Hey, I've received a couple of requests for info on where/how to learn Nichiren gongyo, the daily recitation of portions of the Lotus Sutra.
I learned it by hearing others do it. I followed along, trying to mouth the syllables. I don't know anyone who has fully mastered it in the sense that they never trip and always pronounce every syllable clearly and completely. But then, perfection isn't exactly the goal. Cris Roman wrote about his relationship with gongyo here.
Thankfully, there are tons of great online resources to help you learn gongyo....
Robin has started the Gongyo On Line blog. Check it out.
YouTube has dozens of helpful videos. Here are three of note....
This one is a little faster than many of the "learn gongyo" recordings, with hiki daimoku at the end. The scrolling syllables are a great help.
I say "abbreviated" meaning it's what we used to call "A and C" gongyo. But I realize that many newer chanters have never heard of "Part B" since the SGI cut it from their practice a few years ago. If anyone has a link to a full ABC recitation, please post it or send it to me.
Very slow gongyo for beginners only:
With this one, you can read along with the text, but it doesn't scroll. The very slow pace may start to bug you.
Perfect if you're running late. But it might make you laugh.
SGI stalwart Bob Hasegawa's American Gongyo site might be helpful, but I'm turned off by his using it as an opportunity to shill for donations of real estate and more to SGI-USA, saying: "...the giving of heartfelt gifts is the duty of us loyal members."
Ugh. Why go there if you can learn gongyo elsewhere for free and without the "loyalty" guilt trip?
Also of note on the American Gongyo site are the supposed "10 Good Reasons to Chant Nam-myoho-renge-kyo:"
1. Use the Ultimate Law of the Universe for Your Real Happiness (a.k.a., Enlightenment or Buddhahood).2. Get Rid of Bad Karma and Build Good Karma. Change Defeat into Victory; Loss into Gain; Poison into Medicine.
3. Overcome Your Fears, Painful Memories and Phobias.
4. Understand Your Life Condition With an Enlightened Mind.
5. Relate to People in Your Environment on the Highest Level.
6. Control the Lower Four Worlds of Hell, Hunger, Dominant/Submissive Attitudes and Anger.
7. Find and Keep Actual Love.
8. Understand and Get What You Really Need for Your Happiness. (What Do I want out of life?)
9. Increase the Span of Your Life; Overcome the Sufferings of Birth, Old Age, Sickness, Death and Re-birth.
10. Get Stuff You May Want, Including Freedom, Wealth, Love, Friends, Work Satisfaction and Joy By Buddhafying Yourself.
Holy crap. If you're wondering why Nichiren Buddhism has gotten a bad rap as materialistic, asinine quackery, look no further. I think I've found a new example to add to my Dubious Daimoku collection.
I much prefer Terri Moore's gently optimisticTop Ten Reasons to Chant.
Got a good gongyo-related link? Please share it.
1 comment
This is an interesting topic. Gongyo is so essential to many of us and I second Chris' personal observation of how important it is to him. I first learned gongyo, so many years ago, by myself and got it all wrong, even though I tried to listen to the Japanese ladies.Things just were not working out well in my practice and in my life and then a priest came to our community center to give out Gohonzons. I noticed my gongyo was all wrong. "Hmmmm", I thought, "I had better fix this. Maybe that would help." So, I lassooed a Japanese lady and had her help me and pick it apart and redo it. That improved things.Then, 3 years later, I went to Kyoto, Japan, for a 9 months study abroad. I was able to see the Dai-Gohonzon 7 times. And, Kyoto had a main Nichiren Shoshu temple (the Bowling Club was affiliated at the time) so I went every Sunday to do the toso and gongyo with the priest(s) and folks. I learned there really is a perfectly correct way to do gongyo and I worked on it diligently. There is a difference, in English, between "hop" and "hope" and there is a difference, I observe, when any syllable of gongyo is pronounced incorrectly.There are a lot of very bad gongyos going around, frankly, in my opinion, and they are getting worse and worse. It's the old salt, when you tell somebody something who tells the next person who tells the next person and pretty soon it is practically unintelligible. In the days when the priests came around every month or three and we did gongyo with them (and by cricky, they DO know how to do gongyo, it's part of their profession), we automatically had the opportunity to consciously or unconsciously sharpen things up but that is no longer the case in the org with which I have been associated.Since the Hobenpon, as Chris alluded, manifests the Buddha nature and the Jigage extends it to one's Buddha's Land, I find gongyo imperative for straightening out the future before I ever get into it. Such a magnificent treasure for organizing future reality!! I find the resonance of my life with the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas on the Gohonzon during this Ceremony to be one of the first class pleasures of life itself.So, I am deeply concerned at what I have considered in my religio/social realm to be the degradation of gongyo and, maybe, even the understanding of what it is, and that the serious decline is not even noted as a problem.Signed,Armchair