Nama Amida Butsu.
With roots reaching back to 1945, the Spokane Buddhist Temple practices a derivative of Pure Land Buddhism and honors the sacred tradition of a good potluck.
Founding of the Spokane Buddhist Temple
Dana and courage are threaded through these challenging and miraculous stories of the past, from which the temple we know and love has grown into its rich and diverse present. -Karen Terao Akahoshi
In 2012, Karen Terao Akahoshi gave a speech at the Northwest Buddhist Convention Banquet in honor of her family’s contribution to Buddhism in the region. Her father, Reverend Eiyu Terao, was the founding minister of the Spokane Buddhist Temple.
Railroad and mining jobs along the west coast in the nineteenth century precipitated the arrival of Japanese nationals in the United States, and Eiyu Terao’s family was among them. When the jobs began to disappear in the early twentieth century, however, the trend quickly reversed.
Eiyu Terao’s family followed suit. Though born in Stockton, California, Eiyu’s family returned to Japan when he was six years old, in 1919. He attended Ryukoku University in Kyoto, where he received his Buddhist ordination in the Shin tradition, and then returned to the United States, where he became a minister at San Francisco Buddhist Church.
After Eiyu Terao married, he moved to a new assignment as an assistant minister in Washington at Seattle Buddhist Temple. Soon, however, the lives of Japanese Americans across the country were to change drastically.
The onset of World War II led to the internment of thousands of Japanese Americans, including Terao and his wife. Their daughter, Karen, the source of this information, was born in the Minidoka, Idaho internment camp where they were confined.
In September, 1945, at the end of World War II, the more than 100,000 Japanese Americans interned were released from the camps with “25 dollars and a bus ticket,” which Terao and his family used to travel to and resettle in Spokane, Washington. Friends had told them there was no temple in the city, and there was a need for one.
Over the next couple years, the temple in Spokane established itself under the guidance of Eiyu Terao, and became a tightly-knit community of Japanese Americans practicing Shin Buddhism. Terao served as the primary minister of the Sangha until 1960, when he and his family moved back to California. Though none of Eiyu Terao’s writings are readily available, his legacy lives on in the views of the temple unto today–though some cultural changes have occurred along the way.
Contemporary Constituency & Views
Over the last six decades, Spokane Buddhist Temple has mostly transitioned from an (immigrant) Japanese American Buddhist community to a convert Buddhist community, significantly affecting its cultural and religious atmosphere.
Today, the (growing) seventy-member Sangha of SBT is primarily white, middle-class Americans. Even the ministers (and minister’s assistants) of the Sangha–Rinban Don Castro, Sensei Paul Vielle, Reverend Christine Marr, Reverend Jefferson Workman, and Ken Mondal–are all white Americans. However, Reverend Marr describes the Sangha as a “melting pot,” where all are welcome regardless of background or ethnicity, and the influence of Japanese heritage is unmistakable. This is drastically different from the peaceful haven SBT once was for often persecuted Japanese immigrants and Japanese Americans.
Though primarily white, the Sangha actively cultivates appreciation for its Japanese heritage, and has maintained its ideals of amiability and refuge. In one particularly salient expression of this appreciation, SBT joins other groups in the Spokane community to host an annual week of events celebrating Japanese culture, including cuisine, origami, “calligraphy, ikebana, kendo, laido, jodo, karetado, and taiko drumming.”
The SBT Sangha constantly strives to treasure its Japanese heritage and preserve its characteristic compassion.
Cultural Context & Religious Practice
Like many other Western Buddhist congregations, the cultural context of the Spokane Buddhist Temple has distinctly influenced its religious practice.
Sunday services at the Temple create a weekly rhythm for the Sangha and demonstrate its temporal and ritual dependence on surrounding culture. In a country where the practice of church attendance on a Sunday morning has been indelibly present from the outset, the SBT has followed suit with its own Sunday morning services. These gatherings include a reading for brief meditation, corporate chanting and singing, and a “Dharma talk,” respectively comparable to a scripture reading, the singing of hymns, and a sermon.
Even minute details of Sunday morning services exhibit cultural influence. Volunteer greeters stand at the door to hand out a printed order of service. A ringing Kansho, or “calling bell,” indicates the beginning of service. Afterwards, the congregation casually enjoys coffee, tea, and snacks. All of these follow longstanding practices of Christian churches across the country (this is not to say such practices are exclusive to churches, rather, they are inseparably associated with typical church practices).
One Sangha member of the SBT, Jeremy Philips, substantiates the Temple’s cultural context in another way: he recently wrote, and published, a novel entitled My Buddhist Christmas. The narrative follows teenage American and Buddhist Chris Jones as he grapples with his identity and priorities, and includes tension between Buddhism and Christianity.
