The United Spiritual Leaders Forum (USLF) is a gathering that unites senior lineage teachers with emerging spiritual leaders in service of the next generation — Gen Z and Gen Alpha. Its mission: bring insight from ancient wisdom traditions to the modern challenges and aspiration young people face today.
The second forum convened in Kyoto, Japan in December 2025, hosted by Pearl News. Omote Sensei was one of its featured voices. A week later, his address was displayed on screen for the American branch of the USLF and nearly one hundred of Ahjan Sensei’s longtime students gathered at Bodhiwoods, the mountain hermitage near San Francisco where Ahjan once served as abbot. What followed was not a distant follow-up, but a continuation of the forum’s deepest question: how do we form the kind of human beings who can actually carry peace?
Omote Sensei’s answer was clear and piercing. The struggle is not only outside us. The oni, he shared, is also inside: the swelling force of fear, ego, blame, and reaction that turns pain outward and keeps conflict alive. Yet the atmosphere in the room did not become heavy. It became focused. Listeners felt that he was naming a path they could actually walk.
He shared that purification is not punishment and not shame. It is the steady work of clearing what has gathered over the original soul so that one’s true purpose can be seen again. For the Americans at Bodhiwoods, that landed as hopeful news. Young teachers, older practitioners, and forum participants alike heard that they did not have to be trapped by confusion, reactivity, or inherited turmoil. What can be covered over can also be cleaned.
That hopeful impact was felt across the gathering. People were moved not only by the force of Omote Sensei’s teaching, but by its practicality. He was not asking people to win ideological battles. He was asking them to become honest, disciplined, and useful to others. Several in the room said afterward that his address made peace feel less like an abstraction and more like a daily responsibility.
Ahjan Sensei strongly resonated with that message. Having spent years training students in disciplined contemplative life and serving as abbot at Bodhiwoods, he recognized in Omote Sensei’s words a truth he has long tried to hand on: suffering deepens when we project our confusion outward, and healing begins when we take responsibility for what is arising within. Those present could feel that agreement between traditions.
One younger American teacher said the address opened a new understanding of leadership for her. She was struck by the idea that helping the next generation does not begin with louder opinions, but with inner cleansing, discernment, and service. The teaching left her feeling steadier and more committed to guiding youth without feeding the same cycles of reaction she hopes to heal.
A longtime student from Ahjan’s earlier Bodhiwoods years was equally inspired. Afterward, the student spoke about wanting to take Omote Sensei’s guidance literally: to purify the heart, stop projecting blame, serve people in need, and practice the kind of love that does not center the self. That response captured the mood of the day. His address did not simply impress people. It gave them something they wanted to live.
That is why the gathering remained so energized after the screen went dark. Omote Sensei had given the Americans of the USLF, and Ahjan’s old students, a way to understand peace not as softness, but as courage, clarity, purification, and responsibility. It was a demanding teaching. But for many in the room, it felt like exactly the medicine this generation needs.
Pearl News is an independent civic media platform run by UNA USA members reporting on the UN SDGs, but not tied to the UN.
