By Rev. Patti Nakai
A frog jumped in. Bashō became the frog, and he himself jumped into the deepest part of his life. There was the world of nothing but the sound of the splash.
-Rev. Gyoko Saito (from Meditations on Death and Birth, 1983)
In his recently published book, What’s Your Aspiration: Shinran’s Dharma Gateway, (Anaheim CA: Buddhist Education Center, 2024), James Pollard, a minister assistant at Orange County Buddhist Church, quotes the above passage and focuses on “aspiration” as the gateway to jōdo shinshū (He uses lowercase in identifying Shinran’s teachings as opposed to “Jōdo Shinshū” used by organized sects). Continue reading “Sound of a Splash”
