Over the last half-year, Sensei Grant Ikuta of the Toronto Buddhist Church and Dr. Kawamura have travelled several times to the BCA Jodo Shinshu Center to share in the organization and development of the Honganji sponsored Correspondence Course for Shin Buddhist Studies. They were requested to find as many potential candidates as possible to take the first round of course that will constitute our “trail run” sessions.

Members of the Honganji Correspondence Course organizing committee at Jodo Shinshu Center, Berkeley California
Sensei Grant Ikuta, Dr. Leslie Kawamura and Socho Ogui (fifth from left)

The course consists of three parts, Fall Session, Winter Session, and Summer Retreat. Because the first “trail run” session will begin in January 2008, its schedule will not correspond with the regular schedule. The idea behind the trail run is, in part, to have “feed-back” from the students to find out how the course contents could be changed and/or improved. They anticipate the sessions for the “trail run” to be January to April, May through August, and September to December, with the regular sessions beginning concurrently in September of 2008.

As this course is still in its planning and development stages, if you should be interested in taking the course, please contact kawamura@ucalgary.ca for more up-to-date information that will become available after our next meeting of December 11th 2007 at the Jodo Shinshu Center, Berkeley, California.