Treasurers of Jodo

Speaking of digitalization, one of the great Jobs that Jodo Shu did for public was a creation of "online Search System of Jodoshu Zensho."   

 "Jodoshu Zensho" means "All collections of Jodo Shu" which contain all the Jodo texts which were written by so many Masters of India, China, and Japan.

This is a really amazing system and incredibly large (20) volumes of all the Jodo basic texts has been available online.

Koloa Jodo Mission is one of the lucky temples which has all 42 (23+19) volumes of all Jodo texts, which were republished in 1975 in commemorate the 800th Anniversary of the Jodoshu's founding.  They are mostly written in Chinese characters, but there are Sanskrit texts, and there are English translations of Jodo Three Sutras, too, translated by Dr. Max Müller and Dr. Junjiro Takakusu.

Practice of Jodoshu is said to be simple and easy, however, this easiness is deeply rooted and based upon huge amount of knowledge.   They are really like ocean of wisdom and ocean of treasures.

Getting all the books together at one place made me realize my Buddhist knowledge was truly nothing.  I mean it.  But because I realized I was ignorant, I now want to know more of Jodo Shu.  

Maybe in the past, studying vast knowledge of Buddhism was dangerous for me.  There were some possibilities that I was attracted by other teachings and also possibilities that I got lost in the vast ocean of Buddhism.

But now I am confident that I am sure I enjoy this sailing to the ocean of Jodo Treasures.  

At the same time, I hope I can share wisdom from Buddhist knowledge  with as many English-speaking people as possible.

By the way, while I was scanning the past minutes of the ministers' meetings, I happened to find  two copies of resolutions of certificate of appreciation that were produced  in September 1975.

 One resolution was to Bishop Kakujin Inaoka and Jodo Shu who decided to donate all "Jodoshu Zensho" to all temples in Hawaii.  

The second resolution was to presented to Mr. Isao Ikeda, the director of the National Institute for Sea Training which delivered complete-sets of "Jodoshu Zensho" to 15 Jodo Shu temples in the major four islands of Hawaii.

I was curious for the National Institute for Sea Training? and found out....... It was "Nippon-maru" which contributed to carry all the books to Hawaii and many of the books in the picture above came here in August, 1975.   

As you may know, Nippon-maru was a training ship for the purpose of training students as sailors since it was launched in 1930.  Nippon-maru was replaced by the new designed Nipon-maru II in 1984. 

According to Wikipedia, the first Nippon-maru had travelled over 1,830,000km and had over 11,500 students.  

Now I'm very thankful for Nippon-maru and the staffs delivering Jodo treasurers (shown in the first picture) to Hawaii.

Nippon-maru recently visited Honolulu and now on the way back to Japan....according to their website.  They have a web camera on the ship which we can watch anytime.