The Soto Zen Buddhist Association (SZBA) invites you to the keynote address at the 2022 online gathering of Soto Zen priests residing around the US and abroad. This year the SZBA welcomes anyone interested to attend the opening address of the two-day conference.
During the centennial year of Soto Zen Buddhism in North America, Rev. Duncan Ryuken Williams will offer a presentation about how Soto Zen Buddhists persevered under martial law on the Hawaiian islands and in internment/concentration camps on the U.S. mainland during WWII. The story of how the Dharma persisted during American Zen history’s midpoint is paired with a reflection about how to repair America’s racial karma of exclusion based on race and religion. Williams will share the back story of the building of a a Buddhist-inspired national names monument called the Ireicho honoring the those who experienced wartime incarceration. He will propose that the practice of recalling names from the past helps us acknowledge the important work of lineage transmission that Japanese/Japanese American Buddhists have contributed to for Zen to celebrate its 100 year history in the U.S.
Registration:
PLEASE READ: This event is for guests of the SZBA and any person who is not a member of the SZBA is welcome to attend. If you are an SZBA member, please go to this page to register for the conference. We offer a sliding scale registration with a suggestion of a $10-25 donation. The SZBA relies on the generous of its members and donors and we thank you for whatever amount you are able to contribute to our work.
If you are not a SZBA member but are interested in membership, please contact Anna (Operations Coordinator) at info@szba.org or go to szba.org/membership for more information. There is still time to join us for the full conference as a member. Keynote Speaker: The SZBA is pleased to welcome Rev. Duncan Ryuken Williams as its 2022 Conference keynote speaker. Rev. Williams is Professor of Religion and East Asian Languages & Cultures at the University of Southern California and Director of the USC Shinso Ito Center for Japanese Religions and Culture. He is the former chair of USC’s School of Religion and previously held the Shinjo Ito Distinguished Chair of Japanese Buddhism at UC Berkeley. He has been ordained since 1993 as a Buddhist priest in the Soto Zen tradition and served as the Buddhist chaplain at Harvard University from 1994-96. He is the author of The Other Side of Zen: A Social History of Soto Zen Buddhism in Tokugawa Japan (Princeton University Press, 2005) and editor of seven volumes including Hapa Japan (Kaya Press, 2017), Issei Buddhism in the Americas (U-Illinois Press, 2010), American Buddhism (Routledge, 1998), and Buddhism and Ecology (Harvard University Press, 1997).
His latest book is American Sutra: A Story of Faith and Freedom in the Second World War (Harvard University Press, 2019) reached #3 on the LA Times Bestseller List for Nonfiction.
