Rev. Danny Fisher

A few weeks back, I shared a very funny video with you that was inspired by an Associated Press story about monastic recruitment efforts in Japan.

Well, as you may have noticed, the Buddhablogosphere is abuzz with a new, similar story.

A Japanese Buddhist monk is getting down with rap music. Kansho Tagai, aka Happiness Kansho or Mr. Happiness, learned to rap at the age of 47, and the shaven-headed chief monk of Tokyo’s Kyooji temple is doing a pretty good job of opening the religious doors to young fans.

“I came to this world to help you out of suffering. My name is Shaka Munibutsu (Gautama Siddhartha). Say baby, listen to me. Everyone’s my cute baby. I’m here to help you out of suffering and pain.. .” Mr. Happiness raps, blending Japanese and English phrases.

Bobbing and waving his arms, the robed monk reaches out from the stage to shake hands with his young audience. Fans surround him after the show asking for autographs and for snapshots with the famous rapper.

Tagai has succeeded in reaching out to the new audience by shedding the traditional Buddhist facade, which divided the religious leaders from potential followers.

“As missionaries of Buddha, we are putting up a wall in front of us,” Tagai said in an interview at his temple in Tokyo’s Shinjuku district. “We had to make ourselves accessible and wave people closer so that they can understand Buddha’s words.”

This might be one of the first instances of a Buddhist clergyperson using rap for missionary purposes, but the use of rap for the propogation of the Dharma has some noble roots. Gary Gach included rap lyrics in his wonderful anthology What Book!?: Buddha Poems from Beat to Hiphop. And one of my favorite groups recorded this little ditty almost fifteen years ago…

Naropa University, my beloved graduate alma mater, was given an amazing gift this week: an anonymous individual bequeathed the institution $1 million in her will.

It’s the largest such posthumous gift in the school’s 34-year history, and comes with some intriguing question marks.

“Part of the mystery and the power of this gift is we don’t know what her precise connection was to the university,” said Christopher Dwyer, vice president for institutional advancement.

The bequest will be distributed in segments to Naropa through 2011. The first amount has gone into the endowment fund. The president and its board of trustees will determine future placements. No strings are attached to the money.

[...]

The anonymous donor gave once before, $2,000, in 2004. But when Naropa officials did a follow-up after the donation, the woman declined further contact.

All that is known about the donor is that she was a woman in her sixties.

What she did for the university will benefit it enormously. Naropa is one of those precious places that has so incredibly much going for it–so many wonderful people, so much remarkable work. A gift like this will do so, so much to further support the efforts of the students and the faculty there.

As a proud alumnus, I would like to express the deepest gratitude to our late and mysterious angel. Thank you, friend. And farewell.

From Reuters:

A photograph of the boy with the “beautiful brown eyes” who Anne Frank recalled as her “one true love” in the diary she wrote whilst in hiding in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands is to go on display in Amsterdam.

The photo of Peter Schiff was donated to the Anne Frank museum by his former childhood friend Ernst Michaelis who realized after rereading Anne’s diary recently there were no known pictures of Schiff, a museum spokeswoman said on Tuesday.

[...]

They would collect each other from school and walk hand in hand through their local neighborhood.

“He had dark hair, beautiful brown eyes, ruddy cheeks and a nicely pointed nose. I was crazy about his smile, which made him look so boyish and mischievous.”

Peter later died in Auschwitz, while Anne died in Bergen Belsen concentration camp in 1945.

[...]

Anne last saw Peter a few days before she moved into the annexe, but wrote of him in her diary more than 1-1/2 years later after dreaming of him.

“I’ve never had such a clear mental image of him. I don’t need a photograph, I can see him oh so well,” she said.

I’m going to be giving a lecture entitled “‘What Does a Buddhist Chaplain Do?’: A Dharma Practitioner’s Reflections on Spiritual Care and Counseling” at the New Haven Shambhala Center on Friday, April 11th, at 8 p.m. The event is free and open to the public. Hope to see you there!

I’ve attached a copy of the flyer below. Please feel free to spread the word.

This courtesy of Phil Ryan over at the Tricycle Editors’ Blog: the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life has at last released its long-awaited U.S. Religious Landscape Survey.

Among other things, the survey may be useful in terms of helping us Buddhists figure out the reality of our numbers here in the U.S. In a post from last week, I quoted a Salon.com article as saying that the numbers for American convert Buddhists alone were “sketchy,” ranging from “100,000 to 800,000.”

The Pew Survey finds that convert Buddhists and ethnic Buddhists together equal about 0.7% of the U.S. population.

Less than 0.3% of Americans listed their affiliation as Theravada (Vipassana), less than 0.3% as Mahayana (Zen), less than 0.3% as Vajrayana (Tibetan), less than 0.3% as “other Buddhist group.” 0.3% of Americans identified as “Buddhist” with no further specification.

Of the approximately 410 Buddhists surveyed by the Pew Forum, this is the ethnic breakdown: 53% were white, 32% Asian, 6% Hispanic, 4% Black, and 5% other/mixed. 53% were men, and 47% women.

The Pew Forum provides interested readers with full demographic portraits that are worth taking a look at. Like Phil, I’m especially struck by this: 70% of Buddhists surveyed report no children in the home. I’m not sure what that means exactly, but it’s certainly an interesting finding.

Take a look at the survey. It’s probably something you’ll be hearing more about in the months to come.