Rev. Danny Fisher

2LT Rev. Somya Malasri is an ordained Buddhist minister and the U.S. Army’s first Buddhist chaplain candidate.

In the whole of the U.S. Armed Forces, there is only one active duty Buddhist chaplain at present: Navy chaplain Lt. Jeanette Shin, CHC, USN, who many readers will know from her website, Buddhist Military Sangha. When Somya fulfills all of his requirements with the Army, he will become the second Buddhist chaplain in the history of the U.S.A.F.

A long-standing practitioner in the lineage of Mahāsi Sayādaw, Somya’s root teacher was Ven. Somsak Soradho, who was a student of Ven. U Asabha, who was himself a student of Mahāsi Sayādaw.

He currently lives in Los Angeles, where he is a student at the University of the West along with me.

I was curious to ask Somya some questions about his work and his views. Obviously, as military personnel, he is severely limited in what he is able to talk about without the approval of his commanding officer. But he very kindly offered to answer what lines of inquiry he could. We did the following interview in January during a research trip to Taiwan with several of our UWest colleagues. (I blogged about our time there and shared photographs in this post.) Due to a lot of work, I haven’t had time to transcribe our interview until now. I very much appreciate Somya’s willingness to be interviewed and his patience with things on my end.

FYI: Somya will be at UWest’s campus tomorrow, May 1st, with a chaplain recruiting team from the HQ US Army Recruiting Command. If you are in the Los Angeles area and interested in becoming a military chaplain or talking to other Buddhists about their work in the military, he invites you to attend. They will be between the Administration Building and Library on campus from 11 a.m. until 1 p.m. You can find directions to UWest here.

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DANNY FISHER: Somya, would you tell us a little about your history with Buddhist practice? How did you wind up the first Buddhist chaplain candidate in the U.S. Army?

SOMYA MALASRI: I entered [a Theravāda Buddhist] temple when I was seventeen. This was in southern Thailand, in the Krabi province—close to Phuket. I studied general Buddhist subjects and practiced meditation. And then when I was twenty-one, I became a [fully-ordained] monk and began studying Pāli, Buddhist history, Buddhist culture, and Thai culture. Later I moved to Bangkok to get my bachelor’s degree at Mahachula Buddhist University. While I was there, I also taught Buddhist philosophy and history to primary, secondary, and high school students. There was a school at my temple in Bangkok too, and I taught there as well.

At university, I continued to study Mahāsi Sayādaw’s meditation techniques—noticing the rising and falling of the abdomen, and so on. And at the end of every school year, we did a fifteen-day meditation retreat. You have to get up at 4 in the morning and go to bed at 10 in the evening. Every day. And we were expected to practice meditation while we were in school as well. Also, before we finished school, we had to do some kind of social work or missionary work. They’ll send you to remote temples in other Thai provinces or countries. So I went to Hainan province in southern China, where they have a lot of Thai Buddhists. And then I went to Burma to study meditation further and teach the Thai language to students there.

The university also offered a program doing Buddhist missionary further abroad. I was interested and applied for that. I had to pass a written exam and was then accepted from among two hundred candidates. They decided to send me to America. Those of us going had to do a three-month meditation retreat to prepare. Like the fifteen-day retreats, we had to meditate a lot and keep to the same schedule–get up at 4 in the morning and go to bed at 10 in the evening. Practicing continuously. Sitting and walking meditation: sitting one hour, and then walking one hour. Then it was increased to two hours sitting, two hours walking after one month. We also studied American history, culture, and law in preparation for our work as well. When I was first sent to the United States, I went to a temple Denver. From there, I was transferred to a temple in Colorado Springs. After that, I went to Salt Lake City in Utah.

While I was in Salt Lake City, a Buddhist soldier came to the temple to get a blessing from the monks. I think the idea to become a [military] chaplain first occurred to me then. Later, when I was living at a temple in Las Vegas, a soldier there told me, “When you get your green card, you can join the Army. And when you join the Army, you can become a chaplain.” Shortly thereafter, I applied to be a chaplain in the U.S. Army. The recruiter told me I would need to get [ecclesiastical] endorsement from the Buddhist Churches of America (B.C.A.), and he helped me contact them and put together my necessary paperwork. [NOTE: It is a requirement that military chaplains be able to provide an ecclesiastical endorsement. At the moment, the B.C.A. is the only Buddhist organization recognized as an ecclesiastical endorsing body by the U.S. Department of Defense.] I didn’t have any military experience, so while I waiting for my endorsing papers I joined the Army as an enlisted soldier. I began my training at Ft. Jackson in South Carolina, and then did some in Virginia. My first station was in Hawai’i. As soon as I got my endorsing papers from the B.C.A., though, I was approved as a chaplain candidate. My status then changed from enlisted soldier to officer in the reserves.

