Week 11: Phenomenology

    It is impossible to separate a person from their experiences. There is a reason why Buddhist hymns in Japanese shouldn't be translated by white Christians. Their experiences color the wording used into something that can't have the same meaning. It's a very western and exclusion based way of thinking. 

    As a kid, I remember singing those hymns in the children's services and not really giving a second thought about the strange wording. "Glory to Lord Buddha, Glory to his name." This is the exact wording of the hymn, 'In Lumbini's Garden,' used by Jodo-Shinshu Buddhists across the nation. In high school, I found the wording of this song to be really uncomfortable because I wasn't Christian, yet I was being forced to conform to their words, their idea of reverence. "Glory to" or "Praise to" are Abrahamic religion based wordings. 

Image from 'Home of the Brave', Allen Say, Print, 2002 CE.


    Much like translations, our interpretations of art are affected by our experiences. As a Japanese American, I was taught about the Internment Camps. It's a part of our culture, an event that happened to us as a group. I'm not sure how many outside of that group can relate entirely to what happened to many of the elders in my community. It colors my views on being an American, about loyalty and civil obedience, about incarceration and punishment. Allen Say's 'Home of the Brave' will always be a story that I think about because it's something that I grew up with. The story is really a dream sequence of a man trying to reconcile trauma caused by the internment. 

    Say understood that his art had a specific audience. Hopefully, he thought he could reach people beyond that audience. Make them feel that disjointed, confused fog that many Japanese Americans felt after being released. That final, freeing feeling of coming to terms with something horrible that happened to them and moving on.

    My interpretation is changed by my experiences, my family's experiences, my friends' experiences.

    I do not exist in a vacuum. I came from my parents in an unbroken chain going back to my ancestors.  

    Buddhism teaches its followers that every life in the reincarnation cycle is unique, unrepeatable, to be treasured for its uniqueness. Our interactions with our environment, people, and art in this life will be unique, and thus, profound. The art I create and the art I see will be meaningful because of my experiences, not despite them 

Image and Website Credit
https://www.amherst.edu/system/files/styles/large/adaptive-image/private/media/0780/HomeOfTheBrave5.jpg?itok=j6Bj8T6N&__=1223471969

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