At 8:27 am today I received word that Rev. Ryusho Shonin had died this morning at the Syracuse VA Medical Center, where he had been hospitalized since July 24, 2020. Anyone who has followed this blog will understand just how important Ryusho Shonin has been in the development of my practice.
Here’s a chronological snapshot of his influence.
Sept. 6, 2015, Service at Myoshoji with Ryusho Jeffus Shonin from Charlotte, North Carolina. My first post with his photo.Sept. 20, 2015 service from Charlotte, NC. With Ryusho is Bill Buck, a Charlotte musician who is still today a member of Ryusho’s sanghaAn Oct. 4, 2015, Dharma talk. His most important lesson for me was the requirement that we put Buddhism into practice in our lives. His talks and books focused on how to do that.A Nov. 1, 2015, service with seven attendees, five of whom are shown at left.Ryusho’s Dharma talk on faith and doubt on Sunday, Nov. 15, 2015. Happy BuddhismNov. 22, 2015, Myoshoji Service. These were always intimate affairs.Ryusho Jeffus leads discussion following online service Sunday, Jan. 10, 2016. While broadcasting from his home/temple in Charlotte he often had more people IRL than onlineThe blog post where this photo first appeared explains: “Following the service, Rev. Ryusho Jeffus discussed how each of us can show the Lotus Sutra in our lives, challenging us to write our story in the context of the Lotus Sutra.” Portion of crowd attending March 13, 2016, Sunday service at Myoshoji in Charlotte, NC
March 21, 2016, Monday night study is an example of Ryusho’s efforts to merge practice and study.
Introduction
I attended Ryusho’s 2015 and 2016 Urban Retreats.
As a former member of Soka Gakkai, Ryusho Jeffus was able to help others understand how Nichiren Shu differed from SGI.
On Nov. 27, 2016, Ryusho created this mandala omamori for me. This and a Kishimojin omamori I purchased from Ryusho became my traveling altar.Screengrab from first service with Ryusho Shonin from Myosho-ji Temple since the move to Syracuse on Feb. 26, 2017.Ryusho Shonin broadcasting April 19, 2017, from his new altar space in Syracuse, NY, during an online discussion of the Shutei Nichiren Shu Hoyo Shiki, the manual that priests and those studying to be priests use.Sunday, March 3, 2019, online service with Rev. Ryusho Jeffus was attended by two couples in France, a young man in England as well as attendees in North Carolina, South Carolina, Iowa and Ohio.On Sept. 15, 2019, Ryusho announced his intention to retire. He outlined his retirement plans. His health, already troublesome, wouldn’t improve.My wife, Mary, and I had lunch with Ryusho Jeffus in Syracuse, NY, on Monday, Nov. 4, 2019A few days after my lunch with Ryusho, he suffered a collapsed lung during a flight from Syracuse to California on his way to visit his brother. The plane made an emergency landing in Arizona. On Nov. 17, 2019, Ryusho hosted an online service from his hospital room.The last time I saw Ryusho in person (at right in this photo) was at Mark Herrick’s Feb. 16, 2020, Tokudo Jukai-shiki cermony in which he became a shami.Then the pandemic hit this year and the nation shut down in March and everyone was learning what Ryusho had demonstrated for years: Zoom keeps you connected.Ryusho was given formal approval by Nichiren Shu headquarters to be the official priest for a group of practitioners in Europe. (Don’t recall exactly when that was. Perhaps in 2019.) He would have his bilingual members translate what he said into French for those who had difficulty with English. This is the crowd from the April 26, 2020, service. Attending are regulars from Portugal, Czech Republic, France, England and the United States.Attendees of the Myoshoji online service July 26, 2020, led by Davie Byden-Oakes in England. This was the day Ryusho’s online sangha learned he was in the hospital.Just a small sample of the artwork Ryusho sent to my wife and me. While he was a strong believer in online technology, he was also old school, mailing his handcrafted cards.
Perhaps it is the reality of our modern advertisement saturated media that has led many to believe that only after buying and using every product known to man, after every single penny is spent that has ever been earned in the entire history of man- and womankind then and only then will somehow perfection and happiness be possible. Somehow by doing something so unlikely to produce indestructible happiness as buying a product is more realistic than the realization that each one of us is already all we need to be. We are as complete as we need to be in order to become indestructibly happy. All we need to do is simply wake up to this reality in our lives, and the Buddha is telling us that the Lotus Sutra is the most efficacious way of doing this.
