The Breath of God
To the Zen Center of Soan, Japan
Fr. Amaldas, OSB Cam.
from Bulletin 10, February 1981
This excerpted article has been translated by Sr. Sarah Schwartzberg, OSB.
Soan, located in the mountainous region northwest of Tokyo and near Takamori, is a small community directed by a Japanese Dominican, Shigeto Oshida. The chief characteristic of this community is its effort to live an integral Christianity in a purely Japanese lifestyle. Its members combine an intensely active life with a no less intense contemplative life, where all strive simply to 'live', in the strong sense of the word, beyond the distinction between active and contemplative life. The permanent core is formed by a dozen persons, all Japanese, without distinction of sex, age, or civil status. Long-term guests become one with this core.
The community is open to all who are welcomed equally: Christians of various denominations, members of other religions, those who are searching spiritually or those seeking help with personal problems. The same respect and deference for the "mystery of the divine presence that dwells in each human heart" is shown to all.
Properly speaking, there is neither a "rule" nor rules! The community life is based solely on four principles:
Openness to all, which creates a climate wherein each tries to be genuine, without a mask, simply being oneself.
Members renounce all personal property and the community, as much as possible, possesses nothing outside of what is absolutely necessary for daily life and what is required to face difficulties, sickness, accidents, etc. The living standard is that of most modest villagers: a low table, a cushion for sitting on the ground and a shelf. For sleeping, one unrolls a thin mattress, sheets and covers on the ground of the hermitage.
"Whoever fails to rise at 5:30 am, at the sound of the bell, is not part of Soan." It is left to each one's sense of responsibility to put oneself at the disposal of the community, to work to the best of one's needs of the moment.
The community does not make long-term plans; they live in the present, leaving it to God to determine the next day. "It is in the present that one must face life."
Once a month a sesshin takes place, a 3-day retreat of silence and of long hours dedicated to zazen ("za" in Japanese means sitting and "zen", meditation.) "Zazen practice is to let yourself be seduced by the Breath of God, by the Holy Spirit. If you do not undergo this seduction, pray that it will be granted to you, it is a gift; prayer has no other end than to beg the Lord to make himself irresistible."
Fr. Oshida describes Soan as "Life itself, like a breath that deepens each day, seeking to approach its divine source. . . . Life that flows like a river always descending without any part ever stopping, never stopping anything for oneself." To grasp the subtlety of such phrases, one must understand the fundamental traits of traditional Japanese culture. On one hand, a great love of nature and a need to live in communion with it stems from the most ancient religion: Shintoism. On the other hand, there is the "Zen spirit," arising from the second ancestral religion, Buddhism. Fr. Oshida defines Zen in this way: "It is a state — or rather a road towards a state—in which all that exists is perceived from the viewpoint of the Beyond, in the divine light. Zen strives to deepen interior silence; it is to train oneself to die to oneself in the Word of God, to let oneself be moved by the breath of God." The Zen spirit insists on the impermanent character of all things here below and on the necessity of searching beyond concepts for the solution to the enigma of the origin of our existence. It is upon such elements that Christianity grafted itself.
Buddhist by birth, Fr. Oshida practiced Zen until the day, when, meeting a genuine Christian, he experienced the presence of Christ in this man. Following this spiritual shock, he became a Christian and entered the Dominicans. He has said, "I have never tried to integrate Zen in my Christianity. Zen is a constituent part of my soul and my body since my birth. If there has been integration in me, it is Christ himself who did it, without warning me."
Returning from the Dominican novitiate in Canada, Fr. Oshida suffered a recurrence of tuberculosis which carried him to the doors of death several times: "Sickness has been my guru, my spiritual master; it is then that I have begun to become supple in the hands of God." This was the moment above all that proved the need "to search out my identity as a man born in a country having a well-defined history, civilization and tradition."
It was in the early 60's that Fr. Oshida began to build the foundation of the Center of Soan. He was then staying at the hospital of Fujimi. Very soon, companions in suffering in the hospital joined with him in searching for a new life style. In 1963, with the help of some friends, he bought the land of Soan and built there a hermitage and a chapel. Time and again, people of every background came to join him, asking to live there permanently. The center at Soan was definitely created.
One cannot but give thanks to the "Breath of God" who inspired it, for Soan brings unsuspected riches to whoever arrives there without preconceived ideas.