The subject of curing illness and exploring the greatness of Nichiren Daishonin’s Buddhism is constantly on my mind. Hardly a day goes by for me without an inquiry from a reader or someone who is ill asking how to overcome illness. I am not a medical doctor, nor a healer. I am, however, a seasoned writer and researcher on the subject of Buddhist healing with thirty years of faith, practice and study under my belt. In appreciation for your tremendous support, I would like to convey to you some of the latest findings in Era III, alternative healing, so you can better understand your own unique situation and more effectively encourage others.
Everyone faces a serious medical problem at some point in his or her life. Superstition, pure ignorance, and misunderstanding the metaphoric implications of religious myth are our biggest enemies in understanding the true nature of the Four Sufferings of birth, aging, sickness and death.
Not long ago, I heard of a woman who was advised by a member-friend to chant, drink herbal teas and take vitamins rather than go back to her oncologist for crucial treatment. Her cancer that had been in remission returned. Now she is in real trouble. Let’s get something straight: chanting and faith is not a substitute for proper medical care. Whether that treatment is allopathic, homeopathic, holistic, Traditional Chinese Medicine, qigong, or Ayurveda, the point is that chanting should never take the place of good medical treatment. Chanting is complementary to proper treatment. As for myself, I strongly lean toward Western conventional allopathic medicine, supplemented with chanting lots of quality daimoku. I also use visualization when needed.
It’s been my observation and experience that SGI members become ill at the same rate as other people, contrary to what some believers might claim. There is no cosmic immunity for Nichiren Buddhists or anyone else for that matter. If that were so, Shakyamuni Buddha would not have succumbed so painfully to food poisoning and Nichiren would not have died from a protracted battle with stomach cancer, as some scholars suggest. Sadly, even President Ikeda lost a son to cancer.
Diseases like cancer, AIDS, diabetes, or heart disease don’t care if you’re a top senior leader, a junior pioneer, or the daimoku champion of your territory. At some point disease occurs no matter how strong our faith. When this happens, we are presented with a strict opportunity to transform our life in ways we never anticipated. Whether you left the mainstream of the SGI or you’re a dynamic hill charger on the front lines of kosen-rufu, it seems to make little difference -- illness appears and we are forced to learn about ourselves. With faith, all illness and suffering can be transformed.
In Susan Sontag’s Illness as a Metaphor, there are some interesting references of ordinarily well-meaning people blaming people’s illness on some shortcoming or sin. This is not uncommon in any religion -- I have, unfortunately heard this in the SGI as well. I believe we must be very merciful to sick people, bringing them comfort. In Buddhism, the idea of jihi, or mercy has often times been used as a psychological stick upside someone’s head, to get them to breakthrough some impasse. It is natural to offer someone encouragement and try to help them overcome their illness. Let’s chant with them and for them and explain the sutra and Gosho. Leave the actual healing, both physical and psychological, to the physician and his team. We are not doctors.
It is cruel to blame someone’s illness on leaving the organization, resigning a position, or for having what someone else might judge as weak faith, saying that it’s punishment. I personally experienced such accusations after I had resigned my position as district chief for personal reasons, then six months later being diagnosed with 4th stage cancer. Man, that hurt! I suffered a great deal, worrying that I had destroyed my eternal life. It wasn’t until I had two mystical experiences that I realized that my cancer emerged from karmic strata far deeper than the supposed quick cause and effect whammy of resigning a position. In my mind, there is nothing worse than looking at impending death with the latent fear that you’ve committed some mortal sin, failed in your mission, or failed the Buddha somehow.
No one eased my mind on the subject either. I was allowed to wrestle with advanced cancer and the innuendo that I had let down kosen-rufu, “setting it back a decade.” I was pretty much on my own with the Gohonzon, the Gosho and President Ikeda’s guidance -- but that was enough to fill me with hope.
Finally I shook off my feeling of remorse and realized that the two were unrelated. If I survived, I vowed to offer nothing but pure, practical, energetic encouragement. This psychology of bestowing guilt or making ourselves feel guilt acts like a curse and may actually cause someone to consciously or subconsciously will themselves sick or take a turn for the worse. It is true that guilt can be found at the root of some illnesses. We must give peace of mind, not point out people’s failures.
The workings of the mind and biology are mysterious indeed. Author, Larry Dossey, M.D., has established three eras for medicine. Era I is pure physical medicine where the body is regarded as a biological machine. This is still the prevailing form of Western medicine being taught today. Era II is mind-body medicine, which is becoming more prevalent today with medical schools incorporating alternative treatments like meditation and biofeedback into their curriculum.
