Orange County Buddhist Church
Orange County Buddhist Church
Finding The One Thing That Fulfills Your Life
Recently I have had the most meaningful conversations with one of our members who is battling cancer. His name is Kent Hirohama, and he has been a member for nearly twenty years, or the years that I have been here at OCBC. Kent’s background is different from most members. His family was not originally members here, and he came to OCBC through his interest and involvement in Taiko.
About twenty years ago Kent became friends with members of our Taiko group, joined, and has been deeply involved since then. He started out like anyone else, learning the pieces as a beginner, then learning them better and better, performing at Hanamatsuri and Obon, and performing with the Taiko group and other community events.
In time Kent found himself to be one of the senior members of the group, not in age, but in years of experience. Because our Taiko group has no professional instructor, the group essentially teaches other new members how to play. Every September, our Taiko group starts a new class of beginners, and for many years now, Kent has been one of the instructors for the beginning group. He is not paid to be the instructor, nor are any of the senior members. They simply teach the new people, just as they were taught years prior to those who were senior to them.
As an instructor for the beginners, Kent has taught members of my own family, namely, my wife Gail, and daughter Keiko, when they started as beginners. My son Riki didn’t learn from Kent as a beginner, but he has played with Kent in the group for years.
As I visited with Kent in his hospital room, he shared with me many wonderful things, but one thing has really stuck out in my mind. Kent expressed that as he looked back on his life of a short 40 years, that he realizes that the one thing he has done in life that has given him the greatest fulfillment, has been to teach Taiko to the beginners.
Last summer, Kent was healthy and in remission from his first outbreak of cancer. Some of the younger members of the Taiko group who had been taught by Kent, created a new piece in his honor, and they performed it at the Obon with Kent in the front row watching. It was a Taiko skit/performance, in which the young people showed in a skit, how they went from uncoordinated beginners to accomplished Taiko players, all from Kent’s wonderful patience and instruction as a teacher.
Kent shared with me that that was one of the moments of his life, in which he felt his entire life had been fulfilled, as if he had discovered the reason he had been born into this world. That skit and performance for Kent was so meaningful and moving for him, and I felt so gratified that our young Taiko players thought of it themselves to do.
Can we all say that we have found the one thing that has fulfilled our life? Can we say that we have found the one thing that we were born into this world to do? How wonderful to be able to make that kind of statement.
The other day I took members of our Taiko group to see Kent in the hospital. He was now in the Intensive Care Unit as his conditioned had worsened since my earlier visit. I was able to bring into the ICU, some of the young people in our Taiko group whom he had taught. It was a most emotional experience, and a life experience that I know the young people will never forget.
I couldn’t believe how Kent was able to talk to them. He took their hands in his, and as tears streamed down their faces, he held their hands close to his heart, smiled and said, “I’ll be right here.”
When I was a student at the Institute of Buddhist Studies, our teacher and director was Rev. Haruyoshi Kusada, an amazing person of the Nembutsu. When Rev. Kusada retired, we had a little retirement party for him, just with a small group of his former students. At the end of the party, Sensei got up to say a few words. He gave the most eloquent thank you speech I have ever heard in my entire life.
Rev. Kusada said to all of us, “I want to thank all of you for making my work possible, for being the reason why my life has been fulfilled.” Here we were trying to thank Sensei for all that he had done for us and taught us, but instead he thanked us, for making his work as a teacher possible. He thanked us, for giving him his life’s work.
The late Rev. Gyomay Kubose, the author of Everyday Suchness, studied under Rev. Haya Akegarasu, a wonderful minister and teacher in Japan. In his final days of his life, Rev. Akegarasu said to Rev. Kubose at his bedside, “I feel as if I have been born into this world to meet you.” In other words, the student fulfills the life of the teacher.
What is there that we have been born into this world to do? If we can find that one thing that fulfills our life, then no matter what the length of our life will be, we will know fulfillment, gratification, and meaning in our life. We will be able to die without any regrets, because we have touched on the one thing that fulfills our life.
Namuamidabutsu,
Rev. Marvin Harada
