HumorBrooke St. GeorgeNichirensatire
The scroll is called a Gohonzon. It is a mandala that uses various Chinese and Japanese characters to illustrate the Ceremony in the Air, an event that takes place in the Lotus Sutra.
The Gohonzon is a living energy-web vortex. These are my words, not Nichiren's. Nichiren is the guy who inscribed the scroll. He realized his own Buddhahood and wrote it all down on the Gohonzon so I could do the same.
Twenty-five percent of me hopes that chanting will help me get a new job and money to pay my bills. Twenty-five percent of me is relaxed and not worried about a job or anything. Twenty-five percent of me feels pregnant with expectation that something good is happening in my life -- something is growing in some heart-womb area of me. Twenty-five percent of me is concentrating on the Gohonzon and the act of chanting.
This is how I do gongyo 100%. Gongyo means "assiduous practice." It refers to the twice-daily chanting and sutra recitation that Nichiren Buddhists do.
During his lifetime, people hated Nichiren's guts. He was a sage and scholar in medieval Japan. He would send letters to the government and tell everyone that terrible things would happen if people ignored the Lotus Sutra. People got pissed off. Nobody likes to be criticized.
One night, an army showed up at Nichiren's house to kill him. The soldiers took him to a deserted beach. Just as they were about to cut off his head, a fireball fell out of the sky. The soldiers freaked. No one dared raise a sword against Nichiren.
The fireball thing is a documented historical fact.
Instead of killing him, the government forced Nichiren into exile on a remote island. Most of the people on that island wanted to kill him. But no one did.
All of Nichiren's predictions came true. This is also a documented historical fact.
I got fired from my stupid, demeaning job for insubordination, which basically means that I was aware that my job was stupid and demeaning. If I weren't aware of this, I would not have been so sarcastic and thusly would not have been fired.
My firing was not one of Nichiren's predictions.
I would like to think that there is some parallel between my present circumstances and Nichiren's persecution, but I do not view my life with such distorted grandiosity. There is no parallel, but still I am intimate with the heart of Nichiren. I think about this as I walk to Urth Caff.
Urth serves the best caffe latte in Los Angeles, so rich and creamy that it puts me in a mood to spout superlatives unsupported by objective consumer data. There is also Urth's Spanish latte, a haunting bowl of sweet molten fat. But that is for another day.
The neighborhood at this West Hollywood end of Melrose Avenue pulses, hums and sometimes leans on its horn like an impatient bastard. I sit outside on Urth's terra cotta tile patio with my latte, reading the Los Angeles Times Magazine left over from the Sunday paper. There is a smear of strawberry jam on the page I'm reading.
A woman at a table near me asks, "Where is the love?" The subject is Buddhism. Not just any brand of Buddhism -- she's talking about Nichiren Buddhism. I eavesdrop. She says that Nichiren Buddhists are judgmental. She says that all we do is bicker and condemn other Buddhists as non-Buddhist. She says we're confrontational, just like Nichiren was, and we have no love. We have no loving-kindness in our Nichiren sangha. This is what she says.
A sangha is a bunch of people who practice Buddhism together.
The man she is talking to enacts what he calls a dialogue between two Nichiren Buddhists who practice in different sanghas. This is how it goes:
"You're a slanderer!"
"No, you're a slanderer!"
"Nyeh-nyaaah."
"Neener neener."
Then they talk about something else.
Where is the love? Nichiren is all about love. Nichiren the Lover, I call him. I would like to say this to the people near me, but I am trying to practice self-control regarding what I say. This is my resolution since being fired.
I think of Nichiren in exile cut by cold and starvation yet with his heart full of longing love for the Lotus Sutra. His friends were targets of harassment and murder, so he warned people to stay away from him. How lonely I bet he was, yet how delicious and beautiful like a fragrant ripe plum, and aching with tender love for the whole world.
I do not know any prurient details of Nichiren's life. He wrote a number of letters to a woman whom he called "the mother of Oto Gozen." I have often wondered: Who was the father of Oto Gozen? In his letters, sometimes Nichiren sounds like a lover separated from his soul mate and a parent separated from his child.
This is undocumented historical speculation.
"You're a slanderer."
"No, you're a slanderer."
"Nyeh-nyaaah."
"Neener neener."
Let me just please add that Nichiren was tough when he needed to be. Sharp as a diamond.
Nichiren wrote a lot about correct understanding of Buddhism and correct practice. Correct practice involves the refutation of slander. This makes for bad PR if people don't understand where you're coming from.
I used to think that correctness meant following rules and being very disciplined in the sense that I am bad somehow, therefore I must discipline myself. I put myself through that whole trip. A lot of people I know did too. We thought we were being correct, but it was really about needing to feel in control of something.
Correctness is not rigidity. Correctness is precision. Precision happens when you are so sensitive at heart and open that you can accurately perceive the reality of a situation and respond naturally with wisdom and compassion. It's not a big mental exercise. Precision is fully awake integration of mind, heart, body and environment.
There is no objective consumer data to support this claim.
Nichiren was precise. In one of his letters, Nichiren writes about different degrees of slander and what a person should do about them. One single quote is the foundation of this whole matter of correctness. The quote is: "The most important thing is to continually strengthen our wish to benefit others."
The most important thing is to continually strengthen our wish to benefit others.
Strengthen our wish. He's not saying, "agonize over it," or "second-guess yourself," or "beat yourself up," or "follow the advice of others," "or do what most people agree is beneficial," or "fix other people," or "fix yourself," or "make value judgments."
He's saying: Strengthen your wish to benefit others.
It is still morning. I still have no job. I sit for a while looking at all the people. Now that I am jobless I have the luxury of considering what I want to do with my life. No matter what I do, I want to benefit to others. Some way, somehow. I won't make judgments about how this should come about. I will chant about the "what" and leave the "how" up to the Gohonzon.
The Gohonzon is like the precise heart of a true lover. Distance, time and circumstances are not impediments to that heart. In it, desire and fulfillment are simultaneous.