A Nichiren Buddhist Primer

Chapter 1

Looking for a Bridge

I came to religion -- or perhaps religion came to me -- on a lovely New York City spring morning in 1967, when I was 20 years old. It had something to do with the mingling of the temperature, the sunshine, the smell of coffee harmonized with the aroma of fresh baked goods in West Greenwich Village near Washington Square as I was coming down from my ninth and worst acid trip.

A few hours earlier, I had tried to throw myself off a subway platform into an oncoming train. LSD alters the chemistry of synapses and facilitates a faster flow of sensory input to the brain; on acid, I literally saw more, heard more, felt more. Also, my sense of time became profoundly distorted. The rush of express trains going by led to my perception that I had been standing on the platform for something like two or three years. You wait for a train for a couple of years and suicide becomes an attractive alternative.

As I leapt toward the oncoming car, my friend Steve grabbed me. To preempt the tremendous visual and auditory stimuli of the train, he shouted in my face: "You're on acid!" I had forgotten this fact. I didn't comprehend his syntax but I did have a sense of trust. So I got on the train with him.

When the doors at our intended stop didn't open, I slid my hands between the doors and, with adrenaline pumping, managed to open them enough so I could slip down to the deadly third rail. Steve restrained me again.

After my two suicide attempts and adrenaline rushes, some of the fight was taken out of me. In his most soothing tones, Steve reminded me that I was on acid, that we would be back to our originating station in the West Village soon, and that I needed to relax. He quoted from a Beatles song, "Turn off your mind, relax, and float downstream…." The lines had been borrowed from the Tibetan Book of the Dead. He also recited lines from the Upanishads. I'll never know why he chose those things to say to me, since Steve was a Christian and had not shown any particular proclivity toward Eastern thought. Nevertheless, what he said conveyed a sense of peace and oneness with the world and put me in a pleasant state of mind.

I was a person of no faith. I wasn't nasty, hopeless or lost; I just didn't see any purpose in religion. I had been born Jewish, but my education in that religion consisted of hearing a lot about Nazis and why people wouldn't like me because I was one of the "chosen" people. The dour, vindictive God I kept hearing about, however, was not one by whom I wanted to be chosen. Even so, my prayers were sincere. I was the child of divorced parents. My father was gay; my mother was troubled and, at times, abusive. My prayers came out of my pain and suffering as a lonely, damaged child-and no one could convince me that a God worth worshipping would turn a deaf ear to my agony.

I figured my mind was good enough to know proof of God when I saw it, but I wasn't going out of my way to look for it. Life had already provided enough evidence to the contrary. My suffering in those days was nowhere near as bad as many people endured, and a little worse than others. But, by late adolescence, I had become an agnostic.

It was dawn when Steve and I arrived back in the West Village. Street lights blended with the rays of the rising sun and -- how can I say this? -- the light illuminated the essence of my being. The light enveloped and sustained me. There was no distinction between what lay outside of me and what existed within me. The entire city of New York and what lay beyond was an extension and direct reflection of my life. I was completely open to the world around me, sensing that identical energies flowed within and without, with no distinction.

I watched the sun rise over the city, marveling for the first time at the clockwork that seemed to govern the sun, the city and all its inhabitants. I could not shake my sense of oneness with my environment. I didn't really want this awareness to end, but it was scary; it somehow made me feel responsible for the whole universe.

That morning, I changed from a person with no faith to a person of belief. I didn't know what I believed in -- certainly it was no traditional definition of god -- but I knew it was something that pervaded all reality.

As the LSD loosened its grip on my nervous system, I began to feel more and more detached from the world around me, more like normal. I was a solitary human being once again, seeking a connection with the world. There must be a way to restore my sense of oneness, I thought. I was convinced that the inner part of my being was in a state of total awareness with regard to the ultimate reality and oneness of all existence. All I had to do was bridge the gap from my everyday consciousness. From that moment, I decided to dedicate myself to finding a way to build a bridge that led from my outer self to my inner self.

Many dozens of acid trips and eighteen months later, I was still trying but having no success. Reach my inner being? I still hadn't even gotten laid, which was the most troubling problem in my life at that time. Eventually, I quit doing drugs.

Buddhism teaches that the way to build the bridge between inner and outer realities is to expand our consciousness rather than alter it chemically. But I wasn't Buddhist yet and that's not the reason I quit. The reason was given to me by a quadriplegic in a New York bookstore who chided me as I was coming down off my last acid trip.

He said, quite simply: "What a waste of time."

This man, to whom going to the bathroom probably meant an hour's worth of the kind of effort I can't even conceive of, pointed out the best reason why I shouldn't get strung out with drugs.

He said, "I don't care what you're on -- it fucks with your ability to lead your real life. Time is the only gift we're truly given. Don't waste it."

I got a call from my friend Tuckie Bachrach in Washington DC. I would conservatively estimate that Tuckie, at that time, weighed around three hundred pounds. What made her interesting was that she chose to clothe this girth in a mini-dress of sewn-together kerchiefs. What made her even more interesting is that her persona was so powerful that her size and apparel were totally overshadowed by both her complexity and her intelligence. Over the previous ten months, we had cemented our relationship -- although not romantically -- as she would come visit me in New York and I would see her in DC.

Tuckie had called to tell me of a great change in her life. "I have been shakubukued," she said. I assumed that some kind of African ritual had been performed upon her.

No, she explained, some Japanese ladies had accosted her on the streets in Georgetown and taught her to chant Nam-myoho-renge-kyo. She begged me to try chanting the mantra.

I, ever the skeptic even as I searched for my spiritual bridge, mumbled my distaste for organized religion and thanked her perfunctorily, having no intention of doing anything with her heartfelt offering.

A few weeks later, I found myself in Washington DC, attending what was euphemistically called a "Buddhist meeting."

It was a meeting of an organization that I'll refer to as "The Org." It was the American lay organization of the Nichiren Shoshu priesthood, which is based in Japan. At that time in 1968, there was only one Nichiren Shoshu priest in the US. He spoke no English and was based in California. Therefore, the religion was taught by lay people -- like the women who had accosted Tuckie -- in private homes and on the streets, mostly in New York, DC, San Francisco and Los Angeles.

At that meeting I was given some formal explanation of the origins of Nam-myoho-renge-kyo. A Japanese monk named Nichiren had established the practice of chanting this mantra in thirteenth-century Japan. Chanting, Nichiren taught, enabled people to manifest their inherent enlightenment or Buddha nature. I listened to the experiences of people who had chanted, and had many questions answered about Buddhism. I was given the guarantee: "If you chant, you'll get whatever you want," which turned out to be misleading. And, in retrospect, the experiences were a tad over-blown and the answers were pretty lame. But I was impressed by the energy and enthusiasm of the people at the meeting. There was an unmistakable, genuine joy in the practice of chanting.

I was particularly enamored of the native-born second-generation Japanese-American who was leading the meeting. He was a man of great vitality, masculinity, intelligence, and, most of all, charisma. I mention him because, in my mistaken desire to have him as a father figure, I became vulnerable to the worst psychological manipulations of organized religion. To this day, though, I appreciate that organization for introducing me to Nichiren Buddhism.

The next fifteen years were an austerity in which I learned to separate the wheat of the Buddhist teaching from the chaff of Japanese culture and politics. After my initial joining in 1968, I rose rapidly through the ranks of The Org. I became a very devoted follower of the organization's leaders and attracted a certain degree of attention. In 1971, I was offered the opportunity to go to Japan, ostensibly to help with the publication of English-language study materials. In those days, there were probably fewer than five English books about Nichiren Buddhism and those were all translations of what, at best, could be considered mediocre Japanese. None of Nichiren's writings had been translated.

Before my arrival in Japan, I was charged with a rather heady mission from my Japanese-American leaders. I was to spy on the publications department of the Japanese Org, the "mother" organization of the American Org, and was to use the material I collected to force a move of all English-language periodicals to the United States. Because of this mission, I was under strict instructions not to learn Japanese. As a result, I was forced to dig and probe for every insight I sought. I questioned every nuance and forced my Japanese mentors to meet my idiom. I drove them nuts, lay leaders and priests alike. But, in the end, it paid off. I gained deep insight into Nichiren Buddhism. Along the way, because of my insistence that my understanding be tailored to my English-speaking, American mind, I was able to separate the Japanese from the Buddhism and recognize the universal aspects of the latter.

My conviction about Nichiren's teachings was strengthened even further by some amazing people -- both lay and clergy -- that I met in Japan, and by having the opportunity to study about Nichiren first-hand. Also, I was successful in my espionage mission and, as a result, was hired by The Org, following my college graduation in 1974, to assist in the newly expanded American publications department. In 1976, I became managing editor of the The Org Quarterly, a study journal published seasonally by The Org.

I returned to Japan in 1978, and participated in the editing and publication of the first three English-language volumes of Nichiren's writings, the most treasured experience of my life.

During this time, I witnessed to the beginnings of the schism that would culminate in 1991 when The Org was disenfranchised by the Nichiren Shoshu priesthood. Around the time of the split, The Org was restructured and renamed. Although the lay organization and priesthood seemed to be still fairly unified in 1978, it was obvious to many that the lay organization tended to deify its leader, contrary to Nichiren's teachings. This was taking a toll on the High Priest of Nichiren Shoshu at the time. He passed away in 1979, leaving it to his successor to determine what the future course of action should be.

I returned to the United States in the summer of '79 and shortly thereafter, just as it had meteorically risen, my star began its descent.

Remember how, in 1968, I wanted to get laid? One of the first things that happened to me after I started to chant was that I got lucky. Years of anxiety and phobias about being gay melted away in the arms of my first naked girl. It wasn't a bridge to the ultimate reality, but it sure felt good.

I'm afraid it wasn't so good for my partner. She was also a new member of The Org. We liked, and eventually grew to love, each other. Unfortunately, The Org being what it was, we were told that if we wanted to continue to have sex, we would have to commit to an exclusive relationship, ultimately leading to marriage. I was loathe to give up the first and, to my mind, possibly only and best sex of my life. My future wife had similar insecurities. We stayed together for five years and were wed in late 1973. She accompanied me on my stints in Japan.

In Japan in 1979, we both started to realize how different we were and how our pairing had resulted from the mechanisms of a Japanese cult mentality and not the teachings of the Buddha. In 1980 -- six months following our return from Japan -- I met another woman, left my wife, and was expecting a child with my new partner before my divorce was final.

The Org was not amused. While my bosses and leaders were busy giving me moralistic lectures about the evil I had done, my wonderful priest in Los Angeles at the time asked me, "How did the first kiss feel?" It was at that moment that I had a crystal-clear revelation about what was Buddhism and what was Japanese. Even more, I understood how Buddhism transcended all conventional, culturally and linguistically based morality. There is a morality in Buddhism, but it is predicated on the notion of karma. The priest, after grinning broadly when I reported the sensory experience of the first kiss with my new paramour, then sternly reminded me that I still had a solemn duty to work for the happiness of my first wife. In the eyes of Buddhism, he pointed out, it's always okay to follow our heart and do what we want -- however, it can never be at the expense of someone else's happiness. This is both the tremendous freedom and the tremendous responsibility of Buddhist practice.

By 1983, I was out the door of The Org. I had been stripped of my editorial functions, study positions and ability to lecture on Nichiren's writings. I had to go out in the real world and see if Buddhism would work out there.

Two decades later, I can state unequivocally that it does even more than I had dreamed.

This is core of what I have learned:

· The Buddhism of Nichiren is elegant in its simplicity and profound in its scope. It can be practiced by any man, woman or child on this planet regardless of prior beliefs or non-beliefs. The practice will absolutely yield results, independent of any circumstance or context.

· There is a God-force, or Buddha or Dharma that exists eternally within, as well as without. This Whatever-You-Call-It did not create us, but is the eternal source of our being which, in itself, is eternal.

· The eternal-universe-source-Buddha-God-Dharma works via the mechanism of cause and effect. Not surprisingly, this is the exact same mechanism by which our individual lives work. I am not being facetious when I refer to this "eternal thing" with so many words -- what I'm trying to do is look beyond whatever word we usually call it so our minds can be freed from conceptual constraints. It occurs to me that this is why some religions teach that the name of God may not be given form.

· We can, through our efforts in living, create a consciousness that accepts this "eternal-Buddha-God" truth. This is the stuff of revelations and epiphanies, and these things should never be left solely to prophets or authors of religious texts. What God says to us is precisely as valid as what he/she/it said to Moses or Jesus or Mohammad.

Chapter 2

Nichiren and the Lotus Sutra

A Nichiren Buddhist is one who chants the mantra Nam-myoho-renge-kyo and follows the teachings of the 13th Century monk known as Nichiren. Who was he and on what were his teachings based?

Nichiren was born in Japan in February of 1222. His parents made their living by fishing, so they did not have much money. But they recognized that their son was quite special and wanted the best education for him. So they allowed him to enter a Buddhist monastery when he was around age 12. Legend, and Nichiren’s own writings, record that at age 17, while praying in front of a statue of Bodhisattva Kokuzo to become the wisest man in the universe, a jewel of infinite value was bestowed upon Nichiren.

What I take this to mean is that, as a direct result of his fervent prayer and as a manifestation of his karma to become a great teacher, Nichiren gained a profound, probably non-verbal insight into the ultimate nature of things. From that time until the year 1253 -- a period of at least fifteen years -- Nichiren devoted himself to mastering not only all of the Buddhist sutras available to him, but the languages of Sanskrit and Chinese in which they were originally written.

April 28, 1253 was the big day. Giving a sermon at his home temple, Nichiren proclaimed that the Lotus Sutra was supreme among all of Sakyamuni's teachings and that the present-day way to practice that sutra in its entirety was the chanting of Nam-myoho-renge-kyo. He also took the occasion of this sermon to give himself the name Nichiren, meaning Sun Lotus. His listeners' response to his sermon was a blending of "this guy must be nuts" and "this sounds way too easy" -- not much different than the response that many people today have. But the Japanese response was also accompanied by outrage.

One element that played a part in the Japanese response to Nichiren, and which is probably not a factor to most Westerners, was that he was speaking to an audience already quite rooted in Buddhist culture and beliefs. As such, his views were seen as both revolutionary and heretical. For those "blank slates" who are reading this now, the proposal that the mantra Nam-myoho-renge-kyo is the essential Buddhist practice may seem a bit simpler than you would have expected, but it probably does not seem threatening to your way of life or your beliefs.

Without going into great detail, at least for now, about the rest of his life, suffice it to say that his April 28th pronouncements set Nichiren on a whole new course. He was literally chased from the temple grounds following this first sermon and was dogged by both rival priests and the authorities for the rest of his life. His homes were burned. He was officially sent into exile twice, and at one point the government actually attempted to execute him.

In the fall of 1271, the authorities took him down to the Tatsunokuchi beach, near present-day Kamakura, and tried to chop off his head. Historical documents and Nichiren's own writings tell of a meteor flashing across the sky just as the executioner raised his sword. Both the executioner and the soldiers on horseback who had brought him down for the execution fled the scene, and the government was forced to arrange his second exile.

Do I think some Buddha in the sky or "God" sent the meteor to protect Nichiren? No, I suspect the meteor would have been there anyway. That Nichiren was on the beach about to get his head chopped off was simply superb timing on his part. That's a lot of what the practice of Buddhism is about: good timing. One minute you're driving down the road, the next you get creamed by a drunk driver. How come you were there, or weren't? One minute you're at the convenience store picking up a pack of smokes, the next moment some moron comes in to hold the place up. How come you were there, or weren't? What Nichiren demonstrated during the course of his life, not only at Tatsunokuchi beach but at other times as well, was how good timing can really make a difference, and how the Buddhist practice excels in putting time on our side.

What I really love about Nichiren was that he wrote a lot of this stuff down; I don't have to take anything on "hearsay." Many of his writings, known as Gosho, are still extant and have been translated into English. Many of them contain a sense of power, passion and poetry that cannot help but move the reader.

Benedict Baruch de Spinoza, a Jewish philosopher of the 17th Century, made the following point: He said that whereas men of reason attempt to move men's minds, men of religion attempt to move their hearts. As a result, Spinoza pointed out, religious writings tend toward hyperbole and exaggeration. Great myths are presented in order to bypass the brain and touch the soul. A successful religious teaching is one that does this and, in so doing, moves people to faith. Spinoza dared claim that this was the source and inspiration of the Bible. Incidentally, because of his “heretical” views, Spinoza was issued the harshest writ of excommunication ever pronounced by the orthodox Jewish community in his home of Amsterdam.

I have no difficulty in seeing that what was true for the framers of the Bible was also true for the collectors of the Buddhist sutras and for Nichiren himself. I have no doubt whatsoever that, through his writings, Nichiren intended to touch people's hearts. He was not the sort of man who was either intractable or prone to nit picking. Over and over and over again, he talks only about the supremacy of the Lotus Sutra and the efficacy of the mantra, Nam-myoho-renge-kyo. He is not interested in laying down codes of conduct and commandments.

Keeping in mind that the Lotus Sutra, along with all other sutras, is the product of some council convened in the centuries following Sakayamuni's death, there are several different versions of it in several different languages, including, Sanskrit, Chinese, Japanese and English. Nichiren felt that the Chinese version translated by a man named Kumarajiva was most correct. This version was also used by a Chinese priest named T'ien-t'ai (in Chinese, Chih-I) to develop many of the theoretical doctrines that Nichiren used in supporting his claims regarding Nam-myoho-renge-kyo.

The Lotus Sutra is said to be the sutra that most closely mirrors Sakyamuni's teachings during the last eight years of his life. What the 28 chapters of the Lotus Sutra reveal is Sakyamuni's determination that Buddhism evolve in the millennia after his death. He postulated that both technological achievement and spiritual development would lead all the people of the planet to a place where they could each seek their enlightenment on their own. This was most certainly not the case when he commenced preaching. Sakyamuni's first teachings were heavily codified and he was explicit in his insistence that the Buddhist way was only open to a very elite few.

In the Lotus Sutra, Sakyamuni revealed two great teachings. In the second chapter, he revealed that enlightenment or Buddhahood is the potential of each and every human being. This was revolutionary. It was in the second chapter that Sakyamuni, for the first time, guaranteed the enlightenment of women. It was in the second chapter that he even prophesied the enlightenment of a man name Devadatta, who had spent his life trying to assassinate the Buddha. Two thousand years ago, Sakyamuni Buddha taught that all human beings were equal by dint of their capacity to be Buddhas, to attain enlightenment.

In the 16th chapter of the Lotus Sutra, Sakyamuni went a bit further. Up until this point he had always talked about enlightenment as a process, a gradual developing of the sense and awareness that each of us possesses the Buddha nature, that we are one with Dharma. In the 16th chapter, using an analogy, he indicated that a Buddha even greater and more profoundly versed than he had enabled him to attain enlightenment. Sakyamuni declared that enlightenment is something that eternally resides within. Buddhahood is part of our being; it is something to be recalled rather than something to be attained.

Think about what this means. As long as enlightenment is viewed as a process or a journey, there is always the chance that some of us don't have it or won't make it. The Lotus Sutra makes clear that not only do all of us eternally possess the potential for enlightenment, WE CANNOT FAIL. All we have to do is recall our enlightenment and actualize it in the course of our daily existence.

"All we have to do…" sounds so easy and facile and like every other self-help book ever written, doesn't it? But this is a revolutionary teaching that requires a revolutionary practice -- and that is precisely what Nichiren came up with.

Chapter 3

Defining Nam-myoho-renge-kyo

Just as one who undertakes a scientific investigation cannot help but somehow affect the results of that investigation, so too is my explanation of Buddhism affected by my beliefs, biases and experiences. Even so, I contend that not only is the Buddhist methodology of Nichiren effective one hundred percent of the time, it can be used by one hundred percent of the people. It will work for young or old, rich or poor, male or female, healthy or ill, intelligent or not.

What does Nam-myoho-renge-kyo mean? Why do we chant those words? My definition is closely aligned to one given to me some 30 years ago by my father-figure leader in NSA. I have never heard anyone give a better one, although I have chosen to expand and finesse what I heard on the basis of my own decades of experience.

The words Myoho-renge-kyo form the Japanese pronunciation of the Chinese title of the Lotus Sutra. The word Nam is an abbreviated form of the Sanskrit word, Namaste, that can translate as “devotion.” Nam of Nam-myoho-renge-kyo means devotion to the Lotus Sutra or, more precisely, the teachings of and principles contained in that sutra. This devotion is predicated on more than just lip service.

I actually heard the word Namaste three years before I began chanting in 1968. As a freshman at Michigan State University in 1965, a group of us went to see a strange professor by the name of Timothy Leary. Upon entering the room, the LSD guru clasped his palms in front of him, bowed deeply and uttered, "Namaste." He then explained that he was saluting the divinity within each of us.

It was a pivotal moment in my life because, at age 17, I had never before heard anyone speak of the potential of the divine we hold within. In truth, that moment was the catalyst for all that happened over the next three years -- my adventures as a hippie, my numerous encounters with psychoactive materials and, ultimately, my beginnings of faith in a universal truth -- a truth which I eventually came to realize was Nam-myoho-renge-kyo.

It is very interesting to me at this point in my life that I was recently re-introduced to the concept of Namaste via a course called New Horizons that I took in as part of recent tenure as a counselor in the U.S. Job Corps. The gentleman teaching the course told of being greeted outside one of Mother Theresa's facilities in India by a beggar with a compound fracture. Obviously in excruciating pain, the beggar clasped his hands together and said, with genuine affection, "Namaste." The teacher then said that the full translation of Namaste was, "I honor the place in you where the entire universe resides. I honor the place in you of love, of truth, of peace and of light and when you are in that place in you and I am in that place in me, there is only one of us."

Is it any wonder why, with so many layers of meaning, the challenge of translating Nam-myoho-renge-kyo proves so daunting?

You may have seen the small red dot that many Indian women wear on their foreheads. This is called a Namus and it signifies their dedication to their families. This is dedication that manifests in their spirit and their behavior. In the same way, devotion to the Lotus Sutra is meant to imply devotion lived, not simply felt.

Nichiren understood that devotion to, or faith in the Lotus Sutra, particularly by those unfamiliar with its teachings, could not be either coerced or commanded. Therefore he placed Nam before its title to affirm that devotion to the sutra’s teachings was the key to enlightenment. This key could be turned by the act of chanting -- an act involving both body and mind. In Buddhism, body and mind are considered to be inseparable, two components of the same existence -- that which we call life.

For a person to simply start chanting with no belief or faith signifies devotion, Nam. Naturally, because this is a religion, it is to be fervently hoped that faith and belief develop in time. However, in the beginning, the effort in giving voice to the chant -- the effort being the spiritual component and the voice being the physical component -- is in itself an act of faith and devotion.

Myoho is the first word of the Lotus Sutra's title and is defined as “mystic law.” The mystic law is, by definition, non-definable. Einstein referred to it as the unified field theory and progressively grew more religious as he tried to explain it. It is the non-conceptualized essence of all reality, the glue that holds all phenomena together. I hesitate to call it intangible because it does reveal itself tangibly.

