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English translation by Thomas Sullivan, 2023.
(The Great Buddha of Kamakura (鎌倉大仏), a statue of Amida Buddha. Amida Buddha presides over a Pure Land, mentioned in the following essay, where one can be reborn and become guaranteed to achieve enlightenment.)
The following is a translation from the Esperanto of an essay by the Chief Director of the Japanese Buddhist Esperantist Ligo (JBLE), Yamaguti Sin’iti. Yamaguti has graciously allowed me to publish this translation, and it will also be included in the upcoming edition of the JBLE’s Bulletin.
This essay was originally published as Esperanto kaj Budhismo in issue 382 of the Bulteno de Japana Budhana Ligo Esperantista , which is available online for those who read Esperanto. Yamaguti also wrote a simplified version of the essay for uea.facila, a blog by the Universal Esperanto Association to publish accessible and easy Esperanto for learners (and intermediate students like myself!). I will let the essay speak for itself, I have generally tried to translate literally, which hopefully does not take away from Yamaguti’s accessible and straightforward style. Errors in translation are my own.
When one regards language only as a tool of communication, then language is external form. Then, the message itself is more important than the external form. The message does not vary, regardless of its linguistic form, whether it is expressed in Esperanto, whether in English, whether in Latin, and so on. For those Buddhists who desire to spread Buddhism in the world, the natural attitude is to use English as a method, because English is the most widespread language and the most effective method. Indeed, on the occasion that Buddhists from different countries gather, they speak mostly in English.
Why do members of the Buddhist Esperantist League however use Esperanto to spread Buddhism? Why is a Buddhist Esperanto movement necessary, despite the fact that there is no French-language Buddhist movement, nor a Chinese-language Buddhist movement? There is no country in the world where one speaks mainly Esperanto, right? Is a Buddhist Esperanto movement not a disastrous and vain endeavour? If one understands language as only a tool of communication, these questions are completely correct.
But language is not only the method or tool by which one hands down information and exchanges ideas. It is used in relation to society and culture. It has a culture and it is itself a culture. Likewise, Esperanto has a culture. The culture is found possessed in common by the Esperanto community. This culture includes the way of thinking, or value-orientation, of Esperantists. It can be summarised in three points:
In this way the value-orientation of the Esperanto community is similar to that of the Buddhist community. Buddhism is, above all, a world religion: its teaching is aimed at all people and not at specific nations. Further, it emphasises tolerance, is critical of violent resistance, and condemns “just” or “holy” war. For Buddhists, what is important is wisdom and compassion. Nation, state, class, political opinions, and such, are not important, and are even obstacles if we attach to them. Differences between nations are not important, not worth being attached to. According to the Buddhist perspective, the real world is full of negative emotions [Sanskrit: kleśa] and suffering. In contrast, the world of nirvana (or the Pure Land) presents the perspective [with which] to relativise and criticise the real world, putting great importance on limitless compassion to all living beings and wisdom free of all dogmas. Furthermore, the interest of Buddhists is not only directed towards their interior, but towards the exterior, namely towards society, because compassion demands it.
The Buddhist Esperanto movement aims not just to use the Esperanto language to communicate between Buddhists of different nations, to increase the number of Buddhists in the Esperanto community, or to increase the number of Esperantists in the circle of Buddhists, but to establish the society in which all living beings equally enjoy their lives gifted from all natural conditions - not from God nor from Buddha. The most fundamental doctrine of Buddhism is called “the law of conditional origination” [laŭkondiĉa estiĝo]. This means that all things only exist conditionally on other things, and that nothing exists by itself independently of other things. This law can be also called “dependent origination”. This is why Buddhists emphasise the friendly and peaceful co-existence of all living beings away from different nations, ethnicities, countries, languages, ideologies, and even religions. This idea, born over 2,500 years ago in ancient India and widespread throughout Asia, is in harmony with that of many Esperantists.
