Reverend Greg

Hi everyone!
I am not active member of Soka Gakkai,although I was intruduced to Nichiren Buddhism by the person who is devoted member of Soka (my great appreciation to her!). I actually got my Gohonzon as a member, but decided not to attend meetings. The most important thing is that I don't put any question mark on Soka, Soka is the strenght of multitude, unity of people, many really good things! I am perfectly aware of necessity of drill, sometimes hard line in order to do your best etc. Everything can be taken as part of the process of "turning poison into medicine", depends on base. But, not that I defend Peter, in Soka everything is happening really in the context of relationships between members. And not all of us have, let's say four noble paths as real goal. Some of us have lust for power,domination, control, self promotion etc. And, you find yourself thinking: all of this has nothing to do with the good things for I became Nichiren Budhist. You see, drill is one thing, slander and humiliation of another human being is quite different! When someone teaches you with good cause - this is one thing. When inferior one wants to be superior he/she must humiliate others! And being the object of such "promoting" means completely diferent thing. That's what happened to me! And above all, my "teacher" was person whom I introduced to Nichiren Budhism - what she denied! I told her about Nam myoho renge kyo, Lotus Suta, ten worlds, Ichinen Sanzen....At the beginning she resolutly say: I dont want that! This is something your friend got from her boy friend! You must choose whether I wll teach you or she!
After some more meetings, I was so delightful that I repeated all things...and she agreed to come to the meeting. So, it was not me that gave her teaching?!
So, what could I do? Even now, after many years,I consider myself part of Soka, but I just couldn't go to the meetings any more.
What do you think of all of this? And, with great hesitation in my heart, I want to ask you Rev Greg whether you are familiar with the case of Nobuko Nobuhira? No-one is victim in own head!

This is to Charles in response to his comment:
"that murky tendancy I've noticed in Nichiren Shoshu practitioners that transforms them into believers unable to effectively defend their sect beyond branding other's as slanderers, refusing to speak when a contray idea (except for the harumph! or whine), and finally, not having a thorough understanding of Nichren Buddhim - to say nothing of the whole of Buddhism."
I am interested to know how he justifies a couple of people on the net as being the whole of Nichiren Shoshu believers. For one there are a lot of believers who are extremely well informed of other forms of Buddhism. This includes other Nichiren Schools. In practise and in theory.
Many (I know quite a few personally) afterall came to us from other Buddhist schools. (In UK several came from Tibetan schools for instance - many have never been in SGI.).
Personally I would not say I am uninformed or unread on Buddhism in general. Rather I feel I am rather informed as I have taken time to read religious texts of most schools of Buddhism purely out of interest yet I have never felt they have convinced me that I am on a wrong path.
Just because they generally choose to ignore these forums and do not participate in internet shenanigans is no indication that Nichiren Shoshu believers are ignorant of other schools or teachings.
I suspect rather they feel it is pointless endlesslessly carrying on participating on these groups as a waste of time as in general (if one can at all generalise) the other views -or the people who hold them- have no real interest in dialogue beyond tearing down Nichiren Shoshu.
Dialogue is based on mutual respect and as far as things remain as they are very few will bother.
Now in a sense Nichiren Shoshu is a sort of fundamentalist (if you like) belief as it insists on discarding other beliefs. This does not mean however that Priests nor believers do not take an interest in what is happening around them. Rather it views other teachings as being a part of a whole and provisional in their nature. Nichiren Daishonin was far stricter on this than any sects including Shoshu, I believe. How many sects are continuing with the Four Dictums and mean it?
The idea of slander can be put down to ignorance (which is normally the case) but also to stubborn dislike of another school and this site appears to me to be a home mainly for the latter views.
If we have the sort of anything goes as long as it is attacking or anti Nichiren Shoshu attitude prevalent here you can not seriously expect that Nichiren Shoshu believers would find it meaningful to participate in any serious doctrinal discussions.
In any case what you wrote here is patently untrue and, yes, slanderous as you simply can not be able ascertain the views of one and a half million believers residing outside Japan.
And - yes- we do ask a lot questions. Perhaps you should visit UK when a Priest is faced with a Q&A session.
And - yes- we can ask about anything we like.

