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SF: Maybe a specific form kind of in a sense forced outside stimulation for the church, seems to me, is the influx of hakujins or white people into the church and because it's -- Buddhism is seen contemporarily as a very interesting religion to, or philosophy, religion, whatever, to them. So how does a typical church deal with it? How do the classic sort of JAs deal with these new folks? What are these new folks like? How does that process kind of work through? What have you seen in the temples?

RI: Yeah, I think our hand is being forced in that way. Inside the dharma schools where, of course we have the young families and most of them are intermarried and the children are interracial children, that that just happens very naturally. As far as adults, I think what's happened like the Buddhist Temple of Chicago which is actually more HigashiHonganji. Even at the San Francisco Buddhist Temple when Reverend Ogui was there -- where lot of Caucasians came, you know their metropolitan cities where you're gonna find this interest. What they did is they formed two distinct groups. There was the Nikkei group that came on Sunday mornings and had their board meetings, and their bazaars, and basketball league and all that on certain days and nights. And then the basically Caucasian group that came to study Buddhism and to meditate. And these were usually like Saturday mornings when the Nikkei had no interest in being at the temple, other than maybe cleaning the yard and maybe some weeknights. So they, they formed distinct groups that very rarely saw each other. And I think that's how it's been addressed. If the minister was capable of handling both, you know being bilingual, and confident of dealing with non-Japanese. Certain temples where there's only a handful, maybe three or four say hakujins coming in -- they don't form a separate group, they mainly kind of do their best to fit in. And if they're gonna stick around then they have to help out at the bazaar. They usually become the, the chairman for the services because they're more articulate and more interested in the teachings per se. And as, as you would expect too, they often become board presidents or very high up in the structure because of their confidence and familiarity with -- dealing with the city government and codes and leading meetings and so on. But these are kind of patterns of -- it's been much too slow in that way. But again, maybe the answer again is... I think, though, BCA has encouraged some separate hakujin groups that form -- they call them fellowships. Like in Sunnyvale there was one around a Reverend Eidmann there. But, but they always seem like minor, minor projects that got very little funding or support. It's like, "Hey, don't bother us. Go do your own thing. Go over there." And when the organizing person either passed away or retired, then the groups just died because there was no real interest in BCA or the headquarters to have these groups going. Because they just made them a little uncomfortable, they didn't know what to make of them. So again, as long as we're trying to keep everything under this old leadership and these old assumptions, nothing's gonna happen. I think myself -- maybe others who have left the structure of the BCA and all that, but still feel we're ministers at heart -- our goals or dreams are to, I think, open our own temples, somewhat affiliated with BCA, still being JoudoShinshu -- 'cause this is our belief and training. But not under the jurisdiction of them. So I could kinda see that happening in maybe, I don't know, ten years from now for me.

<End Segment 14> - Copyright © 1999 Densho. All Rights Reserved.