Dallas and the Buddha
In most of my adventures, there is no burning monk, and no Dragon Lady.
It was Friday, and as usual, I was looking forward to our TGIF gatherings at Scotty and Dennis's apartment, just downstairs from my own. There would be music playing, copious amounts of beer and spoolie consumed, a raucous bridge game, and whatever collection of ladies who had taken the bait.
As I was coming out of my Subject A class and walking back to Isla Vista, there was a noticeable buzz in the air. People in small groups were crying and sometimes shrieking. It was about President Kennedy being shot. By the time I got to Scotty's apartment, he had been pronounced dead. We sat around his TV stunned.
November 22, 1963, JFK was assassinated, and LBJ became president. Who the heck was LBJ? He seemed a caricature of a Texas good old boy; a wheeler dealer with a style pretty much the opposite of John Kennedy's urbane classiness. I was just beginning to become aware of the politics and history of what was happening around me. There were suspicions that the 1960 election was tipped in JFK's favor by precincts in Chicago and Texas. In Chicago, the notoriously corrupt Mayor Richard Daley had been able to deliver big margins. Both of these ideas were later discounted, but it was what we were suspecting at the time.
In the space of three weeks, the governments of both the United States and South Vietnam suddenly changed, and hidden hands had done it. Now South Vietnam was LBJ's puppet, and a new deal was being sorted out in Saigon and a military junta installed the Minh regime.
I was in a cycle of partying and enjoying the girls, but while working full time, there wasn't enough time left for my studies, which were uninspired anyway; I had no motivation for being there, except for the fun. I didn't do well that semester and it was suggested I go to SBCC and get my act together. So in the Spring Semester, that's what I did.
I had continued living in Isla Vista while I went to City College, and by the summer of 1964, I was back at UCSB. Immersion in the University culture had changed me, not just the course work, but my new friends, the student life and the political awareness that was becoming increasingly meaningful as one realized that people in Washington DC could get us killed; and our studies of history and politics revealed that the brain trust running the US war was capable of making ghastly mistakes.
August 2, 1964 came the Gulf of Tonkin Incident. US warships had been operating off the coast of North Vietnam in the Gulf of Tonkin in support of covert operations by South Vietnamese commandos and CIA operatives who used small boats to harass coastal targets and insert saboteurs into North Vietnam. In a night of rough seas watchmen on a US Navy destroyer reported an attack on their vessel by North Vietnamese torpedo boats. The planes scrambled to counter them found no sign of any patrol boats.
Nonetheless, it was termed "an unprovoked attack in international waters." And a week later it was used to formulate the August 7, 1964 Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which gave the US president war powers that could be expanded endlessly, and brought the US into direct conflict with North Vietnam. This was all leading up to LBJ's re-election in November.
By this time I was suspicious of everything that the government said, and I still am, especially when it's about the events that lead to war; there's always something fishy about it. I changed my major to Political Science. The "science" part is often mocked, but in the sense I regard the discipline it is important in two ways. There's architecture to the government and mechanisms made of people acting in defined patterns that are important in understanding what's happening, and what can happen, in the public sphere. And most importantly for me is the relentless skepticism and fact checking that Political Science shares with the physical sciences.
Meanwhile, in Isla Vista, I took an interest in Buddhism. A lady I was seeing mentioned that another of her pursuers had been telling her about it, and I confess that my first motivation to look into Buddhism was about making moves on that girl and not being upstaged by a rival. That, and the unforgettable image of Thich Quang Duc delivering his teaching, led me on. I started going down to the Red Lion Bookstore in Isla Vista to sit on the floor and read books about Buddhist history, the haikus, the koans, and the stories. I was hooked.
It was a common pastime of mine and occasionally I would buy a book. One evening as I was leaving the Red Lion, a Japanese guy started talking to me and asked if I was interested in Buddhism. He must have observed me reading. I said I was. Another Japanese fellow appeared on the sidewalk, encouraging me to come along with them, then a car pulled up to the curb and I was hustled into the back seat. My Buddhist adventure was beginning with a kidnapping.
They drove to an apartment building about 6 blocks away and led me into a ground floor apartment with an open door across the lawn. I could see other people like myself being led up to it. At the end of the room was a Shrine with a large scroll with designs in Chinese characters written on it. This is called a Gohonzon; it is the central object in a shrine they had set up there. Within the calligraphy are the phrase, the Daimoku, "Namu-Myoho-Renge-Kyo", and the name of its author, Nichiren. Surrounding those central characters are depictions of the different stages of human life.
The little talk described the Daimoku as a kind of magic incantation, that all good blessings and bounty would follow the diligent repetition of this chant, and it would work "even if you didn't believe it". They also offered to sell a Gohonzon for one's own shrine at home. It was my rather comic introduction to the Soka Gakkai movement. It was created in 1930 as pop culture offshoot of a sect formed by Nichiren seven centuries earlier in medieval Japan. It is a widespread popularized movement emphasizing the chanting of the Daimoku, "Namu-Myoho-Renge-Kyo".
In a long round about path, twenty years later, I came to be friends with a Buddhist priest in Hawaii, who had completed the highest level of training in Nichiren's original 13th Century monastery in Minobu, Japan. He was a bishop actually, I wrote a book about him; "Nichijo: The Testimony of John Provoo".