That may be the key to myoho. Rather than intangible, it is ineffable. It is real and extant -- but we can't reach out and touch it either physically or conceptually. Fundamentally, it explains all that we consider mystic or unanswerable. Why am I here? Why am I me? Why is every single moment of my life completely different from the lives of all those around me? These and other imponderables that we each ask ourselves on so many different occasions are all said to be included within the realm of myoho.

Nichiren said that myo, the “mystic” part of the mystic law should be viewed as having three meanings. First of all, he said, it indicates an opening of the darkness of illusion to reveal the brilliant light of the Buddha nature within. Secondly, this opening allows the person's entire phenomenal life to be endowed with the perfection that is Buddhahood. Lastly, this endowment leads to a revitalization of life so that earlier benighted life activities can be place in perspective and human activity can proceed on the highest plane.

I realize this may all sound rather lofty and vague, but I hope we can understand that Nichiren was trying to describe a process he himself knew was almost beyond description. We may not be able to get a handle on myoho, but we can certainly view its process within our life as one reward of the Buddhist practice.

Renge literally translates as “lotus flower,” a plant which blooms and seeds at the same time, a rarity of nature. This is said to symbolize the simultaneity of cause and effect. However, we never really perceive cause and effect as being simultaneous. In fact, one of the great tortures of life lies in awaiting the effects of causes that we make. Sometimes we may feel like we are waiting forever and, sometimes, it will seem as though we are waiting in vain, but there always seems to be a time differential involved in the principle of cause and effect.

Buddhism would say, however, that this time differential is an attribute of living in the illusion-filled, phenomenal world. In reality, as soon as we have made the cause (sown the seed), the effect is a foregone conclusion (the ultimate blossom). This is one of the hardest, if not the hardest, aspects of the Buddhist teaching. Because we perceive time as we do, it is hard to swallow the fact that we have indeed created the causes for the lives we are living now. Similarly, it is difficult, based on much of our prior experience, to have faith that what we are cultivating now will bear all the fruit we wish.

Nonetheless, Buddhism in general and renge in particular teach that understanding the simultaneity of cause and effect can have a profound effect upon our life. Suddenly we become aware of the fact that concentrating only on life's effects -- those things presently happening to us, or even our state of mind -- is in reality not much of a cause. Better to be causally oriented -- or, as social scientists might say, proactive rather than reactive. There is nothing more fulfilling than living life with the acute awareness that each moment offers new opportunities for new kinds of causes.

It may be a cliché, but it’s true: renge is the concept that this is the first moment of the rest of your life.

Another aspect of the lotus flower is that it blooms in muddy swamp-like terrain. This symbolizes the purity of life as it struggles to emerge from the morass of its own bad karma. There is a saying that “the muddier the swamp, the more beautiful the Lotus.” Buddhism teaches that this is indeed true of those of us who feel our karma, our effects, are simply horrendous. It is a saying not only meant to encourage -- it is a saying that evinces the truth that our struggles are indeed the fertilizer that enriches the soil from which we are striving to make our lives blossom.

Finally, we get to kyo. Although it translates as “sutra” or “teaching,” keep in mind that these teachings are essentially oral, based on the principles of “Thus I heard.” Therefore, kyo needs to be viewed as a vibrational concept. I guess my old hippie roots are showing, but I always liked this interpretation.

Of course, at one level, kyo can denote the Sutra of the Mystic Law of Cause and Effect (the Lotus Sutra), but on a more profound level it can be said to be the warp and weave of the universe itself.

The goal is harmony. The kyo we seek is good vibrations. Cancer eating at your body or the media incessantly bantering about war and tragedy -- that's bad kyo. People telling you they love you or learning to resolve differences with those whom you may have previously disagreed or disparaged -- now that's great kyo.

I suppose that if I could string the entire phrase together for you it might be helpful, if only as a mnemonic. I can't tell you how many meetings I attended where someone would get up and say, “Nam-myoho-renge-kyo means devotion to the mystic law of cause and effect through sound.” This would make my skin crawl because first of all it was so simplistic and, secondly, it was incomplete if not completely wrong. Yes, chanting is a way in which we demonstrate an affinity for the mystic law, but it this definition of “kyo” as the sound we make by chanting is quite shallow.

If we must have a single phrase to encapsulate Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, I believe it should be something like: “Devotion (nam) to the mystic (myo) law (ho) is a cause (ren) which creates the effect (ge) of creating harmony (kyo) in our lives.”

I hope I am communicating to some degree the extent to which I feel Nam-myoho-renge-kyo is indefinable. Do the words Grand Canyon contain the magnitude and awe inherent in that place? It is certainly more than “grand.” Does the word “orgasm” give any indication of how great it feels...possibly grander than the Grand Canyon?

Even a cursory examination of the mantra will, I think, leave one with the impression that there is literally a universe of information contained within. There is profound meaning here, yet it pales in comparison to what actually happens when one invokes the actual mantra of Nam-myoho-renge-kyo.

I worry that this whole issue of definition may beg the question of why can't we just chant in our own language. This is a most common question and, for many, presents a critical hurdle in attempting to chant. For me, it's primarily a matter of aesthetics -- I have chanted Nam-myoho-renge-kyo and, on occasion, tried to recite “devotion-mystic power-lotus flower-sound” in a rhythmical manner. The latter just wasn't very pretty. I may sound facetious and suppose I am to an extent, but I also believe that the pleasantness of any religious practice should be a factor when considering that practice. I'm the kid who truly thought fasting on the Jewish Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur) really sucked.

Religious practice should be a source of joy, comfort and aesthetic pleasure. Since our own home, rather than any grandiose religious edifice, is the place in which the practice of Nichiren's Buddhism is fundamentally undertaken, I think it is important that it be pleasing to the ear.

It is also critical to keep in mind that Nam-myoho-renge-kyo is originally described by Chinese pictograms, not English letters. The Chinese language literally paints a picture for each word it describes. I tried to give a sense of that depth in the above definition and hope that I at least succeeded in conveying the impression that each of these words is literally a novel unto itself. Sometimes things really do suffer in the translation.

There is a final and perhaps most important reason why Nam-myoho-renge-kyo should be chanted as its founder, Nichiren, taught. Namely, because that’s what its founder, Nichiren, taught. He was certainly not conversant with any Latin-based language at that time, but he did know Japanese, Chinese and Sanskrit. To him, these were the languages of the world he knew and he incorporated them. You may recall my saying that Nam is the Sanskrit word preceding the Japanese pronunciation of Chinese characters. It would be a mistake to think that Nam-myoho-renge-kyo is a Japanese phrase. Your average Japanese, or any Asian for that matter, would be initially as unfamiliar with its meaning and pronunciation as any Westerner.

Although chanting is primarily done alone, or within one's family, there are occasions upon which it is both fun and useful to get together with others to chant. Thousands of people chanting Nam-myoho-renge-kyo together can be a tremendously powerful and visceral experience. If each person were invoking his or her own native language it would be incredibly Babelesque.

Nichiren taught this mantra as a universal. It can be chanted by anyone and it is efficacious for everyone. It’s Nam-myoho-renge-kyo.

Chapter 4

The Benefits of Practice

If you were to chant Nam-myoho-renge-kyo I know that, beyond any shadow of a doubt, you would see a definite effect if you simply persisted for several weeks, chanting ten or fifteen minutes each day at your leisure. As I said earlier, it sounds too good to be true.

There are definitely more things that you need, and hopefully want, to understand about Buddhism, of course. Before you get your spider sense tingling too much in anticipation of all kinds of constraints and provisos to come, you should know that I have already told you the core, essential teaching. From here on in, everything is an add-on.

Although I'll probably sound like a used-car salesman, I want to distinguish add-ons from options. Add-ons allow you to gradually deepen and more fully integrate your Buddhist practice and the effects of that practice; add-ons are essential to the long-term continuation of Nichiren's teaching. Options may not be essential but they can enhance the character of the Buddhist experience.

What exactly is the Buddhist experience? What happens to you when you chant Nam-myoho-renge-kyo? All human beings are unique in both their experience and potential; therefore the Buddhist experience may differ from one person to the next. Add to this the fact that there is nothing more personal for any human being than the events and changes that attend to his or her religious belief. Your religious belief, or lack thereof, determines how you think and how you function. How you define life and death, joy and sorrow, important and insignificant, the people and the things around you -- all these derive from your fundamental take on what the world and the universe is all about.

In general, the "Buddhist experience" is the process of enlightenment and Nichiren's promise that it can be attained in this lifetime. The real benefit of chanting Nam-myoho-renge-kyo lies in actualizing progress toward enlightenment.

I, along with tens of thousands of others, was told that chanting would bring me whatever I wanted and thereby prove itself. I was told to chant for what I wanted and it would come. In my case, as you already know, I wanted to get laid and, at the time, some cheap marijuana would have been appreciated as well. I have known people who have chanted for money, sex, health, their loved ones, an altruistic spirit, a Lexus and even one who wanted to meet Elvis (after he died). Some got what they wanted and some didn't. I did get a shopping bag full of grass and I already told you about my first love. But what of the people who didn't get what they wanted? Obviously, the lion's share of them stopped chanting, but many would come back day after day, week after week, asking those more experienced why chanting wasn't "working" for them.

To make a long story short, I believe that what happened in telling people about Buddhism was that a concept known as "benefit" got grossly misinterpreted. The sutras, as well as Nichiren and his followers talk about the "benefit" of the practice. Without going into more Japanese terminology, suffice it to say that there are many different Japanese terms for the one concept of benefit. The Japanese have more than a dozen words alone that mean "human being," depending on age, sex, status, or whatever. The Japanese language, it seems to me, attaches many qualifiers or descriptives onto single-word nouns that the uninformed listener or reader is just not aware of.

Anyway, the sutras talk about the benefit of the Buddhist practice and tend to categorize those benefits into two types: conspicuous and inconspicuous. Conspicuous benefits are said to occur on two occasions: when a person first begins to practice and when a practitioner is in danger. These conspicuous benefits are notable for a couple of reasons. First, they seemingly occur in the absence of any corresponding cause. In the case of the new Buddhist, this can be encouraging because they may be recognized as having stemmed from his or her new-found practice. In the case of one whose life is in danger, the source of encouragement is self-evident, i.e. he or she is still alive. Secondly, conspicuous benefits are relatively uncommon and not considered to be particularly significant from the broad Buddhist perspective.

Inconspicuous benefit is believed to be the greatest reward and lies at the heart of the Buddhist practice.

Ah, I can hear you now: "By labeling their main benefit as inconspicuous, these crafty Buddhists essentially align their teaching with all of those who would have you believe in an intangible God on the basis of unanswered prayers." Not quite. Inconspicuous benefit does not mean that which is unseen or unnoticed. Rather it indicates that which develops inconspicuously, accruing a bit at a time until it hits you over the head. This inconspicuous benefit is said to provide the greatest joys and lessons of all during the course of the Buddhist practice and ultimately prepares the believer for the greatest inconspicuous benefit of all: the attainment of enlightenment.

What distorted the teaching of Nichiren's Buddhism to Americans in the sixties, seventies and eighties was that there was a sincere, yet naïve, attempt to spread the teaching to as many people as possible. Novice practitioners were given the impression that Nam-myoho-renge-kyo was a magic phrase that would bring them whatever their little hearts desired. When the magic didn't occur, many people stopped chanting. If only they had been encouraged on the basis of Nichiren's writings and the type of experience he was actually saying would occur, I believe there would be hundreds of thousand of people in the United States chanting today.

Rather than crying over spilt milk, however, what I want to do is put all of this on the record so that these errors will be perpetuated no longer. I will not tell you that you can get anything you want by chanting. Hell, even assuming that we know what we want, what's perfect for each of us, it goes without saying that our notion of what's perfect, given our current state of (un)enlightenment, is in itself imperfect.

What I will tell you, at the risk of sounding redundant is that chanting Nam-myoho-renge-kyo will, within a short period of time (I'm talking about three months here) have a profound, recognizable and attributable impact on any human life. Over the long term, i.e. the span of one's life, this practice will deliver on the Buddhist promise of enlightenment or, in Western terms, make one feel as though he or she has arrived in "heaven on earth."

This latter is quite important, for Nichiren's teachings deal little with what happens after death, with the exception of admonishing his believers to make wise decisions which lead to fortune in the next life. In Buddhism, death and the ensuing state of non-interactive existence are viewed as natural recharging points for a life that is eternally an integral part of the infinite universe. Just as sleep refreshes us for the next day's activities, so does death allow a revitalization of the active energy force so depleted by the act of living.

Most of us do not go to sleep at night filled with dread and angst in anticipation of what the sleeping state holds in store. This is because we have some conscious understanding and experience of the natural cycles of waking and sleeping. In the same way, Buddhism teaches that a growing awareness of the true nature of life combined with the experience of the correctness of that understanding will similarly dispel any fear or question about death that we may have. This being accomplished, we are free to deal with the events of living while not wasting our precious time worrying about what death may or may not hold in store.

So how come I kept chanting? I was fortunate in the experience of conspicuous benefits involving sex and drugs. Do I mean to imply that the chanting placed a woman in my bed and marijuana under it? No, what I am saying is that the timing got better -- just as with Nichiren down at the beach. Chanting put me a little more in sync with the world around me so that I was better able to take advantage of opportunities that arose. I should note that I did not see it that way at the time. In those days I was content to believe that Nam-myoho-renge-kyo brought me a woman and some weed. It was enough to keep me going.

What kept me going, at least in the early years, was kind of a one-two punch that sustained my chanting. First, there was the definite sense that I had found my long-sought-after bridge to the internal reality I learned existed on that long-ago New York morning. Second, there was a real sense of mission, most of it admittedly artificially programmed by the organization (some would say cult) I had unwittingly joined, which kept me feeling as though I were doing something important. However, there was a third, most important factor that kept me practicing: the undeniable awareness that my life itself was changing.

It wasn't just internal growth; I'd achieved plenty of that through natural maturation, a fair amount of LSD, and a lot of the meditation that occurs as a natural by-product of chanting. This by-product can certainly be obtained from other chants, whether they be Om or one that you buy from the Maharishi or the tongues you speak in while practicing some forms of fundamentalist Jewish or Christian beliefs, or just bio-feedback enabling you to enhance your alpha waves. But the changes in my life had more to do with the environment, the world around me. People were dealing with me differently and, more than my timing just being better, my surroundings were somehow supporting and nurturing me in a way I had never before experienced, and had ever suspected they could.

Carl Jung had a name for this. He called it "acausal synchronicity." He developed the concept following a therapy session in which he was doing therapy with a young woman. While engaging in dream analysis, the woman was telling Jung a dream in which she'd been given a jeweled scarab. It was blowing and raining outside Jung's office at the time and he heard a tapping at the window. Thinking it was a loose shutter, he went to the window and saw that the tapping was being caused by a giant beetle. Jung reached outside, grabbed the beetle and took it over to the young woman, saying, "Here is your jeweled scarab." She immediately burst into tears and Jung took advantage of the situation to open her up to greater probing concerning both her dream life and the real-life problems she had been facing. It was a major turning point in her therapy and Jung became convinced that the synchronicity between her dream recounting and the reality of the tapping beetle at the window was key to the transformation. He called the synchronicity "acausal" because it was seemingly without any precipitating factor.

Would that Jung were alive today, for I would love to write and tell him that there is such thing as "causal synchronicity" and it is linked to the chanting of Nam-myoho-renge-kyo.

During the first decade of my practice and continuing to this day, I have experienced plenty of this synchronicity within my life. I may not have tons of money in the bank or drive a Lexus, but the times the environment has risen up to support and nurture my internal life direction are beyond number. I have been given countless “beetles.” (Including, I believe, The Beatles.)

From a Buddhist perspective, this is not a matter of some divine being attending to our needs. Rather, Nichiren would say that the Buddhist practice incorporates all aspects of reality -- physical and spiritual as well as internal and external. It is only natural that what you initiate within yourself reflects in your environment. The fact that many people do not see this happening regularly is only testament to the shallow nature of the understanding and consciousness from which they are initiating thought, speech and action.

The initial efficacy of chanting has nothing to do with belief, faith or understanding. This is most important if people are to begin chanting or even consider the Buddhist practice. It is hard enough to try something new, let alone combine that attempt with some kind of major emotional or conceptual realignment.

I am very aware of the fact that the vast majority of those who express a desire to try the Buddhist practice are loath to continue it for even the three-month test drive that I mentioned earlier. I think this is for a couple of reasons. The whole thing, even though I've tried to couch it in totally English terms, just feels too strange or foreign. And what transpires after even a couple weeks of consistent chanting is of such magnitude that many people simply get a little frightened. After years of paying lip service to practices and rituals that often work only to console the mind, the real effects deriving from a genuine cause are sometimes a bit nerve-wracking.

Additionally, the majority of people do not continue chanting for long because of what might be termed the diet/exercise syndrome. There are tons of statistics indicating that the useful active life of new exercise equipment in the majority of homes is somewhere under seven days. And all of us probably know somebody who has been saying for several years that "the diet starts tomorrow."

Whatever the reason, Nichiren himself stated repeatedly that the Buddhist practice is "easy to receive, yet difficult to continue." I would have to say that, based on my decades of observation, he was absolutely right. One thing I can tell you however -- I have NEVER seen anyone stop practicing after three consistent months of chanting because they said it didn't "work." It may not have "worked" in the magical way in which they were initially led to believe, but they all knew that it "worked."

Chapter 5

A Focal Point for One's Faith

Although Nichiren advocated the chanting of Nam-myoho-renge-kyo as the mantra which all humans could use to actualize the Buddhist teaching, he did not invent that mantra. It is, as I explained, derived from the Sanskrit Nam prefacing the Lotus Sutra title, Myoho-renge-kyo. There is evidence that Japanese Buddhist priests prior to Nichiren knew of the mantra’s power and may have even chanted it. Additionally, the great Chinese teacher, T’ien-t’ai, who did seminal work on the Lotus Sutra, was also said to have referenced the efficacy of chanting the sutra’s title.

For whatever reason, though, these priests preceding Nichiren did not widely spread the mantra. They may have sensed that it was not their job or perhaps that the time was not appropriate. Whatever the reason, Nichiren was the one who both revealed and aggressively propagated the teaching throughout his life and was continually persecuted as a result. It was toward the end of his life that Nichiren developed and inscribed the Gohonzon, which he repeatedly referred to as the purpose of his life.

Gohonzon is a Japanese word: Go means true and honzon translates as object of worship or veneration. I hate the word true because it implies that everything else is false. This is the curse of all religions -- as soon as they start claiming exclusivity on the truth, there is a backlash or groundswell of resentment from those, much like myself, who resent being told what is true and what is false. Let us figure it out for ourselves. Real life is cast in terms of shades of gray, partial truths and partial falsehoods rather than black and white absolutes. A valid (as opposed to true) religion should couch its teachings in terms that take into account the universe and its infinite variety.

So the use of the word "true" bothers me, and so does the phrase "object of worship." "Worship" immediately calls to mind a transcendent and separate entity. We worship God, we worship spirits and we may even worship saints and sages who have guided us in our spiritual development. It is only natural that, in the act of worshipping, we place something outside of us on a pedestal in order to look up to it. Even the physical act of worship -- on our knees, eyes looking up to a force far greater than we -- carries with it the implication of inferior to superior, and the hope that prayer will be answered from above.

I asked a dear friend of mine, a tenured professor at one of the top universities in America, if there were any translation for honzon other than object of worship. He could only come up with "object of veneration." Same problem. I feel that the word Gohonzon does not translate adequately.

I hope you can see my dilemma. I’m using the word Gohonzon rather than "true object of worship" here because, although it may seem alien, it will not naturally carry with it the linguistic baggage attached to the English phrase. An "object of worship" flies in the face of Nichiren's admonition that we must never seek any of the Buddhist teachings outside ourselves.

I see nothing wrong with acknowledging that something may be greater than ourselves. To think otherwise would be arrogant and small-spirited. What I take issue with is the tendency to separate that greater thing from us and make it distinct from our own existence. Yes, the universe can and will go on without us, but the Buddhist teaching exhorts us to fundamentally realize our part in the cosmic scheme of things. We are part of a whole, a whole that may indeed be greater than the sum of its parts. We are the makers of our own destiny, our karma.

So, what exactly is the Gohonzon and why did Nichiren create it? I'm not sure that this question has a precise answer, and much of what comprises religious faith is to some extent beyond verbalization. Nevertheless, I will suggest a variety of analogies and mythologies that will try to answer the question.

Nichiren's thirteenth century Japan was no different than any other country in any other age. That is, objects of worship were commonly used in the practice of both native Shinto and Buddhism, just as they were in other Asian, Middle Eastern and Western nations. The object of worship is ubiquitous to every religion. Whether it’s a graven image, an icon, or even an internally imagined conception of what the higher power is -- the object of worship provides a focal point for one's faith. It presumably allows a human being to concentrate his or her spiritual energies through a portal of consciousness whereby connection is made, either real or imagined, with the "greater entity" which provides the basis of religious belief.

If Nichiren's teaching were so great, so revolutionary -- if it truly taught of a power within that could be actualized by an all-encompassing mantra -- then why would an object of worship be required at all? I believe the answer lies in large part with the concept of oneness of person and environment as expounded by Buddhism. It is natural for us to view ourselves as sentient entities who spend our lives meandering through an essentially insentient environment. That environment may be filled with other sentient entities such as ourselves -- people, a variety of animals, plants, amoebae, etc. Nonetheless, Buddhism postulates that the environment ebbs and flows, transforms and molds itself around us in accordance with karmic principles.

This is in contrast to our everyday perception. We feel as though we are essentially moving through static surroundings as we undertake our daily activities. We generally feel in control of where we are going and with whom or what we will be interacting. But think about it. Try to imagine that you are another person in your environment, someone in the room or building with you, say. Imagine seeing what they are seeing, and experiencing what they are experiencing. You are part of that person's environment and they are part of yours. The two of you are in completely different moods and that in turn may be generating completely different feelings about that which surrounds you. My point -- and Buddhism's point of view -- is that the environment is individually tailored to each of us, like the finest suit. Our environment, like our life, is not a fixed, static thing; it's in a state of flux. As we change, our environment changes.

Much of that we experience in life comes from the fusion of ourselves with the environment. We tend to relate our experiences to others by talking of relationships and feelings engendered in our interaction with the world around us. Many of us even seek to enhance that experience of the world by seeking to place in our surrounds things such as spouses, children, new cars or swimming pools. As long as we find ourselves living in the phenomenal world, we recognize that an important part of our existence is that which we experience as we interact with our surroundings. This makes it reasonable for a person who desires the experience of religious faith to seek an object of worship with which to engage.

I remember going to the New York World's Fair in 1960. I was only twelve and already an agnostic, but my Dad wanted to see Michaelangelo's Pieta, on loan from the Vatican, and I reluctantly agreed to wait in the two hour line. It was worth it -- to this day, I recall exactly how I felt as I gazed upon this magnificent work of the Virgin Mary cradling Jesus following the crucifixion. Moved as I was, however, I did not leave the fair wanting to convert to Christianity. It was not the religious context that I was reacting to so much as it was the actual work of art. I understand now that great artists, such as Michelangelo, literally pour their lives into their art. When this happens -- and it’s not that often -- what wells up inside the viewer is a reaction to the artist as well as his creation.

