Sangha Without Borders
Please find attached a flyer of our new pilot program we will begin for the first 6 months instead of our monthly Health & Wellness. Rev. Bob will be referring to a reflection or two and then will open it up for discussion. He will share what was happening during the time the reflection was written and to also add the Buddhist aspect to the reflection.
We hope you will enjoy this new format. We hope this will encourage those new to Buddhism as well as those of us who have been on the Dharma path for a long time.
Please join us. Please RSVP to betsuinprograms@buddhistchur.ch.org or to me, poshita@comcast.net
Thanks,
Patti

BOTH EYES OPEN
Dear Members and Friends of the Buddhist Church of Stockton,
We would like to share the following information with you regarding an opportunity to attend a chamber opera on the Japanese American WWII incarceration entitled, “Both Eyes Open” by composer Max Giteck Duykers and Philip Kan Gotanda,
librettist/playwright. The opera features the farmland of Stockton, California as one of the opera’s settings.
When: February 15, 2025, at 8:00 PM & February 16, 2025, at 2:00 PM
Where: Zellerbach Playhouse – 2413 Bancroft Way, Berkeley, CA 94704
Tickets: Students: $15.00 each and Full Price: $30.00 each
Please see the synopsis and poster attached for more information. A clickable link to purchase tickets can be found in the attached poster or for your convenience, you may also purchase tickets here:
https://secure-tickets.berkeley.edu/26079/26080
With Palms Together,
Buddhist Church of Stockton

Opera Synopsis
Both Eyes Open tells a haunting love story and tale of perseverance about a Japanese American farmer, Jinzo Matsumoto, and his wife, Catherine, who are incarcerated in an American concentration
camp during World War II. Before leaving their farm, they bury a Daruma Doll on their land. According to tradition, these papier-mâché idols are given when embarking on a challenging endeavor or making of a promise. One eye is painted on the doll to symbolize the commitment, and if success comes, the doll receives its second eye and is burned ceremonially to release its spirit.
At the concentration camp in Rohwer, Arkansas, Catherine dies in childbirth due to inadequate medical facilities. Jinzo begins to question his belief in America, and when forced to sign a questionnaire declaring his loyalty to this country, he signs no-no, refusing to serve in the U.S. armed forces. Because of his decision, Jinzo is labeled a No-No Boy and is transferred to Tule Lake, a high security prison camp for those deemed potential enemies of the state.
After the war, a new Executive Order is issued and Jinzo is free to return to his former life; he goes home to Stockton, California to see his old farm. He discovers the new owner is not a white farmer as he had assumed, but a Japanese American woman, whose husband had been killed fighting for the U.S. with the all-Japanese American 100th Battalion in Bruyères, France. She angrily berates Jinzo for being a No-No Boy – a traitor – and refusing to fight while her own husband fought and died for Jinzo’s right to live free.
Jinzo is broken. He has lost everything. He finds himself at the railroad tracks where he decides to end his life. Jinzo lies down on the tracks, when the Daruma Doll and the ghost of Catherine appear to guide him to a place of higher understanding. As the train strikes Jinzo, the world freezes. Silence, emptiness. Ma.
We leave reality and enter the meta world of Daruma’s Bigger Mind, able to understand the entire trajectory of Jinzo’s life as a living history. We see the tumultuous world of today as a continuum of the “rich, rotting soil of fertile injustice.” The chorus sings, “What will it grow?”
Philip Kan Gotanda, librettist
Max Giteck Duykers, composer