Humorgosho
People are no longer content to have a group of priests or senior leaders interpret the teachings for them. They want to know the truth from their own experience.
This has been the source of needless angst and confusion. Wasn't life so much easier back when people told you what to think? Weren't things simpler when you had a clear set of rules?
Friend, you need not suffer from angst and confusion. The one-and-only solution to all of your problems is...to take the Gosho literally!
The Gosho are the writings of Nichiren Daishonin, and I am here to tell you that every single word in them is to be taken at face value. The Gosho are a set of instructions, not inspirational writings. We must model our lives after the letter rather than the spirit of the Gosho. "Spirit" is a code word for radical liberalism, relativism and dangerous license.
Fuzzy Relativists will argue that this is downright silly. They'll fill your head up with a bunch of foolishness. They'll tell you that the only "rules" Nichiren Daishonin ever proposed were to chant Nam-myoho-renge-kyo and trust in the Gohonzon with all your heart. Ho ho! Welcome to the slippery slope of the abyss of moral and ethical chaos!
Friend, maybe you have fallen in with these bad influences, these tolerant types who -- in their angst and confusion -- discuss divergent views of Nichiren's teachings…and even go so far as to respect other religious traditions. Maybe you have become less fanatical than you would like to be. Maybe the world is no longer as black-and-white as it used to be.
Sadly, it appears that the Fuzzy Relativists have stolen your mojo.
If you are a lapsed fundamentalist and would like to get your mojo back, I have devised the perfect regimen, drawn from the pages of the Gosho. I call it the Amazing Three-Day Gosho Diet. Within 72 hours it will return you to your true and glorious stature as a Gosho Literalist.
It is a radical cleansing diet. Some nausea is to be expected.
First, secure a small hermitage in the wilderness. Perhaps your local REALTOR can help.
Take off all your clothes and put on an unlined robe made of thread spun from bark fiber.
Go sit in your hermitage. Please remember to turn off your cell phone and pager. There are no telecommunications devices in the Gosho. 'Nuff said.
It is important that you strictly observe the following diet. There are no chocolate walnut brownies in this diet because there are no chocolate walnut brownies in the Gosho. Do not stray from the prescribed diet in the slightest. All of the items listed below are explicitly named in the Gosho. Do not pop a breath mint. A breath mint will ruin it.
Day One
Breakfast: Taros, skewer-dried persimmons, parched rice, chestnuts, bamboo shoots and bamboo containers of vinegar
Lunch: One sack of rice, parched rice, melons, eggplants
Dinner: One horse-load of rice
Day Two
Breakfast: A hundred oranges, kelp, green laver
Lunch: Seventy rice cakes, a bamboo container of sake, a horse-load of potatoes, one paper sack of dried seaweed, two bundles of radishes and seven yams
Dinner: A sack of polished rice, fifty rice cakes, one large and one small bamboo container of sake, five bundles of dried persimmons and ten pomegranates
Day Three
Breakfast: One horse-load of salt and five sho of oil
Lunch: Horse fodder
Dinner: More horse fodder
Congratulations!
If, after three days, your brain does not feel that it has been adequately washed, please lather, rinse and repeat this slogan: "If you're not following blindly, you're not really following."
Now send me twenty dollars.