Kyoto monk on a mission opens his doors to diversity

[yuiyoshida]

Access all areas: “People think I’m focused on LGBT issues, but I’m just treating them as people who want to get married,” says Takafumi Kawakami, the deputy abbot at Shunko-in. “I just want to celebrate them.” | J.J. O’DONOGHUE


Takafumi Kawakami is a monk on a mission, or more like several missions. While the 37-year-old deputy abbot at Shunko-in, a historic Zen Buddhist temple in the northwest of Kyoto, certainly looks monkish with his shaved head and cherub-like youthfulness, he thinks and talks like an entrepreneur.

In his meditation classes, which he holds almost daily, he is as likely to expound on the business tactics of Silicon Valley executives and articles from the Harvard Business Review as he is about oneness, focus and breathing. He dresses in traditional garb but sees little point in holding on to tradition for the sake of it.

“Update” is a word Kawakami uses often. For example, mindfulness is an update of the Zen meditation classes he has been teaching for nearly a decade. Updating is also a mind-set for Kawakami. Since 2007 he has set about upgrading the 500-year-old sub-temple. The physical structures have hardly changed, but he’s almost singlehandedly pulled the temple into the 21st century.

One of his most noteworthy updates: Couples of any faith and sexuality are welcome to be married in the serene environment of the temple. Since 2011 he’s officiated at 13 same-sex marriage ceremonies. The majority of these have been for foreign couples, but he’s also married two Japanese couples, which were extra-special occasions, he admits. The marriage ceremonies are held in rooms bordered by ornate gold screens that open out on to the Garden of Boulders, a postcard-perfect garden modeled on the islands of Ise Bay in Mie Prefecture.

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/community/2016/03/16/our-lives/kyoto-monk-mission-opens-doors-diversity/