Something similar happens in front of the Gohonzon, I feel.

If I were to command you right now to "be angry" or "feel love," you would be unable to comply. The best actors are paid the big bucks supposedly for their ability to convey emotion out of nowhere, but most of us require a thing outside ourselves to connect to and emote with. Enlightenment is the same way. If I ask you to act enlightened or be holy, the results would probably be rather odd. Nichiren created the Gohonzon as the environmental object with which we could each individually interact and gain the experience of Buddhahood welling up within.

Nichiren took his time in conceiving his object or worship. He knew that he did not want it to be a graven image of himself or some other Buddha. Such an object, as I alluded to previously, would engender a belief in something both distinct from and possibly superior to the believer. Additionally, the object of worship should be totally representative of the teaching and Nichiren's teaching was that the invocation of Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, in and of itself, would allow humans in any condition of life to elevate that condition and actualize the Buddhist promise of enlightenment in this life.

Granted, the Gohonzon is one of the add-ons I was talking about earlier -- an essential and critical one -- however it should only be added after one has developed some initial faith in the chanting of Nam-myoho-renge-kyo. The chant alone will work for quite some time. In the beginning, the Gohonzon is not required for a couple of reasons. One is the reality of conspicuous benefit as previous mentioned, which accrues quickly to novice chanters so that they may see the truth of the mantra. The other is that, particularly in the modern day movement of those who practice these Buddhist teachings, it is critical that the mindset of people who receive the Gohonzon be appropriate so they don't mistreat this most respectworthy object of worship. By respect, I don't mean the kind of respect one might pay to something separate and divine. Rather I'm referring to the kind of respect one might have for a precious work of art -- a work that continually inspires one to become a greater and happier human being.

I'm speaking here from the experience of seeing literally tens of thousands of people who were not ready to receive a Gohonzon, receive it and destroy or discard it. These were people who were introduced to Nichiren Buddhism in the 1960s, 70s and 80s by the NSA/SGI organization in the US, which was at the time operating on kind of a quota basis in its proselytizing efforts. By comparison with what happened in the US, political and geographic factors caused new believers in Ghana to have to wait for almost two years before they could receive a Gohonzon. I have not heard of one ever being returned. Thus my point: if you're going to practice this Buddhism, chant first and get the Gohonzon (if you wish) later.

In fact, Nichiren's Gohonzon did not even exist for the first two decades of his preaching. While exhorting people to chant Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, he wanted to get this object of worship thing right. Its significance can’t be overstated.

Chapter 6

The Gohonzon and Bodhisattva Practice

I feel that Nichiren must have been continually working in his subconscious on the “what” and “when” of the Gohonzon. There is evidence to support the notion that the Gohonzon was a work in progress. Each year, the Head Temple of Nichiren Shoshu holds an "airing" ceremony in which many of the Gohonzon inscribed by Nichiren are placed of display for believers. It is clear that his notion of what the Gohonzon should contain evolved as the years passed.

The Gohonzon is usually either in the form of a wooden tablet or a paper scroll -- we in the West generically refer to it as a mandala. The Gohonzon is rectangular with a great deal of writing on it. The writing is almost all in kanji -- Chinese-rooted pictograms, which, for the most part, depict Japanese terms and concepts. However, there is some pure Chinese, as well as Sanskrit, on the mandala. Nichiren, as I mentioned before, wanted to include in his teachings all the languages that were known to him in order to impart a sense of universality and global applicability. It’s important that when we look at the Gohonzon, we see more than just a scroll full of foreign writing.

Written vertically going down the center of the Gohonzon are several kanji that say Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, Nichiren. Around this central phrase are a variety of other pictograms representing characters and events from the Lotus Sutra, including mythological Buddhist characters ranging from Sakyamuni himself to various disciples of his to a variety of demons and protective deities. In Japanese, there is a word which literally translates as "protective gods," but which is understood by both scholars and practicing Buddhists to mean protective forces. When I reference such concepts as gods, devils and demons, I am not proposing the existence of a pantheon of separate entities that somehow holds sway over our lives. Rather, these are metaphors that are used by Nichiren to communicate emotion as well as context.

It is said that Nichiren intended the Gohonzon to be seen, at least on a superficial level, as a symbolic representation of the pivotal event of the Lotus Sutra known as the Ceremony in the Air, also referred to as the Treasure Tower ceremony.

Earlier I mentioned that the two great revelations of the Lotus Sutra were the accessibility of enlightenment to every person, and the reality of Buddhahood as being an eternally existing condition within our lives rather than some destination which we may or may not reach. The first revelation is contained in the second chapter. In general, the first 14 (of 28) chapters are considered to deal with this. In the latter half of the sutra, Sakyamuni reveals the concept of original enlightenment and talks about the mechanism whereby this teaching may spread.

Sakyamuni tells the story of the Ceremony in the Air to convey the magnitude of what he foresees happening. In this ceremony, several of his disciples and believers ask Sakyamuni how this wondrous teaching can be communicated into the future. They are most concerned that Buddhism be transmitted correctly and effectively for later generations. Sakyamuni, recognizing their concern, tells them not to worry, it's all been taken care of. As he does, the entire assemblage of Sakyamuni and his disciples rises into the sky. Sakyamuni declares that the essence of his teaching actually predates him and his enlightenment; it stems from the Buddha or "original enlightenment," which has existed since time without beginning.

In response to his teaching, a wondrous jewel-encrusted treasure tower rises from the earth. Sakyamuni takes his seat at the top of the tower and beside another Buddha, by the name of Taho, who is seated on the opposite side. Taho is considered to be the Buddha whose function is to verify the truth of what Sakyamuni is teaching, which he does.

In response to the disciples' questions about whom among them will be entrusted with this great teaching, the earth opens up. Out spill millions upon millions of Bodhisattvas of the Earth, said to number more than the sands of the Ganges River. They are led by a figure known as Jogyo. These bodhisattvas promise to take the teaching into the Latter Day of the Law, which Sakyamuni prophesied would be about two millennia after his death, and bring the teaching to all humankind. Taho verifies this promise and mission of the Bodhisattvas of the Earth. The entire assembly celebrates and is in awe of what they have just heard.

In his writings, Nichiren often refers to this Ceremony in the Sky and expresses his opinion that he may be fulfilling the function of Jogyo in the Latter Day of the Law. Additionally, he refers to his believers and followers as Bodhisattvas of the Earth.

In the Buddhist view of things, the "bodhisattva" is the highest operational function of life we can strive for. I know -- earlier, I said that we all will become Buddhas. So am I contradicting myself?

In the sutras there is no explanation of the life-condition of the Buddha. There are descriptions of what he looks like and wonderful tales of the miracles he performs, but there's no real talk about what it feels like to be a Buddha. I believe there are two ways we can look at the existence of the Buddha. One is that he is an historical personage, a great teacher who brings the lessons of enlightenment to all human beings. Sakyamuni was the first, and most familiar Buddha. T’ien-t’ai of China is also considered by many to have been a Buddha. Nichiren is thought by many of his disciples, myself included, to have been a Buddha as well.

If we view the Buddha as primarily being a teacher, then it is absurd to suggest that we all be teachers. Who would be the students? Buddhahood, like any other life-condition, may be viewed as a function of life and this is the first of its two meanings.

The second and, to my mind, more important meaning of the Buddha, exists in the ninth consciousness I spoke about earlier. Although we may not function as historical Buddhas in this life, we can still have the same awareness as they. What would be the point of functioning as a Buddha? The teachings have already been given (at least on this planet) and by definition should prove adequate to impact all humankind from now into the infinite future. I suppose if you really wanted to be a teacher like Sakyamuni, you could always chant to be reborn on another planet where the teachings haven't been revealed yet.

The function of bodhisattva is what Nichiren and other Buddhist teachers admonish us to strive for. It is a life-condition underlain by Buddhahood or Buddha awareness and it is no easy feat to achieve. In the Buddhist texts there are many stories of bodhisattvas and their accomplishments, but Nichiren references the story of Fukyo -- which comprises the 21st chapter of the Lotus Sutra -- as that spirit which all Buddhists should try to achieve.

Fukyo’s attitude is the most effective attitude we can have in life. Bodhisattva Fukyo is portrayed in the Lotus Sutra as constantly manifesting, in both word and action, the awareness that all around him possess the Buddha nature. He wanders around, hands clasped in front of him, extolling the virtues of all who surround him, repeating, "I worship the Buddha within you." For his troubles, is continually abused and reviled. Nonetheless, his unwavering commitment to the potential divinity of all human beings is what makes Fukyo the prime example of the spirit all Buddhists should try and enhance within themselves.

I think many of us, stuck in the everyday world with all kinds of jerks -- from our bosses to our spouses, to the person driving the car in front of us -- can at least partially relate to how difficult this kind of awareness may be to achieve.

At this point, I might do well do draw the obvious comparison between the bodhisattva and the Western concept of Samaritan. In terms of function and attitude they are very similar. However, I might make one distinction. It seems to me that the Samaritan acts out of faith in God, and that is all well and very good. Nonetheless, I perceive the Samaritan as having a possible pitfall. He or she may, in the service of others and seeking redemption from without, may turn a blind eye to the God that exists within. Therefore, I can conceive of a situation in which a Samaritan might, despite a life of good works, have a less than perfect sense of his or her wondrous value and thereby not attain fulfillment.

To the contrary, in order to achieve that which the Buddha mandates, the bodhisattva must undertake his or her good works with a real and growing belief in human divinity or Buddhahood. By definition, a bodhisattva must respect the perfection of all human life, including his or her own. My experience in the practice of Buddhism has led me to the conclusion, particularly for those raised in the Judeo-Christian culture, is that this is a fundamental issue that needs to be addressed as Westerners pursue the goals of both Buddhahood and the bodhisattva ethic. Even as one sincerely tries to be of service and good will to others, he or she must remember, "If you think the Law is outside yourself, you are embracing not the Mystic Law but some inferior teaching."

In other words, if you want to make others happy, you'd better get happy yourself.

This is what I love about Buddhism. It is truly predicated on a win-win scenario. Rather than some selfless, austere form of altruism, the bodhisattva must become convinced that what will truly lead others to happiness is the confidence and joy that he or she manifests from within.

The bodhisattva, unlike the Buddha, is described more from the aspect of true spirit than actual function. In this way, Buddhism leaves the door open for each of us to become totally unique individuals. The bodhisattva may be a teacher, a doctor, a mechanic, a farmer, a stripper, or even a used-car salesman. There are no proscriptions to the function of the bodhisattva, although it would seem that obvious pursuits in which one is involved in the taking or degrading of human life would seem to lessen one's opportunity for enlightenment.

Nonetheless, the reason that Sakyamuni, in the second chapter of the Lotus Sutra, predicted the enlightenment of even Devadatta, the man who tried several times to assassinate him, is obviously his effort to clarify that no one lacks the Buddha potential.

Chapter 7

A Personal Relationship with the Gohonzon

With these writings, I hope to give practitioners of Nichiren Buddhism a leg up on what it took me more than twenty years to figure out.

I suspect that anyone hearing about Nichiren for the first time might have a reaction similar to what mine was back in 1968. Hearing about the chant was bizarre enough, and I had trouble seeing the relevance regarding what a thirteenth-century Japanese monk had to say about religion. Nonetheless, the promises given me about the effects of chanting were tantalizing, so I decided to give it a try. In those days, it was quite easy to receive a Gohonzon and after about six weeks of chanting, I received mine.

The individual Gohonzon is a scroll, about 18" x 10", that is unfurled and enshrined in what is called a Butsudan (Buddha box) in the room of your choice. There was a lot of solemnity in the ritual of enshrining my Gohonzon and, after the Gohonzon was in place, a lot of congratulations. But I was fairly unimpressed. As I mentioned, the Gohonzon has a lot of Chinese writing on it and, in those days, my main thoughts in sitting before it and chanting were that this was a truly alien practice. My main feeling was "I can't believe I'm doing this bizarre shit." Nevertheless I continued because there was enough positive reinforcement in terms of what was happening to me.

The Gohonzon definitely felt like something outside of me that I was chanting to. Even though I had long ago given up notions of a transcendent God and my own Jewish roots, I recall being ever so slightly plagued by the commandment, "Thou shalt have no other God before me." I was definitely praying to an alien object of worship, with no ties at all to my Judeo-Christian heritage, and it felt really strange and a little dangerous. At this time, I was totally unaware of Nichiren's admonitions in "On Attaining Buddhahood," concerning the mistake of thinking or perceiving of the Buddha as being outside you. This applied to my friends in the Org as well -- we were all practicing Buddhists, but our mind-set was as Western as it could be. As far as we were concerned, we could have been praying to a big statue of the Buddha instead of a scroll. We were looking for some force from without to deliver the goodies.

For nine years I continued to chant like this. During this time I watched many people fall by the wayside. The Org was giving instruction that truly exacerbated people's sense of imperfection instead of alleviating it. By focusing on the organizational expedient that "you can always do more" (particularly for the Org), people were being led away from the fundamental Buddhist truth that perfection lies within and any attempt to develop it is both praiseworthy and a tremendous source of karmic reward.

In retrospect, I feel most fortunate that I continued to practice. I was definitely sensing that things were changing for the better in my life and, I suppose, the fact that I rather quickly made it into the hierarchy of the organization helped a lot too. I don't know how long I might have kept going in this vein had I been subordinate to some of the bullshit I was handing out as Buddhism at the time.

A few experiences along the way helped change my perceptions about my Buddhist practice and led me to where I am today. There have been internal epiphanies, seemingly independent of any external catalyst, except perhaps the Gohonzon. One such incident happened only a few weeks after I had received my Gohonzon. I had enshrined it in an upstairs porch at my Aunt and Uncle's home in Washington, D.C., where I was living at the time. I was sitting there chanting and suddenly the entire environment changed. The room faded away and I suddenly felt as though I were kneeling outdoors in a Japanese robe in the middle of some field or rice paddy, chanting to my heart's content. Then, after just a few moments, I was transported back to the reality of my porch in Northwest Washington. It was a vivid experience at the time and stays with me to this day -- just like seeing the Pieta or trying to dive off the New York subway.

What that experience did for me at the time was allow me, in a way quite distinct from the acid trip and other synthetic experiences I had had, to at least seemingly touch an alternative reality. In those days I had an intellectual awareness of the concept of the eternal cycle of life expounded by Buddhism, but I had not really bought into it. This experience, however, gave me pause to ponder the possible fact of an earlier lifetime.

I have had one more experience like this. My wife and I were sitting with some friends in a lovely French bistro in Denver. We were discussing the erosion of civil rights we felt was occurring in the country. Anyway, just as in Washington twenty years earlier, there was a great fade-out during which I now felt as if I were a Jew in pre-1939 France, sitting in an outdoor café and discussing the threat of Nazism in a rather blithe and unconcerned fashion. Next thing I knew, I was back in Denver with my friends enjoying my coq au vin.

It seems like when people talk about past lives, they were princes or princesses, historical notables or excruciatingly poor. Neither of my two experiences gave me any insight into either my status or function in a previous life, but they have given me a sense of the unbroken chain that Buddhism says lies at the depths of my existence.

Nichiren writes that, for the most part, we cannot know what we were in a previous existence, but that a true sage can intuit his previous condition from the effects he is experiencing at present. I don't pretend that these past life glimpses -- if indeed that's what they were -- had any more significance than to pleasantly confirm present directions. People who know me will tell you that I'm not really prone toward the mystic or the intuitive. Nonetheless, I mention these experiences as incidents that helped to fundamentally deepen my insight into the Buddhist teachings.

In the spring of 1977, the event occurred that would forever change my life, the way I viewed Buddhism and the way I would approach the Gohonzon. I was working for the Org’s newspaper at the time and had been assigned to write an article explaining Nichiren's writing "The True Entity of Life." I was practicing Buddhism to the best of my ability, but was still fundamentally looking at the Gohonzon as some external source of benefit. "The True Entity of Life" is an exceeding long and complex thesis in which Nichiren responds to a disciple's question about the phrase "true entity of all phenomena" mentioned in the Lotus Sutra. The disciple was a very intelligent priest himself and so Nichiren's response is quite theoretical and convoluted. Suffice it to say that I found the thesis totally incomprehensible. I looked to the translation of a lecture that had been given on this writing by one of the top Japanese lay leaders, hoping that it might provide a clue that might help me understand the "true entity of all phenomena." No such luck -- I was more lost than ever.

Finally, in desperation borne from days of chanting and an approaching deadline, I did the only thing I could think of: I smoked a joint. It was probably the first doobie I'd had in about eight years (no self-respecting leader in the Org would do drugs) and it did the trick. I just didn't care any more. I enjoyed the high and wondered why I'd deprived myself for so long. Then, cognizant of the fact that tomorrow was still the deadline, whether I was high or not, I figured I'd better try and do something. I took the newspaper with Nichiren's writing and the Japanese leader's lecture and spread it all over the living room floor, and started looking for something that might at least give me an angle.

After literally crawling around on the floor for about thirty minutes, freaking out because I couldn't find anything, a sentence jumped off the page that hit me like a sledgehammer. It was from the lecture and it read, "All religions in the past regarded God or Buddha as a sacred, superhuman being." All of a sudden, I realized what I had not comprehended: the notion that there is no distinction between we common mortals and the entities that go by the name of Buddha, God, Messiah, or whatever.

In the Org of the sixties and seventies, there was not much made of the Buddhist concept of immanence. In other words, even though we chanted and were told the Gohonzon represented the enlightened life within, we were still continually admonished to kowtow to the greatness of the Nichiren. More significantly, we were told that, since Nichiren was dead, the only people who could possibly understand the real meaning of his teachings were either the priesthood or the Japanese lay leadership. Sound familiar? Despite it's best intentions (and I'm giving them a lot of credit here), the Org took the path of least resistance trodden by every religious organization since time immemorial, placing itself between its believers and the object of their beliefs as the arbiter of truth.

My one stoned evening with the Gosho shattered that fallacy forever and, from that moment on, my relationship with Nichiren, the Gohonzon and myself was transformed. In that instant, for whatever reason, I finally understood with my entire being the tremendous error of my ways in looking to some kind of outside sage, saint or teacher to provide the answers for my life. I knew in an instant that I must only look to myself -- my own mind, my own feelings, and my own potentials -- for salvation. This isn't to say that I immediately declared invalid all that which I was receiving in the way of external input. It is to say that I gained a fundamental trust in myself that I had never experienced before -- a taste, if you will, of the enlightenment Buddhism had been promising.

This newfound trust was not just a feeling. It was an awareness from which I began to take action. The first action was in writing a great study article on "The True Entity of Life." My insights resonated with people and, all of a sudden, I became more and more in demand to lecture on this and other of Nichiren's teachings. This marked the beginning of my rise to the top of the Org study department and set the stage for my second stay in Japan. Whatever it was I had "cracked" about the Buddhist teachings, it seemed real and permanent and indeed allowed me to read and understand discourses and theses that, just a week earlier, were cloaked in mystery and esoterica to me. It was almost like magic.

The other thing that happened was in my direct and personal relationship to the Gohonzon. In gaining this newfound awareness and trust in my own understanding, I immediately did something that was verboten in the Buddhist organization at the time. I began to seriously question the authority and direction of its leadership. I did not argue with their intent or their strategies. Rather, I simply realized they had very little to say to me. What I needed I had derived from Nichiren himself, both in his writings and his object of worship.

The line that I must seek guidance from my seniors in faith no longer held sway over me because I, for the first time, truly understood the admonitions of "On Attaining Buddhahood." All these years, I had been seeking, and been encouraged to seek, wisdom from without and suddenly I realized I contained all the wisdom within. Let's put it this way: I felt myself starting to cross that bridge I first glimpsed in 1968. Sure, I would have to make tremendous efforts, watch out for the pitfalls of arrogance and complacency, and make sure my thoughts and actions were rooted in the world of Bodhisattva. However, I could finally trust the gyroscope of my own internal faith and wisdom to keep me on course toward the kind of life I wanted, the other side of the bridge.

You have no idea how liberating this was and the final stroke of that emancipation began to occur as I sat before my Gohonzon, and it continues to this day. Without the imagined figure of some organizational leader inserted between me and the object of worship, telling me how I should chant and what my aspirations should be, I began to make a much more direct connection to that scroll.

I am not saying that, in ten years of chanting, I had not felt anything before. Focus on anything long enough as a meditation point or object of worship and you will naturally develop a relationship with it. Whereas I originally viewed the Gohonzon as something strange and definitely separate from me, over the first few years of my practice I became accustomed to chanting to it and enjoyed the relationship I was developing.

Sometimes, when I was suffering, I would get really mad at it and blame it for my troubles, very much like you would rage at an unseen God as the source of your pain. Intellectually, I knew the law of karma made very clear who was the real source of my difficulties, but there is often a great disparity between what you know and what you feel. Other times, when I was really in need, I would face the Gohonzon in the most respectful and submissive way possible, begging for the money or love or sense of mission that would ultimately fulfill me. Still other times, probably few and far between, I would sit and chant with a heart overflowing with appreciation for my life and what I had already received.

Even before my great realization in 1977, I knew enough to acknowledge that life can always be worse and you should appreciate what fortune you have.

I always, or generally, enjoyed chanting, but much of it was rote and much of what was going on in my mind was more rambling than I cared to admit. This was because I thought I was supposed to be concentrating on that scroll out there; I didn't know enough to be paying attention to my mind.

In his writings, Nichiren claimed to have placed his own life in the Gohonzon. As I began to chant following my great awakening, I decided to take him literally. I decided to face the Gohonzon as though I were facing Nichiren himself. I decided that my communication with Nichiren would have to be telepathic. I would throw my thoughts over to the Gohonzon and literally listen to my mind to see if anything came back. You know what? It worked. It continues to work to this day.

Perhaps you can understand why this has proven so liberating. No longer was I dependent on anything or any person other than the Gohonzon itself to provide me the feedback I might need in terms of making life decisions. This does not mean that I had no use for the external world and the good people in it. It just means that finally I became fully able to trust my own judgment, knowing that it was coming from a place both objective and internal.

There comes a point where language truly fails to convey that which we wish to communicate. I’m not advising you to "accept Nichiren into your life" or "praise Buddha.” I am talking about a completely subjective interpretation from which I extrapolate nothing special or universal. First of all, for all I know, I am the only person who has had this experience. God knows there have been enough people, Buddhist and non-Buddhist alike that have looked at me somewhat askance when I have mentioned that I feel like I'm dialoging with Nichiren. Secondly, this type of experience is not any kind of prerequisite for Buddhist faith in general. It is just my experience. I present it only to give you my sense of how the Gohonzon and my relationship to it has evolved for me.

I might also note that I do not view Nichiren as my savior. He's more like a good buddy. The sutras teach that the Buddha has the attributes of parent, teacher and sovereign and, over the years, Nichiren has been all that to me. More importantly, though, my sense of Nichiren, which has grown out of my chanting to the Gohonzon, has led me to believe that he was really a good guy. Not divine (except in what he taught) and not supernatural -- just a man who was so tapped into the deepest levels of consciousness that he was able to make them practicable for all humankind at a conscious level, communicating even across time and space through his creation of the Gohonzon.

