we have, we probably won’t ever meet anyone,” said Suzuki, who was attending the event that combines prayer with speed-dating.
Japan’s rare Catholic PM Taro Aso meets Pope Benedict
Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso, a member of Japan’s tiny Roman Catholic minority, had a chance toenjoy some time away from political trouble at home when he met with Pope Benedict on Tuesday.
As his first stop during a trip to attend July 8-10 summit of G8 leaders in Italy, Aso went to the Vatican, gave the pope a Sony digital video camera and discussed the global economic crisis with him.
His visit was timely in that respect — Benedict published an encyclical on economic and social issues today, calling for a bold reform of the world economic order to overcome the financial crisis and redirect the focus of business to the welfare of all people.
Aso, the first Japanese prime minister to meet a pope in 10 years, told Benedict that Japan wanted to cooperate with the Vatican, according to his aides. According to the Vatican daily L’Osservatore Romano, the two men had a cordial discussion that “touched on current international issues such as the economic crisis and the commitment of Japan and the Holy See to Africa. On the bilateral level, the good relations between Japan and the Holy See were noted.”
For the unpopular prime minister, who looks set to lose a general election due by October, meeting Pope Benedict was probably a personal highlight of his trip, even though voters would not care much.
Aso is having a tough time at home with his support falling on doubts about his leadership abilities and the main opposition party has a good shot at ending more than a half-century of almost unbroken rule by Aso’s business-friendly Liberal Democratic Party.
Pope Benedict told Aso that he was happy to meet a Japanese prime minister who is Catholic and to know that Japan’s society is open to various religions.
Catholic regular at Shinto shrines to visit pope at the Vatican
Pope Benedict has been criticised for his handling of relationships with the world’s other religions. On Monday Tuesday, he is due to receive at the Vatican Japan’s Prime Minister Taro Aso, who has little difficulty with mixing and matching various faiths.
Though an avowed member of Japan’s tiny Roman Catholic minority, Aso regularly pays respects and offers gifts at Shinto shrines. Japan’s indigenous religion of Shinto is polytheistic — its doctrine says the world is crowded with divinities, mostly in natural phenomena such as the sun, moon, wind and mountains. Combining this with Christianity’s monotheism may sound like a contradiction, but it is something many Japanese Catholics take in their stride.
Aso’s visits have in the past included trips to Tokyo’s Yasukuni shrine, which is dedicated to war dead and to 14 people judged by an Allied tribunal to be Class A war criminals. Many in Asia see it as a symbol of Japan’s past militarism. But Aso has stayed away since becoming prime minister last year, probably more to avoid offending China than for religious reasons. For more on Aso and his faith, see our post about him when he took office.
Whether visits to Yasukuni overstep the boundaries of Catholic doctrine is a difficult question, according to the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Japan. “This a very delicate problem,” a spokesman for the conference told me. “There is the issue of how far the Vatican understands the real nature of Yasukuni.”
In the 1930s, when visits to Shinto shrines were made compulsory by the military government, Japanese Catholics asked the Vatican for advice on whether this was acceptable. The reply was that the visits were an expression of patriotism and loyalty, and therefore permitted, the spokesman for the conference said, adding that this may have been an attempt to avert a repeat of the persecution that all but wiped out Christianity in Japan in the 16th century. A second request for instructions from the Vatican after Japan’s World War II defeat and the official separation of religion and state got the same answer in 1951.
“But the problem is that Yasukuni shrine treats those who died in the war as gods. The Catholic teaching is that people cannot be gods,” the spokesman said. “So worshipping is not allowed. It is not forbidden to go there to think of those who died, but worshipping is not allowed.”
“It is the same for other Shinto shrines. As far as we are concerned, there is no god other than the Holy Trinity,” he added.
What should a German pope say at Yad Vashem?
What should a German pope say at Israel’s Holocaust memorial Yad Vashem?
The chairman of the Yad Vashem council, Rabbi Israel Meir Lau, was underwhelmed by Pope Benedict’s effort at the memorial this afternoon. “There certainly was no apology expressed here,” he told Israeli television. “Something was missing. There was no mention of the Germans or the Nazis who participated in the butchery, nor a word of regret.” Nor was there an “expression of empathy with the sorrow.” Lau also criticised Benedict for not specifically saying six million Jews were killed — even though the pope did use this figure earlier in the day during another speech.
While I don’t agree completely with Rabbi Lau, I also thought the speech was not up to the occasion. It was vague and evasive. It approached the Holocaust in an abstract way. Click here to see the difference between his approach and the more direct and powerful style Pope John Paul chose when he made the first papal visit to Yad Vashem nine years ago.
It is a unique situation when, within living memory of the Holocaust, a German is head of the Roman Catholic Church. He is visiting Israel as the head of a universal church, sure, but nobody can forget that he comes from the country that carried out the Holocaust. This is not to imply that he bears any personal blame. But most German clergy, politicians and average citizens acknowledge their country’s responsibility to admit its failures and pledge to never fail that way again. To do so is simply honest and to their credit – unlike for example Japan, which still struggles with admitting its own history.
