Toshitsugu "Tiger" Takamatsu: (1887-1972) Considered the last "combat Ninja" Toshitsugu was born to a family with roots in both the Ninja and the Samurai classes. As a child he was taught by masters of several ryus, becoming the only person to have completed training in all aspects of Ninjutsu. As a young man he gained notoriety when he single handedly stopped a small riot. As an adult he sought adventure in China and acquired an unmatched reputation for ferocity in battle and personal integrity.
For most of his adult life he was the only man fully trained in the art of Ninjutsu. Only after retiring to his village did he take on a single student, Dr. Hatsumi Yoshiaki. After 15 years of instruction Toshitsugu declared Dr. Hatsumi his only heir in the art of Ninjutsu.
In his essay "Ninjutsu Hiketsu Bun" (essay on essence of ninjutsu) Takamatsu sensei makes this comment on religion;
"A religion, when based on faith developed through experience, a broad and questing mind, and unflagging pursuit of universal understanding, is of inspiration and comfort to people. Once a religion loses its original focus, however, it becomes a deadly thing with which to deceive, control and tax the people through the manipulation of their beliefs and fears."
No amount of faith, in any religion, or faith in any human being, can change the nature of heaven, Earth and man. We sometimes wish it would and we sometimes behave as though it has; as though the rules change in our favor as a product of our ever-increasing never-questioning faith. It is at this point we begin to invite evil into our lives in the form of great suffering and the destruction of our fortune.
Practically speaking, it is the fateful decision to leave behind our common sense in favor of the group consciousness that is the “fork in the road” to cultism and ultimate unhappiness.
Rev. Greg, Shidoshi
Nichiren’s Buddhism is based on the Lotus Sutra. Few dispute this since it’s clearly documented in his treatise and letters to his believers. Many innocently try and make Nichiren’s Buddhism into rocket science when it’s not. The problem lies not with Nichiren rather with the Lotus Sutra itself.
Throughout the Lotus Sutra, which is a vast drama and a dialog between the Buddha and his believers, Shakyamuni speaks of the enternal and true teaching of the sutra itself. The conflict arises when one realizes that the true teaching of the Lotus Sutra is only referred to as – the true teaching of the Lotus Sutra. Like an image viewed through a series of reflecting mirrors as a never-ending and descending reflection, one can never grasp the truth of the image itself no matter how many times it is viewed.
So we are left with the essential question, what is the teaching of the Lotus Sutra that all Buddhas throughout the universe are charged to teach?
But I digress, so let’s get back to the original subject;
Nichiren’s Buddhism is simply the true teaching of the Lotus Sutra: it is the ultimate teaching of individual human self-discovery. Self-discovery is in essence human revolution, which is the process of discovering and challenging the purpose of our individual existence by way of our individual karma.
This means, as we all know inside, that there’s no way to circumvent or escape our own destiny or karmic path. This is what is so perilous about Buddhism, and specifically Nichiren’s Buddhism, which is uniquely the Buddhism of self-discovery. There is no amount of money, no proper attitude, no “group-speak", and certainly no organizational position that will allow one to bypass having to undergo the painful process of human revolution.
You see, the truth about Nichiren, and also the truth hidden in the Lotus Sutra, is found not in writings, scripture or orally transmitted teachings (by the way, NEVER trust orally transmitted teachings in ANY religion) rather it is found in the entirety of Nichiren’s life.
Nichiren is the Buddha of self-discovery. He discovered in himself the function of the votary of the Lotus Sutra throughout his life, painfully and with uncertainty on many occasions.
In the end enlightenment can only be a path we find we have traveled after we look back to see from where we have come. The misperceptions of Buddhism mostly deal with our own fear and self-loathing and it is only our own life experience, and our own karma, that can serve as the vehicle for our own path of self-discovery.
Bottom line is we can’t escape it. If we refuse to continue on our own path of human revolution and self-discovery we risk being run over by it. I’ve met people who seem to scream from within their lives “fuck it, I’ve changed enough, time for everyone ELSE to change”.
Most of them happen to be Republicans… but again, I digress....
Rev. Greg Dilley, Shidoshi
My daughter began middle school this year, grade 7. Back to school shopping was stressful because there was a strict dress code to adhere to; White shirts, black pants, well-tailored, not baggy, not too many pockets, etc., etc.
My daughter was very nervous about getting hit up for not dressing just right. This is a big deal for her. The requirements of the dress code that were most important (according to her) was the rule no BLUE or RED, which are the gang colors of the Bloods and the Crips, two notorious and well-known gangs from LA.
Now the first question would be, “are the Bloods and the Crips operating in Salinas?” Then the next question is, “what is the difference between a real gang member and a wanna-be gang member?” The answers are first, it doesn’t matter if either gang has a genuine presence in Salinas because, (and in answer to the second question) there’s no functional difference between real and wanna-be, neither can shoot straight.
