Nichiren was an artist. The Gohonzon was his -- and our -- masterpiece.

Some people take that as a big insult. They think it is disrespectful to consider the Gohonzon a work of art, as if by art I mean a decoration. But the Gohonzon does what all great art does -- it unites us with the divine, transcendent, enlightened nature within our own lives. People who think it's wrong to call the Gohonzon an artistic masterpiece probably expect too little of art.

I do not speak or read any Asian language; to me the words on the Gohonzon are not words, they are symbols. And what is a symbol but an abstraction in concrete form? This arrangement of symbols depicts an aspect of the unconscious, a level of reality of which I am not ordinarily aware. This level of consciousness is pure life force, the entity of life itself. It is knit through every cell of my body and every star in the sky. This consciousness unites all people and things because it is what we are all made of fundamentally.

If you were to ask me to draw you a picture of what I mean, some sort of diagram, I wouldn't know where to start. But Nichiren was able to clearly perceive this consciousness and draw a picture of it so we can come to perceive it too. I concede then that the Gohonzon is not just art; it is extra super special art. Its intention -- to awaken all people to their Buddha nature -- is beyond what even the most talented or delusionally ambitious artist would ever attempt. It took real courage on Nichiren's part.

The Gohonzon is a mandala in the sense that it serves as a focal point for merging the opposites of body and spirit, inner and outer, individual and universal. It functions to center us as well as expand us. Yet I sense it is more than a mandala.

As I contemplate the Gohonzon and the things Nichiren said about it -- that it is found in faith alone, for instance -- I know that I do not understand the Gohonzon. I feel it viscerally as a presence and I embrace it as a theory. But I do not know deep in my marrow what it is. I do not trust that it "works," whatever that means.

For eight years, I have heard other people try to tell me about the Gohonzon. I have heard and read explanations filtered through a mostly Japanese perspective. I need to discover on my own terms and through my own experience what it means that the Gohonzon "works."

I had studied the paintings of Van Gogh for a while (in books) before I ever saw any of them "in the flesh," in person. When I saw them, I was so captivated that I forgot everything I had heard and read about them. I was able to rediscover them in an immediate and timeless way. There was a communication and an understanding that took place between me and the art -- there was no art and there was no me, only communion.

I want to have this same experience with the Gohonzon. I want to forget everything I know about it, and discover what it really is.