Religion: Bone of Buddha

In a crystal globe the size of a golf ball in a small gold pagoda in a large black onyx pagoda on a table in the second-floor study in a house in San Francisco last week rested a tiny object the size of a rice grain. Bishop Kenju Masuyama and two priests, their hands clasped, meditated before it, chanting softly in Japanese. The tiny pellet, they believed, was an authentic bit from the bones of Buddha,* only one in the U. S. Bishop Masuyama, head of the Buddhist Church in North America (12,000 members), got it in Siam last June from Prince Yinavara Siravadhana who took it from a Bangkok temple.

Most Buddha relics are in Siam and in Japan’s great shrine at Mt. Hiei. Buddhists attach no miracle-working powers to them. When Bishop Masuyama arrived in San Francisco on the Taiyo Maru, he and the precious bonelet were escorted by numerous Buddhists to their drab, unimposing Temple at Pine and Octavia Streets. All the Buddhists meditated quietly. Then the Bishop took Buddha’s bone to his nearby home where, because of its great value, he planned to keep it until a suitable new temple might be built.

*Son of a petty North Indian rajah, clan-named Gautama, Buddha was born near the middle of the Sixth Century B. C., left home at 29, sat six years under a Bo tree, died at 80.