Everything Is Broken, December 29, 2024
In May 1978, our dear friend, Tove Neville, an art historian, took us to Nara National Museum to see a major exhibition, "The Sources of Japanese Buddhist Art." The curator of this extraordinary exhibition chose one of the most beautiful Japanese images of each genre of Buddhist art. Then, by displaying images collected from museums all over the world, he traced the development of that image from India, through Central Asia, Southeast Asia, China, and Korea. During the nine years we had lived in Japan, we had seen many Buddhist exhibitions, but no other had provided such a depth of understanding. We were fascinated by the beauty and variety of the images and delighted with Tove's lucid explanation of the history and iconography.
At that time, we were planning to leave Japan, and our return to the United States would follow this same route in reverse. Inspired by the exhibition, we purchased good cameras, and vowed to learn as much as we could about Buddhism and Buddhist art as we traveled. On October 6, 1978, we took a ferry from Shimonoseki on the tip of Honshu to Pusan, South Korea. True to our determination, we visited many temples in Korea, learned a lot about Korean Buddhism, and took hundreds of photographs, mainly color slides. We continued through Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the Philippines. In Indonesia, we spent many hours at Borobudur, admiring, studying, and photographing the miles of exquisite carvings along the corridors of the many levels. From Singapore we took the train to Bangkok, with several stops in Malaysia along the way. Of course, Thai Buddhism is mainly Theravada, but, because we stayed in Bangkok's Chinatown, we visited several Mahayana temples, similar to those we had seen in Taiwan, Singapore, and Malaysia. Being so close, we flew to Burma, but, at that time, tourist visas were limited to only one week. In those seven days, we were drawn to the Burmese people, their culture, and the devotion to Buddhism we observed there.. We promised ourselves to go back someday.
Returning to Singapore, we flew to Sri Lanka, where we spent one month learning more about Theravada Buddhism. About the middle of April 1979, we arrived in India, where we stayed for three months, traveling with first class Indrail passes. It was the height of the hot season when we reached Sanchi. We were overwhelmed by the magnificent carvings on the Great Stupa, but our visits to the hilltop were limited to the early morning hours. The remainder of each day was spent in the MahaBodhi Rest House, taking brief cool showers. The monk in charge suggested that we use the library, which had a fan! There we discovered the Pali Text Society translation of the Jatakas. Realizing that these were the same stories which we were seeing in the carvings on the Great Stupa, we read them voraciously. The more we read, the more the morality, the compassion, and the wisdom in the stories resonated with us, and we realized that we were, indeed, Buddhists.
As we continued traveling, Buddhist art and history gained even more meaning. At the National Museum in New Delhi, it was the Stein collection of paintings from Dunhuang that interested us most. We spent many hours studying the Buddhist art in the splendid museums in Mathura, Patna, and Calcutta. We were thrilled to visit some of the sacred places, but we had not done the preparation for a proper pilgrimage. One of our most memorable days in Paris was spent at the Musee Guimet, renowned for its Buddhist art from the former French colonies of Southeast Asia.
We flew from Amsterdam to Los Angeles on October 6, 1979, exactly one year to the day from our departure from Japan. After a few weeks with Ken's family in California and Arizona, we proceeded to Visakha's brother Mark's house in Texas, where thousands of processed slides were waiting. Our main interest was finding, sorting, and labeling those of Buddhist sites and art. After five months, with the job only half completed, we moved to Flint, Michigan, to take care of Visakha's mother's house while she traveled by motorhome to Alaska. In July 1980, the pastor of the Unitarian Church which we had joined announced that she would be on vacation for the month of August and asked members of the congregation to conduct services in her absence. We immediately volunteered a presentation on Buddhism. We selected about 200 of our best slides, wrote a script outlining the life of the Buddha, narrating a few of the Jatakas, describing some of places we had visited, and explaining the essentials of the Buddha's teaching. The program was well received.