D.F.: And how long will it take before you become an active-duty chaplain in the U.S. Army?

S.M.: It will probably be another two-and-a-half years. I have to complete the required 72 graduate credit hours at UWest. I also have to finish my chaplain office basic training courses. I also have to go through an assessment and complete a practicum at an army base over the course of a summer at some point. They’ll pay for my travel and lodging while I train with an active-duty army chaplain somewhere.

D.F.: What draws you to military chaplaincy?

S.M.: For one thing, I want very much to help Buddhist soldiers. For Christians in the U.S. Army, there are a lot of chaplains. But there are no Buddhist chaplains yet for Buddhist soldiers in the Army. I’d like to share the knowledge I have gained so far with those soldiers. Maybe I can help them in their spiritual training or their practice of meditation. I could offer advice about how to be a good Buddhist and a good soldier at the same time. Personally, I also just like to help other people. Sometimes when people are suffering, they don’t have anyone to talk with. I can be a person who can listen to them and guide them.

D.F.: Somya, I know you’re limited in what you can say to us about your work with the U.S. Army, but what can you tell us about it?

S.M.: You know, in some ways it is quite difficult for me to be the first Buddhist chaplain in the Army. There is not a lot of Buddhist literature and information available to soldiers or for chaplains to use. And there are all kinds of Buddhists in the Army—Theravāda, Mahāyāna, Vajrayāna, and so on. The many kinds of Buddhism are joined together in the Army. It’s helpful for me to work with the principle that every Buddhist denomination can practice together. Every tradition has the Four Noble Truths and the Noble Eightfold Path and the law of karma in common. When I lead Sunday services for Buddhists, I teach this way.

In terms of general tasks, during the week I do things like counseling and helping people with their meditation practice and so on.

D.F.: Going back to your biography for a moment, when did you disrobe? Before you joined the Army?

S.M.: Yes. I then re-ordained as a Buddhist minister. Kind of like a Christian minister. I can teach meditation and lead services.

D.F.: Who did this? Who ordained you?

S.M.: A temple in Los Angeles.

D.F.: In the Theravāda tradition, or…?

S.M.: The ordination was done by Bhante Chao Chu of the Rosemead Buddhist Monastery under the auspices of the [ecumenical] Buddhist Sangha Council of Southern California. It’s part of the World Fellowship of Buddhists. Bhante Chao Chu is Sri Lankan, and was ordained as a Theravāda monk. But he’s also been ordained in a Mahāyāna tradition. Part of his ministry is to help laypersons become ministers and serve others and the monastery and the monks. In this Order of Buddhist Ministers that he has helped to create, there are about fifteen or twenty Buddhist ministers.

D.F.: Did you ordain as a minister because you would not have permitted to serve in the military as a monastic?

S.M.: According to the Theravāda tradition, it is impossible to be a soldier and a monk at the same time. You have to be one or the other.

D.F.: So, in other words, according to the Theravāda tradition, you must disrobe if you’re going to join the military?

S.M.: Yes. But you can become a minister and serve as a chaplain like me. In Thailand, there are a lot of people like me, who have a history with monastic practice and become chaplains for the military there.

D.F.: Where in the Pāli Canon precisely is Buddhist practice and military service discussed?

S.M.: In the Pācittiya of the Pāṭimokkha, it says that monks should not see military camps or observe military movements. There are three or four other rules like that. It also says that monks should not wear lay clothing; if you serve in the military, though, you have to wear a uniform.

D.F.: Thank you very much for speaking to us, Somya.

While I was in New York City this past week, I made a pilgrimage to the Upper West Side to see the statue of Shinran Shonin that stands in front of the New York Buddhist Church.

I had first read about the statue in my friend Jeff Wilson’s book The Buddhist Guide to New York: Where to Go, What to Do, and How to Make the Most of the Fantastic Resources in the Tri-State Area. It wasn’t until last week, though, that I finally got around to seeing the statue. I wanted to see it primarily because of its unique history.

This statue of Shinran Shonin survived the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, in which 150,000 people died, and 90 percent of the buildings in the city collapsed or burned.

[Resident Minister Reverend T. Kenjitsu Nakagaki says:] “The statue stood alone in the middle of all the burning. This gave the people some kind of hope. It is now the focus of an annual peace gathering held on August 5th when a bell is tolled at 7:15 p.m. At that moment in Japan, it is 8:15 a.m. on August 5th, the hour that the bomb was dropped.”