Chapter 8

Theoretical Underpinnings of the Gohonzon, and Perceiving the Nature of Your Own Being

As we know from all the Buddhist teachings, the essential nature of our own being is the Buddha nature. Nichiren described the Gohonzon in a writing entitled "The True Object of Worship for Perceiving the Nature of Your Own Being." This concept of "perceiving the nature of your own being" is known as kanjin.

The High Priest of Nichiren Shoshu gave a sermon on this concept of kanjin several years ago, and talked about how it applies in daily life. This is something I appreciate because all too often Buddhism -- as well as most other religions -- presents the theoretical as something for consideration rather than action. What I have always loved about Nichiren's teachings is that they are explicitly clear and elegantly simple about daily life. Other than encouraging us to strive to be Bodhisattvas, the teachings are remarkably devoid of moralizing.

The priest explained that, from the Buddhist perspective, life is a little like a movie. The movie derives meaning based on the continuity of individual frames flowing at 24 still pictures per second. A single frame will not allow us to fathom the story. Similarly, the flow of life through time reveals its infinite permutations and provides us with richness and meaning. Even so, in life it might be most useful to be able to periodically “freeze-frame” our existence in order to pinpoint and analyze all that is happening at any given moment. That way, we would be better able to recognize both the effects that are occurring to us and the causes that are simultaneously arising, begetting yet more effects, at any given instant. This wisdom would better enable us to direct the path of our karma or our destiny.

We can freeze-frame the flow of a movie through good digital technology and a pause button. Life, however, is not so malleable. Through consciousness and sleep, through good times and bad, life continues its relentless motion. So much is going on that it is impossible to grasp all that is happening at any given moment, let alone analyze and create a strategy to deal with all the parameters. And how much worse is it for us now than, say, in Nichiren's time? Between the printed word, television, computers and the Internet (not to mention the number of people with whom modern technology puts me in touch each day), I have more input in the course of a week than Nichiren may have had in his entire life.

The High Priest’s point was that the purpose of the Gohonzon is precisely this: to allow us to cut through all the distractions and focus on the moment of life. In perceiving this moment at the deepest levels, we are able to tap the Buddha wisdom inherent in each of us and determine what to do next.

From moment to moment, everything changes -- our circumstances, events, and even the truth. It is critical to always check and verify what variations may or may not have occurred. This is why the practice of Buddhism is a daily one. Each day brings a new set of realities. We must consistently tap into our Buddha wisdom to accurately and flexibly deal with what confronts us today.

For me, tapping my Buddha wisdom -- or freeze-framing my life -- is manifested as the conscious experience of directly communicating with Nichiren. As I said in the last chapter, my chanting to the Gohonzon has literally become an ongoing dialogue with the Daishonin. While this has been my subjective experience, I submit that anyone chanting to the Gohonzon will, over a period of time, have a similarly transformative experience. The Gohonzon gradually evolves from an alien-looking piece of paper out there to an indispensable tool by which one gains insight "in here." It doesn't fly through the air, glow in the dark or have lightning bolts shooting out from it. Nevertheless, any person who approaches Nichiren's object of worship with even the slightest modicum of respect will be pleasantly surprised (and I mean surprised) by the relationship that develops.

I consider the Gohonzon from two perspectives. One is that it is definitely the most distinctive and perhaps only entirely original part of Nichiren's teachings. Nam-myoho-renge-kyo had been known, and perhaps even chanted before, but his invention of the Gohonzon was totally a product of his own enlightenment. The other is that I know for a fact the “object” known as the Gohonzon provides the greatest hurdle any Westerner has to leap in considering the practice of Nichiren's teachings. Its theoretical underpinnings are complex, obscure and alien as hell.

The theoretical underpinnings of the Gohonzon can be found in a concept known as “three thousand realms in a momentary state of existence,” which warrants explanation.

T’ien-t’ai (also referred to as Chih-I) was a Chinese priest who took the sutras -- the teachings of Shakyamuni -- and developed, perhaps even originated a theoretical construct about the nature of reality that goes far beyond the poetry and prose of Shakyamuni. I have no idea how he did this, but in some way T’ien-t’ai recognized essential universal truths in what Shakyamuni preached and codified these teachings into an elegant explanation of how things work. This theory is known as the "three thousand realms in a momentary state of existence." Nichiren described his Gohonzon as being the actualization of this principle. It is important to note that Nichiren's enlightenment is, to a great extent, constructed on the foundation of T’ien-t’ai’s teachings.

T’ien-t’ai was first trying to convey a life-philosophy of astonishing breadth and depth and secondly trying to quantitatively break it down into easy to understand modules or components. It was not his intent to limit his description of the Buddhist view of life to a simple 3,000 items. Rather, he wanted to convey the complexity of life and, more importantly, how that complexity encompassed by the Buddhist practice. The number 3,000 is a product that comes from multiplying ten times ten times ten times three. Each of these factors represents a theory about how Buddhism views life -- and these are what I want to explore next.

Keep in mind that, just as there are only six numbers in a lottery, there are literally thousands of permutations of those numbers. So too, in dealing with the following theories, realize there are endless ways in which they can be juggled and combined.

The Ten Worlds

The first factor ten stands for a theory known as the "ten worlds." These are proposed states of existence in which every human being may find him or herself. The term "world" is quite appropriate because the Buddhist view suggests that your internal condition has an effect upon the way you both perceive and experience the world around you. Therefore, Buddhism is actually trying to define a number of different places in which you might find yourself. These places, unlike specific rooms like kitchens, offices or bedrooms, tend not to have rigidly defined boundaries. I know people who've driven themselves crazy trying to figure out which world they're in at any given moment. Please try to refrain from engaging in this exercise. The ten worlds are meant as descriptive terms that try to convey the breadth of the human condition.

The ten worlds are: hell, hunger, animality, anger, humanity, rapture, learning, realization, bodhisattva, and Buddhahood. Although some of these may be self-evident by name, I'll attempt to give a brief description of each one, if you remember that I make no claim to being complete. As with everything I write, the promise is to strive for accuracy, not completeness. I hope this doesn't sound like a cop-out but I know people who've written term papers on the ten worlds and T’ien-t’ai himself wrote multi-volume commentaries on the three thousand realms. I'm trying to make sure the sheer length of this tome alone doesn't keep anyone from reading it, hence my assertion that what is contained herein is introductory and not meant to be taken as the last word.

Hell is the life condition of helplessness and hopelessness. We have all known it at one time or another. It may appear in response to something such as the death of someone dear or some kind of physical debilitation. Hell may also be a place into which we move ourselves emotionally or spiritually resulting from things such as depression or addiction.

Whatever the cause -- and please remember that I use this word in the context of unending karma, i.e. the cause is actually the effect of another cause -- the condition of hell feels like shit. One in such a condition does not need to hear threats about the afterlife because he or she knows that there is truly hell right here on earth.

Hunger is pretty much the spiritual extension of the physical need with which we are all familiar. Rather than hunger for food, it may be hunger for any number of things such as power, sex or material goodies. Modern-day America is a wonderful place to pursue the urges of this particular world, although I'm not convinced such pursuit lends itself to the most fulfilling karma. Shakyamuni taught that the source of much human suffering lies in living a life rooted in the "three poisons" of avarice, anger and stupidity. Avarice would certainly correspond to the condition found in the world of hunger. This is a condition that does not derive from reason or some noble human function, but rather from an instinctive drive similar to that of physical hunger itself. In and of itself, hunger is not a bad thing. It helps us to satiate a very real need for many of the necessities of life, be they food, sex, clothing, shelter, whatever. The danger of the second world lies in its tendency to be rapacious and all consuming.

As one might suspect, animality is a condition that, according to Buddhist thought, animals never transcend. In the human condition, animality can be seen in the instinctual needs people may often indulge to protect themselves. A perfect example might be found in the kind of boss many of us have had: the person who lords it over those who he or she considers to be beneath him while cowering before those perceived as superiors.

The world of anger can be viewed in the service of both lower and higher life functions. There is the kind of anger that derives from feeling like we are in hell, or from having a gnawing hunger for any number of things, or from the animality that tells us we must crush those who would oppose us. This kind of anger, stemming as it does from the lower three worlds, is almost certain to land us in hot water, karma-wise. It can re-entrench our lower life conditions and thereby serve to prolong whatever suffering created it in the first place.

On the other hand, anger can stem from a higher function of nobility of desire for justice. The anger at a murdering dictator or even run-of-the-mill killer can be seen to derive from a profound sense of empathy for the victims and desire for human justice. On a more mundane scale, anger at people who refuses to help themselves and elevate their condition can be rooted in a higher condition of humanity.

Anger may often serve to enhance the life condition if either ourselves or someone else. Even psychologists consider the first flickers of anger over past traumas to be therapeutic in opening the doors to greater emotional breakthroughs. However, this is more complex than it might seem because that anger, righteous though it may be, should not act in the service of the lower three worlds or just be expressed for its own sake.

I may be getting abstract here, so let me explain from my own personal experience. My father was murdered in 1987 and it made me very angry. I was so angry that, even though Buddhism tells me that all human beings are potential Buddhas and human life is the most respectworthy thing in the universe, I had trouble extending that to my father's killer. I wanted him to die. My desire for revenge and self-protection made me feel that punishment meted out on the basis of an eye for an eye was completely justified and rational. Even today, many years later, I still often feel that way.

Nonetheless, my prayer and heart both tell me that, fundamentally, Buddhism is correct. Not only is human life divine, but also the mechanism of the universe will eventually make sure that all causes have their effects, even if we do not see it. We human beings do not have to make ourselves instruments of universal justice. We do not have to compound the crime of murder by committing it ourselves. I am not crusading here -- I am just trying to explain my personal experience of how the sword of anger cuts two ways.

The next rung on the ladder of the Ten Worlds is humanity. This signifies the unique attributes that attend to being human, such as making judgments, exercising control over our instincts and seeking harmony with the environment. It is unique in how it defines us as human beings, but it is also mundane in the way it sometimes feels. Did you ever drive down the street in your car, not particularly thinking about anything and just routinely passing the time? That's kind of like how the world of humanity "feels." Nothing special, yet even a chimpanzee would have trouble doing it for a hundred miles.

Rounding out what are sometimes referred to as the lower six paths is the world of rapture, always a favorite of mine. Pretty much self-explanatory, this condition can arise from any number of circumstances that seem to occur all too rarely for most of us. Whether it's victory in a game, an A in a class, a promotion at work, or the kind of giddy joy that comes from a new love, rapture is something that we all truly enjoy and spend much of our time trying to attain.

The unfortunate thing about rapture, as you can probably tell from its position among the Ten Worlds, is that it is not that which Buddhism would have us ultimately aspire to and it tends to be rather short-lived. In fact, rapture, whether it last for seconds, minutes, hours, or even a few weeks, tends to live more in memory than it does in actual experience. This is why rapture, along with the five worlds beneath it is considered one of the lower six paths.

Essentially, the conditions of life that I have just explained -- hell through rapture -- are dependent on our interaction with the environment. They rise and fall according to circumstance. These worlds may be where we seem to spend most of our time, but they were viewed by T’ien-t’ai as being situations in which the human being is quite dependent on external influence.

In describing the upper four worlds, Buddhist teachers tried to give a sense of how humans can find the underlying truths that govern reality. These can help to make life an experience that is more independent from the vicissitudes of daily existence and thereby more free to seek its own direction without wavering.

Learning, the seventh world, is pretty self-explanatory. Human beings seek to elevate their lives by acquiring knowledge and wisdom, but the two are not necessarily the same. How many times do we meet somebody who, although not particularly smart in the book-learning sense of the word, is wise to the ways of the world. This distinction is fairly important in Buddhism. Learning about life in order to dispel the innate darkness within our being, i.e. seeking enlightenment, is the noblest endeavor of all. Unfortunately, the world of learning may also pose one of the greatest pitfalls to our enlightenment as it leads quite naturally into the next world.

The world of realization is that which we might think naturally transpires as a result of our efforts in learning. It is a wondrous condition wherein all sorts of epiphanies are experienced. These may be as simple as coming to realize, through trial and error, that cars really do break down less when you change the oil. On the other hand, they may be as complex as recognizing, through prolonged meditation, that the key to phenomenal manifestation lies in the twelve-linked chain of dependent origination. Realization is a kind cerebral, spiritual rapture. Unlike the lower world of rapture, it essentially stems from a self-motivated learning process, and can be much more long-lived.

Herein lies the problem. In the second chapter of the Lotus Sutra, one of Shakyamuni's disciples, a brilliant man by the name of Sharihotsu, is overjoyed to find out that even he, an intellectual, can attain Buddhahood. For years Shakyamuni taught that those in the worlds of learning and realization -- referred to as people of the “two vehicles” -- could not become enlightened. This is because such people, by dint of their cosmic realizations attained through the learning process of long study and meditation, actually think they already are enlightened. People trapped in these two worlds can become easily deluded by their own comprehension. They start to believe that their own cosmic understanding is the key to all existence.

How many gurus, past and present, have fallen prey to this kind of delusion? Many names come to mind.

What Shakyamuni taught, and what both T’ien-t’ai and Nichiren stressed, was that the ninth world, bodhisattva, was the condition in which the portal to enlightenment or Buddhahood is truly opened all the way. I gave the description of bodhisattva earlier so will not bore you again with it here, except to reiterate my point about how difficult a life-condition it is to maintain, despite all our knowledge and good intentions. The key to functioning consistently in the world of bodhisattva lies in the condition of Buddhahood.

"Ah hah," you say, "if you must tap into the world of Buddhahood to function as a bodhisattva and if bodhisattva is rung number nine while Buddhahood is at the top of the Ten World ladder, then how can we resolve this paradox? I'm being told that the world of bodhisattva gains us entrance to the world of Buddhahood, but that tapping into my own Buddhahood is the only way to maintain the condition of bodhisattva. Sounds like a Catch-22, or at the very least a Zen puzzle, to me."

In the 16th Chapter of the Lotus Sutra, Shakyamuni tried to clarify that Buddhahood is not a destination -- not at the top of a ladder or pyramid. It is and has always been at the core of our being and, as such, is only waiting to have a little illumination thrown upon it. In fact, Shakyamuni himself stated, on several occasions that, "the Buddha makes his appearance in the lower nine worlds for the sake of suffering mankind." I believe, and T’ien-t’ai postulated, that he was not only speaking of himself as an historical entity. Rather, the world of Buddhahood must be viewed as the support structure of our entire existence.

Buddhahood is not at the apex of existence. It is the earth upon which the ladder or pyramid of the lower nine worlds rest. Buddhahood is that entity which under girds all reality.

Now I'm getting worried that not only have I confused you with all this talk of ladders and pyramids and life-condition hierarchies, I have also strayed too far from my original intent which is to explain Nichiren's object of worship, the Gohonzon. The Gohonzon, as I mentioned before, is the biggest conceptual stumbling block that the novice Buddhist practitioner -- or even the person seriously delving into Nichiren's teachings for intellectual edification -- has to traverse. Therefore, I am trying to present as complete a theoretical underpinning as I can.

My only purpose is to have the reader recognize that there was a lot of heady thought behind that which Nichiren created. These theories, however, do not need to be intensely analyzed, much less mastered by all practitioners. If that were a necessity of the Buddhist practice, the universal applicability of Nichiren's practice goes right out the window. There are many people who do not have either the inclination or the ability to understand all this talk of Ten Worlds and Three Thousand Realms, and that is precisely why the Gohonzon is so significant. The Gohonzon “works” even if you don’t understand its philosophical and religious origins.

Chapter 9

Theoretical Underpinnings of the Gohonzon, Part Two

Remember how I talked about the futility of trying to figure out which one of the Ten Worlds you might be in at any given moment? The theory of mutual possession explains that the Ten Worlds operate as a flowing continuum. Life is not a static process.

You may wake up one morning feeling on top of the world (Rapture). You and your lover had a wondrous night and the day couldn't hold any more promise. You're going off to a job you love and while driving to work (Humanity) you reflect on the past day (a little more Rapture). Traffic is bad (combination of Hell and Anger) and you arrive at the office a little out of sorts. Snapping at the receptionist (Animality), you're off to see the boss (some more Animality in the opposite direction) who informs you that a merger has resulted in you being laid off (big time Hell). You leave work distraught, but on the hour's drive home you calm down (Humanity), consider the fact that this may be a great opportunity to allow you to write the book you've always wanted to (Learning and Realization) and spend some time with your paramour (Hunger). Upon arriving home earlier than usual you find him or her in the arms of another (really big time Hell). Out of your Anger, you decide to either kill yourself (ultimate Hell) or fight to make the world a better place where this kind of bad stuff doesn't happen to people (Bodhisattva).

I guess I was a little more facetious than I needed to be above, but the point is that in the course of a given day we all traverse the lower nine worlds. If we practice Buddhism, making contact with our own Buddha-nature through that practice, we get to experience all ten. This fluidity of experience, of touching bases with all the various possibilities of our consciousness even in the space of a single day, is what the concept of mutual possession is trying to define.

The theory is that no matter what condition we may find ourselves in, there is the eternal potential to be in a completely different state in the matter of an instant.

The second aspect of mutual possession is simply an extension of the first, only more long-term. What it postulates is that, even as we crisscross the Ten Worlds during the course of our daily existence, we have a core world toward which we tend to gravitate. In other words, even as we experience hell, anger, humanity et al in our day to day existence, we define ourselves by the roles we play.

For instance, a junkie scoring some dope might be experiencing Rapture from his or her core existence in Hell. A business mover and shaker looking over the day's stock market activities may be manifesting Humanity from a central condition of Animality. A professor desperately wanting acknowledgement on the basis of a publication might be viewed as temporarily residing in Hunger while the worlds of Learning and Realization are the hallmark of his or her existence. In other words, this view of mutual possession distinguishes the entire range of our daily experience from the perspective of the long-term function we are performing.

Ultimately, we all strive to upgrade that long-term function in whatever way we can. Most junkies would like to get clean and even the most opportunistic businessmen eventually graduate from "he who dies with the most toys wins" to "you can't take it with you."

If we can tap our eternal Buddha nature within to manifest the long-term function of Bodhisattva, then we are free to play whatever role we wish secure in the knowledge that whatever causes we make will yield the greatest rewards. We will always experience all ten of the Ten Worlds, because that is life, but what we will gain is the confidence that the mutual possession of those Ten Worlds guarantees that the awareness of our own Buddhahood or enlightenment is what we will always return to.

Mutual possession represents the second “ten” in the formula 10x10x10x3=3000 realms. The first ten are the individual Ten Worlds, each multiplied by the second ten, namely all Ten Worlds as potential.

The final factor of ten that gets us to one thousand is known as the Ten Factors. I'm sorry that with all the factors and aspects and realms and worlds, these names of these theories get a little redundant in their wording. The problem is, to some extent, with the language. Remember that all these concepts were originally created as pictograms that sometimes may literally tell an entire story. When the pictograms are translated into English, they lose something in the translation. That loss is what I'm trying to compensate for as I attempt an in-depth explanation of each concept. Unfortunately, I know it sounds a little muddy. Nonetheless, if you'll just take the time to read what the theories are actually proposing, I think you'll they are both distinct and profound.

The Ten Factors are appearance, nature, entity, power, influence, internal cause, external cause, latent effect, manifest effect and consistency from beginning to end. The Ten Factors don't lend themselves to the same kind of individual description as the Ten Worlds because, rather than being conditions unto themselves, they are elements by which those conditions actually manifest in reality. I like to think of the Ten Factors as a definition of how an existence manifests and functions in time and space. Let me expand on this a bit.

Appearance, nature and entity form the foundation of the Buddhist description of that which appears in reality. These correspond to another very important Buddhist term known as the "three truths." These are easiest to understand if we apply this triad to human beings, although it could just as easily apply to other living things, as well as insentient and even non-living objects. Appearance is perhaps the easiest to describe because it is the most obvious--it is what we see, hear, touch, smell and feel. It can be said that appearance is the most important of the ten factors. This is because, when something appears to us, not only do we acknowledge that it exists, we also usually have a sense of what to do about it.

In the case of the human being, appearance is certainly a great clue to the existence we are dealing with. "What you see is what you get," "appearances are deceiving," love at first sight," are all examples of the kind of stock we put in a person's appearance. Nevertheless, there is also the unseen nature of the person -- the potential he or she has to look different, behave differently, or feel and believe differently than they do now. We all change -- we are awake, we are asleep, we are attractive, we are a mess, we are in Hell, we are in Rapture. Once again, the factor of "nature" defines our potential to be something other than what we appear to be at present and that is critical from the long-term perspective of things.

Entity is the essence of the thing itself -- its humanness, its plantness, its rockness. A rock appears as a rock, yet over millions of years has the nature or potential to be gravel. Whatever it may be, however, it will always be rock. Similarly, look at yourself. You probably look very little like you did twenty years ago or you will twenty years from now. You, in all likelihood, feel quite differently now than you did yesterday at this time and will tomorrow at this time. We are all eternally changing and yet, throughout our lifetime, there is one thing that remains the same -- we still think of ourselves as "me" and that is our entity.

The "me" I thought of when I was five years old feels no different than the "me" I think of now or the "me" I will connect with hopefully at ninety. I'm not saying that I haven't or will not change. I am saying that I will never change into someone else. The entity of Cris Roman is "me." Buddhism would say that the core of "me," the fundamental entity of my entity is the Buddha, and Nichiren would say that the Buddha's entity is Nam-myoho-renge-kyo. Chanting that mantra equates to calling forth the deepest aspect of my being over and over -- eventually, just like a lost puppy, that part of me that is connected to all the other entities of the universe comes running.

Having now described the factors that give me form and potential, the fourth and fifth factors of power and influence describe my existence in space. My appearance and nature stem from my entity, which derives power from the universal essence with which I am one. Through my existence that power exerts influence into my environment. Think of ripples spreading out from a stone thrown in a pond and you'll get the picture. Now, multiply that by the billions of existences on this planet and you'll start to get some idea of the myriad intersecting influences in our environment and why they wreak such havoc in our everyday lives.

The ripples spreading out in the pond are not only perceived in terms of space but are also viewed over time. That is how we, at least in this physical universe, perceive reality -- in space and time. I cannot say, "I will meet you at two p.m." and not specify where, or the meeting will most likely not transpire. Similarly, "I will meet you at the motel" may leave me equally unfulfilled. We need to specify a locus in both time and space for our activities or they may not yield much fruit. Internal cause, external cause, latent effect and manifest effect are the four factors that describe the activity of an existence in time.

Recall that much earlier I pointed out that Buddhism teaches the law of simultaneous cause and effect and yet the quandary is that we perceive cause and effect to be separated by time, often great amounts of time. These four factors are what provide some insight into that seeming paradox. When we internally initiate a cause, we simultaneously create its latent effect.

However, all we generally see is the external cause and its manifest effect. This is the reality of our existence and yet much of it is not readily perceivable -- many effects have not yet made their appearance. This is critical. Buddhism explains quite clearly that karma is created through thought, speech and action. Particularly in the case of thought, one might think that no real cause is being created since nothing has necessarily been "done." Nonetheless, Buddhism explains that even the smallest internal cause creates latent effect so what becomes important is the continual awareness that nothing arising from our innate power is without influence and subsequent result.

