[#3] SECOND SPRING: Young Buddhist Editorial
A conversation with two young Jodo Shin Buddhist leaders, Devon Matsumoto and Koki Atcheson
Last week, I shared an introduction to this interview with Young Buddhist Editorial (YBE) leaders Devon Matsumoto and Koki Atcheson. Below is an edited transcript.
What was your early experience of spirituality, and or Buddhism?
Koki Atcheson—I can start. I grew up in Seattle attending the Seattle Betsuin. I think I at first equated being at a Buddhist temple with Japanese culture. I don't think I separated the Dharma school activities versus the Japanese cultural activities. All of that was wrapped up into the temple community. I guess my briefest answer is that my early experience in spirituality was community first.
“I think I at first equated being at a Buddhist temple with Japanese culture… my early experience in spirituality was community first.” —Koki
What kinds of cultural activities were you involved in?
Koki—One memorable one was Kamishibai where my dad joined the Kids Summer Program on a bike and pretended like he was a bicycling, storytelling man. I also remember making onenju in Dharma School. And then, with Campfire, it was really fun to spend time in nature. I remember making whistles out of wood, gathering raspberries to make fruit leather, doing pseudo orienteering to find our way around a new campsite. I guess, I'm realizing that I mentally wrapped all of that up into my concept of spirituality.
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It's not quite summer in the Pacific Northwest without picking raspberries! Devon, how about you?
Devon Matsumoto—I feel like mine is just identical to Koki's.
Maybe my first memory of getting into Buddhist spirituality from a doctrinal standpoint was a Hoji service. Every year when my great grandma was still alive, we'd have Hoji services for my great grandpa. Before I was born, they used to actually have a priest come to the house and conduct it. But I just remember it being a cassette tape that had the Amida Kyo on it and the Shoshi-ge on reverse sides. I actually have the tape here now because I like listening to it. It's so nostalgic.
At the temple, I did Nakayoshi Gakko, a Japanese American cultural summer school that I did from kindergarten to eighth grade, and then I was a senpai during high school.
I did Judo at the San Jose Buddhist temple, and I did Tiger and Cub Scouts at the San Jose Temple. And I went to a Lotus preschool, which is a Buddhist preschool. And then I also played in the Asian League basketball leagues here. I also did volleyball and baseball through those Asian League sports clubs that were started at San Jose and Mountain View Buddhist temples.
So I think very much that I connected spirituality, just like Koki said, with community—with Japanese American community and culture.
What is it that makes a Sunday morning kids activity at the temple "Dharma school"? How is it not just daycare or preschool. What makes it Buddhist?
Devon—I think there's a loose curriculum that the Federation of Dharma School Teachers puts out from the Buddhist Churches of America. As far as Lotus preschool goes, I think maybe what made it Buddhist was I think we'd go to service twice a week. You know those jump ropes with the knots? We'd all hold on to it and walk across the street to the Betsuin and listen to the sensei's service or Dharma talk.
I don't even think you have to be teaching Buddhism, though, for it to be a Buddhist preschool. Because by just being at the Betsuin and being a preschool that Buddhist temple members are a part of, that makes it inherently Buddhist. You're deeply embedded in Buddhism without having to say, "we're gonna teach them about mindfulness today," etc. Just being affiliated with the temple and that everyone involved is Buddhist, it is inherently Buddhist.
“You're deeply embedded in Buddhism without having to say, ‘we're gonna teach them about mindfulness today,’ etc. Just being affiliated with the temple and that everyone involved is Buddhist, it is inherently Buddhist.” —Devon
Maybe you didn't recognize it as Buddhist. There's a lot of stuff that, when I was growing up, my grandparents would do when we would visit them in Korea. And I thought it was just Korean what they were doing. It was only much later that I was like, "Oh, this has Buddhist roots."
Koki—I think my understanding of what made Dharma School Buddhist was just talking about compassion. And we recited the Golden Chain a lot, almost in a competitive way. I remember Trevor Yokoyama had the Golden Chain down from a very young age, which is a fun fact. Trevor is another YBE founder.
