This morning, I lost my Daimoku chart. Or, at least I couldn’t find it. Myoho. I have my suspicions about how it “walked away,” but my main suspect denied outright that he messed around with my Buddhist papers (despite an incriminating notebook mysteriously lying on the coffee table near the Budsadan . . .)
I couldn’t have lost my chart if I had been more diligent in chanting every morning and evening. It’s my fault. But while I was tearing the drawer apart searching for the chart, I thought of something that has been a minor irritant to me.
In the summer of 1999, a job opening came available at the University of Nevada, Reno where I was working as an intern in the Office of Communications. I applied for it and then applied myself to chanting and going to meetings in order to make causes to get this job. I went a number of times to a fellow member’s apartment and chanted with him, sometimes helping him with guests he brought and sometimes bringing other members with me. We were sort of a rogue group – these weren’t official meetings, just plain old-fashioned daimoky tozos and gongyos together with friends.
I got the job. Hallelujah! I could divorce my husband, take care of my daughter and continue in grad school!
What’s bugging me is that I heard a rumor that the member who opend up his house to me was running around the chapter telling people he had “gotten me the job.” Now, that’s not exactly true. In order to lead up to the fortune of getting this job, I had to work my way through UCLA, work as a journalist for a decade, win a bunch of awards, as well as excel in my internship. It was a regional search and I beat about 40 or 50 other applicants, but to arrogantly claim that he, and he alone, got me the job, didn’t sit right with me.
Especially since this member is a one of the troubling ones who have tended to de-shakubuku me through their behavior. He doesn’t have a job of his own, nor has he had one in the many years I’ve known him. He has at least five children with various women and he pays not one dime of child support. He’s on welfare and has busted out front teeth. This last point is, I admit, the most petty of my complaints. But it seems to me that if you were serious about doing shakubuku, you would – after 25 years of practice – have chanted for the fortune to get your damn teeth fixed so people at least wouldn’t automatically assume you are the bum you actually are.
Anyhow, I haven’t talked to him in at least a year. To be fair, he did do me the extreme favor of handing me a book called “The Passive-Aggressive Man,” which could have been a detailed account of my life with my ex. It blew my mind and gave a name to the situation I was in and how to deal with it. So no hard feelings. But what is it with folks who chant and chant, but stay the same?
Posted by melanie at April 30, 2004 06:13 PMThis is exactly why I caution people not to reduce the practice to babbling in Sino-Japanese to a scrap of paper covered with sumi squiggles.
Namu Myoho Renge Kyo must be more than just lip service. The Gohonzon must be more than just a paper fetish. Shakubuku must be more than just a recruitment tactic or magical pyramid scheme. I am not saying you have done this - but I would bet that these are the attitudes at the heart of the problem you are trying to address.
Speaking personally - for me the Odaimoku is an expression of a deeply felt committment to live the Dharma in all the causes I make in life - through body, speech, or mind. It is fundamentally a trust and confidence in the Unborn and Deathless nature of the Buddha's enlightenment and my own ability to realize and manifest it in my own life. Upon this an unshakeable inner joy is based.
For me - the Gohonzon is the ultimate reality which discloses this to me in every moment if I will step out of my own bias, projections, self-preoccupation and other forms of narrow self-interest and negativity. This ultimate reality is disclosed in all phenomena but in particular through the teachings and examples of Shakyamuni Buddha, the Lotus Sutra and what the Buddha reveals about the true depths of his and our life there, and in the Odaimoku itself. The calligraphic mandala expresses and manifests all this to me.
And shakubuku is for me not a magical act to get something for myself or someone else, but is the act of witnessing to the above truths so that it can be shared with others out of compassion. I can honestly say that not once have I ever introduced someone to Buddhism for the sake of getting something out of it for myself. I have always shared it because it is something incredibly valuable to me and I feel a great joy when I can communicate that to others. I once saw a sign on a church that I remember to this day. It said: A religion not worth sharing is a religion not worth keeping.
I think our practice should be about a deep existential shift in our attitude and our being in the world. It should not be reduced to lip service or magic or a tool for gain. As Nichiren himself said, "There are those who praise the sutra with their lips but slander it in their hearts." I hope in the future there will be less lip service and more heart service.
BTW, I don't think you are being petty about the teeth at all. I would not necessarily judge a person by their dress or hygience, but these are indicators as to whether a person is taking care of themselves or not. It is shiki-shin-funi - oneness of body and mind. If they don't give a damn about their appearance and have no self-respect, then how are they going to care about anything else (like their own children for instance)? I would like to say that such people are to be pitied - but that would be condescending and all of us possess the ten worlds so none of us are in a position to judge. But such people, as frustrating or even contemptible or pitiable as they can be at times - should be the subjects of compassion in the Buddhist sense. That is to say "feeling with" and NOT "looking down on" because they are going through another aspect of the same confusion and suffering we ourselves are lost in. I need to keep telling myself this over and over - and chant Odaimoku about it.
Namu Myoho Renge Kyo,
Ryuei
Ryuei,
I loved your response. . .and your take on Daimoku/Gohonzon/shakubuku.
I'm still new at this Buddhism. . .but have felt, in moments, that existential shift.
I've felt it enough to know that is the reason I am on this path. . .to alter how I approach life and others.
BTW. . .I really like your blog & your site.
John
I think I know that guy... first name is Bob.
Posted by: John Fletcher at May 1, 2004 02:36 PM