Since the demise of my previous career, a career that would have been the demise of me had I not left, my life has been serene in comparison. However something has been progressing recently which has reminded me what is truly important in my life as a Nichiren Buddhist.
An enormous corporate conglomerate-owned Reprographics Company from San Jose has been threatening to open a satellite office in our area.
Mine and my wife’s Business, Andrews Blueprint Inc. is an extremely successful and hard-working local printer in Salinas. While we provide a full range of printing services the bulk of our business is in the “blueprinting” field. Of course we don’t actually make blueprints; we create bond paper copies of plans on our high-speed and fully networked KIP state-of-the-art copiers.
I work, day in and day out, in true Buddhist Samurai spirit, to deliver plans to our customers ranging from Salinas through Monterey and into Carmel Valley. I work hard to meet our customer's dead-lines and business needs and sometimes I must drive through Monterey, back to Salinas, and back to Monterey again, in the same afternoon.
This other company, which was sold by it’s owners years ago to a giant “franchise” of sorts, which then requires (by the terms of it’s sale) the owners to continue to operate the company under pressure of increasing sales numbers (with a penalty if those numbers are not met) is much like a starving man infested with tapeworms. They simply can’t get enough work to truly prosper.
Previous to this our competition was insignificant, at best. My life and future, the future for my children, seemed to be carved in stone. Now I have doubts, and fears. We are a family business, with only four employees. Next to this repro-beast we are a lean mean fighting machine, providing a level of service that is truly disproportionate to our size. My customers are like family to me and I include their prosperity in my daimoku prayers.
This brings me to the real reason I am writing – fear. Through the last few months I have learned, by bits and pieces, of the status of this invasion and each time I receive new intelligence I have had to confront a fear, the fear of an unknown future, like an old enemy I thought had moved out of town long ago.
In fact not only is this clearly a benefit, but it is a reminder that my practice of Nichiren’s Buddhism is prone to laziness. It is fear, unfortunately, that drives many of us to chant in earnest. This recent challenge also serves as an opportunity to RE-learn an important reality in Buddhism:
Nothing is more important than to chant Nam Myoho Renge Kyo throughout my life
And, equally as important, my life will provide me with a reason to chant, if I have forgotten – albeit momentarily – why it is that I should chant.
In light of what I have written, it is no wonder why many members whom experiences I have read on the internet experience such tremendous suffering, often of their own creation. We as Buddhists should be the most prosperous people in our respective worlds, and we actually are. We prosper because our lives make us chant. Superficial prosperity is unimportant, it seems, and security merely a safety net that weighs us down and keeps us stuck in one place.
I am lucky, I suppose, that I am able to respond to small portents occurring in my world. I am fortunate as well that I am able to practice in SGI which is where I received the training I am utilizing right now. Without understanding this Buddhism, IN OUR OWN LIVES, we run the risk of practicing Nichiren’s Buddhism like so many other Western religious consumers, as a luxurious hobby.
There are many whom, having discovered the cult in SGI, leave and are unable to return. There are many others whom, having never ventured onto the anti-Gakkai internet, practice in SGI blissfully unaware of it's darker side. There are only a few, it seems, who have journeyed into the dark world of Gakkai truth and returned.
In the end, all that matters is whether or not we can chant Nam Myoho Renge Kyo throughout our lives.
Rev. Greg, Shidoshi
Suspended above an alien topography of sand and sediment, I float, buoyant and serene and yet aware. Some 15 feet from the surface of an alien world, I wait, and I breathe, watching for signs of life, signs of movement, perhaps signs of danger. Journeying farther out, I can no longer view the bottom. My vision is lost in a world of liquid protoplasmic creation, murky and alive.
As the time passes I breathe, deeper, then faster, until I exhale forcefully through my snorkel and then fill my lungs with air as full as I am able. Turning my body upside-down and vertical, I descend into the space between myself and the moonscape of this strange and foreboding world.
Moving downwards through the green translucent-ness I am still too far above the surface to see my destination, and yet trusting, I continue. At 25 feet I become neutrally buoyant, neither rising nor falling, and I peer from the lenses of my face mask toward the bottom in the hope of seeing where I will arrive.
There are a series of moments when, soaring downwards and becoming slightly negatively buoyant with my arms stretched in front of me, I am truly flying. I soar, as though I am Superman, the final 15 feet to the bottom. This space of time is the pinnacle of my freediving experience, to fly unassisted though this water-world, until finally I come to my destination. Traveling across the bottom, with little effort, I observe the native creatures of this world, sea stars, anemones, tiny fish which hide in their burrows as I pass, and other unexplained strange biological formations.
On one dive to 45 feet I find myself among a group of young sea lions. They swim in circles around me, curious and weary. They fly like dark angels, agile and swift. In comparison, I am slow and clumsy and yet I am content to swim with them on their terms.
Though only brief minutes have passed before I begin to ascend to my own world, each journey is like a small lifetime within itself. While I am only several hundred feet from the beach, on the ocean surface I am merely five inches tall and seem so alone and distant from terrestrial security. I begin my gradual journey back to land.
6/10/04 PURPOSE OF DIVE - FREEDIVE/SOLO LOCATION- BREAKWATER-COASTGUARD PIER, MONETERY CA DIVE #126 AVERAGE DEPTH – 30 FT. MAXIMUM DEPTH - 46 FT.
Masaaki Hatsumi Soke (Soke is Japanese for Grandmaster or head of the school) recently finished and published a new book entitled “The Way of the Ninja, Secret Techniques”.
“Ninjutsu was not actually “Ninjutsu” right from the start. It started out as “Shinobi methods” (Shinobi no Ho), meaning methods for discerning what is right for the world, enduring, training to become a moral human being, becoming aware of one’s destiny, and dedicating one’s life to other people or the world as a whole. These last became known as Ninpo, and later still Ninjutsu. The original sense was not one of mere Jutsu (techniques), but rather that of Ho (laws and principles) permeating the entire universe. For this reason, Ninja always fixed their perspective on Tenchijin, the relationship between the universe, the earth, and humankind”.
This passage embodies what Soke has been trying to teach for decades. The difficulty with the concept of Tenchijin is that we are called upon to search for the true nature of life and our relationship with the world, on our own and for ourselves.
The “jutsu" of Nichiren’s Buddhism is found in the sect, or group we choose to practice with. Soka Gakkai has their own jutsu, Nichiren Shoshu has theirs, Nichiren Shu yet another and still others practice their own independent jutsu, all the jutsu of Buddhism.
Of course, the true nature of Buddhism is not found in the technique and that is where so many of us go so very wrong. We decide the group, sect or cult IS the truth, and ignore the path along which the truth is found. We become attached to the jutsu and ignore the do, or po, which is the path we all must journey in discovering the relationship of Heaven, earth and man.
In this way no good intent can escape becoming a trap, and in the end a cult. It is easy then to ignore what is good and right, instead choosing what is comfortable and safe.
I in no way advocate quitting or joining, continuing or discontinuing. I preach self-discovery and self-responsibility, nothing more or less.
Rev. Greg, Shidoshi