What is Hōonkō?
If you follow many Jodo Shinshu organizations on social media, you may have noticed that quite a few have recently been advertising special services and seminars for something called Hōonkō. For those groups in the Nishi sect, this celebration comes every year in January. Our Dharma friends in the Higashi sect observe it in November. The difference only being the use of the Gregorian versus the Japanese Lunar calendars. Regardless of which calendar is being used, however, Hōonkō is the most important time of the year for Jodo Shinshu Buddhists. It is when we commemorate the death of our school’s founder, Shinran Shonin, in 1263. It was only 40 years earlier that the humble monk from Hino (now Kyoto) founded this school with its emphasis on the compassionate “other power” of Amida Buddha.
The Japanese word Hōonkō (報恩講) can be roughly translated into English as meaning “a gathering for the return of gratitude”. And that is exactly we do every year at Hōonkō time. You will note that I have referred to the observance as a “celebration” and may be wondering what there is to celebrate about death. To understand this, you need to know a little something about how we view death in Jodo Shinshu. It is not the end of us, but rather the next stage of our journey to becoming Buddhas ourselves. While Shinran left our saha world, he went on to something far better - what we call the Pure Land. It was what he had been waiting for all along. And so we celebrate him and his teachings with show of gratitude. We gather in our temples and sanghas in a sincere show of thanks for the Dharma the master taught over the course of four decades, in the face of great social and political challenges and even persecution.
You may be wondering just how we demonstrate our gratitude. Well, by doing the one thing that we as followers of Shinran and Jodo Shinshu value most - hearing the Dharma. We come together to listen to and learn from esteemed Buddhist teachers, just as Master Shinran urged us to do over 800 years ago. Some of the messages shared focus on history or doctrine. Others look at contemporary issues through the Jodo Shinshu lens, providing us with welcome advice on how best to live according to the Dharma. Listening to the Dharma is a key activity for us in our regular services too, but for Hōonkō we tend to go really big! Some speakers will even travel great distances, at the invitation of temple, to share their thoughts on the teachings.
If you have never attended a Hōonkō celebration, you will be more than welcome at almost any Jodo Shinshu temple’s events. They are always great opportunities to learn about our particular Pure Land school and meet other followers. Heck, if you are in Los Angeles next January, look me up and I will gladly meet you at the one at my temple. As we say in our chanting of the Three Treasures,
“Even through ages of myriads of kalpas hard is it to hear such an excellent, profound, and wonderful doctrine. Now we are able to hear and receive it.”
Namo Amida Butsu!
- Sokusho
