Hanamatsuri is to celebrate the birth of the historical Buddha Shakyamuni, who was born over 2,500 years ago in India. As we know, the future Buddha was given the name Siddhartha, meaning one who achieves the goal. His parents gave him sumptuous mansions where he could be comfortable. His future was guaranteed to succeed his father’s position as a king in the state of Kosala. However, you know what he did - he renounced all he had and pursued the path of enlightenment.

Yūshi Ono, who was a graduate of Tokyo University and became an IT venture capitalist after working for the IBM Japan, has recently become a Buddhist monk by renouncing his total asset of nearly 10 billion yen (over $65 million). His monastic name is Ryūkō 龍光 (meaning “light of dragon”). His story sounds quite similar to Siddhartha’s. This article talks about the Buddhist monk Ryūkō, and his mater Shūrei Sasai 佐々木秀嶺along with the religious landscape in India.

Religious Landscape in India

Buddhism originated in ancient India and grew after Ashoka adopted it. By the 2nd century CE, Buddhism was widespread in India and had expanded outside of India into Central Asia, East Asia and parts of Southeast Asia. During the Middle Ages, Buddhism slowly declined in India, while it vanished from Persia and Central Asia as Islam became the state religion.

According to the Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dalit_Buddhist_movement) Randall Collins says that Buddhism was already declining in India by the 12th century, but with the pillage by Muslim invaders it nearly became extinct in India. In the 13th century, Buddhist monks in India fled to Tibet to escape Islamic persecution. Efforts to revive Buddhism in India began in the 19th century, such as with the efforts of Sri Lanka Buddhist leader Anagarika Dharmapala who founded the Maha Bodhi Society. The Maha Bodhi Society, according to Bhagwan Das, was not a Dalit movement however, because it mainly attracted upper-caste Hindus to Buddhism.

Pew Research Center (Juen 2021) states that Indians say it is important to respect all religions, but major religious groups see little in common and want to live separately. More than 70 years after India became free from colonial rule, Indians generally feel their country has lived up to one of its post-independence ideals: a society where followers of many religions can live and practice freely. India’s massive population is diverse as well as devout. Not only do most of the world’s Hindus, Jains and Sikhs live in India, but it also is home to one of the world’s largest Muslim populations and to millions of Christians and Buddhists.

Anagarika Dharmapala – Buddhist Revival Movement

Anagarika Dharmapala (1864 – 1933) was born as Don David Hewavitharana in Sri Lanka, at that time the British colony of Ceylon. He was raised in the English-speaking middle class of Colombo and was educated in Christian schools run by Anglican missionaries, where he is said to have memorized large portion of the Bible. His family was Buddhist, and he met Madame Blavatsky and Colonel Olcott during their first visit to Ceylon in 1880. In 1884, he was initiated into the Theosophical Society by Colonel Olcott and later accompanied Madame Blavatsky to the headquarters of the society of Adyar, India. She encouraged him to study Pali, the language of the Theravada Buddhist scriptures.

In 1881 he had taken the name Dharmapala, Protector of the Dharma. Prior to the time in Ceylon, the leadership in Buddhism had been provided by monks and kings. Dharmapala established a new role of Buddhist layperson, creating the category of the ‘anagarika’ or wanderer, a layperson who studied texts and mediated, as monks did, but who remained social active in the world, as laypeople did. In 1889 he traveled with Colonel Olcott on his lecture tour of Japan. On a trip to India in 1891, he was shocked to see the state of decay of the great pilgrimage sites of India, all under Hindu control, and most especially Bodhi Gaya, the site of the Buddha’s enlightenment. That same year he founded the Maha Bodhi Society, which called on Buddhists from around the world to work for the restoration of the great sites to Buddhist control, a goal that would only be achieved after his death.