For those unfamiliar with Shinran Shonin, he was the founder of the Jōdo Shinshū (or True Pure Land) sect of Buddhism in Japan. The placard in front of the statue (pictured to the left) tells visitors to the New York Buddhist Church more about their tradition’s progenitor. It also explains that he is depicted here in his missionary traveling robes and accoutrements.

I was glad to have been able to visit and pay my respects. I leave you now with this quote from Shinran, which he wrote “on the night of the second month, during the hour of tiger” in 1257, after he heard it in a dream:

Entrust yourself to Amida’s Primal Vow (Namu Amida Butsu).
Through the benefit of being grasped, never to be abandoned,
All who entrust themselves to the Primal Vow
Attain the supreme enlightenment.

There are some good professional development opportunities for chaplains coming up this summer. Among them:

The First Annual Meeting of the Society for Spirituality, Theology, and Health. The society envisions their annual meetings as bringing together “transdisciplinary scholars and interested physicians, clergy, chaplains, nurses and lay persons from the United States and other parts of the world” to speak about and discuss the latest findings in spirituality, theology, and health. This first meeting “seeks to promote thought and research about how to operationalize and measure concepts such as spirituality, health and human flourishing as well as to evaluate the implications of past and current research for the future.” You can look at the brochure here and register here.

5-day Summer Research Courses at the Center for Spirituality, Theology and Health at Duke University Medical Center. The website states that each course will focus on “how to conduct research on religion, spirituality and health, and how to develop an academic career in this area.” Leading religion-health researchers from Duke, the University of North Carolina, the University of South Carolina, and elsewhere will lecture and present. Participants will also be also to discuss and work on individual research projects with the assembled faculty. Find about tuition and registration here. (A limited number of scholarships are available.)

The Spiritual Care Collaborative’s Invitation for Workshop Proposals. The collaborative is inviting 90-minute workshop proposals on the theme of “Health and Hope: The Hard Reality of Living Intentionally in a Village of Care” for the 2009 Spiritual Care Summit in Orlando, Florida, February 1-4, 2009. You can find more information and an application form here. Email your application to Susanne Chawszczewski, Ph.D., Director of Education and Professional Practice at the NACC National Office, here. The due date is this Friday, May 2nd.

As you may know from recent and major reports by the Washington Post, The Economist, and National Public Radio, we’re currently facing a global food crisis. In a editorial on the subject several days ago, the New York Times described the situation clearly and directly:

Last year, the food import bill of developing countries rose by 25 percent as food prices rose to levels not seen in a generation. Corn doubled in price over the last two years. Wheat reached its highest price in 28 years. The increases are already sparking unrest from Haiti to Egypt. Many countries have imposed price controls on food or taxes on agricultural exports.

Last week, the president of the World Bank, Robert Zoellick, warned that 33 nations are at risk of social unrest because of the rising prices of food. “For countries where food comprises from half to three-quarters of consumption, there is no margin for survival,” he said.

Prices are unlikely to drop soon. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization says world cereal stocks this year will be the lowest since 1982.

When we look at the causes and conditions for this crisis, the responsibility of the developed, industrialized nations to end it become apparent. The Times editors continue:

The United States and other developed countries need to step up to the plate. The rise in food prices is partly because of uncontrollable forces — including rising energy costs and the growth of the middle class in China and India. This has increased demand for animal protein, which requires large amounts of grain.

But the rich world is exacerbating these effects by supporting the production of biofuels. The International Monetary Fund estimates that corn ethanol production in the United States accounted for at least half the rise in world corn demand in each of the past three years. This elevated corn prices. Feed prices rose. So did prices of other crops — mainly soybeans — as farmers switched their fields to corn, according to the Agriculture Department.

Washington provides a subsidy of 51 cents a gallon to ethanol blenders and slaps a tariff of 54 cents a gallon on imports. In the European Union, most countries exempt biofuels from some gas taxes and slap an average tariff equal to more than 70 cents a gallon of imported ethanol.

All of this in mind, Avaaz.org has created a petition to G8, UN, and EU leaders. The text reads:

We call on you to take immediate action to address the world food crisis by mobilizing emergency funding to prevent starvation, removing perverse incentives to turn food into biofuels and managing financial speculation, and to tackle the underlying causes by ending harmful trade policies and investing massively in sustainable agricultural productivity in developing nations.

I encourage you to sign your name to the petition here.

Avaaz.org has also created this video message along with Sierra Leone’s foreign minister Zainab Bangura. In Zainab’s country, rice prices have doubled, leaving 90% of its people unable to afford even a meal a day. Take a look at what she has to say.