Era III is nonlocal or external medicine, where it is understood that the mind and consciousness is not confined to the physical body. It is about the interconnection between all phenomena. In Era III medicine, distant healing is accepted and it is understood that prayer, meditation and intention is capable of curing any illness or influencing someone on the other side of the planet.
All three forms of this brand of era medicine are essential. Notice how these forms of medicine conform to the Buddhist principle of The Three Truths: Era I equals Ke, the physical; Era II equals Ku -- the whole mind, karma and potential; Era III equals Chu, the all pervasive essential spirit that is at the root of all phenomena and still beyond space-time.
The difference I have seen between sick people who chant and those who don’t is not so much in the end result, but in the process. Chanting does make a difference in our ability to fight illness and in our quality of inner peace. Chanting enables us to overcome illness and illness becomes an expedient for us to attain enlightenment. As I have described in my book, Modern Buddhist Healing, chanting Nam-myoho-renge-kyo is a powerful and practical asset when fighting illness. Positive thinking is good, but without faith and prayer, we are at the mercy of our karma, the course of the illness and the skill of our doctor. It is my contention that chanting works on a deeper karmic level than other forms of prayer, but proving this is not yet possible.
Let me also state for the record that prayers besides daimoku work extremely well. Before we get on our indestructible, diamond-ichinen soapbox proclaiming the wonders of daimoku over all other prayer, the scientific studies are pointing toward the equality of prayer and meditation in producing the relaxation response. Christians, Muslims, Hindus, (and yes) other types of Buddhism, Shamanism, earth religions, secular yoga, meditation, and people who use music and singing bowls, have all regained their health through their beliefs and practices. Anyone that says otherwise is either ignoring the scientific facts or is speaking from a sectarian bias. If you don’t believe this, read the book, The Relaxation Response, by Harvard University medical researcher, Herbert Benson, M.D.
There is no shortage of data on the efficacy of various forms of prayers, meditations, and affirmations, and their apparent equality. How is this possible? The answer is quite simple and yet profound. For all who desire complete superiority in their faith, please stop reading: Despite what has been drilled into your head, all prayer works on the nonlocal level. In case you are unfamiliar with the term “nonlocal,” it is derived from modern physics and was incorporated into medical literature by Larry Dossey, M.D. It means the phenomena of mind or consciousness is not a product of the brain. It naturally exists everywhere in the multiverse and is not confined to space-time. It is without restriction and interpenetrates all things.
From a Buddhist view, nonlocal mind is akin to the fabric of Indra’s Net, also known as dependent origination, and it is especially similar to chutai (Ke, Ku, Chu, or The Three Truths). It is the boundless original spiritual essence of all matter and existence. It has also been described as many other things including, The Mind at Large, Universal Mind, Cosmic Consciousness, Quantum Consciousness, Absolute Elsewhere -- or, for Mahayana Buddhists, Amala Vijnana, the ninth consciousness linked to Nam-myoho-renge-kyo.
The point is that we are all interconnected, miniature universes, reflecting our eternal being and will back into the macrocosm. Life and phenomena are all one vast entity -- all mind is one mind. There is a mystical arbitrating force within the universe that is connected to us and we to it. That is why all prayer is answered. Praying to the Gohonzon is obviously going right to the head arbitrator.
But as Nichiren Daishonin Buddhists, haven’t we been taught the superiority of our faith? Yes we have, and in terms of being able to achieve samadhi states of consciousness and the practice having a universal accessibility, I have not seen anything comparable in any other teaching, anywhere. However, as Daishonin Buddhists in a modern scientific era, we are still making claims that are scientifically unsubstantiated. All our claims of healing and the superiority of daimoku are anecdotal at best.
Take for instance qigong, the ancient Taoist based healing philosophy. They have had their healing techniques scientifically studied and documented for many years. The Transcendental Meditation movement has also had dozens of studies conducted on their healing techniques. Christian Science has done this for decades. The results of these independent studies have shown conclusively that their techniques work. Until Nam-myoho-renge-kyo is put to similar scrutiny, all we have is more anecdotal, albeit impressive evidence.
I close this essay with a personal opinion based on many years of practice and overcoming advanced cancer 16 years ago. I do believe that when daimoku is fully studied by scientists that many amazing things will come to light. There will be revelations on its harmonics, its effects on mental and physical illness, its ability to promote relaxation, and its power to pave the way for a peaceful death, to name just a few possibilities.
I was recently asked what I would do if it was proved that daimoku was equal to all other prayer in regard to healing. I said, “...the first thing I would do is the same as the last thing I’d do. I’d chant three times and thank the Gohonzon!”