Anagarika Dharmapala managed to spread the word of the Buddha in the West on a scale that had not been attempted before, at a time when colonial powers and their socio-religious ideas were dominating the world. He used the existing tropes and frameworks of the colonizers to revive Buddhism in the public consciousness. He understood that the revival needed to take place within the milieu of his times and used the same tools of the rulers.

He envisioned a world where there would be widespread knowledge of the Buddha’s teaching, with people who dedicated their lives to that mission by living as renunciants and, the upliftment of under privileged people through better healthcare, education and vocational training.

Neo-Buddhist Navayāna (New Vehicle) Movement

Navayāna Buddhism refers to the modern re-interpretation of Buddhism founded and developed by the Indian jurist, social reformer, and scholar B. R. Ambedkar (1891-1956); it is otherwise called Neo-Buddhism and Ambedkarite Buddhism. According to the Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Navayana), B. R. Ambedkar was an Indian polymath, politician, and scholar of Buddhism, and Member of the Constituent Assembly of India. He was born in a Dalit (untouchable) family during the colonial era of India, studied abroad, became a Dali leader, and announced in 1935 his intent to convert from Hinduism to a different religion, an endeavor which took him to study all the major religions of the world in depth, namely Hinduism, Buddhis, Sikhism, Christianity, and Islam for nearly 21 years. Ambedkar studied the sacred texts of Buddhism and found several of its core beliefs and doctrines, such as Four Noble Truth and non-self (anātman), as flawed and pessimistic, then re-interpreted these teachings into what he called "New Vehicle" Buddhism, or Navayāna. Ambedkar held a press conference on October,13, 1956, announcing his rejection of Theravada and Mahayana branches of Buddhism, as well as of Hinduism altogether. He left Hinduism and adopted Navayāna Buddhism about six weeks before his death. Its adherents see Navayāna Buddhism not as a sect with radically different ideas, but rather as a new social movement founded on the principles of Buddhism.

In the Dalit Buddhist Movement, Navayāna is considered an independent new branch of Buddhism native to India, distinct from the traditionally recognized branches of Theravada, Mahayana, and Vajrayāna, considered to be foundational in the Buddhist tradition. It radically re-interprets what Buddhism is, revising parts of the original teachings of the Buddha to be more concerned with class struggle, social equality, and right to education, taking into account modern problems.

Japan-born Indian Buddhist Monk Shūrei Sasai

Shūrei Sasai came to India in 1966, and became in Indian Buddhist monk. He met Wamanrao Godbole, who had organized the conversion ceremony of B. R. Ambedkar in 1956. Sasai is one of the main leaders of the campaign to free the Mahabodhi Temple at Bodhi Gaya from Hindu control. Sasai represented the Buddhists as a member of the National Commission for Minorities from 2002-2006, and he is currently the president of the Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar Memorial committee Deekshabhoomi.

Sasai has hundreds of thousands of lay followers and hundreds of ordained monk and novice disciples. His most active disciples are Bhante Bodhi Dhamma (Dhammaji), Prajnasheela Bhikkhu, Ken Bodhi, and Bhikkhu Abhaya Putra. The first and last were trained as Theravada monk and the others as Mahayana monks.

Ryūkō’s Reason of Renunciation

Yūshi Ono suddenly resigned the CEO position and received the ordination by Shūrei Sasai in India, and became the monk Ryūkō. He says, “I was tired of constantly chasing revenue and profit in business by convincing customers. Money is just a number, but has the dangerous magical power to drive people greedy and crazy. I started thinking to see if my profession was helping other people, ultimately toward providing solutions to emancipate sufferings. After I abandoned everything that I had, I feel truly free and grateful to what I have. I realized that I should be satisfied with what I have, instead of craving for what I wish to have because we all were born as naked, and die as well.”

The stories of Siddhartha and Ryūkō’s sound quite similar, even though the times are different. My research on the Neo-Buddhist Navayāna (New Vehicle) Movement and the monk Ryūkō will continue.

Namo Amida Butsu