I was just side-googling this Words of Thanksgiving, which is kind of like an enhanced itadakimasu. There's so much food at temple and I think that setting this intention before and after is so different than praying before eating. It's appreciation rather than asking for more, not that that's what every prayer is.
Maybe I can read this in case it's familiar. The Words of Thanksgiving is, "We are truly grateful for this wonderful food, a gift of the lives of many beings. As we partake of this food, let us remember Amida Buddha's compassion, which surrounds all human beings, and all forms of life. Namo Amida Butsu. Itadakimasu."
Maybe that speaks to your point—the evolution of Itadakimasu culture with the Namo Amida Butsu culture and those very commonly uttered phrases being right next to each other. There's something there to me.
I almost want to put you on the spot and have you recite the Golden Chain now.
Koki—I think I can do it!
What was it like to grow up within the Hongwanji and within Jodo Shin Buddhism as you guys got older?
Devon—I usually just went to Dharma School because I was forced to, and then also, my friends were in Dharma School. So I grew up with people I had known for years and our parents were friends, too. Being a teenager, it was more natural to just go because that's where the community was. But I think that itself was also deeply embedded in the Buddhist and Jodo Shin tradition of building community, creating a lay sangha.
Later on, I really started enjoying going to YBA conferences, going to the dances, doing all the social stuff, helping and taking on leadership roles. I think I didn't really get interested in the more philosophical applications until I went through this program called the YAC retreat—the Youth Advocacy Committee retreat that was hosted at the Sacramento Betsuin. I started to have more interest in Buddhism from a religious standpoint because I learned more about the teachings and how it applied to myself, and then more about the history of the teachings and how it relates to our community.
I would say I was pretty immature, as a typical Yonsei high school boy—fourth generation Japanese American—just going through life, not really giving a care, getting in trouble with the advisors. Maybe until the YAC program. I started wanting to give back to the community that helped raise my family and my friends.
Koki—That's so resonant with me! I feel like Devon is my cousin based on some of our upbringing. Being forced to attend Dharma School is a relatable experience to me. I remember just dreading Sunday mornings. I wanted to watch cartoons. But then I'd stay around at temple all day. We had taiko, and then a lot of the time we would go shopping at the outlet mall and eat Red Robin for dinner afterwards, which was the Sunday routine and which I loved.
I did attend Pacific Buddhist Academy. I feel like the first time that I chose independently to participate in a Buddhist activity was to do YESS Camp, which is the Young Enthusiastic Shinshu Seekers camp. It was kind of a weekend retreat with high school and college aged Jodo Shinshu Buddhists or people who are curious about that tradition. That was so impactful, where people who were just a little bit older were doing things that felt super relevant to me as a 14-15-year-old.
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How did you two meet and does that story overlap with how YBE was started?
Devon—It's good to bring back Trevor into the conversation. Trevor and I actually go back a long time. We like to say we're fourth generation friends because our great grandparents were friends in Utah. Our grandparents were really good friends in Utah, and our moms are really good friends from Utah. Our parents always found ways for us to get connected to each other. I also ended up meeting him at the YAC retreat and then we both coincidentally decided to go to the University of Utah.
I remember us having this conversation in a dorm room where we were talking about our experiences growing up in YBA and how the dynamics are changing. Young people just aren't being as active in our generation and there's sort of a disconnect between the generations. So we sort of had this unfinished idea about how we can keep people connected, maybe through publishing Dharma talks that young people gave.
Three years later, I moved to Seattle for grad school and Trevor was back in Washington for his school, too. And then also, Emily Ko, Allison Tanaka, Marissa Wang, Josh McKinney, and Mia Li were all there for some sort of schooling. Then, Reverend Kusunoki hosted a Seattle Youth Ministers Assistant retreat and that conversation sort of organically grew into the idea that Trevor and I had had. It pretty much just blossomed from there.