I'm not saying this to get everyone paranoid and think they have to exercise some kind of Gestapo-like mind-control over themselves to keep from getting bad effects. The point here is that we should not rationalize our negative thoughts or feelings too much. Obviously, thinking about killing someone isn't as serious as actually doing it or even giving voice to it. Nonetheless, it's still not particularly healthy. Instead of clamping down on or suppressing our thoughts, what Buddhism would encourage us to do is develop a healthier, wiser life-condition wherein our thoughts become less worthy of censor and more worthy of productive external cause making. This in turn will reward us with only the most fruitful manifest effects.

Finally, consistency from beginning to end is that factor which describes how existence -- from its initial appearance to its manifest effect -- will ultimately reflect a particular condition of life. In simple terms, those who exist in hell and through time and space exert hellish influence will definitely receive hellish effects. Those in any other life condition will similarly reap rewards consistent with that condition. Don't simplify this too much.

Recalling the principle of mutual possession will clarify that no one, during the course of even a single day, makes causes from only one certain place. The key is to consciously try and shift our condition from lower to higher so that, in the final analysis, the positive outweighs the negative.

Also, please recall that because of the "time" element of the ten factors, one should never be surprised if the factor of "consistency from beginning" to end isn't always immediately apparent. This explains why so many of the S.O.B.s in this world never seem to get their just desserts. Don't worry -- unless they've learned how to live in an alternate universe, the ten factors will nail them in the end.

The final element that goes into producing the Three Thousand Realms in a Momentary State of Existence is known as the Three Realms of Existence. When I was working with the Org study department, I recall that at one time we translated this as the "Three Principles of Individualization." However, I've looked through many publications trying to determine if that translation was ever actually used and have been unable to find it.

If I had my own way, I would come up with new and different translations of all these concepts that did more to convey their breadth and depth in a more poetic and comprehensive manner. Unfortunately, my dilemma here is that, for those readers who may have a nodding acquaintance with Nichiren's Buddhism, it is important that I reference terms with which they may be familiar.

The Three Realms of Existence essentially describes three principles by which individual identity is established vis-à-vis the world around us. The first principle is known as the five components of form, perception, conception, volition and consciousness. What it expounds is that moment-by-moment and day by day we temporarily gather together and bind within ourselves both an internal consciousness and perception of external phenomena that serve to individuate us.

Simply put, what we see and experience combined with how we feel at any given moment moves us to act in a manner that defines us individually. It is critical to remember that over the course of a lifetime, and sometimes only a week, we behave as very different individuals. If you've been able to follow (and I pray that you have) even a little of my explanation, perhaps you'll recall that the Mutual Possession of the Ten Worlds explains both the temporary nature of the way in which the five components gather and the potential they have for change. The five components emanate from the life-condition or World we may be dwelling in at any given moment.

Perhaps an example would be appropriate here. It's just a minor incident, but one I have always recalled in my own life as an example of how mysteriously the five components can combine and transform over a short period of time.

One time in 1976, I was fed up with my situation with The Org. I hated Los Angeles, I felt stagnant in my personal life and I particularly thought the kind of small-minded nit-picking going on in my office would be the death of me. The futility of what I perceived, combined with the way I was feeling, led me to precipitously write a letter of resignation and put it on my editor's desk. It was a little before lunch and I was feeling so depressed that I went home to take a nap. Three hours later I awoke with a start and, in a panic, thought, "What have I done?"

My mood, my thoughts, and my ideas on what to do about them were 180 degrees from where they had been before my nap. It was not just a matter of some much-needed rest, it was a total realignment of how I was looking at things. Luckily, I rushed back to my office to find that, as the flake that I knew him to be, the editor had not yet returned from his regular six hour lunch and the letter was still unopened where I had left it.

Other than an uneventful nap, nothing had transpired to change my essential situation. Somehow the five components kind of rearranged themselves into a more optimistic point of view while I was sleeping. I know it sounds like a silly little story, but twenty-three years later I still recall it as a major experience of the extent to which one's sense of oneself can literally transform in a heartbeat (or quick nap).

So, the way in which we perceive, conceive and act upon things is one of the principles by which we define ourselves as individuals. The second realm is translated, really badly, as the principle of living beings or social environment. This one, just by dint of the bad English, took me years to figure out. I'll try to save you some time.

If you are in a place with other people, your perceptions of that place, compared with those others, may be totally different. You're in their environment while they're in yours -- you see shadows where they see light, etc. Not only are your physical positions different, this individuation also has to do with the different ways in which the five components gather within you as well as the different life-conditions you each manifest.

Buddhism is pointing out that the second way in which we individuate ourselves is in interaction with other people -- the social environment. This is not simply a comparison of ourselves to them -- she's happier than I, he has more money than me, or they're all better looking. Rather, it is testimony to the fact that the greatest rewards and sorrows of our existence have their source in the human interactions we experience.

How many people attempt to define themselves by what happened to them as children? How many people, upon being recognized for their great achievements, hasten to point out that their greatest joy is what they find with their friends and family? Human beings, frail and temporal though we may be, derive a great sense of our common humanity and individuality through the way they interact with others, in both contrasting and complementary ways. Therefore, T’ien-t’ai hastened to point out that in addition to how we internally and temporarily gather the five components with ourselves, another definition of what makes us individual is how we literally rub up against and create causes with other human beings.

The third and final realm of existence is the principle of the land or the environment. Even as we coalesce the five components within ourselves and interact with other human beings, the place in which we undertake our activities is of primary importance.

An example of how we consider ourselves individuals based on the land might be found in the fact that we consider ourselves earthlings. Many of the people reading this consider themselves Americans. The environment (by which I means surroundings containing both sentient and insentient objects) becomes a primary source of our identity. On a more personal level, the environment over time tends to reflect the fundamental world or life condition we exist in. This goes back to the concept of fusion between self and the environment that I talked about earlier.

If we can come to truly grasp the concept that the environment is a real extension of our being, then the concept of enlightenment and Buddhahood becomes much easier to grasp. For one thing, it becomes clear that we do not have to look for some other place (be it heaven or hell) to reap our life's rewards. The sutras encourage us to create the Buddha land right here on earth, where we live. This is not a place of flowing milk and honey with beautiful gardens where never is heard a discouraging word. It is a place wherein every thought, speech and action we make as individuals is synchronized with opportunities without.

As a result, we find we are able to actualize our true human potential and, like those pebbles upon a placid pond, radiate ripples out through the environment that literally impact the world. The enlightenment develops as we actually grow aware of the fact that we are doing this. How many of us, when asked what life is truly all about, might answer something along the lines of "I want to make a difference."

The wonder of the theory of the Three Thousand Realms in a Momentary State of Existence is that it clarifies how each individual life has the ability to develop the highest possible condition. Human life then extends that condition into the world around it by dint of its interaction within time and space and, ultimately, transforms that world into the Buddha land.

It was within the context of this grand theory that Nichiren believed he found the formula by which every man and woman could gain supreme awareness and happiness. The only problem lay in how to apply it -- how do you take the wondrous depiction of the Treasure Tower Ceremony, the elegant comprehensiveness of the Three Thousand Realms and render it all practicable?

The lovely prose of the Lotus Sutra may only be available to those who first, are able to read and second, are able to comprehend Sakyamuni's profound and complex metaphors. T’ien-t’ai's theories are probably only accessible to those in the seventh and eighth worlds of Learning and Realization. The meditative levels needed to comprehend all the various worlds, factors, realms and principles and assimilate them into one all-encompassing worldview would be very high indeed.

What Nichiren wanted, more than anything else, was to create a teaching that could be handed down to every sort of man, woman and child. Hence, the Gohonzon. He already knew that Nam-myoho-renge-kyo was the internal component by which each human being could affirm the righteousness of the Lotus Sutra and the correctness of the Three Thousand Realms.

What the Gohonzon was meant to be was the external existence that forms the completion of the individual life/environment circuit with regard to the attainment of Buddhahood.

Before you can create life, you must literally fuse with another human being in your surroundings. Before you can travel more than ten miles an hour, you must either fuse with a horse or some kind of mechanical device. Similarly, before you can manifest the Buddha nature within and without yourself, there must be a fusion with something in the environment.

Nichiren insisted that the something be nothing less than a total actualization of the Three Thousand Realms. He reasoned that the internal aspect of Buddhahood is human life itself and the ability of that life to invoke Nam-myoho-renge-kyo. Therefore, the external component with which fusion must be sought in order to create the Buddha's land must be one that reflects the totality of the Buddha's teaching -- the heart of the Lotus Sutra.

At this juncture, I wish holograms had been presently perfected. If so, a small one of me, replete with beard and middle age girth, would leap out from these pages to protest, "Please, please, please remember that although the Gohonzon is outside of you, it is not distinct from or greater than you." This is the problem with the Western mind. I blame some of it on Judeo-Christian culture, but even more of it on that son-of-a-bitch Aristotle.

Aristotle's teacher, Plato, through the wonderful allegory of the cave, taught in very Buddhist fashion about a oneness that pervades and undergirds all mankind. Aristotle, with his brilliant mind and flawless logic, attempted to place man in control of things. In his teachings, the environment became that place which man had dominion over -- a static place in which existences, both sentient and insentient, might be manipulated by man's effort.

To me, he was the Mr. Spock of Western civilization -- he took the passions and metaphors of Plato and reduced them to sheer logic; he also took the faith out of living. Small wonder that religions that arose in his wake were forced to adopt the world-view of separation between self and surroundings.

I say all this not to demean Aristotle -- I do stand in awe of his mind and his teachings -- but rather to attempt to fundamentally deprogram the Western reader from the tendency to want to transcendentally deify, whether it be the Buddha, the Lotus Sutra, Nichiren or the Gohonzon. I do not believe it was Nichiren's intent to have us worship him, or Sakaymuni, or any other historic or mythological Buddha for that matter. He inscribed the Gohonzon as something both divine and mundane -- divine in the sense that it manifests the essence of the Lotus Sutra and is therefore the revelation of a true universal doctrine, but mundane in that it is a simple mandala which represents no one man or God.

Now here comes the hard part. My belief, and it is just that – a belief – is that Nichiren so understood the workings of the mystic law and the theory of the Three Thousand Realms that he was able to literally place them in the Gohonzon. In one writing, he actually said, "I, Nichiren, have inscribed my life in sumi (ink), so believe in the Gohonzon with your whole heart. The Buddha's will is the Lotus Sutra, but the soul of Nichiren is nothing other than Nam-myoho-renge-kyo.” This is why we refer to the Gohonzon as having power and accord it a great amount of respect.

Nonetheless, this is different from saying the Gohonzon is an entity to be worshipped as something distinct and separate from us. Remember what the "Pieta" did to me at the New York World's Fair? What I felt was not the life of Michaelangelo, but rather the attributes permanently accruing to that hunk of marble as a result of his efforts.

This notion only works if you accept the dual premise that the environment is an extension of your own life and objects within the environment manifest the Three Thousand Realms in accordance with their relationship to the living entities co-existing in that environment.

Chapter 10

An Intensely Personal Symphony

The final “add-on” to Nichiren Buddhist practice is something called gongyo, which involves the recitation of the Lotus Sutra on a daily basis. I have repeatedly stated that the beauty of the Daishonin's teaching lays in its accessibility to every human being, in any condition of life imaginable. Chanting Nam-myoho-renge-kyo to the Gohonzon will yield results without fail. Gongyo is perhaps less accessible. Although I personally find gongyo to be one of the loveliest features of the practice, it is also the most difficult to integrate into one's daily life. If the Gohonzon can be said to be the largest theoretical hurdle that one must clear in approaching the practice of the Daishonin's Buddhism, then gongyo is the greatest practical hurdle.

Gongyo literally translates as "assiduous practice" and it is a prayer performed both morning and evening by practitioners of Nichiren Shoshu Buddhism. It consists of reciting the second and sixteenth chapters of the Lotus Sutra, followed by the chanting of daimoku. The recitation takes somewhat longer in the morning because there are five repetitions as opposed to the three that are done in the evening. When the recitation is mastered, we're talking about twenty-five minutes in the morning as compared to fifteen in the evening. Mastery, however, is somewhat difficult and that is the problem for many new people attempting this practice.

In the Nichiren tradition, Nam-myoho-renge-kyo is designated the primary practice, while gongyo is referred to as secondary. However, this shouldn't necessarily be construed as meaning that gongyo is optional. Nonetheless, particularly in the beginning of the Buddhist practice, I believe it is critical that people focus on the chanting and efficacy of Nam-myoho-renge-kyo in order to build momentum in the development of their faith. Gongyo may be learned over a period of months, or even years, and should naturally become an enhancing and stabilizing factor in the practice.

Frankly, I'm not exactly sure where the present-day form of gongyo originated. It is generally thought that Nichiren Daishonin daily, and with great fervor, recited the entire Lotus Sutra as part of his regular routine. This would be time prohibitive, however, for those of us living in the present-day real world, so modifications of the sutra reading were probably made over the years by consensual agreement between priestly and lay Nichiren believers.

The largest lay organization of Nichiren believers, known as the Soka Gakkai International, claims that the aforementioned five-in-the-morning and three-in-the-evening form of gongyo originated with the Nichiren Shoshu priesthood and was adopted for lay believers by second SGI President Josei Toda in the late forties and early fifties.

This is the way I learned gongyo (yes, The Org to which I refer is SGI, though when I belonged it was called Nichiren Shoshu of America or NSA) and that is the form I continue to practice. As I mentioned earlier, the second and sixteenth chapters of the Lotus Sutra are considered the heart of the sutra from the perspective of the Daishonin. In gongyo, what is recited most of the time is simply the summarizing verses from those chapters, although the entire sixteenth chapter is chanted once in the morning and once in the evening. Recently, absent the sanction of the Nichiren Shoshu priesthood, the SGI has altered and shortened the format of gongyo.

I will not, at this point, comment on the SGI's shortening of the sutra-reading, except to say that I can certainly understand their contention that it may (or may not) make the teaching of Nichiren more accessible to the masses. What I can personally say is that I have never regretted even one second spent practicing or performing gongyo and that I absolutely believe each and every moment spent reciting the sutra yields more than equivalent harmonious and fruitful time spent in the conduct of my daily activities. In other words, why would I begrudge 20 or 30 minutes spent in the pursuit of something that makes every hour of my life two or three times as productive as it might have been? Now, 20 or 30 minutes in rush-hour traffic or waiting in line at Chili's on a Friday night -- that's a whole different matter.

Most people, upon hearing gongyo for the first time, have fairly ambivalent reactions. The first is that it can sound quite beautiful. The second, as with almost anything you hear in a foreign language, is that it sounds quite alien and certainly difficult to learn. All I can say is that I really want to handle this subject with kid gloves for the following reason. Although I believe gongyo to be an essential part of the teaching of Nichiren Daishonin, I also believe there may be far greater flexibility in its practice than exists either with Nam-myoho-renge-kyo or the Gohonzon.

I think it goes without saying that the mantra, Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, is the absolute core of the Daishonin's teaching and he makes it very clear, in "On Attaining Buddhahood" and many other writings that chanting this is the key to unlocking the door of enlightenment. Similarly, in the creation of the Gohonzon as his one unique invention -- the object of worship which he said actualized Nam-myoho-renge-kyo in the environment -- the Daishonin set out the process by which one fuses with one's surroundings in order to achieve tangible results both within and without.

Gongyo is subtler. Essentially, I believe that its performance ultimately requires and involves (or at least should) some notion of, dare I say it, faith. I'm talking here about faith defined as belief in that which is unknown and which engenders that warm, fuzzy, feel-good, determined kind of feeling that comes from the heart. Faith in the sense of merely trying, of taking a "leap of...," is not going to motivate the kind of sustained effort required to learn gongyo. I guess what I'm trying to say here is that new Buddhist practitioners should know that the daily performance of gongyo is something definitely looming down the road, but they should not let that discourage them from initial efforts made to learn about the effectiveness of Nam-myoho-renge-kyo.

Since I've already explicitly described the benefit of chanting daimoku, it would behoove me to similarly clarify what the purpose is of gongyo, particularly since its performance would seem to require even more time and effort than simply chanting a mantra. In a way, I must once again to defer to my own experience because, in all my studies, I have not really read something that knocked my socks off when it comes to why we do gongyo and what it accomplishes. I am confident that my understanding of gongyo is correct, however it is filled with personal nuance, which you can take for what it's worth.

I say I am confident of the correctness of my understanding only because gongyo is the one thing I have done consistently, morning and evening, without fail, since November of 1968. In those thirty years I have gone without food, sleep, sex, and even an adequate amount of daimoku, but I have not missed gongyo. There are times I have told people this and they have responded that it was intimidating information for them, particularly if they were having trouble getting into gongyo. However, I assure them that I am not setting myself up as an example -- I am not the norm when it comes to gongyo (as a matter of fact, I have met no one else who matches my claim). It's just that from the very beginning I found I really enjoyed the recitation of the sutra and, quite early in my practice, I consciously decided that I could do this without fail -- as big a screw-up as I might be -- and this would be my one claim to fame. Put it on my gravestone, folks -- "he loved to chant da sutra."

So what do I get out of it? If Nam-myoho-renge-kyo provides benefit and transforms karma and the Gohonzon is the object by which we bond with the environment and become synchronous with our surrounding, what exactly does gongyo do? Why is it worth the effort? The best explanation I can give is found in our own consciousness of things. If you think about what the Lotus Sutra has to say, then the second and sixteenth chapters form its core teachings. The second chapter essentially says that all human beings contain the potential for enlightenment. The sixteenth chapter says that enlightenment, rather than a destination, is something eternally contained within. Therefore, reciting these chapters becomes an affirmation of their teachings.

When one does gongyo, he or she is fundamentally affirming the potential for his or her own enlightenment together with the recognition that said enlightenment already exists, although perhaps not consciously.

I feel that when I recite gongyo, I am saying "I can be a Buddha, I have always possessed Buddhahood within and what the Buddha does is to chant 'Nam-myoho-renge-kyo.'" I don't believe I mentioned it before, but gongyo always concludes with the chanting of daimoku. For those of you are already into the concept of affirmation, I believe it is relevant to the process involved in doing gongyo. For those of you are not, perhaps I can put this another way. Nam-myoho-renge-kyo is viewed, in the eyes of the Daishonin, as the source of enlightenment for all Buddhas. It is, as he puts it, "the secret shared between Buddhas." Another way of looking at it might be to term Nam-myoho-renge-kyo as the actual "work" of the Buddha -- it is that which manifests the essential life-condition and actually has the power to transform reality.

The chapters of the Lotus Sutra, on the other hand, reveal the consciousness of the Buddha, or what is in his or her mind with respect to all human beings. The performance of gongyo, then, even though it is in another language, subtly, and over the long term, creates the consciousness of the Buddha within each of us. Consciousness develops, we are better able to take advantage of the very real changes being wrought by the chanting of Nam-myoho-renge-kyo.

The other, more mundane, function of gongyo is that its performance is, in and of itself, as I mentioned earlier, a show of faith. As an "assiduous practice," it is a cause that demonstrates the seriousness of the Buddhist practice. This is not a demonstration for the benefit of some external deity. It is, as with everything else in Buddhism, a cause which further deepens and enriches the texture of our karmic effects.

I keep thinking of cliches such as "cream for the coffee" or "spices for the food" that might somehow explain the relationship of the gongyo ritual to the daily practice of chanting Nam-myoho-renge-kyo. However, none of them serve to convey either the import of the sutra recitation or the very real symbiosis that exists between it and the daimoku. Doing gongyo does not enhance the power of Nam-myoho-renge-kyo. Rather, it enhances our ability to take full advantage of that power.

For me, soon after my determination to do gongyo morning and evening, no matter what, the whole ritual became fairly easy for me. This was simply a matter of my good fortune. I know many people who have agonized over learning how to recite the sutra as well as making time to do it each morning and evening. For me, learning how to recite it was not too difficult. This was surprising because I generally sucked at language study -- had seven years of C's and D's in high school and college French and Spanish to prove it. Nevertheless, with help from my friends, I got the hang of the pronunciation and rhythm.

I am well aware that for some, I hope many, of you reading this book, there may be a desire to try chanting Nam-myoho-renge-kyo or reciting gongyo. In alluding to my own experience, I indicated that total absorption in The Org was the way in which I built the foundation of my own Buddhist practice during my first ten years. I have also spoken extensively of my own convictions, borne of the last two decades, that this practice is universally accessible to every individual and need not be conducted as part of some ongoing, lifelong entanglement with some religious organization, either sacred or secular.

Nonetheless, I am well aware of fact that much of what I am describing may require a degree of tutelage or, at the very least, gentle help. Towards the end of this book I will give you an honest, very personal assessment of what options are available to the reader who wishes to pursue the teachings of Nichiren Daishonin a bit further. In the meantime, just know that I am aware of the quandary all this new information creates, particularly when I start throwing in sutra recitation and the like. I promise not to leave you hanging.

I mentioned earlier that I wish a lot of the information contained herein had been available to me in my early days of practice. I am similarly determined that you will not be left with the exceedingly constraining limitations that I faced when I first started to chant. If nothing else, I am putting forth this effort in order to convince people that this is a teaching of universal applicability. If I'm going to put my money where my mouth is, I had better come up with a way that any of you out there, regardless of circumstance or belief, can pursue this wonderful teaching if you so desire.

I want to conclude this discussion of gongyo by making a couple of points. One is that, although I said earlier that the recitation of the sutra is ultimately a critical part of the practice, I am convinced that progress toward that point should be both informed and joyous. If indeed repeating the second and sixteenth chapters of the Lotus Sutra, both morning and evening, creates some trans-linguistic awareness of the Buddha-consciousness, it is not something to be done by rote or sense of obligation. Just as with the receiving of the Gohonzon, the performance of gongyo should at least be partially motivated by the sense that chanting Nam-myoho-renge-kyo works. If the power of daimoku is not becoming evident, then any of the add-ons so important to the Buddhist practice may feel like burdens.

I am convinced that, on the basis of the mercy that I know the Daishonin possessed, he was determined to create a religious practice that would serve to reduce, never add to, the stress and difficulties of life. He often said that the Buddhist teaching is "easy to receive, yet difficult to continue," but I firmly believe he was referencing the natural doubt we all feel when confronting that which seemingly cannot be changed.

If there's one thing the Daishonin wasn't, it is stupid. He understood the infinite complexity of the human condition and the way it manifests in each person's life. Nevertheless, from April 28, 1253 until his dying day, he maintained his conviction that Nam-myoho-renge-kyo would work for every human being, regardless of circumstance. Ask yourself why he would complicate the teaching in such a way as to make it impracticable for some. The answer is simple -- he wouldn't.

All I can tell you is this. For me, gongyo has become the song of my life. For whatever reason, Buddhism has not given birth to the wealth of gorgeous music and art that its Western counterparts have. I believe that may have something to do with the internal nature of its inspiration. Because the Buddhist practice works so well, environmental cantatas and tapestries are not needed to make the believer's heart soar.

Years ago, I don't remember when, but well over twenty, I was doing gongyo and it became the intensely personal symphony of my life. There is almost never a day when I don't hear at least one movement of that glorious music as I recite the sutra. Then, when I'm finished, I sit before the Gohonzon and reaffirm the "secret shared between Buddhas" with my good buddy, Nichiren Daishonin. I do this morning and evening, winter and summer, in good health and poor. In doing so, I set the stage for the next twelve or so hours of my life to be as perfect as they could be, given my karmic condition.

