太平普度皇靈中天至聖仁義古佛玉皇大天尊

Having been lulled into a false sense of security by those Bahá'í folk, I immediately planned my final foray out into the wilderness. Oh, and it had to be Eastern, and since our resident Lama was off island I couldn’t just traipse down to the Dharma Center. Oh no, it was hard Japanese Buddhism for me.
Which piqued my curiosity. What exactly did Buddhists do when they gathered Sunday morning? What was there to do? So, for the first time, I did a little research before blindly crashing through the church’s skylight (batman style), grabbing the pastor’s shirt in two fists, and gruffly demanding information (again, batman style). This was to prove to be a smart move on my part.
The Makawao Hongwanji Mission is actually the Hongan-ji temple, which falls under the Jōdo Shinshū school, which falls under the Pure Land branch of Mahayana Buddhism, which is in fact the most widely practiced Buddhism in Japan and a devotional religion.
I had never gone into the building itself, which is surprising considering I passed it daily for several years. I’ve always been off-island when the Bon-Odori happens, and the legendary rummage sales occur before the sun is up (so they might as well happen on Mars). We pulled in to the parking lot and instantly realized we were, in fact, “in for it”. My mother and I assumed our polite-and-respectful-yet-alert faces and barely remembered to bow in time after we crossed the threshold. Completely unsure of ourselves in every way, we quickly crossed and sat in the back section of the pews.
The altar in front of us was very, very gold. It was fabulous, it took up a fourth of the entire building, floor to ceiling. “Don’t leave anything up to chance,” the builders had said, “Make it extraordinarily clear that whoever gets the good fortune to look at this thing knows exactly what it’s for”. There were hanging things, and ornately carved things, and candles, and incense, and anything that wasn’t gold was red or bronze or wood and it wasn’t garish or tacky at all. I was both impressed and very aware that I was out of my natural habitat. This awareness was immediately doubled when I realized I was A. The only white person and B. The only person under 20, out of a good 40+ people.
The ratio of Old Japanese Ladies to Anyone Else was honestly about 10:1. They all had ornate sashes around their necks with stiff creases suggesting they stayed tightly folded in a drawer the rest of the week, and they were all talking quietly among themselves. My mother and I were just about to crack when we discovered our first mistake. A kindly old lady notified us we had failed to sign the guest book, and if we could just write down our names and our addresses and our phone numbers please, we could begin.
Then we realized everyone else was digging around their massive purses and pulling out important looking books. I had to shamble back and ask for two spares, which they were happily lending out. Thus laden with two marks of shame, we rose from our seats as a young man in robes took his position on the altar and hit a gong. I listened with half an ear as yet another old lady at the front spoke about what pages we were to bookmark for today’s sermon. The books turned out to be Buddhist chant hymnals, and we were to turn to page 192, and incidentally there were two newcomers among us, wouldn’t they please stand up now, Griffin Weston and aaaargggh aaaarrgh arrgh the embarrassment was stupefying. A girl walked up and presented us both with woven ribbon versions of the embroidered sashes everyone was wearing (which crossed the language barrier effortlessly, identifying us clearly at “white belt” level Buddhism)

And so, the service began. Jōdo Shinshū Buddhists are devotional to Amitābha Buddha, and they praise him with a nembutsu chant. It was a songbook, a hymnal, but why there were musical notes I cannot say, because they were all the same. The rock band of Hope Chapel doesn’t begin to approach the level of dozens of old ladies chanting Namu Amida Butsu repeatedly. My voice was distinctly out of place, and not just because I’m not a natural chanter. This was,(very politely and with no bad feelings, of course) not my world. The only strong voice in the house was the young man leading us.
After a few more chants focusing on the meat of Buddhism (work really really hard to be as compassionate and benevolent and charitable as possible), he rose to speak. And it was strikingly similar to all the other sermons going on around the world. He spoke (earnestly, in a heavy HEAVY Japanese accent) of the difficulty of really living out the tenants we just outlined. How hard it was to really be benevolent, how even a nice word or a charitable act was important. As he spoke of donations, a queue formed up the aisles. Everyone had a plain white envelope covered in their hand. My mother and I scrambled to locate one and stuff it with polite money. I was the last in the line, towering over these hunched women. Some were bent near double, but they approached the altar, somehow managed to bow, toss a pinch of something from a bowl into another bowl oh god is that incense is that what I should do why is there no instructive poster on the wall telling me actually there probably is but it’s in Japanese damn damn damn and then, suddenly, it was my turn. I remembered at the last second to bow, placed my offering in the bowl, and looked up at the altar. It was even more gold close up. I didn’t dare try anything with the bowl of incense.
Safe back in my seat, I listened to the young man pause in the middle of talking about how these donations would go towards a general catastrophe relief fund. “Isn’t that just a wonderful thing? How nice it is, to know that we help!”, he exclaimed. It was such a genuine smile I felt myself smiling too.
He closed with a lovely allusion to a special wind that blows in Japan around this time, and drew poetical reference to the literal meaning of the words, and how they wake flowers up and tell them it’s time to grow. It was all very nicely said, and if I had taken notes I would be able to do it justice but I feel quite definitively that if I had dared take notes I would have spontaneously combusted out of chagrin.
The spokeswoman then declared refreshments were available outside, and did anyone have anything else to say? I looked quizzically around, expecting someone to run up and give Sermoning a go. Instead, an old lady behind me dug out a 409 spray bottle from her purse and proceeded to calmly describe how you can make your own bleach solution once you run out, and what you can sanitize with such a mixture. Another one told people that it was somebody else’s birthday.
I returned the prayer books, half shook hands and half bowed at the earnest young man, and remembered to turn and bow again a split second before I crossed the threshold. All this in less than an hour. A man caught us outside the door to remind my mother that the annual garage sale was in fact now bi-annual, and was tomorrow. We thanked him again, and drove home.
As comically as I treated my experience at the Honganji, it made me think just as hard as my previous events. The most prevalent feeling I came away with was a greater understanding of why you asked us to attend at least one Western and one Eastern religion. The differences are so great, so apparent, you have to see for yourself. The division of the sects of Buddhism also gave me pause. Can there be a faith-based Buddhist religion? Apparently yes, and the overall ideas were still the same: It’s nice to be nice. And they were nice. At no point was I given a frosty glare or a look of disapproving tolerance. And I’m really good at getting those looks from old ladies. Instead, I got a ribbon lei and some refreshments.