June Roshi and I attended a Memorial Day Service at Montrose Cemetery in the present day, honoring Japanese-American veterans who’ve fought and died in lots of wars defending freedom in America. The historical past and therapy of Japanese Americans throughout WWII is a disgraceful one, we must always always remember. Roughly 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry, nearly all of whom had been Americans, had been forcibly faraway from their properties.
After the struggle, many Japanese Individuals moved to Chicago searching for higher jobs, however they confronted quite a lot of discrimination. It was troublesome for them to seek out burial plots in lots of cemeteries within the metropolis. The Montrose Cemetery accepted them, and a number of other giant areas of the cemetery are actually reserved for Japanese Individuals.
As I sat via the service in the present day, I used to be excited about my very own trainer, Taizan Maezumi Roshi, and the various sacrifices he made to assist deliver the Dharma to our shores. After I was finding out on the Zen Middle of Los Angeles within the early 70’s, on New Yr’s day we’d at all times go to the grave web site of Nyogen Senzaki and do a service at there. He was one of many early pioneers of the Dharma within the west. On his grave stone are the next phrases:
“Associates in Dharma, be glad with your individual heads. Don’t placed on any false heads above your individual. Then minute after minute watch your steps carefully. At all times maintain your head chilly and your ft heat. These are my final phrases to you.”
in gratitude,
Roshi Robert Joshin Althouse
