by John Iwohara (Vista Buddhist Temple)

Popular psychology, although it tends not to provide the statistical data that allows one to scrutinize the generalizability of its claims, often does give us insights into the discoveries of modern psychological research. Relying on one such pop-psychology article I would like to describe a preliminary rationale for Jodo Shinshu Dharma School Education.

An attempt at problem identification

During its near 100 year history in the continental United States, much of the effort of Jodo Shinshu Buddhist propagation has been geared towards the youth. Because of this, the "Sunday School" program of the temples of the Buddhist Churches of America (BCA) has tended to be its primary propagation and education program. Perhaps it is because the Sunday School is seen as the primary propagation and education program that criticism over its ineffectiveness has grown over the years. Although this criticism appears to be largely based on the fact that the young adult population of our temples that grew up in Sunday School seem to be leaving in greater numbers and also by the fact that our older adult population still has difficulty trying to describe their religion (Jodo Shinshu) to their children, the relative inability of our Sunday Schools to teach fundamental Jodo Shinshu concepts have not gone unnoticed by the Sunday School programs themselves. Recent attempts at reform and renovation within the Sunday School programs would suggest this. For example, the name change from Sunday School to Dharma School was done to re-focus the goals and to re-establish the propagational, educational aspects of the program away from its Sunday day care image. This re-emphasis on propagation and education resulted in the development of a centralized, curriculum based program and the publication of Dharma School text books, readers, and teacher guides. With this development, the BCA Department of Buddhist Education (DBE) became more important as the central resource and distribution center. This, unfortunately, also resulted in the weakening of local Dharma School programs. Dharma School Teachers at the local level became more dependent upon the materials being provided by the DBE and were less able to come up with creative, personally meaningful attempts at sharing the Dharma. Teachers no longer had to worry so much about how relevant the materials were to their lives: presentation of curriculum materials to the students became the single most important goal for the Dharma School.

With this trend towards conceptualizing the Buddhist doctrine as subject matter to be taught and learned, the meaning of the Jodo Shinshu ministry also became more ambiguous. The connection between ritual and religious observances at the temple to doctrine became less and less clear. The role of the local minister increasingly became limited to that of ritual expert and the number of reciprocal, two-way contacts between temple member and minister to discuss and share the Dharma dropped. This was particularly true of the relationship between minister and Dharma School Teacher. The local temple minister’s time was used up for so many different things that it became easier and faster to ask for materials from a central distribution center than it was to have a discussion with the local minister. Because little effort to discover ways to free up the ministers’ time to facilitate interpersonal contacts to discuss the Dharma is made, fewer and fewer contacts with the resident minister has reduced the presence of a resident minister to the point of becoming so underwhelming that more and more temples of the BCA are content with a supervising minister.

In an attempt to offset this trend and to strengthen local temples, the BCA voted to disband its DBE in 1995. Although this attempt at de-centralization will probably fail--it is unlikely that any attempt towards de-centralization will succeed unless interpersonal contacts between minister and member to discuss the Dharma are facilitated--the Dharma Schools of the BCA have come full circle: localized programs to centralized programs back to localized programs. Although there is a need to distinguish adult education from child education (see Dharma Rain, Vol. 1, No. 1), the criticism of the Dharma School program that led to these 360 degree reforms still exists: young adults are leaving the temples in greater numbers, and older adults still have a difficult time trying to describe their religion to their children. Given this apparent failure of the Dharma School program one may begin to doubt the efficacy of having a program at all. This paper will attempt to create a rationale for re-linking the temple service ritual to the Dharma School program as a preliminary attempt to establish the efficacy of Jodo Shinshu Dharma School Education.

The Sunday Morning Service

The following is the general service format followed at the Vista Buddhist Temple. Although differences in the Sunday morning service ("morning service") format exist between the temples that comprise the BCA, the basic "elements" can be found in most, if not all, BCA temples.

The typical morning service at the Vista Buddhist Temple begins with the ringing of the kansho. This is followed by the singing of a sanbutsuka and the reading of a passage, usually the "Golden Chain." After the sanbutsuka and reading, a brief silent, seated meditation period is followed by the reading of a second passage, usually the "Three Treasures." After the second reading, everyone is asked to oshoko or offer incense. This is followed by the chanting of a sutra or gatha, and a Dharma talk. After announcements are made, the service is concluded with the singing of another sanbutsuka, usually the "Ondokusan." As part of this process, the rice offering, flowers and other foods (usually fruits) are prepared for the altar area, candles are lit, incense is burned, bells and gongs are rung, and occasionally two wooden sticks known as the settaku are hit. From a "cognitive" point of view, the ritual service is robust with sensory stimulation.

"Pop-Psychology" and a Preliminary Rationale for Jodo Shinshu Dharma School Education

Although a basic premise of this paper is that the amount of dialogue between minister and lay person has to be increased in order to develop a program where young adults are motivated to stay at the temple and older adults are better able to communicate their religion to their children, the Dharma School programs will remain to be a key, if not the primary tool for Jodo Shinshu Buddhist propagation. Although the curriculum based approach tended to divorce the Dharma School program from the Sunday morning service, the following pop-psychological report helps to provide a rational for the importance of incorporating the ritual aspects of the service into the Dharma School program especially for early childhood development.