In November, we carried the slides with us to Thailand and, later, the Philippines, where we worked in US State Department ESL programs in the Indochinese refugee camps. We shared the slides and our narration with both refugees and interested relief agency staff members. While working in the Philippine Refugee Processing Center in Bataan, we developed close ties to some Vietnamese and Cambodian refugees, and their Buddhist faith strongly affected us. We were especially drawn to one young Vietnamese monk staying in the temple in the camp from whom we learned much. We joined the meditation group led by the British/Australian monk, Ven. Abhinyana, and our practice deepened. (It was from him that Visakha received her name, having been christened "Christine," still her passport name.)
Having secured teaching positions in Japan to begin in April 1983, we left the Philippines in July 1982, determined to travel for several months through Thailand, Burma, and India, concentrating even more on Buddhist sites. This journey included a complete pilgrimage to the sacred sites in India and Nepal and a two-day trek to Kyaik Tiyo, a sacred pagoda atop a boulder, perched on a cliff high on a mountainside in Mon State, Burma.
Back in Japan to teach ESL at Seifu Gakuin, a Buddhist high school of the Tibetan tradition, we revised the slide presentation to include the photos we had taken in the refugee camps and on subsequent travels. During our summer vacations, we traveled in Asia and returned back to the US to visit family and friends. We usually carried the slides with us, making a presentation whenever asked, in refugee camps in Thailand, sometimes in temples in the US, Thailand, and Japan. In almost every case, the abbot requested a copy of the set of slides, and we happily agreed. This became rather expensive, not only with the cost of copying the slides, but with the need for a projector and a "screen"--often just a white sheet.
In 1993, with the advice of the head of the school’s audio/visual teacher, we bought a special camera and an S-VHS machine to convert the slides to tape. (This was pre-computer.) Then we recorded the narration (done in one sitting!), and added music and chanting. Thus, "Strive On With Diligence: The Buddha and His Teaching" was finalized and released. Hundreds of copies were donated or sold. In 2001, back in Flint, we had the original tape converted to CD, and, in 2006, in Sri Lanka, it was converted to DVD. We ripped the DVD to an mp4, and, now, the presentation is available on our YouTube channel.
Throughout this saga, our real love was always for the Jatakas. Once we settled in Japan, we purchased the complete six-volume set of the 547 stories from the Pali Text Society and read all of them several times. It seemed a great pity that these engaging and profound tales were not a part of world literature and accessible to general readers. We selected a few stories and set about rewriting them for our Japanese high school students, but we became convinced that they deserved the widest possible audience. We had found several small collections of Jatakas, but all of them were simplified for children, and the Dhamma was mostly lost. We strongly felt the need for a collection of Jataka tales which would be easy to read but would also retain all the profound teachings about morality and the workings of karma with which the Buddha had endowed them. In 1985, we bought our first computer, a monstrous Japanese model, to begin the task. Of course, we were teaching full-time and coordinating volunteer teachers to help resettled Vietnamese refugees learn Japanese, so we had little free time for the Jatakas; progress was slow, but always gratifying. Our appreciation of the tales was greatly enhanced by time spent with our remarkable teacher Ven. U Khe Min Da, the Burmese monk in the World Peace Pagoda in Moji, Japan, where we spent at least one month every year from 1986 until we left Japan in 1999. Ven. U Khe Min Da often referred to the Jatakas in his Dhamma talks in fluent English.
Once we had completed retelling several dozen stories, we wrote query letters to a couple of publishers, but none was interested. Trying again, we wrote to Bhikkhu Bodhi at Buddhist Publication Society in Kandy. He promptly replied that the Society had considered such a book and that our timing was perfect. He suggested that the Society begin publishing a few stories in several Bodhi Leaf booklets, and, when we finished, the collection would be published as a book. We were overjoyed and applied ourselves more eagerly to the task. The first of five Bodhi Leaves was released in 1995, but we had still had a long way to go when we left Japan in 1999 to return to Michigan to care for Visakha's mother, who suffered from COPD.

