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 worshiping 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 everything 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.

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 overblown 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 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 -- but not necessarily loved -- 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:

1. 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.

2. 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.

3. 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 must not be given form.

4. 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.

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 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."

*

Chapter 1: Looking for a Bridge

Chapter 2: Nichiren and the Lotus Sutra

Chapter 3: Defining Nam-myoho-renge-kyo

Chapter 4: The Benefits of Buddhist Practice

Chapter 5: A Focal Point for One's Faith

Chapter 6: The Gohonzon and Bodhisattva Practice

Chapter 7: A Personal Relationship with the Gohonzon