Jussi.

Charles, I totally agree. SGI leaders should be allowed to torture and victimize anyone found guilty in not adhering to the faith of the lotus sutra and not chanting 1000000000 daimoku each second and alloting more than their allowed mouthful of air - duuuuuuuuh!

Hi Danny,

The fundamentalist Hindus would like people to believe that their epics (the Puranas) and other Holy Scriptures date back beyond the mists of time. I highly doubt that. In fact, I am not sure that anything was written down prior to the 1st century BCE. But I can't swear to that. Hinduism is not my specialty. I do know that the Vedas date back to long before the Buddha, as do many of the early Upanishads. In fact, the Buddha did indeed seem to be riding a wave, and he came in at the very end of the Upanishadic period.

However, the earlierst Buddhist teachings (the Pali Canon and Agamas) do not show any direct influence of the Upanishadic teachings. When the Buddha taught anatman or no-self, he did not seem to be speaking of the Upanishadic idea of the atman at all. And while he does assimilate the cosmology of the Vedas and speaks of (and to) Brahma, I don't believe the term Brahman ever appears. Brahman is the impersonal absolute of the Upanishads as opposed to the personal creator Brahma of the Vedas. Perhaps the Buddha was outside the major area of dissemination of the Upanishads. That is something I will have to research some time. In any case it is more than probably that the Buddha utilized ideas and concepts that predated him - things like the five aggregates, or the 32 marks of a great man, as well as the details of Vedic cosmology may have been in common use among religous thinkers of his time. The Buddha simply adopted them to express his own unique insight into the dependently originating no-self nature of things.

Namu Myoho Renge Kyo,
Ryuei

that is interesting. I thought I had read that some of these ancient documents actually pre-dated the Buddha...?
Is it not possible that this was simply a time of cultural and literary expression in that region and the Buddha happened to be one of the best?

He rode a wave, so to speak?

Hi Danny,

Since you apparently only trust Japanese scholars try Kogen Mizuno out. Kogen Mizuno, Litt. D. is one of Japan's foremost scholars of Buddhism and teaches Buddhology at Komazawa University where he also serves as vice president. He is an authority on Pali texts. He wrote the book "Buddhist Sutras: Origin, Development, Transmission."

On p. 26 he says:

The original language of the sutras seems to have been Magadhi, which Shakyamuni used in preaching. Of all the Indic-language versions of sutras used as Buddhist texts today, those written in Pali are the most numerous and are widely used in the Southern Buddhist countries Sri Lanka, Burma, and Thailand. According to Southern Buddhist traditions, Pali is regarded as the language that Shakyamuni spoke, and therefore it is called Magadhi or the fundamental language. However, recent studies show that although a little of the Magadhi influence is still evident in the Pali language, the basic characteristics of the two languages are different."

The point of this is that the Buddha's actual language of Magadhi was not Pali or Nepalese or any other modern Indic language. But Pali is related very closely to it. I am skipping over a lot of important things Mizuno says, but I think the most salient are the following statements:

On p. 27 he says:

"The language Shakyamuni spoke was one in general use around the middle reaches of the Ganges, where he was active. Since the area was later called Magadha, its language was called Magadhi (or Old Magadhi), and because many of Emperor Asoka's edicts have been found in this area, we have an idea of what the Magadhi Shakyamuni spoke was like."

On p. 29:

"The Pali language of Buddhism, which developed earlier than the Ardha-magadhi language of Jainism, was more inflected that Ardha-magadhi. Among the Prakrit languages that are known today, Pali is the oldest, and except for the Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit used in Mahayana sutras, for example, it is closest to orthodox Sanskrit (classical Sanskrit). Ancient word forms seen in Vedic Sanskrit still survive today in Pali.

"Linguistically, Pali is a form of the ancient Paishachi tongue. Before and during Emperor Asoka's time, Paishachi was in common use in western India, and the sermons that Shakyamuni delivered in Magadhi were translated in Paishachi, which later developed into Pali."