For the first year and a half in Flint, we were kept busy taking care of Mother and resettling Burmese refugees--Dr. Kyaw Thet Oo's and Ko Ko Naing's families, as well as several disabled ABSDF students. We were able to bring Ven. U Khe Min Da from Japan, and he and the Burmese refugees enriched Mother's life wonderfully. After Mother's death in 2001, we stayed on in Flint, joined Michigan Citizens for Peace for anti- Iraq War protests every Sunday, and formed a meditation group, Students of the Lotus. As often as possible, we visited the Lao temple in Detroit, the Thai temple in Perry, and the Sri Lankan temple in Southfield. Twice, we arranged for monks from these temples and several others to walk for alms in our neighborhood in Flint–a first, we think, in Michigan. We were pleased that we were also able to maintain our friendship with several monks we had met long before, notably, Ven. Kim Cang in Virginia, whom we had first met in Panat Nikhom Processing Center in Thailand; Ven. Kawwida in Toronto, whom we had met in Mandalay; and Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi in New York, whom we had met in Kandy. They all visited us in Flint, and we visited their temples, as well.

Still not finished with the Jatakas, we began to feel dissatisfied with living in the US, politically, socially, and financially. We wanted to live in a Buddhist country and decided on Sri Lanka, partly because that was the home of Buddhist Publication Society. In October 2005, we moved to Kandy and were able, at last, to devote ourselves intensively to the task of retelling the Jataka.

The more we read and reworked the Jatakas, the more we had come to understand and appreciate their profoundness. The introductory stories of the present, usually omitted in collections for children, clearly explain how the Buddha related the story of his past life to the complications of life in this world. Though often taught to members of the Sangha, the story of the past usually involves laypeople, deities, or animals. Thus, they provide profound examples and instructions on how we can practice morality, truthfulness, generosity, nonviolence, compassion, equanimity, and all the other perfections. The identification at the end of each story reveals how the Buddha, his family, and his disciples had been striving together in many forms over many eons. Thus, we came to understand that many of the beings, both people and animals, we meet in this life have been with us in past lives, and that we will come in contact with them again and again as Samsara rolls on and we all strive to reach the goal. The sure knowledge that even the wicked, jealous Devadatta will one day become a Pacceka Buddha teaches that, in time, all can realize the truth and that, therefore, we need to extend our compassion and loving-kindness to the seemingly evil and wicked individuals and leaders causing great suffering and threatening to destroy our present world.

Four years later, the collection that we had expected to be about 100 stories had grown to 217. The three-volume set, Jataka Tales of the Buddha: An Anthology, was more than 1200 pages long. The entire printing of 1000 copies was sold out within one year. We personally published ebooks in both Kindle and epub format.

We mentioned earlier that, from the beginning, we intended to use the Jatakas in our ESL classes. We had not been able to incorporate them fully into a syllabus until we began teaching monks and nuns in Sri Lanka. With these classes, both weekly and intensive, the stories were perfect reading/study material. For many of them, we created exercises to enhance comprehension and to encourage the students to consider and to discuss the Dhamma in the stories. We adapted several of the stories as playscripts and had the students present them as dramas. Particularly enjoyable were "It's All the King's Fault" at one of the Bodhisukha intensives and "The Rabbit in the Moon" with a class of novices at Vajirarama. The audio recording of some of these dramatizations can be heard on our website.

The Buddhist Culture Center, in Moratuwa, took over the work and published a new edition in 2012. Through our website, we have been able to sell several hundred copies, with regular large orders from meditation centers in the US and the UK. In 2018 we granted permission to Pariyatti Press to publish a new edition for distribution in the United States and internationally through their network. Shortly thereafter, Pariyatti informed us that a French publisher was interested in publishing a French translation, and we gave our permission. We have learned that this publisher handles Goenka's books on meditation. A few years ago, Roger Bischoff, a teacher at the International Meditation Center-UK, informed us that his students in both Russia and Ukraine also wished to translate the Jataka Tales into their languages. Volume I of both editions has been published, and we have learned that Volume II of the Ukrainian edition is almost ready. In 2023, we received a request from Sakya Rinchen Ling, a Tibetan Buddhist center in Bolivia, for permission to publish the Spanish translation they had been using in their weekly meditation sessions. Volume I of this edition was also quickly completed, and, through our friend Daniel Mayer, a renowned teacher in the Goenka Institute, it has been placed in meditation centers throughout Latin America.

