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Living in the Dharma - Confusedly > Rev. Kenryu Tsuji: First-Year Memorial Service Dharma Message, March 6, 2005, By Rev. Shojo Honda
One day in summer, more than 20 years ago, I visited Fresno in central California, and stayed there for several days. Fresno is famous for producing wonderful vegetables and delicious fruits, especially grapes.
The first settler in Fresno was Armenian. Around the 1890s, many Chinese and Japanese seasonal workers also came to the Fresno area. During my stay there, one day the head minister of Fresno Buddhist Temple (Betsuin) took me to a local cemetery for Asian people.
The cemetery was well cared for. At my rough guess, there were about 200 tombstones there. Most of them had fresh flowers placed before them. When I looked at them carefully, I noticed that the names of the tombstones were mostly of Japanese people. I saw some tombstones with Chinese names, but they were very few.
Before we went to the cemetery, I had seen a Chinatown in Fresno, and I had my lunch at a Chinese restaurant in the old town. At the time, I asked the owner of the restaurant about how many Chinese were living in Fresno. He said: “I don’t know, but most Chinese have left here.”
However, according to one historical record, around the 1890s there were already 4,000 Chinese picking fruits around the Fresno area. So, there should have been more Chinese graves in the cemetery, but in fact, there were few. So, it seemed to be very strange to me.
After returning to Washington, D.C., I asked my colleague in the Chinese section of the Library of Congress, where I was working, about it. Instead of answering me, he wrote something down on a piece of paper in Chinese characters. What he wrote was: “the flower goes back to its roots.”
What he meant by this was that the Chinese customarily bury their ashes/bones in the ground where they were born. So, the ashes, temporarily buried in the local cemetery in Fresno, must have been taken back to the hometown of the deceased person by friend or family.
To my knowledge, however, the verse: “The flower goes back to its roots,” is metaphorical, so it can be understood a number of different ways. For example, the verse can mean that, (a) life goes back to its origins where it came from; or (b) it can mean that people return to the source of life when they die; or (c) it can mean that people return to the place closest to their hearts when they die.
I am told that Rev. Tsuji was born in British Columbia in Canada, and he formed Sangha here and there, and established several temples beyond Ekoji in North America. For all that, I believe that Ekoji, to him, was the most favorite one, and the closest temple to his heart, and was the hardest to forget. As you all know, Rev. Tsuji’s ashes returned to Ekoji. “The flower, naturally, goes back to its roots.”
Rev. Tsuji’s Japanese dialect and my own Osaka dialect were much the same. So, I really enjoyed talking with him in Japanese. Judging from the feeling of his words, he gave his last efforts to establishing Ekoji, and he hoped that it would have the best future of all .
Now, Rev. Tsuji’s ashes are in the columbarium (n?kotsud?) of Ekoji, but his life is not sleeping in the columbarium. His life, once, returned to the Pure Land, but he is not relaxed in the Pure Land, however. Having become Buddha’s life, he is seeking to help other beings, so he has already returned to this world again having taken the same way he took to Pure Land. The Western mind is linear; the Eastern mind is circular.
In Shin Buddhism, this cycle of living life, coming back to this world of samsala from Pure Land to help other beings, is called genso-eko. The flower goes back to its roots, and the roots come back to the flower. Man’s lifetime ends with his death. But, besides this man’s lifetime, there is great life that is filled in the past, present and future, in every direction. Great life, in other words, Buddha’s life never ends. It is always here. Great life, however, is in incompletion. It is incomplete. Anything that becomes perfect, it stops its living, it stops its growing, because then, there is no purpose left. That is why life never comes to perfection. Perfection means death. Life is in imperfection; hence life is growing, and never dies. Life is continuum. It continues. It goes on and on.
The opening verse of the Shoshin-ge is “Kimyomuryo-junyorai,” which means, “I take refuge in the Tathagata of immeasurable life.” Why is it immeasurable? Since Amida’s life is always growing without stopping, we cannot measure it — it is immeasurable. The Pure Land is established by Amida Buddha. By its very nature, inevitably then, the Pure Land is the realm of growing life, and there is no death there.
Rev. Tsuji’s life returned to the Pure Land a year ago, but it seems to me that his life has already come back to this world of samsara by the will of genso-eko. That is activities of Amida’s compassion. (Samsara is the wheel of life that spins as the cycle of birth-and-death.)
Rev. Tsuji’s life, at times, is with us and is carrying on Bodhisattva’s service, and at times, he may have become wind, passing through pines and oaks around Ekoji to continue his Bodhisattva practices. His life is alive with us.