The year 2022 was a watershed moment for many, because it was then that the shadow of Covid19 shrouded our planet and wreaked personal and financial havoc on rich and poor alike. It certainly marked a significant turning point in the affairs of the Shin Buddhist Fellowship UK.

Jim Pym was the last surviving member of the group that founded our organisation and brought a style of Anglicized Shin Buddhism to the UK in the mid nineteen seventies. My good friend Rev Paraskevopoulos called Jim a ‘humble pioneer’. I could not agree more. By 2022 he had become frail and he was battling gamely against a couple of detrimental health conditions, but he remained happy and active. However, in this catastrophic year he suffered a fall at home, was admitted into hospital, and died there, alone and in complete isolation. This was a sad end that many suffered in 2022.

Alongside this personal tragedy, we were dealt a devastating financial blow when the owners of the property that we had occupied for the previous twenty years served us with a notice to vacate so they could quickly sell it and themselves avoid bankruptcy.

The Chinese say that a catastrophe can be regarded as a great opportunity. In more contemporary language, we decided that this was a good time to ‘reboot’, physically downsize and shift a proportion of our activities to Zoom and on-line at a couple of websites. At our previous location we had a Buddha Room that could accommodate about thirteen people. In twenty years it was filled only twice, and that was at the times we hosted two European Shin Conferences. Our new Hondo is smaller, but perfectly adequate.

We settled quickly into our new way of doing things and we now offer weekly Zoom meetings and our websites consistently attracts over six hundred visitors every week. By doing things this way, we remain connected to our roots and maintain the tradition of being humble pioneers.

In 2003 four former members if the SBFUK were, like me twelve years earlier, ordained as priest in the Nishi Hongwanji tradition. Those four bonded during their training together and formed the Nishi Hongwanji Shinshu sangha 2025. The Shin Buddhist Fellowship pre-dates this new organisation by at least 30 years, and the four 'new' priests all used to be associated with the SBFUK. However, they have decided to go down the route of the most tradition Japanese interpretation of Shn Buddhism. On the other hand, we have always been more interest in how Shin Buddhism may be assimilated into a more European, and particularly, English cultural manner; and thus, with contentment and confidence, we continue to pursue this course.