{Each of the pictures along the sides can be enlarged with a click}

Other Books
In Sri Lanka, these books are available in bookstores islandwide. If you have trouble finding any of them, please contact us at buddhist@brelief.org,

We are extremely grateful and honored that these stories, which have given so much meaning and purpose to our lives and have greatly enhanced our understanding of wisdom, virtue, generosity, the workings of kamma, and other aspects of the Buddha's Teaching, are being used by meditators and teachers in so many traditions. We are also grateful to our friend Calvin Malone for his untiring efforts to help us place copies of these books in prison libraries around the US.

Many thanks to those friends, old and new, who have reached out to us in these crazy times. And to those from whom we've not heard in a long time we send concern and supporting thoughts. Be assured that we haven't forgotten you. We don't want to lose touch with you, our old friends. As part of every night's metta meditation, we send loving-kindness to all friends far and near. We would love to hear from you, and we will certainly respond.

{In this section, you can enlarge each photo on the sides with a click.}

Email

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Thank you, Dr. Kyaw Thet Oo! The 6 days you spent here with us were so precious, filling our thoughts and indeed the house, with memories--of Mother and Flint, of beautiful children now grown with children of their own, of those on the border and friends who got bitten by the "border bug" and came to care about Burma and Democracy. We talked, we meditated, we looked at photos--each awakening another memory!While he was here, Mike's mother, Barbara came, and we played a rousing game of Coopoly. She had brought four oxygen tank regulators which Dean and Nancy donated to Kandy National Hospital Emergency Ward. Kyaw Thet Oo accompanied us to donate them to our family physician, Dr. Salahudeen, who works in that unit. Barbara has begun closing out so that she can resettle here in the spring. We look forward to movie nights, more games, and lots of fun!

Recent visits by Keiko, Paul, and Jason evoked even more memories. All this in addition to singing with Dorothy on SKYPE/telephone and with Madoka and her parents on Messenger! Then, of course, there are the holiday Kawasaki family meetings with Ken's surviving siblings--Joyce, Nancy, Louis, and Dean--and numerous nephews and nieces, as well as Hiroshi in Japan. It is wonderful to be able to chat with so many others of you. And Beverly is coming again from Thailand for a visa run. We feel truly blessed with good friends!

During the past year, there have been many SERVAS guests to brighten our lives. Therese and Frank arrived on Christmas Eve for their second visit. Frank has followed Tibetan Buddhism for many years and shared photos of some of his teachers. Each morning, our taking refuge is enhancec by his deep-throated chanting.

In January, Professor David Loy will be coming with his wife Linda. His name has been familiar since we heard of him in Japan. We are excited, finally, to have the chance to meet him. We are using his material on Buddhism, War, and Ecology in our ZOOM class, and are looking forward to the university lectures we are helping to arrange. Check out his books!

Speaking of the ZOOM class, it recently transformed itself into a hybrid. Several of the students, particularly the organizer, Ven. Silacara, and a Vietnamese bhikkhuni, Ven. An Ngoc, expressed the same frustration that we had been feeling about the ZOOM technology and asked whether they could come to our house for the class. Now, every Sunday morning, they and others in Kandy/Peradeniya arrive before 8 o'clock and set up the computer at the end of the dining table. We are joined by others from Colombo, Kelaniya, and Myanmar for the two-hour session. It is much more satisfying to have at least some physical and in-person contact. The class has been going on for more than 2 years, focusing on Buddhism and Non-Violence. We began with The Buddha's Eight Great Victories: Stories of the Jayamangala Gatha (which has just been published by Buddhist Culture Centre and is available for sale). We discussed the 2014 article by Bhikkhu Bodhi in Inquiring Mind, claiming that, under certain circumstances, such as "to block the murderous campaign of a ruthless tyrant," war, and World War Two in particular, from a certain Buddhist perspective, can be justified. We also read and discussed the the debate with Ven. Thanissaro, as well as the latter's firm statement of the Buddha's rejection of killing under any circumstances, "Getting the Message," other articles asserting the irrefutable position of Buddhism on nonviolence, and several Jatakas which also present that view. The students were moved by Christopher Titmuss's "The Suffering of Soldiers; Hell on Earth," and we have read "Why We Love War" from Dr. David Loy's Money, Sex, War, Karma.