So why can’t Benedict do it? What do you think he should have said?
Okay, I’ve pretty much had it! This is beyond ridiculous! So now the Holy Father is nice enough to show up to a Holocaust memorial (which he didn’t have to do by the way), and renounce the hatred that caused the Holocaust, vowing to never let it be repeated, and all he gets for it is this? THIS!?! This is the thanks he gets?! They attack him for not attacking the Catholic Church?! They attack him for not apologizing for something neither he nor the Church is responsible for?! They attack him for his unfortunate heritage of having been a teenage boy who lived under the reign of Nazi Germany?! Unbelievable!!! I’ve had it with this politically correct LIBERAL FASCISM! So you’ll have to excuse me while I cut loose a bit.
My God is Jewish. His name is Yeshua HaMashiach (or “Jesus Christ” in English). I am a member of a religion (The Roman Catholic Church) which came down to us through the Mosaic Law, the Kingdom of Israel, then the promised Messiah and his apostles – all of them Jewish. I believe that anyone who hates Jews, for no other reason than being Jews, is a racist monster and ultimately a God hater.
The reason why the pope did not apologize for the Church at the Holocaust memorial, is because the Church is not responsible for the Holocaust. If the Catholic Church were responsible, then it would have reason to apologize, but an apology means nothing if the one doing the apology had nothing to do with the thing that needed to be apologized for. It has been well proved, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that Pope Pius XII saved nearly a million Jews from the hands of the Nazis, that Hitler himself wanted the pope kidnapped, and that the Soviet KGB was responsible for spreading lies about Pius XII after his death, implicating him as complicit in the Holocaust, for the purpose of undermining the moral authority of the Catholic Church in Western Europe during the Cold War. If you say Pius XII, or the Catholic Church, had any role in promoting the Holocaust, then you are repeating the propaganda lies of Communists from a failed Communist state. That’s what these Israeli Jews are doing with the pope right now. They’re repeating Communist propaganda, and promoting the agenda of the KGB. But is it really the KGB’s agenda anymore? Not likely, since former operatives within that organization now freely admit the whole thing was propaganda.
This Masonic monument marks the entry into Israel from Egypt. It’s designed to send a clear message of who controls the fate and future of Israel.
Now this should not surprise us when we consider just who is in control of the modern Israeli state. Freemasons have a long history of animosity toward the Catholic Church, and you could say the Catholic Church stands squarely against everything the Freemasons work toward. I would not be the least bit surprised if Freemasons were behind the continued KGB propaganda blitz against Pius XII long after the fall of the Soviet Union. I dare say that they are the ones keeping it alive, for their own purposes, which are designed to further undermine Catholicism.
The ultimate goal of Freemasonry is to rebuild Solomon’s Temple on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Why? Because the Masonic religion (if you can call it that), is chalk full of imagery and symbolism hearkening back to the ancient Temple in Jerusalem. Masons trace their lineage to the Knight’s Templar, and while this may or may not be their actual lineage, the Freemasons believe it is. Rebuilding the ancient Temple means a lot to Freemasons, and now that they control both the United States and the European Union, it is within their reach. Let us not forget the Masonic imagery on American money, and the bleak mason-like temple that lies beneath with United Nations building….
So now let’s look at the pawns of this Masonic agenda. First you have the United States and the European Union, controlled entirely by the Masonic brotherhood. Is it a secret conspiracy? Of course not! This is out in the open, and hid from no one. All you need to do is pick up an American dollar bill and look at the back side. Then of course you have the modern nation-state of Israel, also under control of the brotherhood. Is this a secret? Of course not! It’s openly advertised at Israel’s border with Egypt for everyone to see upon entering the country.
So now that we know who the pawns are, I guess the next question is who are the suckers? Essentially there are three suckers in this whole scheme. The first suckers are the Israeli Jews, and any Jew for that matter, who buys into the KGB nonsense that the wartime pope and the Catholic Church are somehow responsible for the Holocaust. I must say, the Communists (and now the Freemasons) are playing them quite well. The second suckers are American Evangelicals, who are told to blindly support Israel no matter what because it is “God’s chosen nation.” This in spite of the fact that modern Zionism was practically invented by Freemasons in 1896 and the modern nation-state of Israel was created by Masonic cooperation in 1948. The third suckers are liberal to moderate Catholics, so watered down in their faith by Modernism, that they’re willing to believe the anti-Catholic propaganda about the wartime Pope Pius XII, and go along with Evangelicals in their blind support of the Israeli nation.
The Jewish people, particularly Israeli Jews, are being used. They’re victims, and they’re pawns in a much bigger scheme. Their attacks against the pope are not Jewish in origin. Those attacks come straight from the Masonic Lodge.
The pope goes to Israel as an emissary of peace, supporting the only thing that might possibly prevent World War III – that being the “two-state solution.” Now that Israel exists as a nation-state, it has just as much a right to survive as Canada, America, France, Germany or Britain. However, at the same time the sovereignty of non-Israeli Arabs (both Christians and Muslims) must be recognized. There is no other way outside of all out war.
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Resident FaithWorld Expert
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