Now here is something by Paul Williams (Professor of Indo-Tibetan Philosophy and Co-Director of the Centre for Buddhist Studies at the University of Bristol) in his book "Buddhist Thought: A Complete Introduction to the Indian Tradition":

"There are differences among scholas however on how far we can use these sources to know exactly what the Buddha himself tuaght. Lambert Schimithausen has recently referred to three approaches to this issue. The first position he detects, particluarly associated by him with British Buddhologists, stresses: 'the fudnamental homogeneity and substantial authenticity of at least a consideral part of the Nikayas [i.e. earliest base canonical, particularly Pali] materials... On this assumption, the canonical texts are taken to yield a fairly coherent picture of the authentic doctrine of the Buddha himself...' Scholars in the second group (Schmithausen seems to be thinking here in particular of Gregory Schopen and D. Schlingoff) express extreme scepticism about retrieving the doctrines of earliest Buddhism, especially of the Buddha himself. This is because among other things even the earlierst texts were not codified until after the first century BCE, and it is difficult without making questionable presuppositions to go much beyond that time as regards the canonical texts, although archeological sources such as inscriptions may be helpful. Schmithausen himself would side with a third group. This group maintains that notwithstanding these problems it may occasionally be possible to detect in the texts that now exist earlier and later segments and thus sometimes earlier and later doctrines. " (pp. 32-33)

Notice that none of the three camps of scholars mentioned in this piece presume to go back any further than the Pali Canon, though some might admit the rather sparse evidence of inscriptions. Personally, I think the third camp makes the most sense to me.

Namu Myoho Renge Kyo,
Ryuei

Peter wrote:

"I was bullied by SGI."

Training in any arena can be brutal - and probably should be because most everyone needs to have their attachments, negative tendancies, and lesser ego jostled.

For all my hard line against the SGI - doctrinal, organizational deception, etc., I have only appreciation for those leaders who took me to task for being a greenhorn idjit. My drill instructor in the Army was a bastard, but I appreciated the lessons he taught me because they taught me how to survive in the world of men. My coaches in athletics were like Bobby Knight with a hangover, but without their big stick, I would never have excelled as I did. And my youth division leaders in the SGI were bullies, but it was the only way for them to whip me into shape.

If your leaders are always warm and fuzzy, you may not grow in faith or understanding - which seems to be the case with you, Peter.

Charles

Poor Peter, someone call the Waaaaa-mbulance. You want to be part of the "abused by SGI" club but you aren't and never will be. You're a victim in your own mind. This is why you can never be a member of the LJ cult.

Rev. Greg, Bully

I was bullied by SGI. Presently I am contacting Danish newspaper in order to write an article about SGI in Denmark to expose it for what it is: a destructive cult. The former Danish leader resigned in Denmark a couple of years ago for seriously bullying a woman who had been sexually mistreated as a child. I don´t think this is abnormal behaviour in SGI. It must me exposed for what it is.

I wish I understood the thread here which somehow summoned up the phrase "reluctant cult leader". I love that phrase.

I suppose it is, but this guy may be the exception to the rule in that he actually writes books on the subject and asks questions and delves.
I think he's the only one...
Like Soke, the exceptions in Japan tend to be exceptional exceptions...

But, as we all know, being knowledgable about a religion and actually being a devout follower are two different things.

Wow Danny, that seems like somewhwat of an "about face" for you who has complained that the Japanese don't really understand their own religion. Now you're choosing one over the other based on race?

Interesting.

It doesn't really matter actually. Faith in Nichiren's Buddhism is built upon practice and actually experience and benefit. Theorizing without "doing" in true Buddhism is really an excercise in delussion.

Rev. Greg

well, Mike, Im just going to have to agree to disagree with you. It would be foolish of me not to read your studies and consider your words, but it would be equally unwise to reject the words of a Japanese buddhist here in Japan because a white guy in San francisco said he was wrong on the internet.

If you ever look at a map, you may notice that the ancient province of Magadha overlaps the modern boundaries of Nepal and Bihar. Id say that was close enough to call is Nepalese.

I suspect you will end up being disappointed by whatever LJ puts up. Clearly Peter, she does not love you, or anyone like you i.e. mindless following anti-culties.

Certainly she has become the prototypical reluctant cult leader.

