Shigeto Oshida

Shigeto Oshida at his hermitage, Takamori Soan (高森草庵), in 1994

Shigeto Oshida, also known as Shigeto Vincent Oshida (15 January 1922 – 6 November 2003), was a Japanese Zen Buddhist monk and Dominican friar.

Quotes

Miller, Lucien (2023). Jesus in the Hands of Buddha. Collegeville, Minnesota: Liturgical Press. ISBN 978-0-8146-6867-2. 

• If the so-called “followers of Christ” today insist that their task in East-West dialogue means you compare yourselves to others, is this the sign of the New Horizon of bare reality? Each way should be unique, a unique way to the very him, to himself, not to man in general.
  • p. 106

• In every religion it is the same—each one is unique. Shakyamuni Buddha and Dogen Zenji and others—each is unique. The sutra—the canonical Scripture—in other traditions is another kind of revelation. Don’t compare! Don’t say, “I am superior.” Learn other mystical currents. We should adore by Spirit and bare reality. Don’t condemn! Don’t compare!
  • p. 107

• It is true, even in Buddhism, there is pain, vain talk about ‘enlightenment’ as though enlightenment were a uniform one could put on. And then there is the problem of the koan. Buddhists and Western followers of Buddhism are attached to the koan because they lack any real sign of tradition. If they do not have sub-currents it is better for them to disappear. The koan is the occasion to cut us off. “If you have faith, you can move mountains” (Matthew 17:20) is a koan. It cuts through! The bonzes do not know the reason for the koan. Therefore the bonzes cannot satisfy. A flower can be a koan. A great master, Gutei, made a koan of his finger.
  • p. 107

Poems

• 限りなき
  なみだの海に
  消えず 立たなむ
  茂人
  • Kagiri naki
    namida no umi ni
    kiezu tatanamu
    Shigeto
    • We shall stand
      without disappearing
      in the sea of infinite tears
      Shigeto
      • p. 30

• Holy breath breathes deeply
  setting earth and water ablaze
  false self’s face burns away
  God-given life endures
  • XVI. Transformation, p. 66

• Falling leaf’s voice
  listen
  the Unborn Sphere
  • XVIII. Even in This, p. 67

Quotes about Shigeto Oshida

Miller, Lucien (2023). Jesus in the Hands of Buddha. Collegeville, Minnesota: Liturgical Press. ISBN 978-0-8146-6867-2. 

• He was unlike anyone whom I had ever met before, a Zen master, a Buddhist who had met Jesus, a Dominican friar, and a Catholic priest. Yet I felt utterly at home with him, touched at the core of my being.
  • p. xi, Timothy Radcliffe, OP on August 6, 2022 (Feast of the Transfiguration; 77th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima)

• The Buddha-Jesus statue at Takamori Soan symbolizes the dynamic of eternal salvation so well. Buddha, in a sense, is the Lord of this world. There is a story about Buddha saying at his birth, “I alone am the honored one in the heavens and on earth” (Chinese 天上天下唯我独尊). Jesus is the Son of the Holy Other, the Father, who is not contained in this universe, but is its Creator. Jesus is sent to live among us in this world as a channel for eternal salvation. Buddha, gazing upon the child, Jesus, is holding incarnate Love, coming from the Holy Other as His Only Son. Buddha represents this world, yearning for salvation.
  • Chisato Kitagawa, Episcopal priest and professor of Japanese at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst
    • p. x

• Oshida told Father Trahan that what he had said was infinitely more precious than any word to indicate that he understood what Oshida wanted and needed to do. He left the superior’s room with a Deo gratias! (“Thanks be to God”) and a Tibi gratias! (“Thank you”) on his lips. He was overwhelmed by the deep sense that he had experienced the chikaryū (地下流), the “subterranean stream,” the current of faith flowing from the Unborn Sphere deeply beneath the world’s religions, traditions, and indigenous communities in the East and West, forming many different and distinct tributaries.
  • p. 19

• There is the Voice seducing us, calling us to a leap of faith like the deer plunging over the precipice. The Unborn Sphere is everywhere, as is the Hand of God, the Source, the Absolute, out of which flow the streams of faith, the sound of every bell, and the fall of every flower and leaf. Tiny things, sparrows, know the Way of Heaven. There is synesthesia and the juxtaposition of the abstract and the concrete, water turned to bird and whispering fish, satori in the splitting of the moon in a moment of sadness, the poet born again, steeped in sin and the unspeakable mystery of baptismal washing in every tradition. Everywhere too is the cross and sacrament, gratitude for the holocaust of dust and ashes, the tornado-like union of life and death in resurrection.
  • pp. 60-61, Lucien Miller on Shigeto Oshida's "Unborn Sphere" (or Ultimate Reality)

• Father James Campbell, an American Dominican, loved to tell of his meeting with Oshida. He had been a bomber pilot in the Second World War and repented of his collusion in this violence. He went to Japan to ask for forgiveness and there met Oshida. James expressed his sorrow at his sin; Oshida laughed and said that he had been in the anti-aircraft artillery and he repented that he had not shot down James! There followed laughter and the tumbling down of all barriers. Two people face-to-face, naked and unafraid.
  • p. xv, Foreword by Timothy Radcliffe

See also

• Thomas Merton
• D. T. Suzuki
• Thich Nhat Hanh