Help Chase & Trevor Go To Japan
Donation protected
Hey everyone!
We're Chase Breedlove and Trevor Bartlett from PsychoLogic Studios (psychologicstudios.com ), and we're raising funds to go to Japan!
Since April of this year, we've been trying to earn enough cash to pay for traveling expenses so we can go to Japan with our good friend, Taiun Michael Elliston, a local Zen teacher and abbot of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center. Elliston and his associates are going on a cross-country road trip across Japan this coming October, and want to take us with them to make a documentary.
The film is intended as a biographical piece about Elliston's late teacher, Soyu Matsuoka. The trip to Japan will be only the beginning, as we intend to also travel to some key places in the States where Matsuoka founded temples and groups. We will include extensive interviews from those who knew him best, and, along with anecdotes and photos, piece together as complete of a biographical film as can be accomplished. You can learn all about the project in the video and details below.
Through the generous help of the Silent Thunder Order's supporters and friends, we have recieved some donations from other crowdsourcing sites. Subtracting that, $6,000 will be just enough to ensure that both of us can attend the trip as a team and make this film the best that it can be.
This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for us, as this will be Elliston's final trip to Japan. A film of this scale would be an enormous step for us as filmmakers, and would aid Elliston & company in preserving Matsuoka Roshi's legacy for decades to come!
We can't do it without you, so please spread this link like the plague!
Thanks, and be sure to check out our mini-documentary below!
-Chase & Trevor
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
THE UNTOLD STORY OF A ZEN PIONEER...
This October, a small group of American Zen practitioners will be traveling to Japan for a two-week pilgrimage to document lost biographical details of their revered teacher's life.
A true master, Soyu Matsuoka was fearless in his pursuit of propagating the authentic practice of Soto Zen to America (particularly its unique form of meditation, known as Zazen), and building bridges between East and West, especially between the USA and Japan before and after World War II.
Zengaku Soyu Matsuoka, Roshi (1912-1997) was a Japanese Zen Master from the Soto sect. Born into a family of Zen priests in Yamaguchi Prefecture near Hiroshima, Matsuoka was sent to America just before World War II as a missionary from Sojiji Monastery to serve Japanese-American immigrants. During the war he was confined to a Japanese internment camp, where he taught his fellow countrymen Zen meditation. In the years following the peace and reconstruction in Europe and Japan, he began attracting American students, and eventually became a respected teacher of Zen Buddhism in the United States.
Matsuoka Roshi didn't write any books, and he wasn't interested in fame and fortune. Most of his important lectures on Zen for Westerners have been published in two collections: The Kyosaku (the “Zen stick”) and Moku-rai (“silence is thunder”; “stillness in motion”) available online. His aspirations were to spread the message of Zen, and to build a bridge of peace between Japan and the United States, whose relationship had had more than its fair share of turmoil before and after World War II.
In the spirit of what the great Master Bodhidharma did for ancient China, and what Myoan Eisai and Eihei Dogen did for Japan, Matsuoka Roshi's efforts influenced a new, modern tradition of Zen in the U.S. He was quick to say that "Zen is always modern, always up-to-date".
This coming October, Zenkai Taiun Michael Elliston, Roshi (from the video at the top), and a group of his disciples from the Silent Thunder Order, are traveling to Japan to retrace the steps of Matsuoka Roshi, and to, hopefully, fill in some of the blanks of his life that remain untold.
One of Matsuoka Roshi's chief disciples, Taiun Roshi has spent the last half-century carrying on his great teacher's legacy. He has established the Silent Thunder Order and the Atlanta Soto Zen Center in Matsuoka's tradition, and has initiated a large number of disciples and priests of his own, active throughout the United States and Canada, who carry on Matsuoka's mission.
This documentary, "Silent Thunder", is an effort to lift Soyu Matsuoka's name out of relative obscurity for those who may not have heard of him. By documenting his Dharma heir's historic trip to Japan, tracing the roots of this revered teacher, perhaps we can finally reveal to the world just how influential Soyu Matsuoka was on Zen, as one of its pioneers in America, and confirm his importance to the history of Zen in the modern era.This is an ambitious project, and we can't do it alone. We need your help!
We are passionate about this incredible opportunity, and are committed to capturing every detail of Matsuoka's life. To give you some idea our abilities, we've produced the promo video you see up at the top of the page. It should give you a taste of what your donations are going to underwrite, and an idea of the professional quality of the final film.
THE PLAN, AND WHY WE NEED FUNDING:
Traveling from Atlanta, GA to Japan is expensive, and so is making a full-length documentary. But the real cost would be the tragedy of letting this historic trip go undocumented. By donating to this important cause, you're helping to ensure that doesn't happen.
The group and our two-man film crew will be spending two full weeks in Japan. As Taiun Roshi said in the video above, we're planning to travel from Atlanta to Tokyo. From there we will be making our way south to Yamaguchi Prefecture (near Hiroshima), where Matsuoka Roshi was born. After that we will spend the next 14 days covering a lot of territory as we reach our final destination at Sojiji and Eiheiji Monasteries further north.
We thank you for your time and efforts. Your donations are helping us document an important chapter in history, and to give Matsuoka Roshi a complete biography we all can be proud of.
