Your hotel room drawer may have a Buddha book

By Mary Kaye Ritz
Advertiser Religion and Ethics Writer

The Rev. Yoshiaki Fujitani is making books on Buddhist teachings available to guests of the New Otani Kaimana Beach Hotel. Such works are found in more than 100 hotels in Hawai'i. Richard Ambo • The Honolulu Advertiser

Slowly but surely, in Hawai'i and around the globe, another book is finding its way into hotel room drawers — this one exulting Buddha.

"The Teaching of Buddha," a compilation of ideas from different books of Buddhism, now can be found in more than 100 Hawai'i hotels, including the Sheratons, Astons and Outriggers on nearly every major island.

Although no single sacred text captures all Buddhist beliefs — there are an estimated 10,000 separate works used across the spectrum of Buddhist sects — this book borrows a bit from several sources.

"Unlike the Christian Bible, to carry around a Buddhist bible would take a wheelbarrow!" joked the Rev. Yoshiaki Fujitani.

So there's a mix of devotional teachings of the hongwanji, the mysticism of the Tibetan, the meditativeness of Zen, and the rules of conduct of some southern sects, for example.

Fujitani, the retired bishop of Honpa Hongwanji Mission, tapped retired businessman Ralph Honda to start the project here in 1977. When Honda turned 91 three years ago, he decided it was time to take a break and turned the work over to Fujitani, who by then had retired himself.

At 79, "I'm a very young man compared to Mr. Honda," said Fujitani, who now has made the Bukkyo Dendo Kyokai Sudatta Hawaii, or the Society for Promotion of Buddhism, his mission.

Honda's years were successful — he placed books in more than 90 hotels in the years he was at the helm, Fujitani noted. Under Fujitani's stewardship, books have been placed in three more sites, including the New Otani Kaimana Beach Hotel.

Tom Herman Jr., general manager of the Doubletree Alana Waikiki Hotel, said that just about as many island visitors will be interested in "The Teaching of Buddha" as in the ministry of the Gideons. (Gideons aim to put Bibles and New Testaments in "human traffic lanes and streams of everyday life," according to gideons.org, its Web site, but are best known for their hotel-room Bibles.)

And it's not just in Hawai'i. The Bukkyo Dendo Kyokai movement covers 53 countries, from Europe to Canada to South America to Africa. Unsurprisingly, Japan has had the greatest involvement, with 1,083,646 books for 366,698 rooms in 3,094 hotels.

Outside Japan, 4,294 hotels (that's 476,265 rooms) are on board. It takes 1,236,720 books to keep those rooms stocked, as some are taken home, and others are available for purchase.

"The basic idea came from Rev. Dr. Yehan Numata, an industrialist who made a lot of money," said Fujitani. "His stated purpose is to share with anyone who is interested the teachings of the Buddha, for the purpose of world peace."

In 1965, Numata created the Bukkyo Dendo Kyokai foundation with his fortune, purchasing the first books.

"(At first) our job simply was to get books into hotels," Fujitani said, but because of the interest of Buddhism in Hawai'i, which ranks only behind Catholicism as the most popular religion here, Bukkyo Dendo Kyokai made an interesting exception.

In 1990, some Shingon temple property in McCully was purchased and donated to the foundation, which in turn built a 15-unit apartment complex on the land. Rental income from the building is used to supply the books here.

"This is kind of a unique situation, he said. "One drawback, you might say, is because of the limited source of income, we can't expand beyond this."

Books are an unintrusive way of promoting Buddhism, he added.

"It's sort of an Asian trait that we have. We're not pushy, I guess," said Fujitani. "But we want to make sure it's there. And millions of people, of course, have found comfort in Buddhism. There must be some reason for its existence."