I cannot tell you how many times people have said to me, "How do you make the time?" or "I just don't have the time." If the entire universe moves at your behest in exchange for twenty minutes or so of chanting, wouldn't it be wise to make the time? To suffer under the delusion that the minutes just aren't there for one to spare is, to me, the saddest decision of all -- a real surrender to the ridiculous, nano-second inundated consciousness of our spiritually impoverished technological age.

That said, I should mention that I hold no inherent objection to the SGI's shortening of gongyo. If I were to find myself at one of their meetings (a rare occurrence), I would be more than happy to "do as the Romans do" and chant the sutra a single time through with them. Then, I would go home and do the other two or four sutra recitations in order to conclude my own "unfinished symphony." However, and I cannot stress this enough, that's just me.

Chapter 11

Changing Karma

In a writing entitled "On Prolonging Life," the Daishonin wrote about karma and our ability to change it. Changing karma may be the quintessential benefit of his practice.

The Mystic Law (Myoho) manifests all reality. Karma might be conceived as the mechanism by which we experience the manifestation of the mystic law. Karma is the flow of internal cause to latent effect in time and space. If you want to know why your life is the way it is right now, look at all the causes that have preceded the present moment. If you want to know your future, look at what you're doing right now. The chanting of Nam-myoho-renge-kyo is a practice that exerts a direct and fundamental force to shape the future. In other words, when we chant we gain the ability to change our karma.

In "On Prolonging Life," the Daishonin states: "When I, Nichiren, prayed for my mother, not only was her illness cured, but her life was prolonged by four years." He was not bragging about his ability to cure people. What he was referencing -- and specifically writes about elsewhere in the same letter -- are the Buddhist concepts of mutable and immutable karma. Both of these may be good or bad, but mutable karma is considered to have a lesser influence and can usually be transformed by simple, consistent effort. Immutable karma, however, is another story. From the Buddhist perspective, it is much more deeply rooted, determines much more about the basic course of our lives and, as its name suggests, is next to impossible to change.

In the older texts, things such as appearance and personality are talked about as being immutable karma. However, between plastic surgery and prozac, I'm not sure that's the case any more. In any event, the Daishonin mentioning the moment of his mother's death was in truth an allusion to the most immutable karma of all -- the moment of death. Science has not yet come up with a way of allowing us to function after death and, as such, dying must be viewed as a real turning point in our ability to lead our life. I may sound facetious, but I shouldn't want my sarcasm to obscure the very real fact that all our hopes, dreams and aspirations essentially go out the window when we die. That is why, whether we address it or not, the moment of death is so pivotal in the Buddhist teaching.

As Buddhists, we are not primarily concerned with what happens after death or where we might or might not be going. Death is an effect that, at least temporarily, causes the total cessation of all life activity. Buddhism views it as a critical point because it is the moment at which there is total clarity as to whether or not the life it impacts is enlightened and complete or diminished by ignorance and unfinished business.

The Daishonin's contention that he changed his mother's moment of death is really an affirmation of his belief that if the chanting of Nam-myoho-renge-kyo can change the most immutable karma, it can change anything.

Sometimes I worry that Westerners in general do not pay enough attention to the importance of the moment of death. This is not to say everyone should sit around worrying or obsessing about when and how they're going to die. On the contrary, if people had a more natural awareness of death as just part of an ongoing, eternal cycle, it would not hold so much dread. What I am saying is that the way we define death informs the way we live to a tremendous extent. How we conceive death, in terms of "no meaning" and "no life activity," is exactly what comprises the basis for how we define meaning and activity at present -- it is at the heart of our beliefs about life and the behaviors that reflect those beliefs.

If people are only concerned about what transpires after death and where they are going, it may serve to put them into procrastination mode -- kind of like, "well, I'm going on this trip eventually, so I can always pack for it later." If, on the other hand, we acknowledge that the moment of death is immutable karma that we may experience at any time, the awareness can cause us to fundamentally transform the causes we are making right now. We develop the consciousness to live as though it were "the first day of the rest of our life" at the same time that we "live each day as though it were our last." This is not just a mind game I'm talking about here. How many times have we heard people who've had near-death experiences talk about cherishing each day and making sure you tell the people you love that you do because one never knows if you'll have the opportunity again? This identical consciousness will naturally arise as a result of the Buddhist practice -- you don't have to nearly die to create it.

Of course, all this raises the question: "If death is the most immutable karma and Nichiren says that even this can be transformed by chanting, why not just chant to live as long as I want and, as long as I'm at it, have nothing but good things happen to me?"

Please remember that for all the confidence the Daishonin exudes about the efficacy of practicing his Buddhism, he remains firmly within the context of the mystic law and the workings of the universe. Admittedly that is a fairly large context. Life and death are the natural order of things and his point is that death is not something to be overcome, but rather an effect to be recognized as both immutable and important. Its importance lies in how it serves the way we live each day. The goal is enlightenment -- defined as a complete understanding of our life proven by the complete actualization of our human potential.

Perhaps I'm sounding a bit evasive here, but I want to make very sure that chanting is not construed as some kind of magic or supernatural force. True, some things seem magical or beyond the ken of reason when one chants, and with remarkable regularity. But I hope all people who begin to practice Buddhism in the future do so with a long-term, broad perspective. We can't all be rich, we can't all be famous and we certainly can't all be good-looking and smart -- these things are not part and parcel of Buddhism's promise and I will not lie to you.

A lot of this wasn't even important a few centuries ago. The delusions that we in the modern technological age live under are truly mind-boggling. This may be what Sakyamuni was referring to when he spoke of the "corrupt latter day of the law." Nonetheless, we can each lead the most fulfilling lives possible in terms of breaking the karmic bonds that constrain us and actualizing our deepest dreams -- dreams we may not even be conscious of at present.

Aside from the moment of death, what exactly might these immutable karmic bonds be? This is the big question, because for each of us the answer is completely different. That is why it is easy to look at the world and see all kinds of examples of those who seemingly have overcome what to us looks impossible.

Why chant when you know of all kinds of people who have overcome cancer, maintained a happy marriage, raised happy, healthy children, or come from poverty to become rich? First of all, it is impossible to perceive the depths of another's life to determine what is mutable and what is immutable. What another may seemingly change with ease seems like Mt. Everest to us. So, as with everything else in life, it is probably not wise to judge ourselves in comparison to others. The fact that someone else may seem to have a process that works for them should have little impact on what we decide to do.

Only we can know what forms the insurmountable obstacle that resides within our own life. Good advice notwithstanding, the Buddhist practice enables each person to isolate for him or herself what it is that stands in the way of happiness so that a frontal assault can be mounted. I'm talking here about the things that we, over the years, have become resigned to: those nagging circumstances or attributes about which we have come to think, "that's just the way it is" or "that's the cards I've been dealt."

Four causes of immutable karma

According to one of the ancient teachers who succeeded Sakyamuni in India, there are four causes which create immutable karma. They are:
Earthly desires arising from the fundamental darkness inherent in life;
A pure, seeking mind toward Buddhism;
Habit; and
Buddhist or secular sins along the lines of killing a Buddha, one's parents, another person, etc.

Number one asks us to recognize that a lot of what we may want stems from delusional attitudes concerning the realities of life. A lack of awareness with regard to our own or others' Buddha nature combined with a shallow, materialistic view of life may find us acting from a pretty dark place. Unlike earlier forms of Buddhism and even certain Western religions however, the Daishonin's teachings do not admonish us to do away with attachments or even repudiate earthly and carnal desires. He actually encourages his believers that the pursuit of earthly desire is ultimately what transforms one into a more enlightened being.

His point is that rather than take the unrealistic approach that insists we immediately elevate ourselves beyond who we are, the chanting of Nam-myoho-renge-kyo will ultimately show us which pursuits and which desires are truly part of our enlightenment. Cause and effect is the name of the game and all we have to do is chant in order to create the proper causes.

What this means is that it is totally possible to be a fully credentialed Buddhist acting with the purest of faith and still go after the goodies. Wealth, power, sex, property -- none of these things is necessarily out of the purview of the Buddhist. What is most important is that we keep in mind that these are not end games and that their acquisition carries with it the implicit responsibility to act in an enlightened fashion as a Bodhisattiva.

On the other hand, if despite our best efforts at both cause making and chanting, our attainment of these things is either thwarted or serves to create suffering in ourselves or others, then perhaps it is time to try and tap a greater portion of Buddhist wisdom in order to redefine our goals. It may have been our unwise behavior in the past in pursuing certain goals that led to our most difficult karma at present. That is something to always keep in mind.

Number two is pretty self-explanatory and obviously is talking about that which creates only the best kind of karma, like chanting. Enough said -- anything more would be too obviously self-serving.

Number three, however, is one I find quite interesting because it seems so mundane. The original translation was "daily routine," but this was originally explained to me as habit and I kind of prefer that term. Our daily routine may vary at different points in our lives in accordance with our situation. If we are working a job, or taking care of children, our routines may all look to be a bit different by dint of how we function. I don't think the guy who codified this theory on immutable karma (his name was Vasabandhu, by the way) was referring to what time we awake, have dinner or go to bed.

Rather I believe that he was referencing the way in which we habitually deal with that which confronts us each day. If our life itself is viewed as a process of cause and effect, then it is obvious that the causes we create each day do indeed tend to deeply ingrain a variety of effects into our lives. People who work hard as a matter of course more often than not find themselves rewarded both in terms of what they have accomplished as well as by society in general. People who routinely run late often find themselves missing out on significant events or are not even provided access to those events to begin with. Those who yell at their children generally tend to create more chaotic family environments than those who take the time to communicate a bit more deeply.

Of course there are exceptions to every generalization, but Buddhism would suggest that these are karmic glitches -- carryovers of good or bad fortune from previous existences. For the most part, "as ye sow, so shall ye reap."

More often than not, when confronted with a negative experience in our lives, many of us tend to initially react from a similarly negative life-condition. If we are sick, we may despair. If we are fired, we may get angry or lose hope. If a loved one abandons us, we may rage about revenge or give in to profound feelings of worthlessness. The problem is that each time we respond with this kind of negativity, we perpetuate the cycle of suffering; we reinvent the cause that most likely created the situation in the first place.

The Daishonin urged people to chant Nam-myoho-renge-kyo to reverse these habitual patterns of behavior. When a person chants, he or she actually gains the ability to act, not just think, positively. From the perspective of karmic creation, it is important that spontaneous proactive behavior replace habitual negative response when one is presented with any kind of terrible situation. Changing one's bad habits can indeed be the key to changing the source of much of his or her suffering. However, many people do not have mental or spiritual stamina to heed the words of Norman Vincent Peale or their empathetic, yet detached, psychologist. Finding the strength to break the karmic chain of habit within is exactly what tapping the Buddha nature is all about.

The fourth cause of immutable karma, much like the second, is pretty self-explanatory. I'm not really sure why the ancient teachers differentiated between Buddhist and secular sin, particularly in the area of murder. It seems to me that if every person indeed possesses the Buddha potential within, then killing anyone becomes tantamount to killing the Buddha. I suspect that the differentiation was made for primitive people in an earlier age who were taught Buddhism in a way that connoted the Buddha as a special, separate entity.

The “Diamond Commandment”

Similarly it is important to reconfirm that the notion of sin in general -- when defined as the fourth cause for creating unchangeable karma -- has evolved in the Buddhist doctrine. What were codified and rigid commandments in Shakyamuni's era are far less significant in the Daishonin's teachings. Fundamentally, the only real sin in the Buddhism of Nam-myoho-renge-kyo is found in the slander of the Lotus Sutra teachings concerning the reality of the Mystic Law.

In Nichiren Buddhism, there is only the one Diamond Commandment: "Thou shalt chant Nam-myoho-renge-kyo to the Gohonzon."

End of story.

More than anything, I desire to stop perpetuating the erroneous concept that Nam-myoho-renge-kyo is some magical mantra. If rational (albeit theoretical) thought allows us to conclude that this chant may be the name by which we summon our deepest internal consciousness -- the part of us that is fundamentally linked with the "external" universe -- then it is indeed possible that by affirming that name over and over, we illuminate the darkest, unenlightened parts of ourselves.

Chapter 12

Total Responsibility

Nichiren Buddhism is not a teaching that presents itself as the only way or requires people to believe or act in a certain ways. Rather, it is the only religious teaching, to my knowledge, that has no a priori requirement for its practice. Even though I have already stated that a man of religion by definition tends toward hyperbole, I cannot stress strongly enough that when I use the word universal, I am not exaggerating. I understand the ramifications of that term -- it envelops man and woman, brilliant and moronic, gifted or deficient, rich or impoverished and yes, even good or evil.

I am very aware that in making such claims, I open the Daishonin's teaching up to some heavy-duty scrutiny. It would almost seem irresponsible, if not downright sinful, to offer the promise of enlightenment to some of the lowlifes populating this planet. However, the beauty of the Buddhist teaching lies in its availability to all. Even though one commences the practice without faith (as defined by belief or even some desire for spiritual value), I would hope that I've made it clear that change is the cornerstone of the practice.

Resistance to change

When one first chants, he or she may both expect and demand change as actual proof of the mantra's efficacy. However, over the long run, that same person, having received ample, irrefutable evidence, is ultimately expected to pursue personal transformation as befits the acquisition of the life-condition of the Bodhisattva.

This expectation does not come from God or the Buddha; rather, it is the expectation of an evolving universe struggling toward the harmony and peace that I believe each of us somehow feels should be the birthright of the human species. In the long term, the Buddhist is forced to make attitudinal changes which deal with both the personal acceptance of total responsibility for one's karma and the need to teach others how to similarly accept such responsibility if they also seek fundamental change.

My own perceptions of both myself and other people have led me to conclude that if such attitudinal changes are not forthcoming after a decade or two of the Buddhist practice, the efficacy of chanting, at both objective and subjective levels, seems to diminish quite substantially.

"Not fair," you might protest, "you've been promising all along that the chanting of Nam-myoho-renge-kyo will work no matter who you are or what condition you are in." Yes, however: the process of enlightenment implies the concurrent process of learning. In the creation of karma, ask yourself which is the more critical error: a bad cause borne of ignorance or one that stems from a refusal to learn?

I'm not saying that Buddhism ceases to work for a person guilty of the latter. I am saying that since the workings of the practice are inextricably bound up with the mechanism by which karma is created, it makes sense that a person who resists positive change may see less benefit accruing from his or her behavior. Ultimately, whether through gain or loss, the lessons that need to be learned are learned and the promise of enlightenment in this lifetime is upheld.

All of us have learned through loss -- "that which does not kill me makes me stronger" -- but how much more joyous would our life be if we could just well up our courage and confront the reality that we each truly are the source of our own suffering? At times we may see the causes we made and at times we may not. Either way, this notion of total responsibility is the most difficult lesson of all, but is also that which offers the greatest redemption.

Responsibility does not necessitate guilt

It is crucial that the Buddhist not confuse issues of responsibility with the requirement to feel guilty. Nor should he or she look to any outside "authority" for the definition of what the bad or ignorant cause may have been. These are particularly Western concepts and hold no place in the Buddhist scheme of things. Ultimately, the feeling of guilt and tendency to want to let others judge us may work against our own awakening.

Guilt feeds very nicely into concepts of original sin and shallow Freudian concepts of repressed evil. Such a burden may very well be too much to bear and a Westerner can easily become convinced that he or she is unworthy of redemption or enlightenment. This would be completely antithetical to the Buddhist teaching.

Additionally, placing too much importance on what others think about what we have done, or are doing, may cross the boundary of seeking "enlightenment outside yourself," and we already know what the Daishonin says about that. I am not preaching arrogant detachment here -- I am saying that Buddhism requires we gain the humility within to perceive the nature of our own errors while appreciating the help we gain from without as we refuse to let ourselves be subjugated by the opinions of others.

Perhaps the best way to define the kind of attitude I'm talking about here might be to define a concept known as sange (pronounced zahn-gay). In "On Prolonging Life," that writing in which the Daishonin discusses the changing of immutable karma, he writes, "Sincere repentance will eradicate even immutable karma, to say nothing of karma which is mutable." He then goes on to explain how the action of repentance is the chanting of daimoku, i.e. faith in the Lotus Sutra, however there is also the implication that a repentant attitude or Buddhist apology (sange) will prove most effective.

Here, once again, is a place where semantics can throw us into a tizzy. In English, the concept of repentance or apology immediately begs the question of the object. Exactly who or what are we supposed to be apologizing to--doesn't Buddhism teach that there's no God or Buddha out there to hear how repentant we are?

The attitude of sange

Perhaps I would do well at this juncture to relate the example that was given to me when I was first told about sange. If it's okay with you, I will continue to use the Japanese word because it doesn't carry the unconscious associations with God or some external deity that repentance or apology might.

A Japanese gentleman, an erudite man by the name of Matsuda, asked me to imagine a scenario wherein the police came to my home in the middle of the night and took me downtown for reasons unknown. Now, I suppose in the United States, what with warrants and Miranda rights and all, this particular situation might be difficult to envision, but we were in Japan at the time and I found the example credible. I can remember TV shows over there that would take the crime of the week and re-enact it. If a person had been arrested with respect to that crime, whether he had been arraigned or indicted or not, the re-enactment would depict him or her committing the crime. So much for "presumed innocent."

Anyway, Mr. Matsuda's story seemed viable and as I listened, he explained what my various reactions might be. First, he said, I would probably be frightened. I would not know why they had come for me or what their intentions were. As I languished in my cell, the fear would gradually turn to anger at both the infringement of my rights and the lack of information about the charges against me. If, he pointed out, I were kept longer than a single day, with only bread and water to subsist on, my anger would probably give way to a combination of fear and worry and resignation. I would feel impotent in the face of what was happening to me and ultimately become a person of very little hope.

Mr. Matsuda concluded that should this incarceration continue for very much longer, my internal thought process would ultimately become, "I don't know what I did to get in here and I don't know what I can do to get out, but I swear I'll never do it again." That, he said, was the feeling of sange.

In other words, he was pointing out that Buddhist apology has a lot to do with the determination not to repeat the same mistake twice. The feelings of regret may be non-specific and not targeted, particularly if we have no idea what it is exactly we're regretting. Like the person in prison who has not been charged, our bad karma often manifests in response to causes we have no awareness of. That doesn't excuse us from liability, but it is also unnecessary to waste time trying to figure out what we did.

Of course, if we know we have hurt or offended someone by our behavior, then it never hurts to say, "I'm sorry." But our deepest regrets may simply manifest as a generalized sense of apology -- to ourselves and to the universe for having failed to behave in a caring manner. From the standpoint of sange, however, of greatest importance is the resolution to change karma, to behave differently the next time that the opportunity to commit a serious error presents itself.

Lessening karmic retribution

When I first became a Buddhist, a lot of the input I received was from sweet little middle-aged Japanese ladies -- war brides who had found their way over to the United States and, in the process, became the first collective group to bring Nichiren Buddhism with them. I used to talk to them about various benefits I thought I was receiving. I never told them about the bag of pot, but did tell them about getting laid. One of them, a sweet fifty year old named Kimiko, who had been a bar girl, upon hearing of such sexual exploits, used to give exhibitions (clothed of course) of various positions that she thought women enjoyed. She passed away about ten years ago, but I appreciate her to this day.

Anyway, in addition to such practical demonstrations, Kimiko would talk to me; when I was encountering problems and wallowing in the depression that was my fundamental condition in those days, about lightening karma and turning poison into medicine. These were both ideas that were expressed in Japanese terms that I share here.

The concept of "lessening karmic retribution," refers to a very specific way in which karmic effects are experienced. When I, and many others, first heard about changing karma, we misunderstood and thought that Buddhism was actually a way to escape karmic effects. It was erroneously implied that by chanting we would somehow avoid the negative effects of previous bad causes. You can see how this would perpetuate the natural tendency to not take responsibility for one's own life.

In reality, Buddhism teaches that the key to changing karma lies in compressing (similar to hard-disk optimization for you computer nerds out there) and lightening its long-term effects so that they essentially are all experienced in this lifetime and, hopefully, don't kill you. By flushing the gunk out of a garden hose, so to speak, you are then able to totally infuse it with the pure water of enlightenment and make causes of highest order. In a way, you might think of chanting as Drano for the soul.

In any event, to extend the metaphor, as the gunk comes out of the hose there is a natural sense of both unhappiness and revulsion. None of us particularly enjoys this process, but what Buddhism suggests is that, since the experience of effects is inevitable, what is most important is that you become able to appreciate the process as well as make the determination to change (sange). By doing so you are "turning poison into medicine."

So, in summary we're talking about a two-step process here: the Buddhist practice enables the mechanism of lessening karmic retribution and provides the Buddha wisdom and strength to turn poison into medicine.

You have to walk the walk

As I said, I heard about these concepts early on in my Buddhist practice, but it was not until 1980, in the circumstances surrounding my divorce and remarriage, that they actually coalesced into anything meaningful. My first twelve years of practice, between my Org association and my own shallow understanding, were valuable in terms of showing me the objective power of chanting and allowing me to study in Japan. But I cannot say that much karma was being transformed.

I had begun practicing Buddhism as an introverted, drug-addicted, sexually repressed hippie. Twelve years later I was a leader of hundreds, lecturer to thousands, and published writer who not only got to enjoy sex regularly with his wife, but was pursued by adoring groupies. At one level, things had definitely changed, but at a more profound level -- the place at which I had to face myself and the demons had that had pursued me my whole life -- things were amazingly the same.

I could have lived my whole life clinging to the way things were in 1980. To this day, there are probably some people who say I should never have turned away, based on a superficial awareness of my career track at the time and the esteem in which thousands held me. Nevertheless, the fundamental promise of the Buddhist practice lay in its guarantee of changing karma and attaining enlightenment in this lifetime. For better or worse, I felt that I had to push the envelope.

For the little story that follows, you need to understand something about the way I was in the years before New York. It's real popular these days to bash parents and childhood and claim abuse at every turn -- all as justification for being the way you are now. As I mentioned before, I had problems with both my mother and father, but they were not and are not responsible for the person I am now, or in 1980, or even in 1967. I guess what I'm trying to get at is that I was, in the years before Buddhism, a pretty miserable person.

Certainly, I was not in tragic circumstances, particularly from the standpoint of today's talk show or media standards. I was simply a boy who, for reasons either good or bad or a little of both, felt exceedingly unloved and unable to understand even what love was. By my teenage years, I was pretty continually depressed and I suppose that the only thing that kept me from suicide was my own cowardice. I cannot deny that I probably saw myself as a victim at the mercy of others who made me suffer. However, the one thing I knew was that, whether the abuses were imagined or not, I would NEVER treat people the way I felt I had been treated – either by my parents or, in adolescent years, by the callous jerks who were my peers.

As a result, in addition to the Buddhist practice, I have made it my mission in life to try to fathom the mysteries of love and relationships. By 1980, 12 years of Buddhist practice notwithstanding, I don't believe I had come very far. As serendipity would have it, I had just returned from my last, nearly two-year, stay in Japan. I had been there as a representative of the U.S. Org, studying the writings of Nichiren Daishonin and writing about the contrasts (and similarities) between Buddhism and the Western philosophical tradition.

