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.  
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. 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 woman 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 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."

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 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 66th 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 go 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 away 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 now 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!"

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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

Chapter 8: Theoretical Underpinnings of the Gohonzon

Chapter 9: Theoretical Underpinnings of the Gohonzon, Part Two

Chapter 10: Gongyo, An Intensely Personal Symphony

Chapter 11: The Moment of Death, and Changing Karma

Chapter 12: Total Responsibility

Chapter 13: Propagating an Individual Practice in America

Chapter 14: Ethics and Morality in Nichiren Buddhism