The Rev. Dr. Kenji Akahoshi

I'm at the Buddhist temple on Market Street, and it's after-service refreshment time in the kitchen and I'm almost back at my table, from the food counter, with a cup of tea and a plate of something called snickerdoodles, when the Rev. Dr. Kenji Akahoshi smiles at me, looks down at my legs and tells me how much he likes my tattoos and all the colour on them.
'Oh,' he says, 'I like your tattoos and all the colour on your legs,'
So I say thank you and stop and and am about to start talking to him about the service when Maria, who I had sat next to during the service, and who is short and has long blond hair and a lot of makeup on and is from Spain, interrupts me and starts talking to the Rev. Dr. Kenji Akahoshi instead.
'How you get,' she says, looking up at the Reverend, 'to be so happy all the time?'
At this the Rev. Dr. Kenji Akahoshi, who has grey hair and glasses and is wearing a pale blue shirt and used to be a dentist, tilts his head back and laughs.
'I look for the good things,' he says, looking down at Maria, 'I try to stay focused on only the good things I have in my life,'
'Oh,' says Maria who is holding a small styrofoam cup of assorted grapes and a plate of chocolate chip cookies and frowning as if the Reverend has just told her a giant piece of nonsense, 'it's not so easy every day,'
I don't say anything to this but I keep looking at Rev. Dr. Kenji Akahoshi, because I don't think he has really finished saying what he wants to say, and whatever he has to say I really want to hear.
'Well,' says the Reverend, who is still smiling and laughing, 'What I do is I just look for the things to say thank you to,'
And then, because the Rev. Dr. Kenji Akahoshi is in the food line and probably wants to get some food, and I want to leave him alone so he can get it, I put my tea cup and plate down on the table, put my hand on the Reverends arm and say-'I am thankful for you today, Reverend.'
And the Rev. Dr. Kenji Akahoshi tilts his head back and laughs.
And I laugh, too.
And then Maria and I go back to the table and sit down.
And then, while Maria tells me about her holiday to Japan and we eat our snickerdoodles and chocolate chip cookies and drink our green tea, I think about what the Rev. Dr. Kenji Akahoshi has just said and I silently list all of the things I have that I can say thank you to.



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Bruce

It's after the service and I'm standing outside the Buddhist temple in Market Street, San Diego, when Bruce comes up to me and says hello, shakes my hand and tells me it's good to see me again.
'Hey,' says Bruce, who has wooden Buddha beads around his neck and is wearing a pale blue Hawaiian style shirt, jeans and brown leather flip-flops, 'it's good do see you,'
'Hey,' I say back, 'oh, it's very good to see you, too,'
And then, because Bruce looks so happy, I tell him how happy he looks.
'Bruce,' I say, 'you look so happy, you look happier than last week,'
'I am happy,' he tells me, 'I've had a good week,'
Then, because last week when we had sat together for refreshments after the service, drinking green tea and eating rice and a Japanese salad, and Bruce had told me how much he works, I ask him some questions about his job.
'How's the job going?' I say, 'do you own the company?'
Bruce laughs and says no, he does not own the company, but he has worked there for 23 years and that he loves his job, which involves designing some kind of metal work.
'I love my job,' he says, 'I love going to work, I love the work I do,'
I tell him that's great.
'Yeh,' he says, 'so many people complain about their jobs. I want to ask them, "Hey, if you were hiring someone to do your job, would you hire someone like you? Someone who moans and complains all the time?"'
I start laughing and so does Bruce.
Then he tells me he loves the company he works for.
'I'm good at my job,' he says, 'and I like helping my company prosper, because they have been very good to me and I have prospered,'
I tell Bruce that this is a great way to look at life and work, and then we get on to the subject of chanting.
'I like how chanting feels,' I tell Bruce, 'like literally how it feels in your body,'
Bruce says he does too.
'It's like someone hit's you with a big tuning fork,' I say to Bruce while I pretend to hold a big tuning fork and hit him on the shoulder.
Bruce laughs.
'It's exactly right,' he says.
Then he asks me if I have a TV.
'Oh,' I say, 'is your show on today?'
Bruce's company is going to be featured on 'How It's Made' and I want to watch it.
'No,' Bruce says, 'but there's a show called CBS Sunday Morning and it has really great things on it. Like, this morning there was a segment on blind baseball players who use a sort of sonic ball that makes sounds,'
'I don't generally watch TV,' I tell him, 'American TV frightens me and makes me anxious,'
'Try this show,' he says and smiles, 'it will make you feel good. It's full of...goodness, really,'
I tell Bruce that I'll try to watch next Sunday and then he asks me how my trip to Los Angeles had been and I tell him that I had done some tattooing, and spent the evening in a strip club and I tell him about the train trip that goes partly along the ocean, and that at 7am the sun was coming up on one side of the train, over the bare hills, and that on the other side I could see, through the fog, the surfers out on the Pacific ocean, waiting for their waves.
'Ah,' says Bruce, 'you know that's the only other time I get some kind of peace in my head,'
And then he holds up his hand and starts waving it in front of his forehead.
'It's always going on up here,' he says, 'but not when surfing and not when chanting,'
And then we laugh.
And then we talk about the content of the service.
And then we talk about the priest.
And then we talk about new years eve celebration at the temple.
And then, because I am going out for lunch, I tell Bruce I have to get going.
But then we stand there in the Buddhist temple car park for a bit longer, me holding my bicycle, my helmet on my head, and Bruce swinging his car keys and smiling until even though I really want hug him, I just shake his hand and tell him that I liked his ideas on prosperity and that I hope I would see him next week.
'I hope I see you next week,' I say to Bruce.
'Yeh,' says Bruce as I get on my bicycle and get ready to cycle off, 'I hope I see you next week, too.'

The New Kitchen

On Sunday at the Buddhist temple in San Diego, where I have gone to hear my first ever Buddhist service, a woman tells me that for many years, non-whites had been forbidden by law to buy property any closer to Downtown than Market Street.
'That's why the temple is all the way out here, away from Downtown,' the woman, who had married a Japanese man and thus become a Buddhist, continues to tell me as we eat our lunch, 'because this was agricultural land, and the Japanese workers could afford it,'

During the service there had been a ribbon cutting event for a new kitchen and I had been invited to join the Buddhists for lunch in the big hall.
I am eating tofu in sesame seeds and white rice and a kind of vinegary cabbage salad that reminds of the sushi place where me and the wife had liked to eat in Hilo, Hawaii.

On the table in front of us are little paper cups of green tea and sake and non-alcoholic cider, so that when suddenly a man at the front of the hall begins talking into a microphone, we are ready to make a toast.
The man begins to talk about the building of the kitchen and how important fund raising had been and how the kitchen belongs to not just the temple, but to everybody.
And then he says '...and we couldn't have done it without the help of our builders, who will please stand up now,'
2 big Mexican looking guys stand up and one takes off his baseball cap and they both bow while everybody claps.
And then, when the toasts are over, there is much smiling and clapping and commemorative cake is passed out by smiling teenage girls and all of us are given a commemorative rice paddle with the words 'San Diego Buddhist Temple' burned into the handle.

On my way home on my bicycle, under an unintentionally vicious California sun, I think about how on this Sunday a random Australian was offered lunch by a bunch of predominantly Asian strangers, whose temple kitchen had been built by some Mexican construction workers on land that had once been considered by white men to be far enough away from them and theirs as to not cause offense.

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