Copyright © 2022 John Oliver
All Rights Reserved
mail@unclejohnsweb.com
It was Friday, and as usual, I was looking forward to our TGIF gatherings at Scotty and Dennis's apartment, just downstairs from my own. There would be music playing, copious amounts of beer and spoolie consumed, a raucous bridge game, and whatever collection of ladies who had taken the bait.
As I was coming out of my Subject A class and walking back to Isla Vista, there was a noticeable buzz in the air. People in small groups were crying and sometimes shrieking. It was about President Kennedy being shot. By the time I got to Scotty's apartment, he had been pronounced dead. We sat around his TV stunned.
November 22, 1963, JFK was assassinated, and LBJ became president. Who the heck was LBJ? He seemed a caricature of a Texas good old boy; a wheeler dealer with a style pretty much the opposite of John Kennedy's urbane classiness. I was just beginning to become aware of the politics and history of what was happening around me. There were suspicions that the 1960 election was tipped in JFK's favor by precincts in Chicago and Texas. In Chicago, the notoriously corrupt Mayor Richard Daley had been able to deliver big margins. Both of these ideas were later discounted, but it was what we were suspecting at the time.
In the space of three weeks, the governments of both the United States and South Vietnam suddenly changed, and hidden hands had done it. Now South Vietnam was LBJ's puppet, and a new deal was being sorted out in Saigon and a military junta installed the Minh regime.
I was in a cycle of partying and enjoying the girls, but while working full time, there wasn't enough time left for my studies, which were uninspired anyway; I had no motivation for being there, except for the fun. I didn't do well that semester and it was suggested I go to SBCC and get my act together. So in the Spring Semester, that's what I did.
I had continued living in Isla Vista while I went to City College, and by the summer of 1964, I was back at UCSB. Immersion in the University culture had changed me, not just the course work, but my new friends, the student life and the political awareness that was becoming increasingly meaningful as one realized that people in Washington DC could get us killed; and our studies of history and politics revealed that the brain trust running the US war was capable of making ghastly mistakes.
August 2, 1964 came the Gulf of Tonkin Incident. US warships had been operating off the coast of North Vietnam in the Gulf of Tonkin in support of covert operations by South Vietnamese commandos and CIA operatives who used small boats to harass coastal targets and insert saboteurs into North Vietnam. In a night of rough seas watchmen on a US Navy destroyer reported an attack on their vessel by North Vietnamese torpedo boats. The planes scrambled to counter them found no sign of any patrol boats.
Nonetheless, it was termed "an unprovoked attack in international waters." And a week later it was used to formulate the August 7, 1964 Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which gave the US president war powers that could be expanded endlessly, and brought the US into direct conflict with North Vietnam. This was all leading up to LBJ's re-election in November.
By this time I was suspicious of everything that the government said, and I still am, especially when it's about the events that lead to war; there's always something fishy about it. I changed my major to Political Science. The "science" part is often mocked, but in the sense I regard the discipline it is important in two ways. There's architecture to the government and mechanisms made of people acting in defined patterns that are important in understanding what's happening, and what can happen, in the public sphere. And most importantly for me is the relentless skepticism and fact checking that Political Science shares with the physical sciences.
Meanwhile, in Isla Vista, I took an interest in Buddhism. A lady I was seeing mentioned that another of her pursuers had been telling her about it, and I confess that my first motivation to look into Buddhism was about making moves on that girl and not being upstaged by a rival. That, and the unforgettable image of Thich Quang Duc delivering his teaching, led me on. I started going down to the Red Lion Bookstore in Isla Vista to sit on the floor and read books about Buddhist history, the haikus, the koans, and the stories. I was hooked.
It was a common pastime of mine and occasionally I would buy a book. One evening as I was leaving the Red Lion, a Japanese guy started talking to me and asked if I was interested in Buddhism. He must have observed me reading. I said I was. Another Japanese fellow appeared on the sidewalk, encouraging me to come along with them, then a car pulled up to the curb and I was hustled into the back seat. My Buddhist adventure was beginning with a kidnapping.
They drove to an apartment building about 6 blocks away and led me into a ground floor apartment with an open door across the lawn. I could see other people like myself being led up to it. At the end of the room was a Shrine with a large scroll with designs in Chinese characters written on it. This is called a Gohonzon; it is the central object in a shrine they had set up there. Within the calligraphy are the phrase, the Daimoku, "Namu-Myoho-Renge-Kyo", and the name of its author, Nichiren. Surrounding those central characters are depictions of the different stages of human life.
The little talk described the Daimoku as a kind of magic incantation, that all good blessings and bounty would follow the diligent repetition of this chant, and it would work "even if you didn't believe it". They also offered to sell a Gohonzon for one's own shrine at home. It was my rather comic introduction to the Soka Gakkai movement. It was created in 1930 as pop culture offshoot of a sect formed by Nichiren seven centuries earlier in medieval Japan. It is a widespread popularized movement emphasizing the chanting of the Daimoku, "Namu-Myoho-Renge-Kyo".
In a long round about path, twenty years later, I came to be friends with a Buddhist priest in Hawaii, who had completed the highest level of training in Nichiren's original 13th Century monastery in Minobu, Japan. He was a bishop actually, I wrote a book about him; "Nichijo: The Testimony of John Provoo".
Copyright © 2022 John Oliver
All Rights Reserved
mail@unclejohnsweb.com
All Rights Reserved
mail@unclejohnsweb.com