Hozan Alan Senauke
1947-Dec. 22, 2024
In 2012, Alan Senauke, the late Abbot of Berkeley Zen Center, recorded a CD of Buddhist folk/C&W music, subtitled, "Songs about things as they are." The title song, "Everything is Broken," expresses how Alan saw the world then and how Bob Dylan saw it in 1985 when he wrote the song. Undeniably, it is even truer today than ever before that Everything is Broken.

Midnight on the Doomsday Clock is about to strike. With President Biden giving permission to fire long-range missile at targets in Russia, President Putin has threatened retaliation with nuclear weapons. Israel's genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza and its desructive attacks on Lebanon are beyond comprehension. As Israel continues to ignore Security Council resolutions and International Court rulings, the United Nations and the Courts are losing their authority, and the collapse of the framework for peace and justice has become apparent. Even more baffling than this is the lack of decisive action by the rest of the world to put an end to the horror. Of course, the United States must take the blame for vetoing ceasefire resolutions and for its unrestrained arms supply, including 2000-lb bombs, which are being used to destroy hospitals, schools, and refugee camps. Like the US, Germany and the UK continue to provide Israel with weapons to carry out this genocide, while suppressing protests and censoring the truth of what is really happening. The irony is staggering. The Democrats lost the election due partly to Biden's ironclad support for the Israeli genocide of the Palestinians and the abandonment of the working class in favor of rich lobbyists, but, on both counts, the Trump administration is going to be much worse. Israel, which was created as "reparation" for the Holocaust, has become the Nazi Germany of the Middle East. In one country after another, the far right is becoming stronger, and the entire world seems to be turning Fascist. Democracy has been replaced by oligarchy of billionaires and corporations. It appears that our civilization is virtually bankrupt, the inevitable end of capitalism and imperialism. EVERYTHING IS BROKEN!

On Christmas we held a dana at our house with four monks and three nuns. We honored the memory of Hozan Alan Senauke and others who passed away recently and wished good health for family and friends who are ill. There was no Christmas tree nor any mistletoe, nor did Santa appear, but our hearts were filled with loving thoughts for all of our friends and all the suffering people around the world.


With the new President in Sri Lanka, there are signs and hopes that conditions in the country, socially, politcallly, and economically. Nevertheless, we cannot say that the crisis is over. A neighbor has told us that recently quite a few people have appeared at his gate asking for work and telling him that, instead of money, they would be happy with just some food. Thus, Buddhist Relief Mission will continue its program of distributing relief food aid to families, the Sangha, and various institutions.

These are the relief flyiers we have issued since our last report. Click each one to view the PDF large.

When we serve High Tea at the Kandy Cancer Home on the fifteenth of every month, we also provide dry rations for the kitchen. This includes rice, onions, potatoes, milk powder, spices, etc. This month, Ken went to the supermarket of the local department store to purchase all of these supplies. There are, of course, several kinds of rice. The matron at the Home prefers nadu. He asked the attendant in charge for thirty kilos of nadu, and the reply was "No."

"I want thirty kilos of nadu," Ken repeated. "You don't have to measure it from the bin. You can give me big bags, as usual."

"Nadu is finished," the attendant insisted.

"Completely finished?" Ken asked incredulously.

"Yes," the attendant confirmed.

Ken quickly called Ashoka to find out what other kind of rice would be suitablet, and he replied, "Kekulu Samba."

Ken turned to the attendant and said, "OK, thirty kilos of kekulu samba."

"No kekulu samba," the attendant replied.

Ken realized that the rice shortage in Sri Lanka which he had seen mentioned in the newspaper was not just a rumor. He walked over the the pallets and noticed that ALL of the bags were keeri samba. Another call to Ashoka confirmed that, if there was only keeri samba, that would have to be OK. Ken turned again to the attendant and asked for thirty kilos of keeri samba. The attendant answered with a puzzled expression, and called a floor manager, who explained that each customer was allowed to purchase only fifteen kilos.