It was a very interesting time in both the histories of the Org and the Nichiren Shoshu priesthood. During my stay in the late seventies, the sixty-sixth High Priest of Nichiren Shoshu, Nittatsu, died and the current High Priest, Nikken, was installed. The seeds of schism were starting to be sown as Nikken, in some of his earliest moves, sought to quell a rebellion of priests against the growing influence of the Org. More on this later when I reflect on the present sorry state of affairs currently involving the Org and the Nichiren Shoshu priesthood.

For my part, I was joyously engaging with Nichiren believers on both sides of the pulpit and truly appreciating my good fortune at being able to do so – an experience I now know is rare in the present-day pantheon of Nichiren practitioners. Anyway, one eighty-year old Org Vice-President – a wonderful shaved-headed hulk of a man named Izumi – kept telling me it was my mission to back to the United States and teach all the Buddhist there about sange.

I took him at his word and, sure enough within weeks of my arrival back home in 1979, I was in great demand on the Org's lecture circuit. I went around the U.S., lecturing about changing karma and the nature of Buddhist apology. People were hanging on my every word and it was a very heady experience. So heady that I started believing my own press, thinking I had actually plumbed the depths of this incredibly powerful concept: sange. Ah, foolish mortal – I had forgotten the fundamental premise that it is not enough to talk the talk. You have to walk the walk.

A personal example of how it all “clicked”

As I mentioned, I have spent my life since adolescence trying to fathom relationships and the nature of love. Perhaps for this reason, along with personal deficiencies too vast to measure, I now find myself in my third marriage. In order to protect the innocent, I find it fortuitous that I have been married to a brunette, a blonde and a redhead in that order. I will refer to them as such here (understanding that those who know me will know exactly of whom I speak) so as to give them what anonymity I can. I also want to imbue the reader with a sense that, whatever may have happened with a particular wife, I hold myself responsible for any negativity that transpired.

In February of 1980, I had an almost frantic desire to have a child. The Brunette and I had tried for years, even to the extent of seeking out fertility clinics and support groups, however to no avail. Our inability to conceive was what forced me to put sange to the test. I had already figured out in fairly simplistic terms that if I had a rather difficult time as a child, it was because I had created difficulty for children in some previous existence. This awareness allowed me to forgive both my mother and father for real or imagined grievances and, in the years from 1968 to 1980, I managed to grow a bit closer to both of them.

This was a giant step way from the total estrangement I had felt toward them in the late sixties and early seventies and I thought it was real proof of the Buddhist practice. I really thought I had changed some karma, although I know understand it was highly mutable. Turn on Oprah or Dr. Phil any day and you can see people who have changed their relationship with their parents. You don't necessarily need Buddhism for that, though you might.

In 1980, however, my chanting led to a quantum leap in realization and I became viscerally certain that I had been a real asshole in a previous lifetime. Not only were my own parental relationships screwed up, but also I was unable to become a parent myself. I didn't know what I had done but, just as the prisoner in Mr. Matsuda's prison, I became very determined that I would never do it again.

Long story short – within a week of this determination I found my life completely turned upside down. I was no longer with the Brunette, but now found myself in conjugal bliss with the Blonde… a bliss that resulted in pregnancy within the first 14 days of our relationship.

Make no mistake. Though I will not provide a detailed explanation here of what transpired, you must believe that it was in no way strategized, nor was it undertaken blithely or without concern for the pain it -- or rather, I -- created. Recall that implicit in sange is the comprehension that bad causes have been made and that a true change of karma requires that positive, "enlightened" causes must be undertaken.

You have to understand that up until this point in my life, I thought I was a really, really good person. I took, and still take, great pride in having never had a physical fight with anyone. Part of that is my natural genetic cowardice, but a lot of it is also my conviction that any overt act of brute force is generally a very poor cause to make and a fallback to our ancestral pre-human predecessors. It is essentially a way of admitting to the universe that you've run out of options and have no physical, spiritual or mental control.

Additionally, although prone to fits of anger and pique just like any human being, I had always prided myself on going the extra mile not to hurt some one else. The Org had arranged and insisted upon the marriage between the Brunette and myself but, as much as I would have loved to have slept with another woman while I was with her, I would not even allow myself to consider such behavior.

Therefore, on a gloomy evening in early February, I told her the truth about my sense (starting with clear differences that emerged during the two-year stint in Japan) that our relationship had come to an end and resolved to leave. Did my enchantment with the Blonde catalyze my decision. Absolutely! However, to this day I remain convinced that it was my determination to do sange that set my life on a whole different path.

All of a sudden, I was spending my last night of marriage to the Brunette, feeling that I was no better than a piece of shit. I had hurt someone, a woman, in a way that I had never even conceived possible. Simultaneously, I understood the potential I had for causing pain to anyone, even a child. Looming large within my consciousness was the knowledge of why I had been beaten as a child and why I was childless now. There was no question: despite all my good intentions, I had a tremendous capacity to do evil and cause pain. I had been evil, I had caused pain -- and what I had just inflicted on the Brunette was simply the tip of the iceberg.

I have told this story to illustrate a couple of points. One is that the changing of karma is most definitely a long-term process. I thought, by simply quantifying the number of things that had happened and truly changed for me during the first decade of my practice, that I was really changing my karma. Additionally, this particular series of events comprised my first experience with both sange and the notion that one need not be aware of the causes one has made to endure a specific kind of suffering at present.

For me, the crux of changing my karma lay in the recognition that I was capable of great ignorance and evil, despite the high regard in which I wanted to hold myself. This realization was not for the purpose of creating guilt or further suffering. Rather, I believe it was the truest, greatest benefit of chanting Nam-myoho-renge-kyo. In gaining real insight into the dark potential within myself, I was able to simultaneously transcend the effects of that negativity and be blessed with a new life, new marriage and even offspring.

Don't get me wrong – life with the Blonde was in no way easier or more idyllic than with the Brunette. It was, however, much more the place I wanted and needed to be in order to further my quest for enlightenment. I've already talked about how the Japanese reaction to my divorce and subsequent remarriage set my life on a whole different course, both vocationally and environmentally.

There were actually people within the Org who told the Blonde and me that our child would be deformed or ill as an effect of what we had done. These kinds of remarks, contrasted with a caring priest's warm inquiries about the nature of our first kiss, solidified my opinion of how seriously awry the introduction of the Daishonin's Buddhism had gone in this country. The seeds of this book were sown in those days.

The point is that for the first time in my life, despite the seeming chaos of the circumstances that formed my life in 1980, I felt I had total control of my destiny – a feeling, a confidence I retain to this day.

Mr. Matsuda once told me, "Listen, you have X amount of negative karma to pay off in your lifetime. One of the great things about Buddhism is that it gives you the freedom to choose how and where you want to go through it. Nobody has to be a martyr!"

Chapter 13

Propagating an Individual Practice in America

Nichiren Buddhism is first and foremost a religion for the individual. I feel quite certain Nichiren did not envision a world full of people attending mass functions and contributing their time, energies and money to a centralized hierarchy.

Conversely, I am similarly convinced that he did envision a world in which all people had the opportunity to practice his teachings in their personal daily lives while relying on a modest clergy to somehow keep those teachings unsullied.

The Daishonin laid out no great organizational plan -- all he insisted upon was that his disciples chant Nam-myoho-renge-kyo and aspire to teach others that they too possess the Buddha-nature. Some may accomplish the latter by actually talking to others about the practice of Nichiren Buddhism. Others may find it more appropriate to develop their own consciousness as Bodhisattvas in order to teach others of the fundamental respect and dignity with which all humans must face each other.

In Nichiren Buddhism, many practitioners talk about “practice for oneself” (jigyo) and "practice for others" (keta.) My point is this: Beware of those who would be too facile in explaining what the Buddhist “practice for others” entails. At times it may indeed be teaching someone to chant Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, i.e. shakubuku. At others, it may be improving yourself for the sake of others, i.e. leading by example and not coercion.

Nichiren Daishonin was not a dogmatist. In some writings he admonishes that chanting Nam-myoho-renge-kyo a million times is not enough while in others he says that a single daimoku will make you enlightened. In some writings he tells people to steadfastly refute the heresy of others, while in others he says that all religious teachings should be accorded respect. This was not a person who reveled in exclusivity and righteousness. Nichiren Daishonin was simply a man who knew that his mission was to spread a teaching of universal applicability and, over a period of thirty years, he risked both life and limb to do so. He also knew that the proof of the pudding is in the eating -- all a person has to do is chant.

Remember that the woman, Jean, who introduced me to chanting told me she'd been shakubukued and I thought it was an African term? In truth, it is Japanese and literally translates as "break down and supplant." It refers to the process by which the Daishonin would vehemently debate and tear apart the proponents of other Buddhist schools in order to prove their limitations vis-a-vis the Lotus Sutra. He would then compassionately explain that the Lotus Sutra was the vehicle which included all previous teachings and actually went far beyond them in its promise of Buddhahood for all human beings.

In truth, he was simply trying to mercifully bestow real diamonds upon people who were pretty impressed with cubic zirconia. Nevertheless, he did it with such fervor that he acquired quite a reputation. Even today, in the rare English references you may find on Nichiren, you will often find him described as a "militant" Japanese monk.

Please understand that this description of militancy derived from his demeanor and his steadfast refusal to acknowledge any other Buddhist teaching as being equivalent to the Lotus Sutra. He was not a samurai and he did not carry a sword nor did he incite others to violence. As a supreme Buddhist, no matter how much he might disagree with what others were teaching and, at times, predict dire consequences for their behavior, he never indicated a lack of regard for the sanctity of their humanity.

Unlike the medieval Japan that the Daishonin lived in and the Asian world in general, the Western world has had little or no experience with Buddhism. Therefore the militant approach isn't really needed here. We in the West have not been programmed with the erroneous dogma of earlier Buddhist sutras, so there is no need to "break down" our corrupted minds. On the other hand, the Daishonin taught that erroneous religious belief lies at the basis of all suffering.

I have tried to point out the fallacy of transcendence versus immanence when it comes to looking at the Buddha or even God. Additionally, I think it could be said that from the viewpoint of the eternal mystic law and the ephemeral nature of phenomenal reality, materialism is not a safe harbor for religious belief.

Nonetheless, these are reasoned arguments that can be made without jumping up and down while screaming "I am right and you are wrong." The fallacies inherent in the views of transcendent deities and rampant materialism readily evaporate in the sunlight of very real effects manifest by the invocation of Nam-myoho-renge-kyo. There is always plenty of time to redefine terms and, in Western civilization, there is very little need to proclaim the truth of one's cherished teaching while denigrating the beliefs of others. Far too much of that has been woven into our history already -- the Crusades, the Inquisition, the Pogroms, not to mention the "War on Terrorism," which, from my perspective, sometimes comes dangerously close to a Christian vs. Islam overtone.

The “Japanese” factor

I'm hoping that for those of you who have even a nodding acquaintance with Japan, there might be some sense that Nichiren Daishonin was not really your typical Japanese. I believe that this fact to some extent ameliorates the "Japanese" factor concerning the origins of the religion. If you ask me why this Buddhism originated in Japan, I cannot tell you. If you ask me why the chants themselves are alien and multi-lingual with a Japanese pronunciation, I can tell you that this is because they originated with a Japanese person. In and of itself, the appearance of the Daishonin and his form of Buddhism does not imply any special capabilities or understanding to the Japanese race. The following story may help to explain.

By 1978 I had become convinced that Japan being the originating point for Nichiren Buddhism was the greatest obstacle to propagating it in the rest of the world. Not only had my years living in Japan provided me first hand evidence of how xenophobic the Japanese are in general, a decade of working with and for them had created in me a more personal antipathy based on what I perceived as both paternalism and arrogance.

Please, please don't get me wrong -- I am telling you what I felt 25 years ago, not today. I have mellowed with age and come to deeply appreciate what the Japanese are about (at least in my limited perception). In their ability to work for the sake of the whole, to have patience and unify towards a long-term goal, I believe they are unmatched. In their deep sense of gratitude, honor and responsibility, I similarly believe they are light years beyond the average Westerner. In their appreciation of extended family and the elderly, I think the West has much to learn from them.

Nonetheless, we Americans, despite Japanese perception of the relative youth of our culture, have things we can also help them with. Our spirits of creativity, of inventiveness, of rugged individualism are all things the Japanese might do well to delve into. Where the American child is taught "any child can become president," the Japanese child is taught, "the nail that sticks out, gets hit." Don't kid yourself -- these lessons strike equally deep in our respective cultures.

I hope this gives you a little more sense of how unique the Daishonin was. He stood up in the midst of an isolated, completely homogenous society to declare that grave errors were being made in the development of Japanese Buddhism and that only his righteous interpretation of the Lotus Sutra could save the Japanese from great troubles. It is no wonder that those in power sought to kill him – failing that, they exiled him. It is also no wonder that his stridency in railing against the corrupt state of Japanese Buddhism at the time has been misinterpreted in our present age and earned him the totally erroneous label of "militant."

Toward the end of my second stay in Japan, I was expressing to anyone who would listen my astonishment at how much chaff of Japanese culture I had to separate from the wheat of the Buddhist teachings. Over and over again, I posed the question, "Why did this wonderful, universal teaching have to start over here?"

I already knew that it didn't have anything to do with language. Mr. Matsuda, my mentor, had explained to me how the essential theories of Buddhism (including the Three Thousand Realms and all of the other teachings to which the Daishonin referred) had been originally expounded in Sanskrit and Chinese -- languages that were closer to English in their origins than to Japanese. In one fell swoop, Mr. Matsuda disabused me of the notion that the Japanese had attained some pinnacle of understanding regarding Buddhism that was inaccessible to other nationalities or cultures. He also reinforced my almost obsessive desire to find out "why did it start in Japan?"

Finally, probably out of their desperation to get me out of their hair, Mr. Matsuda and other members of the editorial staff wangled an opportunity for me to visit with a gentleman named Yasuji Kirimura. Mr. Kirimura was, at the time, the head of the entire Org study department. You need to understand that we are talking here about an organization that had almost twenty million members in Japan at that time. As the head of its study department, Mr. Kirimura was considered by both laity and priesthood to have a pretty profound grasp of both the Daishonin's teachings and their relevance to Japanese society.

I say this by way of introduction to his answer, because I want the reader to be very clear that none of what follows is my own invention. The reason will become evident as I tell you what Mr. Kirimura said in response to my queries about why Nam-myoho-renge-kyo came out of Japan.

Via a translator, Mr. Kirimura looked me in the eye and said, "That's easy – the Japanese are the most evil people in the world. Because of their great slander of the Buddhist law, the life of Nichiren Daishonin had to manifest in this land and reveal Nam-myoho-renge-kyo. I can see you have some doubts about this, but let me put it this way: who are the only people in the world to have ever had the nuclear bomb dropped on them? This event by itself demonstrates the deep negative karma of the Japanese people and that's why the Gohonzon had to appear here first. If it will work for a Japanese person, Nam-myoho-renge-kyo chanted to the Gohonzon will work for anyone. This should give hope to people throughout the world that global propagation of this teaching is absolutely viable."

You can see why I wanted the reader to be very clear that I did not make this up. In addition to just sounding racist, from a superficial perspective it's appalling to suggest that the tragic fate of an entire people could be somehow linked to their own evil-doing. It's like saying that Jews were responsible for the concentration camps or that African-Americans were responsible for slavery. Even writing this stuff gives me the willies but, from another point of view, I know that the Buddhist teaching of karma makes these kinds of statements plausible.

It's a lot easier to believe that people have created their own suffering, either individually or collectively, when we see the cause and effect manifest within a generation or two. We have no trouble in believing that the Third Reich sowed the seeds for its ignominious end or that the French aristocracy received their just desserts via the revolution. It's when we perceive bad things happening to good people or atrocities being committed upon seemingly innocent populations that we recoil in horror at the injustice of it all.

Please understand that I am not saying, nor do I believe that Mr. Kirimura was implying, that "people deserve what they get" and Buddhism would have us all stand idly by mumbling about bad karma. I have gone to great lengths to emphasize the fact that Buddhism cherishes human life as the greatest treasure in the universe. Anything that can be done to prevent that life from suffering or being extinguished should and must be done.

The Buddhist doctrine of karma is simply meant to provide a logical explanation for the seemingly random acts of horror and inhumanity we see all to often on this planet. Please understand the difference between explanation and excuse. At some lofty theoretical level, certainly transcending my emotional capacity, there may be some explanation for nightmares such as the atom bomb and the holocaust. But there is no excuse.

So, as incomprehensible and somewhat distasteful as it was, my question about the reason for the origins of this teaching in Japan had been answered. After recovering from my initial shock, I realized what a great gift I had been given my both Matsuda and Kirimura in liberating me from the bonds of language and culture that had prevented me from seeing the kernel of Buddhist truth. My own chanting, reinforced by epiphanies that were catalyzed by studying the Daishonin's writings, had led me to instinctively understand that Nam-myoho-renge-kyo was truly universal. Now I had some real answers and, like a dog with a bone, was determined to chew at them until there was nothing left to the imagination.

So this was the philosophical conundrum facing me upon my return to the States in 1980. I was very cognizant of the fact that something had gone horribly awry in teaching Buddhism to Westerners. I had always had the sense that, being the independent spirited folk that we are, Americans would have difficulty in learning about Buddhism via a Japanese lay organization.

The Org had placed so much emphasis on both organizational participation and ritual, I had assumed that was part and parcel of the Daishonin's expressed regimen. How ironic that two tours of duty in Japan not only served to help me divest myself of the Japanese ambience of Nichiren Buddhism, but also provided the key to teaching Buddhism in this country. No longer was I bound by the notion that something about Japan inherently made it the best place for Buddhism or made Japanese people the best people to teach it.

I had, and still have, profound respect for the Japanese in their practice and continuation of the Buddhist tradition, but now realized that only a completely Western mind-set would enable Buddhism to take its proper place in the mainstream pantheon of Western religions.

Propagation and cultural myth

Nichiren Daishonin actually elucidated what he termed the five guides for propagation, yet time and time again these were ignored in favor of traditional Japanese methods and a peculiarly Japanese mind-set which I will get into in a moment. The five guides are:

1. A correct understanding of the teaching,

2. A correct understanding of the people's capacity,

3. A correct understanding of the time,

4. A correct understanding of the country, and

5. A correct understanding of the sequence of propagation.

Where the Japanese attempts at propagating this Nam-myoho-renge-kyo in the West went wrong were in numbers two through five. Seven centuries of practice did give them, particularly the Nichiren Shoshu priesthood, the upper hand in number one, but the remaining four were sadly lacking. I, on the other hand, may be weak in area number one (only have thirty-five years under my belt), but by dint of both my birth and my studies have become very aware of numbers two through five.

By way of clarification, it is critical to go back to the origins of both the Japanese and the American societies to understand the underlying assumptions each of these respective peoples makes, not only about themselves but about the essential nature of things. Please understand that although I may speak in glittering generalities, I do understand that there are great differences and unique opinions within both cultures. I know that all Japanese are not Shinto or Buddhist, just as I know that all Americans are not Christian or Jewish. What I am suggesting is that, within both cultures, there are threads that run through their general collective mind as a result of their original mythologies. I say mythologies because, historical facts aside, that is what they are to a great extent.

Most Americans are aware that our founding fathers were homogenously white, propertied, slave-owning men of questionable morality. This does not affect the greatness of what they accomplished, either in the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution. These were great works that set up a dynamic in American society that benefits its people, the majority of whom are nothing like the founding fathers. In that they probably did not throw coins across the Potomac River, live completely moral lives, or speak with total honesty, these men have become myth.

The Japanese myth, which goes back farther than ours, is contained within two works known as the Kojiki and the Nihongi. To tell the truth, I have read neither of these and so shall summarize the Japanese myth of origin as briefly and accurately as I can. Essentially it tells the story of the Sun Goddess, Amaterasu, who came to earth thousands of years ago and gave birth to the Japanese nation and race. In this sense, the Japanese became both a blessed and "chosen" people, in all likelihood superior to those inhabiting the rest of the earth.

Just as America's historical facts do not necessarily bear out the myths surrounding its origins and "manifest destiny," so too do Japan's historical origins call their myth into question. There are some who say that Japan, much like Australia, was a dumping ground for the prisoners of other Asian nations -- convicts who hunted down the native Ainu (much as we did the natives of our own land) and drove them north toward the island of Hokkaido. This would certainly be a far cry from the notion of divine ancestry.

In my opinion these originating myths, together with logistical realities, created some situations that were almost diametrically opposed. America was founded by Protestants, deep believers in a transcendental God, who looked out over a vast expanse of land, full of natural resources, which ignited their pioneering spirit and became the forging ground for rugged individualism. The Japanese indigenous religion was Shinto, based on beliefs of innate divinity (as befits the descendants of a Goddess) and a pantheon of lesser gods and spirits that serve to either bless or vex the human condition. Japan was a tiny nation with a scarcity of resources -- rather than develop their individuality, its population had to continually strive to subjugate their own sense of independent spirit to a deeper sense of commonality -- good for the whole was, of necessity, good for the individual.

So along comes Buddhism to both countries. The Japanese sense of their own divinity, combined with their notions of harmony and introspection, are a fertile breeding ground for its teachings. If there is any place where the Buddhist teachings may have difficulty in taking root in the Japanese mind-set, it lies in the concept of the Bodhisattva. This notion of respect for all others as though they too are Buddhas does not set well with a "chosen" people.

Additionally, rigid systems of class and gender distinction do not integrate easily with the Lotus Sutra's admonition that all people, without distinction, possess the Buddha nature. The Daishonin had his job cut out for him in the thirteenth century.

Railing against the corruption of a Buddhist teaching that had evolved both as a result of mixing with indigenous Shintoism and bowing to cultural class distinction, the Daishonin vociferously attacked the Japanese religious and social status quo, nearly losing his head as a result. In truth, he lived a life of true austerity. Never well off, he was exiled twice – the second time to a remote island named Sado, with a climate similar to northern Minnesota, where he lived in a hut in the midst of a paupers' graveyard. It was on Sado that he wrote many of his most moving and important works. He was freed only when the Shogun, fearing that a combination of typhoons and Mongol attacks threatening to decimate Japan at the time might be a karmic effect of his treatment of the priest, Nichiren, gave in and allowed him to return to the mainland.

Flash forward to the twentieth century. Nichiren Shoshu Buddhism in Japan has had slow but steady growth over the years, garnering a few thousand believers and a few hundred priests. At the end of World War II, a man named Josei Toda, who spent years in prison during the war for his belief in Nichiren Shoshu, emerges to spread his religion to a nation reeling from nuclear aftershock. Embodying the spirit of the Daishonin, together with an awareness that may very well have mirrored Mr. Kirimura's above revelations concerning the depth of Japanese karma, Toda raged through Japanese society until his death in 1957. As a result of his efforts, Nichiren Shoshu became the fastest growing religion in Japan, garnering over ten million families by the mid-sixties.