-Chase and Trevor
We're Chase Breedlove and Trevor Bartlett from PsychoLogic Studios (psychologicstudios.com ), and we're raising funds to go to Japan!
Since April of this year, we've been trying to earn enough cash to pay for traveling expenses so we can go to Japan with our good friend, Taiun Michael Elliston, a local Zen teacher and abbot of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center. Elliston and his associates are going on a cross-country road trip across Japan this coming October, and want to take us with them to make a documentary.
The film is intended as a biographical piece about Elliston's late teacher, Soyu Matsuoka. The trip to Japan will be only the beginning, as we intend to also travel to some key places in the States where Matsuoka founded temples and groups. We will include extensive interviews from those who knew him best, and, along with anecdotes and photos, piece together as complete of a biographical film as can be accomplished. You can learn all about the project in the video and details below.
Through the generous help of the Silent Thunder Order's supporters and friends, we have recieved some donations from other crowdsourcing sites. Subtracting that, $6,000 will be just enough to ensure that both of us can attend the trip as a team and make this film the best that it can be.
This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for us, as this will be Elliston's final trip to Japan. A film of this scale would be an enormous step for us as filmmakers, and would aid Elliston & company in preserving Matsuoka Roshi's legacy for decades to come!
We can't do it without you, so please spread this link like the plague!
Thanks, and be sure to check out our mini-documentary below!
-Chase & Trevor
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
THE UNTOLD STORY OF A ZEN PIONEER...
This October, a small group of American Zen practitioners will be traveling to Japan for a two-week pilgrimage to document lost biographical details of their revered teacher's life.
A true master, Soyu Matsuoka was fearless in his pursuit of propagating the authentic practice of Soto Zen to America (particularly its unique form of meditation, known as Zazen), and building bridges between East and West, especially between the USA and Japan before and after World War II.
Zengaku Soyu Matsuoka, Roshi (1912-1997) was a Japanese Zen Master from the Soto sect. Born into a family of Zen priests in Yamaguchi Prefecture near Hiroshima, Matsuoka was sent to America just before World War II as a missionary from Sojiji Monastery to serve Japanese-American immigrants. During the war he was confined to a Japanese internment camp, where he taught his fellow countrymen Zen meditation. In the years following the peace and reconstruction in Europe and Japan, he began attracting American students, and eventually became a respected teacher of Zen Buddhism in the United States.
Matsuoka Roshi didn't write any books, and he wasn't interested in fame and fortune. Most of his important lectures on Zen for Westerners have been published in two collections: The Kyosaku (the “Zen stick”) and Moku-rai (“silence is thunder”; “stillness in motion”) available online. His aspirations were to spread the message of Zen, and to build a bridge of peace between Japan and the United States, whose relationship had had more than its fair share of turmoil before and after World War II.
In the spirit of what the great Master Bodhidharma did for ancient China, and what Myoan Eisai and Eihei Dogen did for Japan, Matsuoka Roshi's efforts influenced a new, modern tradition of Zen in the U.S. He was quick to say that "Zen is always modern, always up-to-date".
This coming October, Zenkai Taiun Michael Elliston, Roshi (from the video at the top), and a group of his disciples from the Silent Thunder Order, are traveling to Japan to retrace the steps of Matsuoka Roshi, and to, hopefully, fill in some of the blanks of his life that remain untold.
One of Matsuoka Roshi's chief disciples, Taiun Roshi has spent the last half-century carrying on his great teacher's legacy. He has established the Silent Thunder Order and the Atlanta Soto Zen Center in Matsuoka's tradition, and has initiated a large number of disciples and priests of his own, active throughout the United States and Canada, who carry on Matsuoka's mission.
This documentary, "Silent Thunder", is an effort to lift Soyu Matsuoka's name out of relative obscurity for those who may not have heard of him. By documenting his Dharma heir's historic trip to Japan, tracing the roots of this revered teacher, perhaps we can finally reveal to the world just how influential Soyu Matsuoka was on Zen, as one of its pioneers in America, and confirm his importance to the history of Zen in the modern era.This is an ambitious project, and we can't do it alone. We need your help!
We are passionate about this incredible opportunity, and are committed to capturing every detail of Matsuoka's life. To give you some idea our abilities, we've produced the promo video you see up at the top of the page. It should give you a taste of what your donations are going to underwrite, and an idea of the professional quality of the final film.
THE PLAN, AND WHY WE NEED FUNDING:
Traveling from Atlanta, GA to Japan is expensive, and so is making a full-length documentary. But the real cost would be the tragedy of letting this historic trip go undocumented. By donating to this important cause, you're helping to ensure that doesn't happen.
The group and our two-man film crew will be spending two full weeks in Japan. As Taiun Roshi said in the video above, we're planning to travel from Atlanta to Tokyo. From there we will be making our way south to Yamaguchi Prefecture (near Hiroshima), where Matsuoka Roshi was born. After that we will spend the next 14 days covering a lot of territory as we reach our final destination at Sojiji and Eiheiji Monasteries further north.
We thank you for your time and efforts. Your donations are helping us document an important chapter in history, and to give Matsuoka Roshi a complete biography we all can be proud of.
-Chase and Trevor
Organizer
Chase Breedlove
Organizer
Acworth, GA
