Dear all
I went to a SZBA talk last night given by Jan Chozen Bays, on the subject of the first Buddhist to be ordained in Japan. You may know that this person, Zenshin, was a woman, not a man, and this is true of at least the first three people who were ordained.
In 552, King Seong of the Korean province of Baekje sent a gold statue of the Buddha to Emperor Kinmei of Japan in order to both promote the practice of Buddhism and to acquire the favour of the emperor regarding an ongoing war in Korea.
Several Japanese clan leaders (one of whom was in charge of Shinto rituals) said that worshipping the Buddha would incur the wrath of traditional deities. When a plague later broke out, this was used as a reason to burn both the statue and the Buddhist sanctum that had been built to house it.
Soga no Umako was the son of Soga no Imane who had been given the original Buddhist statue, and when he succeeded his father to be head of the Soga clan, he also inherited some stone Buddhist statues and sutras that envoys had brought back from Korea. He decided he needed a Buddhist priest to conduct ceremonies and found Eben, a former monk from Korea.
Eben instructed an eleven year old girl, Shima, into the practice of Buddhism and in 584 she became the first ordained Buddhist in Japan, taking the name Zenshin. Two other girls followed her, Ezen and Zenzo.
Some time after, Umako became ill and another plague followed. This was, again, thought to be due to offending the local gods by worshipping the Buddha so the new sanctum that Umako had built was burned down and the three young nuns were stripped of their robes and publicly flogged. Undeterred, they decided to go to Korea to study Buddhism there. Zenshin was still just 15 years old.
After studying the precepts and ordaining fully in Korea, Zenshin and her fellow nuns returned to Japan in 590. They took up residence in the first Buddhist temple in Japan and ordained eleven new nuns and the first monk. This was the beginning of Buddhism in Japan.
A short manga illustrates the story: https://asuka-japan-heritage.jp/glob...enshinni/life/
Gassho
Kokuu
-sattoday/lah-
I went to a SZBA talk last night given by Jan Chozen Bays, on the subject of the first Buddhist to be ordained in Japan. You may know that this person, Zenshin, was a woman, not a man, and this is true of at least the first three people who were ordained.
In 552, King Seong of the Korean province of Baekje sent a gold statue of the Buddha to Emperor Kinmei of Japan in order to both promote the practice of Buddhism and to acquire the favour of the emperor regarding an ongoing war in Korea.
Several Japanese clan leaders (one of whom was in charge of Shinto rituals) said that worshipping the Buddha would incur the wrath of traditional deities. When a plague later broke out, this was used as a reason to burn both the statue and the Buddhist sanctum that had been built to house it.
Soga no Umako was the son of Soga no Imane who had been given the original Buddhist statue, and when he succeeded his father to be head of the Soga clan, he also inherited some stone Buddhist statues and sutras that envoys had brought back from Korea. He decided he needed a Buddhist priest to conduct ceremonies and found Eben, a former monk from Korea.
Eben instructed an eleven year old girl, Shima, into the practice of Buddhism and in 584 she became the first ordained Buddhist in Japan, taking the name Zenshin. Two other girls followed her, Ezen and Zenzo.
Some time after, Umako became ill and another plague followed. This was, again, thought to be due to offending the local gods by worshipping the Buddha so the new sanctum that Umako had built was burned down and the three young nuns were stripped of their robes and publicly flogged. Undeterred, they decided to go to Korea to study Buddhism there. Zenshin was still just 15 years old.
After studying the precepts and ordaining fully in Korea, Zenshin and her fellow nuns returned to Japan in 590. They took up residence in the first Buddhist temple in Japan and ordained eleven new nuns and the first monk. This was the beginning of Buddhism in Japan.
A short manga illustrates the story: https://asuka-japan-heritage.jp/glob...enshinni/life/
Gassho
Kokuu
-sattoday/lah-
It is hard to bend tradition. Hopefully, we will be spared the flogging. 
)
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