I have read Eugene Hirahara’s response to Ryuei’s response to Hirahara’s article in the Living Buddhism of April 2005.
I must admit, it was very difficult for me to read. Not in the sense that I can’t read, I can, rather in the sense that Hirahara continues to perpetuate a mythology that I fear will be SGI’s undoing in the future. Reading his reply to Rev. Ryuei of Nichiren Shu hurt me, it gave me a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach to listen to someone quoting strange documents I’ve never heard of in an attempt to validate the mythical transfer documents the Nichiren Shoshu have depended on to validate themselves as the one true Nichiren sect.
I stick by Daniel Montgomery’s book “Fire in the Lotus”. I probably will depend on his version of Nichiren Buddhist history until something better is written in English. Unfortunately the book is out of print. None the less it is quite a lot more accessible than many of the documents quoted by Eugene, and much more complete.
The Beginning of the End
Back in the 90’s many of us were quoting FITL on ARBN, and in place of a lucid argument against many of the primary points made in the book, Gakkai fundamentalists would simply point to the few tiny mistakes or merely accuse Montgomery (himself a member of the Christian clergy) as being a “Nichiren Shu Stooge”.
Speaking for myself the true eye-opening of FITL was my realization that Nichiren would simply have known better than to try and establish an ordination platform, an act that turned so bad for Tendai Buddhism, and in doing so select one priest out of six to be the sole inheriting disciple.
Looking back over 700 years into the past it’s easy to disregard the 5 senior priests in favor of one, especially if doing so somehow makes you No.1. If you take a moment to put yourself in Nichiren’s shoes however, any “betrayal” that occurred happened after he had already passed away. I have not heard anyone credit Nichiren with fortune-telling abilities, so why would he cut out five guys in favor of one? This is what Montgomery has to say regarding the six senior priests;
“Why had Nichiren left the succession to 6 disciples instead of only one of them? He made this appointment on 8 October, less than a week before he died. He must have known the Buddhist traditions whereby lines of succession had supposedly been passed down from master to disciple throughout history, but he also knew that such lines of transmission were of little value. The Tendai transmission, according to him, had been betrayed within a generation of Saicho’s death. His real model, however, was not Saicho but Shakyamuni, who had passed on his transmission to the four great Bodhisattvas and to myriads of Bodhisattvas from under the Earth, not to any single successor. “I wish to give the wisdom of the Buddhas, the wisdom of the Tathagata, the wisdom of the Self-Existing One to all living beings”, Shakyamuni had said in the Lotus Sutra chapter entitled “Transmission” (chapter II). Nichiren desired the same, and chose six as a working number for future ordinations. The number six also had a mystical connotation for him; it means ‘perfect’, he had said in the Kaimoku Sho. The transmission of the Dharma would pass not to any one teacher, but to all who kept the Sacred Title.”
What really struck me when I first read this passage was the line “but he also knew that such lines of transmission were of little value”.
The Nikko Transmission, the Transfer Documents
This is, in my mind, the big picture. Primary or fundamental principles simply cannot be obscured or erased by small and highly debatable facts such as who said what when, or who stole what from whose gravesite.
It is possible that most of the senior priests in fact did not live up to the wishes of Nichiren, but all that happened later, after Nichiren had already died. And… in regards to the subject of the lineage of the Nikko school, I would like to again point to passages of FITL;
“When Nikko died at age 88, he left six main disciples at Taisekiji-ji and six at Hommon-ji, following the example of his master Nichiren. But if Nichiren's transmission to six disciples had caused problems, Nikko’s transmission to two sets of six caused even more. Both groups claimed that their temple was the head temple of the Nikko Branch – Taisekiji-ji because it had been founded first and Hommon-ji because it had been Nikko’s headquarters. The rivalry degenerated into dynastic squabbles when the landowners began to exercise their authority as chiefs of their respective clans. It was they who chose the abbots and dictated temple policies.”
