Robin Beck

Gohonzon Shu Study: Introduction

I shall be going through the Gohonzon Shu one Mandala at a time, with cross references. There are going to be typos, bad links, misreadings, and other grotesque errors in this work. I go over it, and over it, and over it again. The errors are caught & corrected. Much of it is uncharted waters, and my maps have errors made by others. With practice, I am getting better at some new tricks I am learning. Also, I am going to focus more attention here. One thing I need to remember is too add "it appears,' "it might be," "this might read." etcetera. What you see here is live raw research.

We have four {4} main resources. These are:

1. 日蓮聖人御本尊集 : Clicking that will take us to a Gohonzonshu index that is apparently hosted by the Lotus Buddhist International Society.

2. The Coffeehouse Gohonzon Shu hosted by the Great One, Don Ross: which starts here: Nichiren Shonin Gohonzon Shu O'Mandalas by St. Nichiren

3. Jim Breen's WWWJDIC Japanese Dictionary Server . The Translate Words in Japanese Text is the section we will find useful.

4. Mahou Kanji Dictionary

Others: ... Romaji Translator at Romaji.org ... Babel Fish Translation ... Kanji Dictionary Publishing Society

Let us start with

日蓮聖人御本尊集 . This translates as: Collection {集 } of Gohonzon {御本尊} by Nichiren {日蓮} Shonin {聖人}. Note that Sho is {聖}. Because of that character; Shonin {聖人} means Muni or Saint/Sage. My understanding is that is a rare title. The Shonin in Nikko Shonin {日興 上人} is written as 上人. The Sho is {上}. I think this means he was an ordained Priest; not a Muni or Sage/Saint. I think Shonin written as 上人is a more common title. Note that 人 is read as nin; it simply means person or human.

Now, look at the first column on your left. That is your left assuming you are facing your screen. That would be your screen's right. Have you got it? We are here. The Heading of the first column is 文永年間. With Jim Breen's help, we can read that: 'Bun'ei {文永} Era {年間}. The Bun'ei era of Japan, in solar terms, is accepted as being from February 28 1264 through April 25 1275. The Published Mandalas are entered in order, reading down, by order of the accepted date each was inscribed. The entry gives the location where it is kept, and hyper-links to a low resolution scan of the mandala. Once we determine the location, we can search for temple websites. That might give us more data, which generally will need to be translated.

By the way, the second column is 建治年間; Kenji era; April 25 1275 - February 29 1278. There are a couple entries out of order at the bottom of column two, but we shall ignore that for now. The third column is 弘安年間; Koan era; February 29 1278 - April 28 1288. . The remaining two have no headings, they are still in the Koan era.

Let us talk briefly about 'published Nichiren mandala.' The Gohonzonshu includes about 128 significant, authenticated Nichiren Mandala Gohonzons. There are boat loads of Nichiren Mandalas that are not published. Kitayama owns four main ones that are unpublished. There are seven at Tanjoji. There is one at Taisekiji. There are a lot at Minobu. There are many reasons why so many have remained un-cataloged. The main reason is that it there are not enough resources to get it done, yet. There is much work to do. The research is in its infancy.

I will not go into a detailed explanation about the Coffeehouse Gohonzonshu here, it is pretty much self explanatory. One thing, there are photo images of what I assume is Japanese text. I think these are scanned from Don's Gohonzonshu book. It would be good, but due to format, very difficult to translate that text. I do not think the text always matches with the mandala displayed on the same page.

As we go through each mandala, I will hot link an image of the mandala. I will also hot link the above referenced scans of text displayed at the Coffeehouse Gohonzonshu. By the way, I will be hosting these images myself, at one of my image accounts, I will not be stealing anyone's bandwidth. I also might hot link some art images related to the inscription of each mandala, and the temples where they are kept.

Does this sound interesting? Please add your comments. Here are a few more links to useful sites.

Yahoo Groups Gohonzon Forum : This is an open discussion about the Gohonzon, the Great Mandala of the Lotus Sutra.

GohonzonInfo: Copies of Gohonzons inscribed by Nichiren himself may be downloaded from the files section.

nichirenpix · Nichiren Buddhist Art & Culture

E-sangha, Buddhist Forum and Buddhism Forum. Go to Traditions > East Asian Buddhism > Nichiren Buddhism.

irgosho · Study/discuss Nichiren Buddhism Gosho Study

Posted by rbeck at September 14, 2007 07:47 AM

Posted by rbeck at November 1, 2007 12:53 AM