Refocusing Body, Mind and Community Interconnections

Abstract

This paper explores responses to COVID-19 by the Buddhist organisation Soka Gakkai in Japan. Sōka means ‘value-creation’, but what kind of ‘value’ was created amidst a global pandemic? So-called ‘new religions’ in the context of Japan are typically presumed to embody a ‘flight from the human world’ into the exotic and remote. SG’s response, however, encouraged people to stay very much within a ‘human-bound world’. How did SG differ compared to other popular responses in Japan that drew on yōkai (or ‘spirits’) for comfort in defeating the soon objectified virus ‘monster’? SG may be well-built for responding to disaster in its extensive grassroots networks and its daily newspaper to provide information. Responding with a renewed focus on study, chanting and outreach also highlights, however, how the meaning of ‘hope’ and ‘well-being’ were generated by internal change while structurally working to realise the SDG s as part of more long-term solutions.