Testimonial letter from Koku Nishimura
This letter is one of a remarkable series of over 2650 letters amassed in 1983 to support Osho's attempt to get permanent resident status in the US at the time of the Oregon ranch. The image is reproduced here with the kind permission of The Oregon Historical Society. Information about their collection of these letters and other supporting material -- the "Jeffrey Noles Rajneesh Collection", named for Osho's immigration lawyer Jeffrey Noles, who compiled them in 1983 and donated them to the OHS -- can be found at this page. The wiki is grateful to the OHS for making access available for these documents. For more information and links to all the letters, see Testimonial letters.
This letter is from Koku Nishimura. It is "Exhibit A-54" in the Noles collection.
The text version below has been created by optical character recognition (OCR), from the images supplied by OHS. It has not been checked for errors but this process usually results in over 99% correct transcription. Most apparent "errors" are correct transcriptions of typos already in the original. The image on the right in the text box will link to a pdf file of the original letter when the pdf is created. It has 2 pages.
 Mr Koku Nishimura To Whom it May Concern, I graduated from the department of sculpture at Tokyo National University fo Fine Arts and Music. After that, I felt it was necessary for me to delve into my inner space in order to create a great work of Art. Since that time I have been playing Kyotaku ( a long Japanese Shakuhachi recorder ) and now I have succeeded to the head of the family of Tani School, Fuke Sect of Zen. Kyotaku is a totally different type of musical instrument from the former Shakuhachi, The way of the Kyotaku is to become spiritually awakened through the union of playing the Kyotaku and Zen meditation, I heard of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh for the first through my disciple. At that time He was still in Poona, India. I recieved a letter from Him about the sound of Kyotaku. In the letter it seemed to me that He had expressed His impression of Kyotaku as played by my disciple. Many sannyasins, disciples of His, have knocked on my door, and they are tredding the path of Zen through Kyotaku playing. The sound of Kyotaku is Zen and I think it is helpful for meditation. I have been teaching and leading them enthusiastically. Since Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, and I, appear to be searching for Zen, I am watching Him with a lot of Love, I sincerely pray for the health and happiness of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. With folded hands |
(Please note: We assume that the above letter is still copyrighted, but we regard its historical interest to constitute a Fair Use exception for publication in this wiki.)