It was sort of curtailed by the beginning of the pandemic but then the pandemic was also instrumental in how YBE was formed because it became a completely online base. Now we're no longer just a group of friends.
At the height of the George Floyd uprisings, we really wanted to have a conversation about uprooting anti Blackness within our community and addressing systemic racism that even we uphold as Asian Americans. That put YBE on the map. That's when we realized we're much more than friends and that we needed to bring more people on who were more experienced in certain realms of building out a community. And so that's when Emily Ko brought you in, Koki.
Koki—Yes, enter Emily Ko and Koki. So this is like, two months into the pandemic. I was working from home and I was very unhappy just dealing with this big adjustment amidst so many other social issues, including George Floyd and police brutality, and racism in your face.
I was super excited to have the same kind of feeling that I had with YESS Camp of like, young people who are genuinely interested, nobody's forcing them to be involved in this way, trying something new, something that's creative. It's not bound by the legacy of another person's vision, or another group's vision.
That is how I met Devon, when we did like an introductory call. They wouldn't even let me join a meeting! I had to interview first.
So what's the status of YBE now? What's sort of in front of you guys?
Koki—The organization has grown and we've broadened our reach beyond just being a group of friends looking for ways to publish the voices of young Buddhist people. Behind the scenes, we've shifted from this pretty hierarchical board structure with a president to a central coordinating committee, and then focus committees on other issues, like the editorial aspects, social justice, communications, and then a core group of supporters who kind of help to do administrative tasks to keep the org running.
It's compiled into a very lovely flower diagram, that's kind of a running joke with us. But I think that kind of community structure took a while, like years, to get to. It's still evolving somewhat.
So it does seem like as you're growing, it's also a pretty diverse group of people from all the bios I see on the website. It seems like not everyone is AJA, Americans of Japanese ancestry. I couldn't quite tell if everyone is still associated with Jodo Shinshu or if you've branched out.
Devon—One of the things that we were struggling with and still have conversations about is walking that balance between the foundation of the organization being rooted in Japanese American and Jodo Shinshu history to where we are today, where so many other non-Japanese American Jodo Shinshu, Asian American, and non-Asian American people of color have come to the organization looking for this more progressive space amongst Buddhists. They're also looking for a community space that does not replicate these hierarchical and oftentimes predatory, rigid structures of power.
It's still an ongoing conversation about how we hold space for those folks who are looking for that community, while also acknowledging that Japanese American Jodo Shinshu is also a community that's needing space.
“How do we hold space for those (non AJA Jodo Shin Buddhist) folks who are looking for community, while also acknowledging that Japanese American Jodo Shinshu is also a community that's needing space?”
The values statement that we worked on took us half a year and that is really the starting point because the whole organization was involved in crafting those values. Where they stand at the moment, which I think is still rooted in the Japanese American Jodo Shinshu tradition, is also opening up and trying to find ways that we don't replicate Japanese Imperialist notions of exclusion.
Is there a wish that you have for Asian American Buddhists at large, or for American Buddhism?
Devon—I think this goes back to the conversation Koki and I always have about the scarcity approach within Japanese American Jodo Shinshu temples that says Japanese Americans aren't the future of the BCA. And I think that's a common sentiment among white Buddhist spaces—that Asian Americans aren't the future of Buddhism here in the States or in the West. My wish is that we come to the understanding that we *are* the future and we are, I would even argue, more important than white folks in the future of Buddhism here in the West, just based off of our own histories and experiences of resiliency, persecution, and everything else in between. So, yeah, we are the future.
“My wish is that we [Asian American Buddhists] come to the understanding that we *are* the future [of Western Buddhism].” —Devon
Koki—I think my wish would be to be hopeful about the future and to recognize that each of us who is showing up in whatever way is part of that hope. By you being here today, you are giving me inspiration for the future. Seeing abundance everywhere in the histories of resilience, and in the future and possibility. Having that understanding in both directions, I think really allows people to be active in the present moment.