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View from the Pew  Mary Adamski |
Faith intertwined
A new program at Chaminade
University encourages interfaith
dialogue as a path to knowledgeEven if the speaker is noted and the title provocative and the sponsor distinguished, it's hard to make a story about a lecture intriguing enough to lure people through the doors.
Announcements and invitations have gone out about the launching of an interfaith dialogue program next weekend couched in the dignified, academic context befitting Chaminade University and the Nobel Peace Prize nominee invited to speak and the Buddhist Promotion Society, which has endowed the program.
But academic folks, look -- this is remarkable stuff, and maybe you need the circus promoter approach to hype it. Let me try to help.
RONEN ZILBERMAN / RZILBERMAN@STARBULLETIN.COM
Retired Buddhist Bishop Yoshiaki Fujitani, pictured at the Buddhist Information Society and Numata Foundation office, is the namesake of a new interfaith program to be launched by Chaminade University.
>> What in the world is a Catholic university doing bringing in a Buddhist speaker?
Don't you guys have your own faith to promote? Does the Vatican know?
>> Wasn't that author, activist and publisher Sulak Sivaraksa run out of Thailand because his social commentary offended the monarchy? Is this a good model for a lecture series? What's a Buddhist doing as a rabble-rouser anyway; aren't they contemplative, directed inward?
>> Whoever heard of Bukkyo Dendo Kyokai -- Buddhist Promotion Society? Like I said, aren't they contemplative, directed inward? Isn't promotion and proselytizing more of a Christian thing?
>> Good move, though, in naming the lecture series after the Rev. Yoshiaki Fujitani. The retired Honpa Hongwanji bishop with 50 years in the trenches of ecumenical effort is the first name in mind when you mention interfaith understanding in a local context. How did you ever get that modest, humble man to allow it?
Those mysteries and more will be unveiled at the free lecture at 5 p.m. Feb. 8 at the Japanese Cultural Center ballroom.
More than 100 people who already know the answers, or endorse the program mission to "promote interfaith dialogue and the search for understanding, peace and justice," have already reserved seats at the dinner to follow. Wednesday is the deadline for reservations. Tickets at $100 -- $75 tax-deductible -- are available by calling Poranee Natadecha-Sponsel at 735-4822. Checks to Chaminade University, Fujitani Interfaith Program may be mailed to the university at 3140 Waialae Ave., Honolulu 96816.
"The idea is larger than Yoshi and myself and the university," said David Coleman, Chaminade chairman of humanities and fine arts. "Our concern is to create a space where Buddhists and Christians can reflect on their faith journeys and the importance of those journeys on their lives. They will look at comparisons, areas of common interest and disagreement, and how do we work through those ... all those dimensions."
"To be able to work with the Buddhist community and bring people in for discussion, to learn from each other, is important in this place," said Coleman, who credits Fujitani with a key advisory role in establishing the Buddhist studies program at Chaminade.
The new program will "institutionalize these ideas," Coleman said, and was also seen as an ideal way to honor Fujitani, who recently turned 80.
The local minister has been president of the Buddhist Promotion Society and Numata Foundation for the past 10 years. His connection with the international educational organization was fortuitous for Chaminade.
After the new program was already rolling, Toshihide Numata, son of the Japanese millionaire who endowed the society, agreed to endow the Chaminade program with $100,000 for the first five years.
Chaminade has offered Buddhist studies since 1989, with Buddhist Poranee Natadecha-Sponsel as head of the program, which offers six courses as well as four Chinese study classes that cover Eastern religions.
That's not a bit irregular for a Catholic school, says Coleman, not since the Second Vatican Council in 1965 opened the faith to new ways to worship and view the divine. "The Vatican II document on religious freedom and relationships with other religions focused on the sense that we need to listen to and learn from each other," said Coleman. "We don't reject what is good and what helps us see more fully.
"We recognize that the spirit of God moves throughout the world and is bigger than us. Following through on that is to create opportunities for listening. That sort of defines what universities do."
The program will be more than a lecture series, said Natadecha-Sponsel. "We will develop workshops and in-service training for teachers" at the recently opened Pacific Buddhist Academy as well as in Catholic high schools.
"Secondly, we could encourage student research and prepare them for presentations at conferences," she said. She teaches philosophy of religion, world religion and environmental ethics, and in evening classes on the discourse between the disciplines of sociology, philosophy and religion. She is the president of the Hawaii Association of International Buddhists.