Rev. Greg

Interesting discussion. I´m writing from downtown Copenhagen. Going to a Greenpeace meeting in a while. Ninja training is going well. Soon the Buddhajones website will emerge like the bird Phoenix and create great tremors through the Buddhist community... just when you thought there was no gay Buddhists L... J.... is back! Anyway, still two months. It´s due in May, 2005. Last time I checked. Haven´t checked for months. I´m not growing up, McCormick, I was born grown! He, he, I am Bruce Wayne, Slim Shady... down at the end of Neon Street. Well, Greenpeace is supposed to be a terror organisation.... all organisations are evil I think... when you organize something it becomes evil... this is what is wrong with SGI as well... Of course there are no similarities between The Moonies and SGI... duuuuuuuuuuuuh! Saw the former DAnish Leader in Copenhagen last saturday as well... THat Hyhpocrite (Hypecriite)
Yeah... SGI treated me very unfairly... not polite at all...

Best regards
Peter

Danny,
I think you don't understand what I am saying. The Pali Canon is not written in Chinese. It's in Pali. Imagine that. Scholars believe that Pali is pretty close to the Magadhi dialect that the Buddha probably spoke. He certainly didn't speak "Nepalese."

Anyway, there is no magic to the language. The Buddha himself in the Vinaya of the Pali Canon told his monks to use the local dialects to teach the Dharma. So the Buddha himself was not attached to Magadhi, or Pali, or Sanskrit or any of that.

In any case, you don't need to read Pali to read credible translations of the Pali Canon into English. And that is as close as you are going to get (again, unless you take the time to learn Pali) to what the historical Buddha actually taught.

The Odaimoku is a whole other story - to which I will have to refer you to my blog elsewhere at fraughtwithperil and to Ryuei.net.

Namu Myoho Renge Kyo,
Ryuei

I cant read Chinese and since Buddha was Nepali, he probably didnt either. I'll just have to wait for the movie.
Think about this: "namu myoho renge kyo" is a Japanese phonetic attempt at replicating the language used in India, which wasnt even where the buddha lived. (according to the history book I have)
How "sacred" can words be when they arent even correct?
Japanese people do this to every language they hear, they make approximations and then just call it Japanese. Just the other day one of my students kept saying "Baby shitta"
She meant "baby sitter" but kept insisting that "baby shitta " was Japanese. As opposed to pidgin...
You can talk about the "truth" all day long, but until you're speaking in Nepali, you're going to be separated from the "source" by at least one or two cultural re-interpretations.

If chanting magic words were necessary to please God, (and I do not believe that they are, but you are free to believe whatever you wish obviously)whoever is chanting "namu myoho renge kyo" is probably cracking his holy ass up!
God must be laughing all day long.

What the hell am I talking about?
Exactly!
I believe that the Buddha and Jesus had similar goals in some ways. Teach people how to help themselves and help others. I do not believe it was their intention to create an entirely new set of superstitions, of which the people of the world needed no help from divine sources in creating.

Welcome to Fraughtwithperil, where Ninjas and Priests fight for control of the universe.

(not me, I'm just a lowly minister, servant of the faithful)

Rev. Greg

Hi Danny,

Uh, ok, so you are going to take the word of secondary sources over the sutras themselves. As if those secondary sources aren't the writings of people hundreds or in this case 2,500 years later.

The fact is that there is nothing earlier than the material in the Pali Canon to go on. People like Takada Yoshihito are simply engaging in revisionism and wishful thinking based on pretty much their own imagination.

The Pali Canon makes it very clear that Shakyamuni Buddha definately taught about an afterlife and took gods and spirits and other such things for granted. In fact, they are part of the whole teaching of samsara which is integral to his teaching. The Pali Canon was written down in the first century BCE in Sri Lanka. The earlierst Mahayana sutras were written down at that time as well. these sutras were supposedly based on oral transmission going back to the historical Buddha. If they are not what the Buddha actually said - then we are sore outta luck - because there are no other records of what he may have taught. So you either go by the Pali Canon for what the historical Buddha did and taught or, like the authors of these books you read, you make up something out of thin air to suit yourself.