After discovering, as I had warned her, that the pre-school list of supplies each student would need to provide was nonsense, merely a creation of bureaucracy, we set out to buy 4 spiral-bound 100 page notebooks in compliance to the individual teachers requests. My daughter was absolutely certain that none of these could be blue or red. In fact, after searching both Longs and Super Max, there were very few green, black, purple or yellow notebooks left. There were however shelves of blue and red.
Simply put, the colors red and blue are banned from the school, so much so that I now wonder what talismanic power is being assigned them by the school administration.
Being a minister, and especially being a Ninja, I understand the true nature of magic and talismanic power better than most, or at least I believe I do, which is as good as genuinely knowing. THIS is how magic beliefs start in primitive societies, primitive societies such as are found in Africa, Borneo, the Amazon or in middle school.
If you make something too wrong, and too taboo, it will eventually become desirable.
Children who have no knowledge of gangs or gang colors are learning about them as I type. Perhaps soon they will be adding blue or red bandanas to their off-school-hours rebel attire, while knowing or caring nothing about the gangs they represent. Imagine high school students attempting to perform magic rituals read out of books who include as a part of their “High Priest” or “High Priestess” costume red or blue gang wear or the sports logo uniform of some corporate entity.
Years from now, long after the gangs even actually exist, this may become fodder for department store marketing; “Gang Wear” at JC Penny’s, all thanks to fearful and reactive school administrators across the Country….
Rev. Greg, Shidoshi
Our universe is 15 billion years old, by some estimates. Earth originally had no oxygen, no rain. The first rains were boiling hot and fell upon the Earth for millions of years. Because of the Earth’s mass and its position relative to the Sun, its atmosphere did not drift off into space. Water was held to the Earth’s surface, as a liquid, as a sold and as a gas.
The oceans formed.
It was in water that life began almost 4 billion years ago. Whether from sulfur springs in the deep sea, or from pools where space dust came to rest. It may have even been that minerals provided scaffolding around which living matter organized itself.
We’re really not sure.
The first life was bacteria. Oxygen was still a rare gas and a danger to life on planet Earth. The development of the cell nucleus was a major step in evolution on this planet. After the nucleus came multi-cellular beings. Slowly a food chain developed as life made its rapid development over millions of years. Cells learned to band together and form more complex creatures, upping their chances for survival. The sea sponge may be one of the earliest of these complex creatures.
Even while oxygen was forming from waste gas expelled by the tremendously successful microbial life underneath the sea, there was no life on land. Undersea bacteria would eventually all but extinct itself due to its own success. While many joke about how the cockroach may be the only living survivor of a nuclear holocaust, terrestrial life on Earth is that very cockroach thriving in the holocaust of prior extinctions.
By new estimates 97% of the inhabitable living space on Earth is in the deep oceans. Terrestrial life on our planet is an aberration, a rare and unlikely variation. We are the strange exception to life on the ocean world Earth. Our history, the history of air breathing warm-blooded animals is so short as to be almost unnoticeable in light of the history of life on Earth. We are the strange new-comers: the bad seed that was forced from his home, the black sheep of Earth’s multi-cellular animal family.
Mankind – human beings, he who walks on two legs and descending from apes…. How short our unique history is even compared to the short history of air-breathing terrestrial animal life? We did not appear yesterday, we appeared a breath ago, a mere blink of the cosmic eye. We have been here so short a time as to not be measurable at all by any scale even remotely useful in measuring real time on Earth.
Even shorter and even more frightening to comprehend is the blink of time in which human self-awareness came into existence. That moment when primordial man left the metaphorical garden of eden and took intellectual control of his perception of his world is no mere yesterday, rather it is in that millionth of the very last micro-second.
We live, as “modern man”, in an illusion of having evolved into a beautiful and god-like creature, capable of dangerous technological creation and mind-altering art. We parade and prance like a great-ape descendant, a master of his own world as though we have been here always and will be here forever.
The history of man is too short to be measured in any scale other than its own. The creation of religion, society, civilization, warfare, all of these things have occurred in a space of time unimaginably brief. While we still are fortunate to be able to study much of our own human history through the current existing primitive human societies we nonetheless act as predator towards our own species. Is this caused by jealousy or is it self-loathing?
There are those who ponder whether or not human intelligence is in fact an aberration of itself, like some deep psychosis from which we seek to awake in order to rejoin the natural living world. Human beings can be both creator and destroyer of themselves. We have even now arrived at a fork-in-the-road of our own destiny. Millions upon millions of species have come and gone in the blink of the cosmic eye on Earth. We too will have our time and whether or not we choose to perceive it as long or short, it will be merely a passing glance in the gaze of the universe.
Even more disturbing is to consider that our destructive and wasteful nature towards our planet, our home, and ourselves may in fact be a naturally occuring cycle from which we cannot escape. Perhaps we are still very much a part of the natural world indeed.
Reverend Greg, Shidoshi
It has been suggested, during this current debate regarding routine male circumcision, that I am defending my perspective and that "anyone" can post to the internet (which of course is true).
The following page hosts an organization of Doctors who oppose circumcision.
http://faculty.washington.edu/gcd/DOC/
Well, more on female genital mutilation. Not a lot of comments on the last one, either no one is reading me or my readers are too uncomfortable to comment. I understand.
