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69 c h a p t e r 4 Incense at a Funeral The Rise and Fall of an American Shingon Temple Elizabeth Eastman One of my earliest memories is of wandering the twisting paths in the overgrown garden behind my Watanabe great-grandparents’ house.1 I would meander over the fish pond’s stone bridge, peering down through the tangle of weeds to catch a glimpse of fish darting in and out among the shadows. Then I would choose a path, turn a corner, and lose sight of the house behind me. One of these pathways, I knew, led to a church, though I couldn’t remember ever having been there. Although I didn’t know it at the time, the church next door to my greatgrandparents ’ house was a once-thriving Buddhist temple supported largely by my great-grandparents. I grew up calling them Ojichan and Obachan, the informal terms for grandfather and grandmother in Japanese. My great-grandfather’s funeral is the first, and last, time I can remember entering the church—listening to the service but not understanding any of the words. In my child’s mind, Buddhism was lighting a stick of incense after Watanabe Ojichan’s funeral and leaving it smoking in the dish near his picture. It wasn’t until years later that I learned how much more Buddhism once meant to my family. The temple was a vital part of my issei (first-generation Japanese immigrants) great-grandparents’ lives, but I—three generations later—barely knew it existed. I became truly interested in Buddhism when I spent a year as an exchange student in Thailand between high school and college. I went to Buddhist weddings and funerals with my host family. I visited temples, both the famous ones and the smaller, local variety. I bought incense, flowers, and candles to leave before the altar and had my fortune told by shaking a can of numbered sticks until one fell to the floor. I visited the Reclining Buddha and the Emerald Buddha . I studied meditation and learned about Theravāda Buddhism. I spent the 70 Elizabeth Eastman year immersed in a world where I passed the Buddha every day at school and where my Thai host family placed incense before a miniature altar in the house each morning and evening. I had always considered myself Protestant in the tradition of my Caucasian father’s family, though I wasn’t raised in a particularly religious household. But in that year overseas, I gained a great respect for Buddhist values and lifestyle. At Smith College I took classes in Japanese and Thai language and in Asian literature but didn’t encounter Buddhism again until three years later when I heard about the TransBuddhism seminar being organized by Smith’s Kahn Institute. I hoped the seminar would allow me not only to learn more about Buddhism as a religion but to create a stronger connection to my own religious heritage. After reading the seminar’s first few assignments I decided my project would focus on what Jan Nattier calls “baggage Buddhism.” Nattier categorizes Buddhism in the West based on its method of transmission: “import” where Buddhism is “actively sought out by the recipient”; “export” involving active “‘selling’ by a Buddhist missionary”; or “baggage” brought by “Asian immigrants who came to North America in search of jobs, new opportunities, and a better future for their families.” This third type of Buddhism is also termed “ethnic Buddhism” because its importance as a source of cultural identity in the new country means that these communities generally remain mono-ethnic at least initially (Nattier 1998, 183–95). I wanted to choose a topic with personal significance to make my time spent researching more meaningful. I started by asking my mother about religion on her side of our family, thinking that my Japanese American relatives might once have practiced Buddhism. I was a bit surprised to find out that my greatgrandparents , Watanabe Ojichan and Obachan, founded and helped build the church that was on their property in the small Portland, Oregon, suburb of Milwaukie. We spent so much time in the TransBuddhism seminar talking about the increasing interest in Buddhism in the United States that I expected the temple would be thriving like so many other Buddhist institutions. Because of this, I was startled to learn that in this climate of rising interest and acceptance, my own family’s Buddhist community had dwindled and disappeared . I soon realized that the...

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