I don't dispute that you can read - but what you have been reading doesn't sound very scholarly. You need to go to my website and read what the Buddha actually said and did and then follow up on the more reliable sources that I have used. Here is a link:

http://nichirenscoffeehouse.net/Ryuei/sutra.html

Personally, I don't really care if you follow up on that or not. I just don't want anyone else being taken in by the wishful thinking of latter day commentators who apparently haven't even bothered to read the only reliable record there is of the Buddha's actual teachings: the Pali Canon and the Agamas. You can agree or disagree with the Pali Canon, but you can't say that the Buddha taught something else as there is no evidence of any other teaching.

Namu Myoho Renge Kyo,
Ryuei

I dont know what that means, but I can read, and the books say that Buddha never spoke of an afterlife. The books say that people who came after the Buddha and claimed divine inspiration and/ or communication talked about that stuff, but that's not the same. I am not interested in sutras written posthumously.
I got my info from a book on Buddhism written here in Japan by Takada Yoshihito.

Hi Danny,

There is no need for a "he said, she said" here. You don't have to take my word for it. All you have to do is read the Long Discourses of the Buddha, the Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha, the Connected Discourses of the Buddha, and other translations from the Pali Canon published by Wisdom Pubs and the Pali Text Society and you will see that the Buddha often talks about or even to various gods, demons, spirits and what have you.

Don't trust secondary sources, go right to the Pali Canon and see for yourself. All of this talk about the Buddha being some kind of materialistic rationalist has no basis whatsoever in the Buddha's actual teachings. It is a fabrication made up by ex-Christians who are embarrased to admit that the Buddhism they have embraced also has elements that don't square with modern materialistic secular humanism.

In particular I would look at the Apannaka Sutta (The Incontrovertible Teaching) wherein the Buddha uses roughly the same argument now known as Pascal's Wager to show that it makes sense to have the view that there is an afterlife. This argument is used in the Buddha's teaching to the Kalamas as well which is in the Anguttara Nikaya. There is also a sutta (discourse) where he states that he does not just believe there are heavenly spirits (devas) but that he has seen them and knows directly that there are, but I can't find that one at the moment. In any case, even a cursory reading of the Pali Canon shows that this kind of material was very much taken for granted and even positively asserted.

Namu Myoho Renge Kyo,
Ryuei

Well, the texts I have read say that the Buddha never said anything about the afterlife nor spirits.
It does say that many people who came after the Buddha claimed divine inspirations or communications of even resurrection and they did talk about such things, but the man himself never talked about it.
It does seem strange that his "4 noble truths" dont say anything about God, doent it...

Hi Danny,
You have been misled. The most historical documentation of what the Buddha actually did and taught are the Nikayas (collections) of the Pali Canon and the Agamas (which currently exist only in Chinese translation). The Pali Canon material makes it very clear that not only did the Buddha talk about supernatural beings and realms (hells, heavens, gods, spirits, etc...) but he affirmed their existence as a matter of mundane right views (as opposed to the supramundane right view of the four noble truths). Beyond the Pali Canon material there is no basis for saying that the Buddha did or did not teaching anything other than our own imagination and projection.

To Peter: as usual all I have to say to you is "Grow up!"

As for Japanese Buddhist clergy: what was it Batman said? "They are a superstitious and cowardly lot!" Oh, no, wait - he was talking about criminals. Never mind.

Seriously though, I find that Japanese clergy are just reluctant 1) to cross the language barrier. This makes them reluctant (very understandably) to even use the phone; and 2) they tend to avoid contentiousness and debate which is very foreign to their culture where people are very circumspect and strive for harmony and concensus to the point where considerations of justice, and right and wrong, and true or false or secondary or even tertiary, or even not important at all.

Neverthless, one Japanese Zen Master, Gudo Wafu Nishijima (renowned for his opinionatedness and all round cantakerousness and whose disciple is the punk priest Brad Warner), has taken his life in his hands and started his own blog:

http://gudoblog-e.blogspot.com/

I have not read his blog because, though I deeply appreciate his translations of Dogen and am a big fan of Brad, I have no interest in Gudo Sensei's own opinions. However, maybe others here might want to take a look.