The interfaith program has special personal meaning for Natadecha-Sponsel, who was born in Thailand and grew up in a mostly Muslim area. "You learn you have to treat people with respect and as the minority, you learned you have to work with people and try to promote mutual respect."
Sivaraksa was her college professor and is the model of an "engaged Buddhist," acting out his belief in the world. He was nominated in 1993 for the Nobel Peace Prize because of his pursuit of educational and economic reform in his country. He lived abroad for a few years after being charged with "lese majesty," criticism of the government that reflected badly on the monarchy.
The Thai writer and activist founded the international Seeds of Peace organization to promote peace through the teaching of Buddha.
"He organizes the grassroots movements to promote self identity; he organized Buddhist monks to be involved in environmental issues," said Natadecha-Sponsel.
"His work reflects exactly what we are trying to promote -- bringing your belief to work for social justice and to work toward peace," she said.
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Buddhist bishop sees benefits
in sharing beliefsThe Rev. Yoshiaki Fujitani has reflected on the common values and the differences between his Buddhist beliefs and other religions throughout his 50 years as a minister.
"We demand that others be like us and if they're not, they're unacceptable," he said. "I guess this debate will continue.
"The whole idea is to get to know each other. If we can accept people as they are, imagine what could happen."
A new interfaith program to be launched by Chaminade University next week will bear Fujitani's name as a way to honor his decades of leadership in ecumenical efforts in Hawaii. It was endowed by the same international Buddhist organization that established the Numata Chair at the University of Hawaii School of Hawaiian Asian and Pacific Studies. The program at the Catholic campus will explore the spiritual dimension as well as religions' views of justice and peace.
He said that in sharing ideas with Christians, "I feel I know what they're talking about. We don't have a word for God, but we do have a God concept.
"God is a term used for the ultimate reality in Western expression," Fujitani said in an interview. "We have other words for that. In the Pure Land tradition, we conceptualize that reality as the Buddha of compassion, the Buddha of ultimate light. They are aids to visualize what it is not possible to visualize, what is beyond our ken."
The new program "is a good chance for Christian-Buddhist dialogue," said Fujitani, who has been president of the local Buddhist Promotion Society chapter since 1993. He served as bishop of Honpa Hongwanji Betsuin for 12 years and director of the Buddhist Study Center for seven years.
His appointment to head the international society and the Numata Foundation was a extension of his lifelong ecumenical experience. The group's grassroots effort is the distribution of a book of "Teachings of Buddha" in hotel rooms and to prisoners.
He was acquainted with the late Tokyo businessman Yehan Numata, who founded the society, Bukkyo Dendo Kyokai, and endowed it with millions from his Mitutoyo company, one of the largest manufacturers of precision instruments in the world.
"Numata said his purpose was to bring world peace and give people the opportunity to see what Buddhism has to offer. He didn't say anything about spreading Buddhism."
Some hotels decline to put the Buddhist books alongside the Gideon Bibles in hotel rooms. The only time the group forced the issue on First Amendment grounds was to have the equal opportunity at Hale Koa Hotel, which is operated by the U.S. Army.
When asked about his leadership in interfaith efforts for years, Fujitani will deflect the focus from himself with anecdotes. He recalls, in his first assignment at Wailuku Hongwanji mission, officiating at a funeral in 1959. The pastor of Christ the King Catholic Church attended, and "he came forward to offer incense. It was remarkable. I had been told that a Catholic was not to even enter another church, and I had seen children stay outside" during their family's Buddhist services.
"I felt released from the feeling about people of other faiths."
He attended the first ecumenical effort on Oahu, a 1960 joint Thanksgiving service at St. Clement's Episcopal Church, with a Jewish rabbi participating and a message from a Buddhist minister read by the pastor. "That was unthinkable," he recalls. "That spirit of cooperation opened my eyes. I recognized that we have to be friends, we have to spend time together so we could understand each other."
In recent times, interfaith efforts are often built around social justice and peace issues.
Fujitani served in the Military Intelligence Service during World War II but followed a different path than others in his generation of returning nisei soldiers who became business and political leaders in Hawaii.
Before the requisite years of study in Japan to become a Buddhist minister, he earned a master's degree in the history of religions at the University of Chicago, grounding for the open-mindedness that was rare 50 years ago. The University of Chicago experience was common ground with the late Protestant ministers Abraham Akaka and Teruo Kawata.
"I had a feeling that as Buddhists, we keep to ourselves, and that maybe we should go out," said Fujitani.
And that is what he has done.
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Mary Adamski covers religion for the Star-Bulletin.
Email her at madamski@starbulletin.com.