"But I buy thirty kilos of rice every month for the Cancer Home," Ken insisted.

"Only three five-kilo bags," the floor manager insisted just as firmly.

Just then, a female assistant manager stepped up and asked what the problem was. Ken explained that he wanted to buy thirty kilos of rice for dana at the Kandy Cancer Home, and she repeated that each customer was allowed only fifteen kilos. "We have to consder other customers," she added.

"I understand," Ken replied, "but this is for the ninety-two patients at the Cancer Home. We offer dana every month, and they need that much rice."

"I see," the assistant manager said. "Let me ask my boss," and she walked toward an office. A few minutes later, she returned and said, "OK. We can give you six five-kilo bags, but we have to hide them, so other customers do not see. Let me get you another cart." She brought another shopping cart, and Ken lined it with boxes of cookies he was buying. The attendant loaded the six bags in the cart between the cookie boxes. Then the assistant manager instructed him to take several big bags of vegetables from Ken's first cart and to place them on top of the rice completely concealing the six bags. "I'll take this cart up front," the assistant manager suggested, as she pushed it to the check-out area, and Ken continued his shopping.

When Ken went to the check-out, he retrieved the extra cart and pushed it to his aisle. As soon as the clerk saw the six bags, he also made a puzzled expression and rang a bell for a manager. At this summons, all three managers arrived and conferred with him in Sinhala. They stood there while he rang up two bags. Then they explained to Ken that the six bags had to be rung up on separate bills, and he assured them that that was not a problem for him. When the clerk had finished with the bill, the floor manager took Ken's credit card and rang the extra bags of rice on three different cash registers. Finally, with all the bags of rice once more hidden under many cloth bags of other supplies, the chief manager returned to his office, and the assistant manager, rather than calling one of the usual bagging attendants, herself pushed one of the carts out to Ashoka's waiting three-wheeler.

We are was extremely grateful for the special service and will, certainly, continue patronizing that store with future purchases, particularly for dry rations for dana.

Buddhist Relief Mission also provided substantial relief to victims of the disastrous flooding in Myanmar caused by Cyclone Yagi in September. We must express great gratitude to our generous donors who promptly responded to this appeal. We also supported a water purificatioon project initiated by several monks in response to this crisis. Here are the flyers we distributed at that time and the letters of appreciation from the monks in charge of the project.

Recently, George Cooper, a long-time resident of Kandy from England, succumbed to cancer. A few months ago, his wife, Yvonne, asked to borrow Visakha's wheelchair (only used when we traveled) to help him get around his house. After he passed away, Yvonne, asked our help in giving away George's clothes. We assured her that we could, indeed, find a charity. A few days later, her driver delivered a large bag with lots of shirts, slacks, a jacket, several pullovers, and some underwear.All of it was very high quality. This inspired us to rummage through our closets, as well. We found blouses, shirts, and slacks, all made in Bangkok by Visakha's dressmakers, Julie and Moon, and Ken's tailor, Sindoo. They were things which we had worn for teaching in Japan, but which we would never wear here. We added them to the pile. Then we contacted the Miracle House Church in Kandy and learned that they were planning a distribution for Christmas, and that the clothes would be welcome. The Church was very grateful for the donation. Sadhu! Sadhu!! Sadhu!!! to George and Yvonne.

Manjula and Jayden
Mohana and Family, Guests from Bengaluru, India
Ashoka's daughters: Ruth, with Selva, and Rebecca, wuth Charuka
Michelle and Leo
Christmas celebration at Methasevana Youth Rehabiltation Center
Supported by Buddhist Relief Mission and Godwin Memorial Fund
Sri Lanka Navy rescues over 100 Rohingya adrift in the Indian Ocean
December 20, 2024 (Photo: Zainal Abidin/EPA)
We will offer support when possible.
A Tibetan wall plaque
A gift from Frank and Therese


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