by Gene Reeves

An Invitation to Meadville/Lombard

One of the things Founder Niwano and I had talked about during the IARF Congress was the possibility of having someone come from Japan to Chicago to lecture on the Lotus Sutra. So, on the day following the founder's birthday celebration, I was introduced to Professor Yoshiro Tamura of the University of Tokyo, perhaps the greatest scholar of Tendai thought and the Lotus Sutra at that time. I liked Tamura immediately, and invited him to come Meadville/Lombard to give a series of lectures, as Founder Niwano had suggested. Those evening lectures were so well received, by students and faculty alike, that Joseph Kitagawa, then the dean of the university's Divinity School, invited Tamura back to teach for the spring quarter in 1986. In addition, with Founder Niwano's help, I organized a series of small Rissho Kosei-kai--Unitarian Universalist conferences to discuss various matters of concern to these two progressive religious organizations. Tamura participated in them. Thus in these and other ways, I met Tamura often over a few years and we became good friends. He helped me to understand both the Lotus Sutra itself and Founder Niwano's one-volume commentary, called Buddhism for Today in its English translation.

Under Niwano's influence, and subsequently under Tamura's, I gradually became more and more profoundly interested in the Lotus Sutra. And in 1988 I decided that I should devote myself much more seriously to studying the Lotus Sutra. At some point, Founder Niwano had suggested to me that I might come to Japan for a while. Tamura had even more strongly urged me to come to Japan, and together we considered some projects which we might work on together. I discussed the matter with Dean Kitagawa, who urged me to go to Japan, but insisted that the four or five years I had in mind would not be enough and that I should plan on being in Japan for a minimum of seven or eight years. Joseph Kitagawa died several years ago, so I have sometimes wondered what he would say if he knew that as of 2003 I had been in Japan for fifteen years.

With all of this encouragement to move to Japan, to study both the Lotus Sutra and the Japanese language, in December of 1988 I announced my resignation from Meadville/Lombard, effective the next year, and began to make preparations to go to Japan. The school having selected a new head, I packed my suitcase, my computer, and some books and moved to Japan, arriving on the fourth day of the first month of the new Heisei era, which began in 1989. Little did I, or anyone else I suspect, imagine that I would be in Japan for more than a few years.

Tragedy struck. Two weeks before I was to leave for Tokyo, Professor Tamura was told that he had cancer. A few months later he was dead. I never even saw him after coming to Japan, in part to work with him and to learn from him.

That first year, I devoted quite a bit of time to studying elementary Japanese, as I had not had time to do much of any studying during the final year in Chicago as head of the school. I also began to learn to read the Lotus Sutra in Japanese and Chinese, with a great deal of help from Akio Tsukimoto, a friend of mine and a professor at a Rikkyo University.

On June 14, 1992, Dr. Reeves delivered an address at the second ceremony conferring an honorary degree of doctor of divinity on Rev. Nichiko Niwano, president of Rissho Kosei-kai, by Meadville/Lombard Theological School in Chicago. This followed the first ceremony held at the school on June 7.

During the first two years in Japan I taught part-time at the University of Tsukuba and then was fortunate to receive a full-time appointment in the graduate program in area studies, where, among other things, I taught Chinese Buddhism. During those years, I visited with Founder Niwano periodically, primarily to report on what I was doing and to receive his advice. He did not give me much advice, but always encouraged me to continue my studies, especially my interest in the Lotus Sutra.

I also met regularly with Tomonobu Shinozaki, who had served as the dean of Gakurin, the Rissho Kosei-kai seminary in Tokyo, and once had studied at Meadville/Lombard before going to Vanderbilt University for his Ph.D. Before long, he and I decided to translate together from Japanese into English a little introduction to the Lotus Sutra and its impact on Japanese life. That book had been written by Yoshiro Tamura. I thought of the work on the translation of it as a kind of small substitute for the projects Tamura and I were never able to do together.

When President Nichiko Niwano was to receive an honorary degree from Meadville/Lombard, as had Founder Niwano some years earlier, it was decided that I should give the major address--in Japanese. If I had been awed by the large audience in the Great Sacred Hall when I first spoke there in English with an interpreter, I was nearly terrified at the thought of speaking in Japanese before a full Fumon Hall. With a lot of help from my wife, who had been my first Japanese language teacher, I managed to get through the speech. As he passed me on his way to the podium following my address, Founder Niwano indicated that he was pleased with what I had said.

I have not given many formal addresses in Japanese. From the first week I was in Tokyo, I had a warm relationship with Rissho Kosei-kai's Language Service (LS), which had been founded by Masuo Nezu, then director of the organization's international department, in preparation for the IARF Congress in 1984. Many of the members of the LS became my good friends and conversation partners. I began giving lectures in English for the LS very soon after coming to Japan. In time, more and more often, these lectures were on the Lotus Sutra. Eventually, I was also asked by some members to give a course in English on the Lotus Sutra. Over the years quite a few courses of about ten lectures each were sponsored by the Language Service and given at several different places. Various themes were selected. It took three such courses, for example, to cover the stories in the Lotus Sutra, lectures which are now being revised and are appearing in Dharma World, the bimonthly English-language magazine published by Kosei Publishing Company.