Over the years I have gotten into many dialogue and debates about the Honzon or Gohonzon and I have found that there is a lot of confusion about the nature of the Gohonzon because different people are talking about very different things while using the same term or terms.

The word "honzon" is composed of two Chinese characters: "hon" which means fundamental or original or basis and "zon" which means respected, honored, or venerated. It is actually a generic Japanese word for whatever is enshrined at any temple as the main focus of devotion. In fact, that is how I prefer to translate "honzon" - "focus of devotion." "Object of worship" seems a little idolatrous to me, and in any case it is not the object itself which is worshipped but that which the object represents. So for instance, at a Pure Land temple the honzon is a statue of Amitabha Buddha. But they don't worship the statue, they worship Amitabha Buddha. Of course, because of eye-opening ceremonies which are universal in traditional Buddhism (even Theravadins and Tibetans do eye-openings as well as the Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans) the object also participates in that which it symbolizes. Incidentally, Paul Tillich in his extremely insightful book "Dynamics of Faith" defines a symbol as something that points beyond itself but also participates in that which it points to. A Gohonzon is the same thing with an extra honorific attached. It is also used generically.

So when Nichiren wrote Kanjin Honzon Sho he was not introducing a honzon or the Gohonzon of Nichiren Budhdism. There were already honzons in each school and temple prior to that. Rather, he was carefully defining what he believed the Gohonzon of Buddhism should be in the Latter Age. What should be the main focus of devotion (or object of worship) for Buddhists?

This is where the arguments begin. I don't want to revisit them all here. But I will just lay out the Nichiren Shu position really quick before I move onto something much more important. Nichiren Shu's reading of the Kanjin Honzon Sho and the Honzon Mondo Sho and other relevant gosho based on the Showa Teihon text is that the Gohonzon of Nichiren Buddhism is the Eternal Shakyamuni Buddha but also the Wonderful Dharma which is the Odaimoku. The two are different in that one is the Buddha and one is the Dharma, one is the original teacher and the other is the truth which is taught. It is the unity of the Person and the Law. The best explanation I have heard is that the Gohonzon is the Eternal Shakyamuni Buddha transferring the Wonderful Dharma to all of us - which makes it not just the Person or the Law but the Act of transferrance. This makes the Gohonzon a verb more than simply a person or abstract principle.

The Nichiren Shu does not think of the Gohonzon as an object though objects can be used to represent it. So in Nichiren Shu we accept five different forms of the Gohonzon: (1) the Odaimoku alone; (2) a statue of the Eternal Shakyamuni Buddha; (3) a statue of the Eternal Buddha flanked by the four leaders of the Bodhisattvas of the Earth; (4) the treasure tower inscribed with the Odaimoku and flanked by Shakyamuni Buddha and Many Treasures Tathagata; (5) the Omandala which is what SGI and NST call "the Gohonzon."

None of these are considered to function or represent the Gohonzon in Nichiren Shu until they have been "eye-opened" which is a ceremony by which someone who has the requisite faith and understanding (not necessarily but in practice almost always a minister) performs gongyo and dedicates the merits to the bringing out the world of buddhahood in the inanimate object which can not practice for itself. Because it is inanimate, the object will also not revert back to any other world on its own.

There are over 125 extant Nichiren mandalas, but the Nichiren Shu only officially bestows the Shutei Mandala dead link which it feels is the most representative and is the one Nichiren himself had enshrined at his passing (along with his statue of Shakyamuni Buddha). The Nichiren Shu does not condone or condemn the sale of Omandalas which are available at Buddhist supply stores in Japan, and will recognize the validity of just about all Omandalas which are made in accord with Nichiren's intentions. Still, they prefer that Nichiren Shu members abide by Nichiren Shu custom and receive one from the minister rather than getting one at a store and then presenting it to a minister for an eye-opening (or not). However, there are no Dharma police, and we are more concerned with where people are spiritually in terms of their faith and practice rather than with objects and rituals. Of course, there may be some ministers out there who are more concerned about this than the ones I know, but I am speaking based on my own experience.

Aside from objects and rituals however, the most important thing is the Odaimoku itself and our faith in it. So why worry about which Buddha the Gohonzon is supposed to represent? In fact, why do we need to worship or devote ourselves to anyone or anything at all? Shakyamuni Buddha did not talk about worshipping images - whether statues or mandalas or otherwise. And if we all have buddha-nature and should not seek things outside ourselves then what good is it to worship or focus on something outside of ourselves like a statue or mandala? Isn't that distracting ourselves from ourselves - the true source of our problems and solutions and the actual residence of the ten worlds? Didn't Nichiren himself teach that we should not seek the Gohonzon outside ourselves? If we are buddhas by nature, shouldn't our focus of devotion, our object of worship, our Gohonzon be ourselves? That would certainly be the recommendation of Antoine Szander LaVey, the founder of the Church of Satan; but I somehow doubt that Nichiren Shonin or Shakyamuni Buddha would go alone with it.

