Japan’s Newest Technology Innovation: Priest Delivery | Hacker News Reader

Japan’s Newest Technology Innovation: Priest Delivery

nytimes.com

61 pointsdaegloe31 comments

Is this the first step towards the Electric Monk then?

"Electric Monks believed things for you, thus saving you what was becoming an increasingly onerous task, that of believing all the things the world expected you to believe. " -Douglas Adams

I've personally been through several Buddhist funerals for my grandparents, and can attest to this murky and opaque "business" practice of traditional Buddhist temples. There are many additional "upkeep fees" that you're expected to donate to your family temple for years (at least 7 years after death iirc). As a westerner, I was quite befuddled.

But it's really a SaaS model of you think about it.

I really welcome the transparency this service will bring. Also, many people move to Tokyo from other regions and really don't have the "family temple" to turn to.

> But it's really a SaaS model of you think about it.

Spirituality as a service?

Soul.

> you're expected to donate to your family temple for years

Well, it's a matter of semantics. In several Western countries, including Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, Norway, Sweden such 'donations' are extracted by force from the people by the tax man, and then the state funds the church to varying degrees. Same result, different force.

The Buddhist temples ought to be embracing this. Many of them are running out of money.

Frankly, Buddhism in Japan was run like a business since the 1600s, when the government made every family register with a temple (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danka_system). This led to the development of "funerary Buddhism," in which Buddhist temples made most of their money providing funeral services and benefitted from legally mandated customer loyalty. The temples survived primarily on funeral income for a long time, and now that it's no longer legally required to register with a temple, the temples are having a pretty hard time. Most of them subsist mainly on tourism money and donations now.

They're running out of business? Their services are so expensive that I thought most of them are driving BMWs.

it seems like the only recurring revenue they might receive comes from publishing books

If you have a family cemetery spot at the temple, you pay a yearly fee for it.

I understand the traditionalists hesitation (and fear). But it seems to me this is actually a good thing from the Buddhist perspective; it's increasing contact in an age of more secularism.

Customers like Mr. Kai in the article seem just as likely to simply not use a priest at all, rather than figure out how to negotiate with the local temple that they have no roots in, if the "on-demand" service was not available.

On the other hand Mr. Kai gave some portly dude 50 bucks to dance around his living room. Without community and roots, religion is a scam.

Religion is a scam in either case, so why not streamline it?

Sure, most of humanity participates in a religion of some kind, but they're all just fools getting taken in a con. I get that there are some well established problems that come up in conjunction with religion, but perhaps there's a little bit more to it than that, no?

Big (if not major) part of humanity are used to some kind of drugs too (alcohol, tobacco, sugar, coffee etc.), but we don't say there's something more to it. Religion is a drug for one's mind to make feel better and ease existential pain/uncertainty.

>Religion is a drug for one's mind to make feel better and ease existential pain/uncertainty.

Well if that's the case then Buddhism is pretty bad at it. It teaches that you have no self even when you are alive, much less after death.

It also does not promise reincarnation either, but rebirth, which is kind of an impersonal process.

It teaches you to embrace the fact that you are nothing, and to make peace with the impersonal universe. That's one way to ease existential pain.

Buddhism is remarkably compatible with the modern scientific view that the universe has neither purpose nor personality. Once you throw away the anthropocentric Judeo-Christian mindset, you are left with no external, authoritative source of purpose. Many people struggle to find an alternate source of purpose, either within themselves or in something else. This can be very stressful. Buddhism relieves you by teaching you that you don't need to try so hard, you don't even need to "be yourself". It's a strangely attractive proposition.

Maybe let's not talk about Buddhism like we all know what it's really like as a religion. It IS a religion and there is much more to it than the average person seems to think.

Granted, like any belief system people are free to pick and choose if they want, but we don't base our judgement of a belief system's "religiousness" on people who have chosen the very least amount.

> Maybe let's not talk about Buddhism like we all know what it's really like as a religion.[1]

Oh really, and why not?

Maybe some of us do know what it's like...

One could argue that "the very least amount" correlates roughly with Theravada buddhism which bases its practices on a set of very early talks given by the buddha that are believed to be the core teachings.

There are a _lot_ of theravada buddhists in the world, so you could say that many have chosen "the least amount".

Why do you come to HN if not to discuss things? Should we exchange credentials before being allowed to discuss things?

[1] http://i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/000/582/861/e26...

I'd say that Buddhism is more like philosophy than a "real" religion. Though I agree that there's no clear definition of what "religion", especially now, where every nutjob can create his own "religion".

> Religion is a drug for one's mind to make feel better and ease existential pain/uncertainty.

This is quite a position to put forward without providing some supporting evidence...

My take on what people get out of religion is totally different. To me, two things stick out:

1) Religion is a framework for approaching life. In the same way that a Rails developer relies on the collective wisdom encompassed by their framework to answer the question, "What is the best way to accommplish this in a web app?", a religious person leans on their framework to answer the question, "What should I do in this life circumstance?"

2) Religion is glue that binds people together into cohesive communities. And, frankly, I see the utter lack of connectedness in secular life and it seems like religious people are on to something here.

tangentially related, I saw the 2008 Japanese movie "Departures" recently and it was quite fascinating to see the funeral rites and general attitudes towards it, very interesting movie if you happen to catch it

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1069238/

Direct link to the detail page on Amazon (taken from the article): https://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/B018HVTR2U

So it's like... Bonze Uber? 1-800-DIAL-A-BONZE... if it were shipboard it would be... umibozu, no wait, that's a very different entity entirely.

Jokes aside though, this makes a lot of sense. I would guess that in a busy urban life, religion probably gets the "no time today" treatment. The ability to get a house call, on that basis alone, seems like a smart model to follow. When you add in the problem of Japan's elderly and young shut-in population, maybe it even makes more sense.

It's interesting that the middleman taking 30 percent is a constant across countries and products.

I think there was an actual church inside the Second Life MMO.

Quite likely. I knew of a shamanism-based group that had conversational and spiritual meetings within second life.

Many 'occult' groups met in Second Life, some charging money for attendance.

Classic Japanese weird.

'Japanese weird' is nothing but confirmation bias. Because you only hear about the outliers, stories strange enough to make their way all through the ocean. There are myriads of ultra-bizarre things happening around you, but most likely you view them as isolated events and don't have a label for them. Whereas you do have one label for Japan, and whenever you encounter something unusual you confirm this bias - while ignoring other things. Next time ask yourself questions such as: is this commonplace in that country? is this considered unusual by the locals as well? is this considered normal in cultures other than mine?

Most likely the journalist will not answer these for you - bad journalists often rely on stereotypes and biases to appeal to your feelings of shock.

Hardly that; Roman Catholic priests make house calls, too, and hospital calls, when it's needed. This just streamlines the process.

In India you can get the whole thing done online: http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-31002439

(there was a better story but I can't remember the search keywords for it…)

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