Female genital mutilation. Say it to yourself and see just how awful it sounds. I continued my research because after pondering what I had written, and why I had written it, a question had emerged; when did this start and who started it?
If you read the page I pointed to in my last blog you may have noticed a reference to the Koran and the least damaging form of female circumcision. The Koran seems to be referring to what degree this procedure should be performed, but that would mean – in my mind – that it already existed and was in widespread practice. The question remains where and when did female genital mutilation begin and who began doing it?
There’s no answer, at least by “experts”. Anthropologically speaking there is no clue as to where and when the mutilation of young women began. One thing is clear in my mind however; female anatomy is pretty – well – intimate. It’s internal as opposed to external. Any male walking around naked in primordial times pretty much gives away the secrets to male sexual anatomy but the same is not true with women.
See what I'm getting at here? No? Let me spell it out then. Female genital mutilation was probably begun by women. Female violence perpetrated by women against women and later capitalized by men. It’s clear that throughout those countries still practicing this form of sexual violence the majority of practitioners are women.
In this page yet another subject is discussed, male circumcision. Violence against male infants is standard practice in America under the guise of “medically necessary”.
Bullshit
This page claims that circumcision was begun in 19th century England as a cure to masturbation. Funny, infant boys are still being circumcised today though England stopped routine circumcision long ago. The harsh reality is that circumcision in capitolist America is big business.
Go figure. We are a self-loathing species. I wonder if, as a race and as a species, we are on a global path of painful self-discovery.
Evolve or perish,
Rev. Greg, Shidoshi
It’s not that I am a self-hating human; it’s merely that I enjoy amusing myself with my own reactions of horror. Occasionally I search for pictures of Lethal Midline Granuloma(here and here). Perhaps I have been on the internet too long…
In truth my life study, as a Buddhist and as a Ninja, is to understand the true nature of life. This, in the world of opposites - the ura and omote - would be the ura approach. The omote, the fundamentalist approach, would be to force life to appear how I wish it to be in accordance to my own fears and insecurities. An example would be White Supremacists and Islamic Extremists.
The reality remains, whether or not we wish to face it, that life on this blue ball as a human being is truly fraught with peril. Who could have thought up a disease like Lethal Midline Granuloma? I mean, get real. Only the human psyche could manifest something so horrible.
All the other creatures on this planet manage to live in harmony with nature, their nature and the nature of their world. This is the broader meaning of tenchijin, the relationship between heaven, Earth and living beings. Only man denies and rebels against his own nature and the nature of the world. Here is an example of what I mean;
http://www.religioustolerance.org/fem_cirm.htm (read this all the way through if you dare, it contains several little jewels)
It’s a simple and natural thing to be outraged as an American at this ancient autrocity, but as an American I am spoiled and am a world-view elitist. And while it is certainly tempting to think “why doesn’t someone DO something to STOP this inhumanity!!!” to do so is to completely miss the point….
This is who we are. We are human. We hate what we fear and we are afraid of nearly everything. What we cannot control we destroy. It’s really as simple as that. Humans have thousands of years of combat training behind us. We’re born killers. This fact largely accounts for why we are the top predator on the planet.
Those of us who deny this in ourselves are truly the most dangerous because we are killers in denial. I have come to fear hippies more than the mercenaries I have come in contact with. A Hippy will seek to take away my freedom while others will only try to kill me. Hippies, like all other fundamentalists think they’re right and that is something to be feared in another human being.
This leaves us with the only true path towards our salvation; Buddhism and Nam Myoho Renge Kyo. What Nichiren left as his legacy is not merely another world religion; a system of beliefs, rituals and rules with a figure-head to worship, but rather something much more scary;
Nichiren’s Buddhism is the Buddhism of self-discovery.
Only through individual self-discovery and self-knowledge can we, as a race, come to grips with our killer nature. Without self-discovery religion is a mind-control device with which we can ignore and desensitize ourselves to what we know is truly right and wrong. Religion without self-knowledge is predatory self brain-washing, an excuse and methodology for the perpetuation of control and violence over those we fear including ourselves.
Without self-discovery humans like myself would favor nuking the entire third world so we don't have to read about female genital mutilation. But I suppose I didn't have to read about that, did I? Oh well, there's always stories of acid throwing in India....But don't even get me started on that....
Rev. Greg, Shidoshi
August 1 was the Kosen Rufu gongyo for the Monterey area. It was decided, certainly not by me, that the current top secret Pres. Ikeda video be shown towards the beginning of the meeting instead of at the end. I believe, perhaps, that this was because members tend to filter out, or get caught up in discussions with their friends, instead of watching the video.
Our family left to go boogie-boarding….
This isn’t because I don’t trust and enjoy Pres. Ikeda’s heartfelt guidance; it’s just that those videos and how they are handled kinda creeps me out.
I wish I could write more on the subject of the top-secret Pres. Ikeda videos however they are in fact top secret and no one is allowed to discuss them….
Rev. Greg, Shidoshi