First, thanks for creating an open soapbox where people like me (unaffiliated seeker of the way) can reach a large audience.

I've been around the block with Nichiren Buddhism for almost 20 years. I've seen 'em come and go -- the messiahs, the reformers, the upstarts. I've seen The Org change for the better and for worse, but it was never much help to begin with.

Can we please forget about Japan, everyone? Can we please forget about Nichiren and the cramped cultural, historical realities he faced, which are very different from our own?
That's some kinda blasphemy, I know. We owe a debt to Japan and to Nichiren. Too many Nichiren Buddhists are determined to repay the debt by forever imprisoning the practice of chanting in a little Japanese box tied with a reverent ribbon of piety.

Brooke is intrigued by Charles Atkins' plan for a new sangha which sounds invitingly western and modern. I wish Charles all the best. But I won't be joining.

I won't be joining a new sangha for the same reasons I won't be joining any of the old sanghas.

I reject the institionalization of Namu-myoho-renge-kyo. I reject all beliefs surrounding and related to Namu-myoho-renge-kyo.

I tell people, chant Namu-myoho-renge-kyo and discover for yourself what it is. My practice is whatever my practice is on any given day. Sometimes I chant chapters from the Lotus Sutra, sometimes I just chant Namu-myoho-renge-kyo three times in the morning, like saying hello to my life.

I have ten solid years of disciplined, twice-daily gongyo and daimoku under my belt. So you can say, oh, well it's fine for you to slack off. when you really get into trouble, you know how to go back to doing a real daimoku campaign.

I think training, discipline and campaigning are nonsense when it comes to the practice of Namu-myoho-renge-kyo.

If you take the mantra as your light / guide / teacher / prayer to re-link you to the immensity and eternity of your life, that's all you have to do. It shows what must be seen, it opens a path where one needs to go. It just does.

Meditation and mindfulness are beneficial practices. I would encourage anyone to sit in meditation for 20 or 30 minutes a day. If you want to develop calmness, nothing beats seated meditation. Likewise, taking a walk / jog, or bike ride for 30 minutes a day is a beneficial activity. If you want to maintain cardivascualr health, you have to move your body. Go for it!

Namu-myoho-renge-kyo is a very different kind of "activity," but it's also very straightforward, basic and unfettered by cultural crap -- like taking a walk or sitting calmly. Our problem is that we can't resist the urge to add rules and caveats to Namu-myoho-renge-kyo.

We say that you have to have this vision in your mind, and you have to have this spirit, and you need to read these books. That's all institutional add-on crap.

Now, imagine if chanters in the west told thier friends, hey, have you tried intoning the mantra Namu-myoho-renge-kyo three times in the morning?

What if that was the totality of practice? Nothing to join. No tenets to embrace. No religious values to adopt. No guilt trip or controlfreaking.

What if we forgot everything we think we know about Namu-myoho-renge-kyo, and intoned the mantra as if we were flying free, effortless in mid-air?

Then we'd have something. But it wouldn't be a sangha in the traditional sense of a Buddhist organization or club. We'd have something none of us can imagine right now.

We don't need a new institution. We need to free our minds from the institutions we've already created.