Basic Buddhism Study welcomes all

WAIMEA — The Basic Buddhism Study on Sunday will discuss how to experience Shin Buddhism, but Shin Buddhists and all others are welcome and encouraged to attend.   

Rev. Frank Childs Jr., an associate minister of Hawai‘i Higashi Hongwanji District in Honolulu, will deliver his brand of real-life outreach from 10 a.m. to noon at the Waimea Higashi Hongwanji, located at 9554 Kaumuali‘i Highway.

“I will specifically talk about how we experience Shin Buddhism,” Childs said. “We are not an exclusive school, but an inclusive school.”

Childs practices Zen Buddhism at the Honolulu temple, but he will talk about the foundation of Shin Buddhism in the year 1175. It is now the most practiced sect of Buddhism in Japan.

The founder, Shinran Shonin, established Shin Buddhism during a time of chaos in Japan, Childs said. The shoguns had overpowered the emperor and the loss of social fabric and onset of natural calamities made people think it was the end of time.

Now at 62, Childs said he came of age during the 1960s when the country was at a cataclysmic point with the War in Southeast Asia and the Civil Rights movement. It was a time of confusion and traditional systems were all in question, just as Shinran’s following of disillusioned peoples faced strong criticism from established leaders.

Childs was raised a Roman Catholic and was introduced to Buddhism in 1969. It was a life-affirming moment.

He met Robert Aitken (1917-2010), a Zen Master who co-founded the Honolulu Diamond Sangha in 1959.

 He was also popular for his social justice advocacy of gays, women and Native Hawaiians.

Aitken taught that there are other options in life and opened the door to the Eastern systems as way to live life, Childs said.

“He (Aitken) awakened my feelings and interest in Buddhism,” Childs said. “It was a long journey, but I ended up becoming a Shin Buddhist priest.”

Sometimes people are moved by pain to search for something better. Others are geared to seek new ways of looking at life, he said.

Japanese Buddhism arrived with the immigrants in the 1880s. Childs said most of them thought they would earn money for a short time and the return to Japan.

They didn’t find paradise and many soon learned they were trapped in the plantation system and never would return. They wrote home and asked for Buddhist monks to come over and say prayers for them and bury them when they died, he said.

This “Aloha Buddha” is an education in itself, Childs said. The first generation Japanese remained close to the culture and faith, as did the generations through the World War II.

With the opening of society in the 1950s, the empowered community has become comfortable and the need for religion has fallen off as it has with their children and children’s children, he said. Life was better and the need for religion was reduced to honoring our ancestors, he said.

The other disassociation with faith is the introduction of online technology. He said many ask, why go to a temple when you can learn about it with a simple search online?

“Technology has made people too comfortable,” he added.

Young people need to find that internal compass and develop their sense of searching for meaning, for something bigger than themselves, he said. He teaches about how to apply information in a way that is useful and meaningful.

Teaching or practicing Buddhism shouldn’t be a laundry list, he said. It is important to understand the eight-fold path and the four noble truths, but it is all really about making it relevant to our experience or they are words without meaning to us, he said.

Buddhism can be confusing and paradoxical at times, Childs said, and he enjoys the priests role of putting the inexpressible into words to help people find meaning. At some point the student must stop looking at the finger pointing to the moon, and to the moon itself, he added.

With declining temple membership, Childs said it is his hope to engage a new generation to see beyond the cultural association and find a way to adapt it to their increasingly modernized lives.

“Come as you are, just come,” he said. “Whether saint or sinner, man or women, gay or straight, just come as you are.”

For information call 338-1847 or 645-0237 or email fujimori@hawaii.rr.com.