Constructed in 1994, the current temple’s architecture, too, exhibits a conflation of Western culture with Buddhist inspiration. A building of primarily Western design, with flares of Buddhist inspiration, sits among residential homes and a gas station; its appearance is not unorthodox. Japanese-inspired lattice stair railings and a raised, square hip roof contrast with the structure’s asymmetrical Western homelike appearance (asymmetry is uncommon for Buddhist temples). The main gathering place, called the Hondo, betrays knowledge of a church sanctuary; there is a well decorated altar and stage, and a seating area of quintessential church pews. A piano and pulpit are present, too. Indeed, the SBT website describes the Hondo as “a typical church-like setting.”
Pure Land & Shin Buddhism: History of the Tradition
I simply receive the words of my dear teacher, Honen, “Just say the nembutsu and be saved by Amida,” and entrust myself to the Primal Vow. Besides this, there is nothing else. -Shinran, Tannisho
Spokane Buddhist Temple follows the tradition of Shin Buddhism, the most practiced branch of Buddhism in Japan unto today. Shin Buddhism, also known as Jōdo Shinshū, was founded by the Japanese monk Shinran in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Shinran (1173-1263) was a disciple of the monk Honen (1133-1212), who established the major school of Japanese Buddhism called Pure Land, a sect of Mahayana.
The conception of a “pure land” serves as an alternative and favorable plane of rebirth; not the permanent state of Nirvana, nor the impermanent state of heaven. Rather, a “pure land” is a buddha-field wherein one is able to hear the teaching of Buddha, the Dharma, at any moment one wills. This plane of existence serves as a stepping stone towards Nirvana for those who are unable to achieve extinction from Samsara in this life, especially laypeople.
This concept emerges from the Sukhavativyuha Sutra (“The Discourse on the Land of Bliss”). In the Sutra, Ananda, Buddha’s closest and perhaps most curious disciple, asks the meditating Buddha why he appears particularly serene. Buddha reveals his contemplation of a past Buddha’s conversation with a monk.
Lokeshvararaja was Buddha at the time, and was talking with a monk named Dharmakara, who desired to be the Buddha of a new, perfect buddha-field. At Dharmakara’s request, Lokeshvararaja described the qualities of the multitude of buddha-fields, and Dharmakara responded by meditating upon these qualities for five aeons. When he had finished, Dharmakara returned to Lokeshvararaja and described his ideal buddha-field—his “pure land”: a place he hoped to create and live within as a Buddha.
Dharmakara succeeded. He created the buddha-field, called Sukhavati, and became the Buddha called Amitabha, or Amida (“Infinite Light”). Before departing to this new land, however, Dharmakara vows to welcome all who hear his name (Amitabha), desire to live in his land of bliss, and cultivate merit for that purpose—so long as they do not commit any crime of immediate retribution: to kill one’s father, kill one’s mother, kill an arhat, wound a buddha, or cause a schism in the sangha. Dharmakara’s conversation with Lokeshvararaja, and its recollection by the Buddha of this world, have profoundly affected Buddhism unto today.
Fast-forward to the twelfth century. A Japanese monk named Honen perceived the world to be devolving, and was deeply concerned the Buddha’s teachings (Dharma) were fading—leaving humanity without a path to Nirvana. With reference to the Sukhavativyuha Sutra, he argued the only way to peace in a degenerate age would be rebirth in Amitabha’s “pure land.”
Thus, Pure Land Buddhism began. Honen advocated the chanting of the name Buddha Amitabha and the importance of living a moral life. Daily, he would chant Namu Amida Butsu (Honor to Amitabha Buddha) seventy thousand times, a phrase referred to as the nembutsu. Shinran, however, a disciple of Honen, exalted the power of Amitabha and warned against superfluous recitation of the nembutsu—one recitation alone has the power of salvation.
Shinran’s disciples preserved his teachings and theology primarily through oral tradition and a text called Tannisho (“Lamenting the Deviations”). In the document, a follower of Shinran records a number of conversations he had with the teacher, and thus preserves much of his thinking.
Information regarding Shin Buddhism retrieved from The Norton Anthology of World Religions: Buddhism, edited by Donald S. Lopez, Jr. and published by W. W. Norton & Company in 2015. Images linked to sources. All information in this report regarding Spokane Buddhist Temple retrieved from:
- SBT website
- SBT Facebook page
- Spokane Historical, a Public History publication from Eastern Washington University
- The Wheel of Dharma, an official publication of Buddhist Churches of America
