Determined American Becomes Shingon Buddhist Nun

Buddhist nuns living on a sacred Japanese mountain eyed the American cautiously when she became the first foreigner to submit to the harsh training their sect requires.

A year later, Susan Tanaka emerged from Mt. Koya with shaved head and wearing black robes, a full member of the Shingon sect of Japanese Buddhism.

Mt. Koya, near Osaka in central Japan, has long been the home of Shingon, a sect which has never achieved the international fame and following of its cousin, Zen Buddhism.

“Perhaps Shingon is the least modern of Buddhist sects in Japan, which is the reason why other foreigners haven’t studied it before,” Tanaka said.

“I’m sure they would have gossiped a lot if a foreigner had dropped out. It’s good to assure the Japanese that foreigners can endure too,” said 31-year-old Tanaka, who was born Susan Noble in Portland, Ore.

Five of the 16 people who entered the yearlong course ending in March dropped out, unable to stand the training. Others have gone crazy trying to keep up, she said.

Tanaka and her classmates, varying in age from high school graduates to a 50-year-old woman, were limited to the nuns’ training quarters for all but four hours of each week.

“We could hear the outside world, but we were forbidden to go into any restaurant or do anything entertaining, and people watch you very carefully,” she said.

Tanaka became interested in the Japanese culture in college and spent her senior year studying in Japan, visiting Buddhist temples every Sunday.

She returned to the United States determined to pursue her religious interest and find a teacher. She found Jomyo Tanaka, the only Shingon priest in the United States, and married him two years later.

“I was fascinated. Never before had a Japanese teacher said it was possible for a foreigner to learn Shingon,” she said.

But she found the only way to be initiated into the full mysteries of the sect was to enroll in the school at Mt. Koya.

More than half her course was spent studying the Chinese classics, Sanskrit scriptures, flower arrangement, tea ceremony and calligraphy. But she found the last 100 days, dedicated solely to religious ritual, the most difficult.

The women lined up on wooden floors clasping wooden sticks, then kneeling, prostrating themselves and standing again 500 times a day.

They chanted their prayers in low-toned unison 300 times a day and also had to learn almost 600 different mudras , or intricate hand gestures.

“It was basically 100 days of four or five hours of sleep,” she said.

The day for the trainee nuns began at 2 a.m. with bean curd, vegetables and thin soup--one of only two meals a day.

“The most difficult thing for me was sitting in the Japanese style,” Tanaka said.

The novices sat with their legs folded under them for up to 10 hours a day. Ankle muscles weakened, making walking difficult. Tanaka once sprained her ankle but was carried to classes.

“If you can’t sit, you’re out,” she said.