It was in the mid-sixties that the previously mentioned Japanese ladies introduced the Daishonin's Buddhism to America. Their efforts made it possible for the enormous Japanese lay organization known as the Soka Gakkai (the creation of Josei Toda) to initiate its American counterpart known as NSA. NSA was the group that first taught me, along with tens of thousands of others, about the Buddhism of Nichiren Daishonin. I will forever be grateful to NSA for that introduction, however I am not similarly appreciative of the errors it unknowingly conveyed as a result of not paying close enough attention to the final four of the five guides for propagation set out by the Daishonin himself. As a result of these errors I was, shall we say, improperly programmed to correctly practice the Nichiren Shoshu teaching.

Being a child of the Judeo-Christian American culture, although I had consciously rejected a lot of its dogma and really didn't buy into many of its beliefs, I still was impacted by what, for lack of a better term, might be called the national collective unconscious. Just as the Japanese might have an inborn sense of divine superiority, I as an American, have a similar sense of original sin. It's not that we Americans don't believe that we are great. It's more that we believe our greatness derives from an external source -- the blessings of our God. You hear it in what probably should be our national anthem -- America the Beautiful ("god shed his grace on thee") and our pledge of allegiance ("one nation, under God").

Sigmund Freud, early in the twentieth century, only served to exacerbate the situation. His notions of all kinds of repressed aberrant thought, swirling unnoticed below our conscious mind, only served to make the Western population evermore convinced of its inherent wrongness, requiring salvation from an external source. Is it any wonder that depression seems to be the new "American" malaise?

The converse side to this notion of self-imperfection lies in the wonderful ideal of the samaritan. Americans, unlike the Japanese, have historically been generous to a fault. The concept of Bodhisattva, of being charitable, comes easily to Americans. In our own sense of fallibility, we find it easy to help and forgive others. This is not to say that racism and its attendant horrors have not also been part of the American legacy. However, the reality of the situation provides ample evidence that never, in the history of the world, has there been a nation that was so much of a true melting pot and so materially benevolent to its neighbors, even those vanquished in war.

So, in a statement of sweeping generalization, let me summarize what I'm attempting to say here. From the standpoint of the last four guides for propagation, Japan is a nation steeped in Buddhism for many centuries and populated by people who believed in their own innate divinity with little sense of the Bodhisattva ideal. In contrast, America is a country in which Buddhism was virtually unknown until the sixties; its people have a profound sense of their own imperfection and live according to the precepts of the samaritan, a strikingly similar, albeit not identical, concept to that of the Bodhisattva.

I don't know, as a nation, who's karma is better or worse, but I'll bet the farm on one thing: what worked to spread the Daishonin's Buddhism in Japan will never truly resonate in Western civilization.

Here's why: What essentially worked in Japan to both establish the Daishonin's Buddhism in the thirteenth century and then widely disseminate it in the twentieth was the traditional method of shakubuku. As I described earlier, this is a process by which people's erroneous belief structures concerning Buddhism are essentially broken down. They are then replaced with the correct teachings of the Lotus Sutra, culminating with Nam-myoho-renge-kyo. When employed correctly, shakubuku appears to be a very stern procedure in which there is demonstrable intransigence in dealing with the person being shakubukued. The Daishonin himself adopted this kind of attitude and Josei Toda was similarly known for his sternness and solemnity when introducing people to these teachings. Doesn't sound very attractive, does it? That's exactly my point.

“Strictness” tends to dishearten Americans

The intractable aspect of shakubuku may be essential in a culture where Buddhism has already taken root, perhaps even become diseased, and where the people themselves believe they are already little gods. In fact, even after people began chanting in Japan, they were regularly given doses of what was known as "strict guidance" in order to keep them on the straight and narrow. This means they were regularly scolded to ensure they did not backslide into an earlier Buddhist teaching (many of them had centuries of lesser Buddhist practice in their background) or buy into the notions of their own arrogance.

This may sound a bit racist, but these opinions were confirmed by Mr. Kimimura and I am not trying to say that Westerners are in any way, shape or form better than the Japanese. Any Westerner who has done business with the Japanese will tell you that underlying their seeming geniality and social grace is a rock-hard sense of the fact that they always feel they are holding the upper hand. It was this sense of smug superiority that Toda and his Soka Gakkai minions would constantly try to strike down as they awoke their compatriots to the truth of Nam-myoho-renge-kyo and tried to get them to recognize their Bodhisattva responsibilities.

This approach did not work well in America. I already told you of the way in which my personal relationships were interfered with, supposedly in the name of Buddhism. In reality I was being asked to conform to a Japanese set of standards. I could take that to an extent -- I was young and pure and really did want to practice this Buddhism correctly, having realized within that Nam-myoho-renge-kyo did indeed work in amazing ways.

However, over the years, I began to see that what was being asked of me was counter to my very being. I was literally told to put all thought out of my mind except that which would serve to fulfill the agenda of the Soka Gakkai's leader. I was told over and over again that, as an American, I could never truly understand the Daishonin's teaching or his heart. You can see that, following my experiences with the Gosho in 1976 and my dealings in Japan from 1978 - 79, all of these things I had been told were being proven false.

Of most importance, I discovered that I was going against the Daishonin's mandate in all of this. This is where even my own chanting seemed to fail me. After ten years of chanting, something felt truly stagnant and this is what motivated so much of my questioning while in Japan. Remember in "On Attaining Buddhahood," the Daishonin says, "even though you chant and believe in Myoho-renge-kyo, if you think the Law is outside yourself, you are embracing not the Mystic Law but some inferior teaching." Similarly, in the "True Entity of Life," he says, "there is a clear distinction between a Buddha and a common mortal, in that a common mortal is deluded while a Buddha is enlightened. The common mortal fails to realize that he himself possesses both the entity and the function of the Buddha's three properties."

What I began to realize was that both my cultural and genetic history had set me up to fundamentally go against these Buddhist teachings. Even though I wanted to believe in the Buddha within, the fact was I had an enormous reservoir of guilt and inferiority built up inside me as the karmic effect of my heritage. Even though I wanted to believe in the purity of Nam-myoho-renge-kyo and the infinite potential of my own human life, the attitudes of shakubuku and strict guidance I was receiving from my senior Buddhists reinforced my own heretical beliefs to the detriment of my progress in the practice.

Lucky for me I was also culturally imbued to perform the good works of the Samaritan. With this Bodhisattva-like intent, I was able to move forward and ultimately discover the truth of things -- that this teaching was both totally unique and accessible to the individual, no matter what his or her circumstance.

So why, you might ask, did the same strictness and intransigence work so well for the Japanese? Because, I would respond, they are coming from a place essentially 180 degrees opposed to the average Westerner. Again, I realize I am speaking in generalities. There are certainly arrogant American jerks just as there are insecure, depressed Japanese. Still, I am addressing that which is both religiously and culturally ingrained and which flows in currents deep below the conscious mind or appearance.

Judging from the growth of the Daishonin's teachings in Japan, the Japanese seem to have blossomed as a result of the repeated scolding required to break down their unjustified arrogance as children of the sun goddess and help them develop greater mercy for others. This same scolding worked to dishearten Westerners who already believed in their original sin and thought they were doing the best they could on behalf of the suffering masses.

Even though hundreds of thousands of Americans received the Gohonzon in the 1960's and early '70's, I would be surprised if even twenty thousand of them continue to chant today (that's a generous estimate). Is this because Nam-myoho-renge-kyo chanted to the Gohonzon doesn't work unless you're Japanese? Absolutely not. It is because the fundamental truths of Buddhism were never taught to the neonate American Buddhists. As a result these new practitioners found themselves in an alien lay organization which:

1. Insisted they behave according to Japanese, not American, ideals,

2. Played to their deepest fears as Judeo-Christians, resulting in an enhancement of their erroneous beliefs with a corresponding reduction in the power of their Buddhist practice, and

3. Completely missed the fact that Americans come to the table replete with Bodhisattva/Samaritan attributes.

In his writing, "The True Entity of Life," the Daishonin states, "When one is praised highly by others, he feels there is no hardship he cannot bear…When praised, one does not consider his personal risk, and when criticized, he can recklessly cause his own ruin. Such is the way of common mortals." Although he was speaking with regard to all people, I truly feel this quote is particularly apropos of Americans. I am not suggesting that introducing a Westerner to Buddhism need necessarily be a warm and fuzzy encounter full of new-age empathy ala "I feel your pain."

Nonetheless, keeping in mind the notions attendant to a deep cultural belief in original sin and the ever-present witness of an all-knowing, and rather strict, external deity, it is critical that Buddhism be presented as a practice of hope, first and foremost. It takes an enormous leap of faith to for a Westerner to even attempt the Buddhist practice, couched as it is in such apparently strange and esoteric concepts and language. The only way this person is going to continue his or her effort will be on the basis of positive reinforcement, flowing from actual results, combined with compassionate teaching that acknowledges and embraces the infinite variety of existence in this world.

Nichiren Daishonin expounded a universal teaching out of exactly this kind of profound compassion -- compassion he shared with other teachers such as Christ and Mohammed and Sakyamuni. In the final analysis, I don't know why he appeared in Japan instead of the Middle East or even New York. It sure would have made my life a lot easier if it had been one of the latter two, but I suspect the convenience of Cris Roman was never part of the universal game plan. What I do know is that, as I have repeatedly stated, although there may have been no qualitative distinction between the compassion and humanity of Christ, Mohammed, Sakyamuni, or the Daishonin, there was certainly a difference in what each of them ultimately wrote down and left as an actual practice.

In the Daishonin's case, no intermediaries need apply, be they Asian or Western.

Chapter 14

Ethics and Morality in Nichiren Buddhism

You may be wondering: Where are the ethics and morality in Buddhism? Where are the rules on how to live and behave toward one another? The bodhisattva ideal seems rather broad and non-specific. Aren't there any other codes or commandments?

The admonition to chant Nam-myoho-renge-kyo to the Gohonzon -- the Diamond Commandment -- is as far as the teaching of Nichiren goes in terms of commandments. In Buddhism, all behavior has an effect. No one escapes the inevitable retribution for -- or effect of -- making causes that demean the dignity of human life, the repository of the Buddha nature. On the other hand, no one has the unilateral authority to righteously or piously proclaim what that dignity entails, other than the universal existence of Buddhahood within. Chanting Nam-myoho-renge-kyo serves to activate the internal compass with which we direct ourselves along the path to enlightenment in this lifetime.

So much evil has been wrought in the name of piety. So many horrors have occurred in the service of religion -- crusades, pogroms, inquisitions and jihad. Buddhism makes no pretense about the existence of good and evil in this world. Both exist as a reality in every human life. According to Buddhism, both heaven and hell exist in this real world, rather than in some real or imagined afterlife. Instead of spending our lives in anxious anticipation for the hereafter, Buddhism suggests that what transpires in the future will simply be part of the ongoing continuum of existence being lived right now. Living the present moment as if it were our last is most important. This entails making the "causes" that we feel will benefit us in both the long and short term. Making the "right" cause may require a bit of wisdom, but that's what chanting and the Buddhist practice are for.

The growing awareness that now is the most critical moment of life creates the moral mandate for the Buddhist. A growing desire for peace and harmony, the manifestation of kyo as it knits the interwoven tapestry of the human race, is the motivation for figuring out what is good and right. The Buddhist cannot procrastinate by rationalizing that the day of reckoning may still be years away. Similarly, the Buddhist understands that the law of karma is very clear in its assertion that no cause is without its effect. Therefore, it behooves the person who invokes Nam-myoho-renge-kyo to carefully consider the nature of the causes he or she is making each and every day as part of the process of "perceiving the nature of your own life." This is the very purpose for which the Gohonzon was created.

The moral or ethical imperative expounded by Buddhism is involves each individual tailoring a dynamic and developing life-process rather than unquestioningly following an externally mandated set of static laws or commandments. Morality is no less important in Buddhism than it is in the Judeo-Christian tradition; it is simply defined in a less facile and obvious manner. Because Buddhism offers no explicit proscription or prohibition, each believer may make his or her own determination about "the moral thing to do." "Bad causes" born out of ignorance may have effects somewhat less deleterious than causes born out of the arrogant refusal to change. However, just as in civil law, ignorance should not be used as an excuse.

If we operate on the assumption that people practice any religion in order to gain awareness of their world and deal with the nature of suffering, then what Buddhism has to say about karma can almost be viewed as a law of physics. If we are suffering from anything -- ranging from poverty to ill health to lack of love -- all such effects might be looked at as our life not getting what it needs to sustain or support it. Granted, my life as a fat, happy American can in no way be compared to the true suffering of a Kurd or Croatian about to be "ethnically cleansed." Nonetheless, the subjective "feeling" of my suffering is to some extent similar. I may feel as though my life is being diminished, that I am not in receipt of either the physical or spiritual sustenance that I need to be at peace or, dare I say it, happy.

Through Buddhist practice, I can elevate my perspective to a place where I recognize my suffering as a lack of some sort of support from an infinite universe with which I am one and to which I am inextricably and eternally bound. At this point, simple Newtonian physics would have me understand that if I wish energies to be directed toward my being, I need to create forces that emanate outward from my life. This is similar to the attitude of “do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” which resonates with the Bodhisattva ideal. In the service of this attempt, chanting Nam-myoho-renge-kyo is a tremendous starting point. This practice allows me to maintain the aforementioned lofty perspective while providing a direct link to the internal, unconscious (for now) Buddha wisdom that motivates my behavior in more enlightened ways. I would like to make more of those enlightened, outwardly supportive behaviors because my prior ignorant, self-centered actions are what got me into this trouble to begin with.

Ultimately the goal, at least for me, is to arrive at a point where personal suffering is minimized so that more and more of my finite energy as a single human can be exerted in relieving the suffering of others. Buddhism does not promise the annihilation of all suffering. Shakyamuni's teachings began when he perceived suffering as an inevitable aspect of life. What Shakyamuni intended and what Nichiren perfected was a way to totally illuminate my Buddha nature, thereby providing me the wisdom and strength to eternally transform all the sufferings of life and death into fundamental joy. Daimoku provides the wisdom, strength and opportunity while the Bodhisattva ideal supplies the moral imperative.

The Middle Way

Another Buddhist concept that has some bearing on moral and ethical behavior is "Middle Way," not to be confused with Western concepts of the "Golden Mean" or "everything in moderation." The Middle Way is represented in Chinese by the character chu. This Chinese character resembles a rectangle with a line drawn through it. It was told that the most important aspect of writing this particular character lies in the determination of where to draw the line.

Similarly, the concept of the Middle way is bound up in the determination of what the proper approach to a given situation may be. Just as an artist might draw the line in the pictogram at either end or in the middle, according to his or her individual propensity, so too does the finding of the Middle Way imply that, under certain circumstances, it may indeed involve going to an extreme.

Obviously, a life lived in only extreme behavior may ultimately engender undesired results, but the Middle Way should not be construed as meaning behavior that only takes the cautious, moderate course.

In "On Attaining Buddhahood," Nichiren says, "Life…is neither existence nor non-existence, yet exhibits the qualities of both. It is the Mystic entity of the Middle Way that is the reality of all things." In saying this, Nichiren takes his cue from the teachings of T’ien-t’ai and is pointing at a concept known as the Three Truths in order to clarify his take on how the Middle Way is to be interpreted. In his writing, T’ien-t’ai explained these as, "First the truth of existence; second, the truth of non-being, and third, the supreme truth of the Middle Path. 'The truth of existence' refers to reality as perceived in the mind of ordinary people; this is called 'the truth of existence,' and is also called the 'the mundane truth.' 'The truth of non-being' refers to reality as perceived in the mind of people who have transcended the world; this is called the 'truth of non-being,' and is also called 'the real truth.' 'The supreme truth of the Middle Path' refers to reality as perceived by all Buddhas and Bodhisattvas; this is called 'the supreme truth of the Middle Path,' and is also called the 'one real truth.'"

Perhaps the best way to get this Middle Way concept across is to relate some of what Mr. Matsuda once told me as he attempted to explain what truly distinguished the Daishonin's teaching from that of T’ien-t’ai. As I said earlier, the Daishonin relied upon the theoretical constructs of T’ien-t’ai as the philosophical basis for his practice. However, the chanting of Nam-myoho-renge-kyo to the Gohonzon is more than mere philosophy -- it is a religious practice. Whereas T’ien-t’ai was attempting to reveal truths of the universe based on complex theoretical doctrine, the Daishonin concerned himself with passing on a simple practice which, although it encompassed the totality of T’ien-t’ai’s doctrine, was not contingent on the comprehension of same.

To put the teachings of T’ien-t’ai into practice, the aspiring Buddhist would have to meditate on writings such as the above for god only knows how long in order to hopefully achieve an intellectual or spiritual awakening that would reveal the meaning of theories like the Three Truths. You can see how this might prove less than universal in its appeal.

Conversely, the Daishonin says that the simple invocation of daimoku to his Gohonzon will manifest the reality of the Three Truths in your life. And what are those Three Truths? Well, they are both clear and nearly incomprehensible, just like that which they represent. Essentially they refer to the fact that we can see that which exists and that we do not see that which does not exist -- at least in our present state of awareness. For instance, we do not see the reality of what happens after death. Nevertheless, we need to appreciate that both existence and non-existence stem from the Supreme truth, which T’ien-t’ai called the Middle Path and the Daishonin referred to as "the Mystic entity of life," the Middle Way.

Flip a coin. It may land heads or tails, but one thing is for certain -- only one of them will be evident to you at any given moment. The other side of the coin, although it exists, is not currently on display. This is, to a limited extent, analogous to what the Three Truths are getting at. There is that which is in evidence, that which is not in evidence -- the other side of the coin, the dark side of the moon, the state of death in the eternal life-death cycle, and the entirety of the whole matter. When you spend the coin, you plunk down the whole thing, not just the head or tail. In fact a coin that is missing one of its sides is considered invalid or counterfeit. It serves as currency only when it has two sides, one of which we never see if we're looking at the other.

Similarly, even though the vast majority of us will never actually see the dark side of the moon, we infer its existence from our knowledge of the portion visible to us in our sky each night. Our concept of moon includes both that which is revealed to us as well as that which is not.

Death is a further step of faith. Life is what we know and what exists. We know that we will die and yet cannot know when, given our sensory limitations. We cannot know how the state of death, of non-manifest existence (or what T’ien-t’ai called ku) will be. Nonetheless, being alive and being dead are both integral to that which Buddhism defines as the totality of life, what the Daishonin points out as the Mystic entity of the Middle Path.

Seeking the Middle Way means finding the "coinness" in that piece of metal that has two sides, heads and tails, and ultimately applying it as currency. Both a penny and a quarter have heads and tails, yet a penny will never purchase twenty-five cents worth of goods.

For humans, seeking out the Middle Way means manifesting our fundamental humanness, our Buddha nature, during the course of our lifetime. Chanting Nam-myoho-renge-kyo enables the direct manifestation of the entity through our daily life appearance and behavior. What creates the appearance of charisma and fortune in the lives of some, though perhaps not many, that we meet? I submit that it has to do with the extent to which they (whether they practice Buddhism or not) have been able to tap into the infinite, eternal current that flows in the depths of life. They look human, they act human, they talk human and yet, they seem to have an indefinable something that makes them seem just a little above the fray. We all have it -- we just have to touch base a bit more with our own, unique Middle Way.

In our conversation about the distinction between T’ien-t’ai and the Daishonin's teachings, Mr. Matsuda said, "What you have to remember is that with the theoretical teaching of the Lotus Sutra, as described by T’ien-t’ai, the most you can do is meditate upon the Middle Way. As you do, you recognize the reality of ku and the entirety of what life is becomes evident to you. With the Daishonin's Buddhism, people who do not have the capability for such reflection -- the vast majority -- need simply to chant daimoku in order to manifest the reality of the ultimate life entity. This makes Buddhism infinitely more accessible, and rather than indulging in only internal, reflective, somewhat selfish meditative behaviors, the Buddhist can make real causes for the creation of global peace and harmony."

Herein lies the key to the Buddhist notion of morality and ethics. By pursuing the Middle Way, the practitioner literally elevates his or her life activity to the global arena. Although the vast majority of us won't become rich or famous or perhaps even charismatic, we each can attain the absolute confidence that the depths to which we plumb our lives and transform our karma makes a difference in the life of every human being on the planet. This is an awesome possibility which speaks volumes about the Buddhist concept of morality -- that each of us is fundamentally responsible for all of our companions on this fragile ecosystem known as Earth.

I want to reiterate that Middle Way does not mean that you seek the middle. It refers to the fact that the entity of life is at the center or core of all existence and projects the light which we see -- as well as the shadow we do not -- upon the movie screen of our daily lives. If we attend only to light or shadow, failing to seek their origin at the center or "middle," we miss the key to our existence. In seeking the Middle Way, the Buddhist invokes Nam-myoho-renge-kyo and uses the wisdom that naturally wells up within to make the appropriate causes at the appropriate times. Even our seeming mistakes are made so we can learn. The promise of the Lotus Sutra is that life will not end before we have realized our absolute power.

So what of homosexuality, abortion, capital punishment, infidelity, gun control and all the other issues that have become buzz words in our national obsession to define morality? Buddhism would say each man and woman must determine for him or her self what the proper take on each of these subjects may be, and encourage people to make their decisions based on the deepest wisdom they find within. Part of that includes prayer (I'm not going to remind you which one -- they all serve a purpose) and part of that includes not being swayed by the opinions of others. Let the moral pundits of the world all express their opinions and let us listen to all of them and open-mindedly arrive at our own conclusions.

Every man or woman who feels they've cornered the market on what constitutes morality and ethics speaks from lessons learned. None are totally pure and none are totally corrupt. That being the case, what is critical is that such pundits leave each of us the space to lead our own lives, make our own mistakes and learn our own lessons. When such people dare to speak for all, or even for God or the Buddha, and declare unholy all those who do not follow their way, they then cross the line and open the doors to tyranny and despotism. This is what set Nichiren Daishonin apart. He simply and elegantly admonished all of us to chant daimoku to the Gohonzon, pursue our life's path utilizing the compass of the Middle Way and, in so doing, become the completely unique Bodhisattvas that we all are: truly a universal ethic for each and every human being.

I still remember one gathering over twenty years ago, when many Org members were being incorrectly counseled by homophobic leaders that the gay life style was not in accordance with Buddhism, when Mr. Matsuda was asked, "What does Nichiren Daishonin say about being homosexual." Mr. Matsuda, who wore rather thick glasses and looked a bit like a Japanese nerd, looked out over the hushed crowd and simply said, "The Daishonin says that if they chant Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, they will surely become enlightened." I think about fifty people in that room were moved to tears by his answer. That said it all. He was not being facetious or coy. He was simply reminding everyone that the promise of the Lotus Sutra is that no one, no matter what they are or what they do, is excluded from the Buddha's assurance of enlightenment.

I believe this non-judgmental, unconditional love that is at the heart of the Buddhist practice comprises the highest moral dictate on the planet.

©2000-2005 Cris Roman
all rights reserved

A Nichiren Buddhist Primer

Sunday, October 24, 2010

The Mentor Passes

Tuesday, July 12, 2005

Nam Myoho Renge Kyo: A Personal Exploration of the Wonderful Buddhist Mantra -- My Book in Progress, Chaps. 1-14