The following seven point guide towards early childhood cognitive development is taken from the article "You Can Raise Your Child's I.Q"^[1] The seven points given by the article include: (1) "Look ‘em in the eye", (sic), (2) "Talk, talk, talk", (3) "Make room for music", (4) "Encourage Columbus", (5) "‘Label’ things", (6) "Stand up and cheer", (7) "Don’t stop now". Of these seven points, points (3), (4), (5), and (7) help to provide the rationale for incorporating the ritual elements of the service with the Dharma School.

Because the Jodo Shinshu ritual service is very musical, Point (3), "make room for music" becomes an important consideration. Although no one will mistake the sanbutsuka as anything other than singing, most people tend to neglect the musical nature of chanting. Because this aspect of chanting is often overlooked, very little time is actually spent "teaching" chanting. However, according to a study quoted by the article, "Giving three-year-olds piano and group singing lessons dramatically improved their spatial-temporal reasoning." Although the article does not make clear whether piano lessons had to accompany the singing lessons, the importance of music is clearly stated. The relationship between music and spatial-temporal reasoning probably did not escape the Buddhists who initially created the ritual service. For example, it becomes possible to surmise that the musical nature of the Jodo Shinshu ritual service--which is held in praise of the virtues of Amida Buddha--developed in response to the attributes of Amida Buddha as the Buddha of infinite light (spatial) and infinite life (temporal).

In their discussion of point (4), "Encourage Columbus", the authors state, "Little explorers are looking for new worlds...They have boundless curiosity, which they satisfy by touching, tasting, handling, and rubbing." Point (4) has several implications for the design of Dharma School programs. The altar area, as a symbolic representation of the Buddhist realm of enlightenment, tries to direct our six senses towards enlightenment and away from the bondages of birth and death. The altar area, in other words, is trying to help us discover the world of enlightenment. Because of this, the altar area--besides being the focus of the ritual service--also has the function of encouraging the "Columbus" in all of us. As participants of the ritual service, we become engaged in the touching, handling, and rubbing of such things as the o-nenju and ground incense, and if the ritual itself is taught in the Dharma School then this list would expand to include the rice for the o-buppan, bachi for the rin, stick incense, flowers, candles, and settaku. Also, despite sometimes being criticized for being too ethno-centric, the temple and its preservation of "traditional" Japanese customs and arts give youngsters the opportunity to eat and taste such things as Japanese confectionery and other "seasonal" Japanese dishes such as ozoni.

The different pieces used for the ritual service are varied in size, shape, color, and usage. Because of this, the articles found in the altar area very easily lend themselves to point (5), "‘label’ things". Although not mentioned in the article, another relative concept that can be discussed is the difference in length of the different sutras and gathas chanted during the service. This relation is quite often heard before the beginning of service regarding what will be chanted, "Are we going to chant the long one or the short one today?"

Point (7), which is described as "Don’t stop now" by the authors, discusses the importance of continuing these cognitive developmental techniques throughout the later childhood years. The reason they give for this is, "Neural networks continue to develop into the teens, especially those for emotion." This final point, the cognitive development of emotion, helps to address many of the issues concerning youth our society faces today. Many of the words we use to describe our youth today unfortunately also include words such as "angry," "disenfranchised," and "lost" to name a few. Part of the reason that any parent wants to have their children participate in a religion is for the emotional stability that religions have to offer. The doctrine of Jodo Shinshu, which is also manifested in its ritual service, helps to provide the foundation to promote such emotions as introspection, gratitude, and appreciation. If, as some psychologists maintain, emotions are learned, and if we wish to teach our children the positive emotions Jodo Shinshu has to offer, then one way to do this is to engage our children in the ritual service and discuss those aspects of the service that developed as an expression of such emotions as introspection, gratitude, and appreciation.

Conclusions and Possibilities

It is my hope that I have been able to describe with some clarity the importance of the ritual service in the development of a rationale for Dharma School programs. Although the seven points presented by the "pop-psychology" article were meant as guidelines to promote the cognitive development of young children, because the Jodo Shinshu ritual has several of these elements "built in," the importance of the ritual service as a means of Jodo Shinshu Buddhist education cannot be overlooked. That some of the elements found in the ritual service may also promote cognitive development should probably come as no surprise given that temples also served as educational centers before the widespread adoption of public education.

Furthermore, although the long term success of any Dharma School program will still probably be based on the number of young adults who decide to remain at the temple and by the amount of difficulty the older adult population has in trying to describe Jodo Shinshu to their children, the incorporation of the Sunday ritual service into the Dharma School program may have the added benefit of "re-establishing" the connection between ritual and doctrine. If this occurs, then hopefully it will become more likely for the temple leadership to try to find ways to free up more of the local ministers’ time to "re-engage" the local minister and temple member to participate in two-way dialogues on the Nembutsu teaching.

References

[1] Kiester, Edwin Jr., and Kiester, Sally Valente, "You Can Raise your Child’s I.Q." Reader’s Digest, Oct., 1996, Pp. 137-141

 

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