Testimonial letter from Shinkai Tanaka
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 Shinkai Tanaka. It is "Exhibit A-92" 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 links to a pdf file of the original letter, it has one page.
 Mr Shinkai Tanaka July 12th, 1983. To Whom it May Concern, I am the master of a Zen Temple. The temples name is Saikohzenji and it exists in Kameoka of Kyoto Prefecture in Japan. I have been searching for what the truth of the universe is, mostly through Zen meditation for twenty years, since I entered the priesthood. I went to India on a pilgrimage that followed the footprints of Buddha in 1979. At the end of this journey I had the opportunity to visit His ashram which was in Poona, India at that time. I found that the ashram was healthy, clean, bright and alive. I wanted to participate there even though I had been doing Zen meditation for sixteen years. So, I took part in various meditation sessions and therapy groups for three months. For many years I had between suffering from a want of the love between a man and woman. Here I had the chance to know a certain woman and through her I became aware that I had been loving my shadow. Eventually through Him I started to love myself. And the result was that my fantasies towards women dropped and I felt relaxed. This can only be taken as prove that the whole Shree Rajneesh Ashram was a place of meditation. Meditation of love was taking place in the ashram. That is how I could resolve my long time suffering. I thank Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh for making it possible for me to accept a traditional Zen life totally. [notary statement] |
(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.)