Namu Myoho Renge Kyo,
Ryuei

to be honest, I am concerned about any buddhism that comes from any direct source other than Buddha himself, whom I am led to understand, never spoke a single word about the spirit world nor supernatural things...

I am a Christian, but I do not believe in the resurrection. Go and see if you can understand how that can be true and you will find a man who is in limbo.

LOL, I saw some slutty Soka Gakkai babes today in the bus in Copenhagen - they were visiting from Japan. Very nice-looking...

Best regards

Peter

Too bad Reverend Hirota opted to decline the ever-so-rare opportunity of blogging at FWP. It would have been interesting to get his slant on Nichiren Buddhism and to see how he reacted when one of our irrevernet readers or fearless writers took him to task.

It is much safer to hold dearly to one's beliefs and not put them on display in the store front window. It takes a pinch of moxy, a dash of daring, and a liberal dose of writer's discipline to write a blog on the complexities of Nichiren Buddhism. You need thick skin when the readers remind you that your theories are flawed or that you're just plain full of crap.

I'd love to see a Japanese Nichiren priest with the dharmic balls to mix-it-up. The problem as I see it is that blogging with open commentary from a critical readership might be too challenging to the authority and status conscious Japanese priest. Perhaps it's cultural - which isn't surprising, or maybe it's that murky tendancy I've noticed in Nichiren Shoshu practitioners that transforms them into believers unable to effectively defend their sect beyond branding other's as slanderers, refusing to speak when a contray idea (except for the harumph! or whine), and finally, not having a thorough understanding of Nichren Buddhim - to say nothing of the whole of Buddhism.

Please reconsider, Reverend Hirota, this is you big opportunity to convince us of the legitimacy of the Shoshinkai. Yea, when foo dogs fly.

Charles

One more comment I neglected to add below: I wonder what exactly Rev. Hirota wrote that you described as his admission that the Dai Gohonzon is not genuine. The reason is that I have seen his previous writings on this question and they are a bit more nuanced than that.

What he had written, if I understood it correctly, is that Taiseki-ji had reified the Dai Gohonzon and Kechimyaku, changing them from symbols of the entity and heritage of the Law, to idols worshipped for their own sake. If memory serves, the word he used for this deviation was they were made "absolute," which I took to mean reified.

Hi Rev. Greg and all

I have read a good bit of the Rev. Hirota's teaching in the "Middle Way" newsletter; some of this material is online and at the Udumabara Foundation website, which many here must have already seen.

He is an interesting chap with an interesting take on Nichiren Buddhism, and appears to be very sincere. Some of his writings do indicate a rather unorthodox view from the Taisekiji standpoint, but at others times he appears quite fundamentalistic. In any event his blogging on FWP would be a welcome addition but it's not surprising he turned it down.

I had heard there had some discussions toward reconciliation between the Shoshin-kai and Taisekiji not long ago. Does anyone have information on this? It makes me curious in an odd way.

Damn! All these years I thought the twenty-four characters meant:

"I deeply respect you. I would not dare despise you or be arrogant, for you will all practice the bodhisattva way and surely attain Buddhahood."

Still, it seems the river flows backwards. All this time I thougt that Bodhisattva Fukyo's twenty-four character verse was the result of his enlightenment, not the cause of it.

What Gohonzons? And where are they?

Rev. Greg!

I tried to email them {SSK}. I wanted to tell him where the missing Gohonzons are.

robin

Cool reply Danny - thanks. You'd be surprised, most Nichiren Buddhists are more aware of what they are practicing than most. It is ok to chant without believing in the religion by the way. Buddhism is different this way. Buddhism can be either a belief system of a practice, or both.

Rev. Greg

My wifes parents do this chant ( namyo ho..)
I cannot say how much or how deeply they believe or study any of the texts, but they have a shrine and they do their chanting sometimes.
I did it once with them, when I first came to Japan. But I realized that it was disrespectful to practice a religion I did not truly believe in.
When we got married, they gave me a cloth-covered "prayer book" for lack of a better word and some of those beads.(juzu)

I dont know what sect they may beong to, Im not sure that matters much to them.