There must be a Middle Way between losing ourselves to something outside and getting lost in ourselves through egotism. I think this is what the Three Jewels (aka Three Refuges) in Buddhism are all about. All ten worlds do indeed exist within ourselves, but we do have a tendency based on our causes and conditions to gravitate towards one or another, and usually they are the lower six worlds. The perspective of nine of the ten worlds is limited though they are not apart from one another. So the key is to find a way to awaken to the all embracing perspective of Buddhahood which not only participates in the mutual possession of the ten worlds but is also fully awakened to them and their functioning and interpenetration. So how do we get this perspective when our habits keeps us in the blinders and harness of the lower worlds. This is where the Three Jewels/Refuges come in. They represent to us what we could be. They remind us that there is more to our lives than we thought. They provide us with a model for creating new and more liberating and more compassionate ways of seeing and acting in the world. So one focuses on them invests time, money, and energy on them rather than on one's usual and perhaps more selfish and destructive interests and past times. It is not that a Buddha is going to come down from some heavenly realm and fix you or grant your wishes, or that the Dharma is going to be some kind of magical panacea when you read, recite, or study it, or that the Sangha is going to do everything for you and/or tell you how to live your life. Not at all. Rather, in focusing on the Three Jewels one sees what one can be and is inspired to bring out the very qualities one admires in them from out of one's own life. The Three Jewels are the causes and conditions of the world of Buddhahood and at first they may seem to be external, but their very purpose is to allow us to recognize them internally on the level of our aspirations, intentions, will, and practice.

In Buddhism, the word "faith" does not mean blind belief or subscribing to some unproven dogma. Rather, it means confidence and trust. And the confidence and trust is placed in these three things: that the Buddha really did wake up to the truth and therefore we can too; that the Dharma really does teach us how to awaken for ourselves; and that there is a Sangha that continues to correctly uphold the model of awakening and the way to attain awakening so that we can benefit from it here and now. We also have to have confidence and trust in our own ability to practice and awaken to the truth. We must not undermine or second guess ourselves and we must be willing to at least provisionally give Buddhism a try to see where it takes us.

So it would seem that faith, worship, and devotion in Buddhism is not at all about trying to flatter or win the attention of a Supreme Being in order to get goodies and stave off disaster. Buddhism is a more mature approach to spirituality whereby one must become conscious of one's intentions and learn to work with them and steer them in a direction that puts us in harmony rather than conflict with the law of cause and effect. No one is going to do it for us, but Buddhism is the way whereby we can empower ourselves to do it for ourselves and to go on from there to help empower others.

And this is where we get back to the Gohonzon. Nichiren was concerned that the Gohonzons of the other schools had become partial and disempowering. Their views of what should be focused on (their honzons) reflected aspects of awakening and buddhahood but not on the fullness of what Buddhahood is all about. For Nichiren, the Eternal Buddha of chapter 16 as interpreted by the T'ien-t'ai school in terms of the unity of the trikaya revealed the full significance of buddhahood - not just for Shakyamuni but for each of us. Nichiren connected this with the mutual possession of the ten worlds and a buddhahood that embraces and is embraced by all ten worlds. So the Gohonzon that Nichiren was presenting was not just an attempt to tell us who or what to worship. It was his attempt to point us to the most inspiring, profound, and holistic image of what buddhahood is and how it is at work in our lives right here and now.

So I believe that the Gohonzon as the Eternal Shakyamuni Buddha transferring the Wonderful Dharma to all beings in the Latter Age is not something that I bow and scrape to in order to get goodies or to get zapped by a beam of light for instant enlightenment. I see the Gohonzon as a focus for my aspiration, a model to reflect on in my daily life, a profound source of inspiration, and a reminder of what I have locked within me which my trust, confidence, and sincere practice of the Odaimoku can help me to unlock. Other analogies would say that Odaimoku is the seed which meets the fertile ground of my buddha nature which then brings forth a crop of buddha qualities - but the point is that the Odaimoku helps us to bring out the best in ourselves and the Gohonzon represents those qualities as they were modeled by the Eternal Shakyamuni Buddha and as we will model them ourselves.

Namu Myoho Renge Kyo,
Ryuei