I think in Shogyoji, this beautiful place, I will begin with a haiku which expresses something of my feelings when, last November, I actually saw in reality for the first time a Zen Garden:

Fall dragons
Breathe flame.
In the garden,
sand seas
island rocks
cloud trees,

peace.

You will see it is not at all like a Japanese Haiku, since English has so few syllables in each word that many more thoughts can be packed, for better or worse, into seventeen syllables.

I come to you not as a representative, no one can represent UCL.

We are all of us, individuals - some better, some worse - some more intelligent, or wiser - some less.

We are all of us united only in the search for a deeper, richer understanding of the world in which we live, of how it came to be as it is, and through that knowledge make it a better, or at least not a worse place, for the millions who live in it as we do now and of those who will live in it when we no longer do.

Whether in individual men and women, in nations or cultures, it is the richness of diversity which alone is the basis of a unity that is worth having - a true harmony, and all of us are united as teachers in trying to pass on the new knowledge that we have gained, and the ways in which the problems that face us might be solved.

UCL is a place for the search for understanding - and a place for understanding how little we understood - of how much there is beyond all understanding or knowledge or the depth of the mystery in simple things.

Consider
one leaf,
falling.

It will tell you
all
that you need
to know.

Nevertheless, UCL is indeed a place for thinking and learning and teaching, and of learning from those who are being taught and who, if we teach them well, will be quick to leave us behind.

By the same token, it has been from its foundation a place without religion, but open to all religions, to all races, to all social classes. It is, therefore, no coincidence that the students from the Chōshū and the Satsuma clans who set out to learn from the west came to UCL. It was the only University institution in England in which free thought and free discussion in the face of the established, entrenched ideas of the times, were possible.

They came to what was and I believe still is in a deep sense a beautiful place, because where there is understanding and argument - and willingness to disagree - and to understand disagreement - to be in harmonious conflict - there is indeed beauty.

When I come to you here In this Temple, I am, as you know, not a Buddhist, but I would like to tell you a Haiku and a short poem which have the same theme and perhaps express what I feel:-

You of pure
faith,

I
who am certain
of nothing

travel
the one
road.

And the second poem runs like this :-

There is
no yin
and no yang,

no middle
road.

All roads
are the one
road

leading back
to the same
beginning.

I think indeed that those of you who can come to UCL in September to see the unveiling of the monument to the Japanese pioneers who came to UCL in 1863 and 1865, in particular the musicians and dancers, who are doing us the signal honour of coming to perform at the ceremony and in a special performance after it, will feel that for all our differences of culture or of faith we are indeed on the one road.

I hope you will all feel also that you have come not merely to celebrate the past, but to lay a new and stronger foundation for the future.

Indeed, the Haiku inscribed on the monument expresses our sense of what was achieved a hundred and thirty years ago. It expresses our hopes for today.

It expresses our hopes for the coming decades and for the distant, unknowable future that lies still further ahead:

Harubaru to
kokoro tsudoite
hana sakaru

When distant minds
come together
cherries blossom.

I promise that I will certainly do all I can to make this unique event, with your unique contribution, a truly memorable occasion.

There will be many distinguished men and women, coming to England from Japan, including descendants of the men of the Chōshū and Satsuma clans who came in 1863 and 1865. There will be leaders of the Japanese community in London; there will be television and press and all that goes with It. But in the end It is not the outward show, but the inner meaning, that matters; what each individual brings to it and takes away with himself or herself.

We shall all of us, you and I alike, bring different things and take away different things. We will all be striving for success in the future, but all, I hope, able to look upon success or failure with an equal eye - unshaken by either.

And so in the face of my ignorance, and with only an inkling of your faith and your beliefs and of what the nenbutsu means to each of you, I will end by risking another abysmal failure to follow the many that have gone before, and the many that are certainly still to come, by making yet one more comment on things of which I so patently have no right to speak In this place of all places.

Beyond

summer
and winter

sunrise
and sunset

a pure
land

- within.