FITL continues to explain that by the time of the late 1300’s the Nikko sect had already been split 5 ways. And it gets worse;
“These sub-sects, cut off from the sacred Mount Minobu, from the principle temples in Kyoto, and from each other, were hard-pressed to establish their titles to orthodoxy. The distinctive feature of the Fuji school is its claim that the only true line of descent from Nichiren is via Nikko, the chosen heir. In 1488, two centuries after the death of Nichiren, Nikkyo, a priest at Taiseki-ji, claimed to have discovered two documents written by Nichiren, passing on full authority to Nikko alone. The original documents have disappeared, but “true copies” are preserved at Taiseki-ji. Other Nichiren bodies ignore them as forgeries.”
“The first of these documents, called the “Document for Entrusting the Dharma which Nichiren Propagated throughout His Life”, is said to gave been written by Nichiren on Mount Minobu in Sept. 1282, a month before his death. It reads ‘I transfer all my Buddhism to Byakuren Ajari Nikko. He should therefore be the great leader for the propagation of true Buddhism. When the sovereign establishes this religion, he should erect the Kaidan of Hommon-ji at the foot of Mount Fuji. All we have to do is await the time. This will be the Ordination Platform of the Original Gate (Hommon no Kaidan).”
“Needless to say this document played especially in to the hands of the Hommon-Ji party since that temple is specifically named, but it says nothing about Taiseki-ji. Since it is written in Chinese, the key phrase could also be interpreted as ‘At Hommon-ji of Mount Fuji the Kaidan ought to be established’, thus making it more specific yet. In any case, its propagation did nothing to settle the dispute between the two temples.”
“The second document, called ‘Document for Entrusting Mount Minobu’, is supposed to have been written by Nichiren on the day he died. It reads, “I transfer the fifty-year teachings of Shakyamuni to Byakuren Ajari Nikko. He is to be the Chief Abbot of Kuon-ji on Mount Minobu. If anyone, clergy or layman, opposes this, he is not disciple of mine.”
“The two documents are contradictory. The second says that all authority is to go to Nikko, who is appointed High Priest at Kuon-ji on Mount Minobu, whereas the first says the official High Sanctuary (Kaidan) is not Mount Minobu, but Hommon-ji at the foot of Mount Fuji. In any case these documents convinced few people, and Nichiren Shoshu, which published them, remained a minor sect right up to the end of WWII, when it had less than 3 percent of the Nichiren faithful. Its sudden rise to prominence since then had been owing to other causes.”
The Big Picture
This is the big picture, in my honest opinion. If you simply disregard these huge historical contradictions, as well as the huge contradiction that an ordination platform, a single disciple as Head Priest, or a supreme Gohonzon (another blog in itself) even fit into Nichiren’s life and teachings, then it is easy to continue on to argue whether your team is No. 1.
Let us touch base with reality for a moment. Nichiren – unlike Tien Tai or Dengyo, did not live during an ideal period. Whereas Dengyo certainly could be excused for establishing the Kaidan on Mount Hiei, Nichiren’s advent was during a period where the failings of the major sects were apparent, even obvious to him. Why would someone so smart make the same mistakes all over again?
Anyway, here we are, factions of the SGI continue to raise the banner of Nichiren Shoshu, and to be clear, we must realize that Eugene Hirahara is defending Nichiren Shoshu in the process of promoting his own team’s superiority. This is the part of the whole picture I think has not been made clear.
In order to validate SGI as being the true and sole successor of the will of Nichiren, one must first validate Nichiren Shoshu. Any magic obtained must come from the source, which is Taiseki-ji. This is, in fact, a gigantic leap of faith considering it was the SGI Youth Division, following the excommunication of SGI in the early 90’s, that published research showing just how broken and disconnected the lineage of Nichiren Shoshu and Taiseki-ji really was. There were allegedly periods not only when the High Priest was a mere child but when the entire temple was completely abandoned.
Ignoring this for the moment, and ignoring the immediate conflict and separation of the Nikko school following Nikko’s death as well as the intense infighting, ignoring transfer documents that are most likely forged and themselves contradict each other and then further ignore the reality that Nichiren Shoshu itself was a minor player in the Nichiren world up until the advent of the Soka Gakkai, we can move on to present times.
A greater obstacle exists to the claim that the SGI is the sole inheritor to Nichiren’s Buddhism. SGI was completely separated and excommunicated by the High Priest of Nichiren Shoshu himself, Nikken Shonin. Since it was our own Toda Sensei that stated clearly “The cardinal point of faith lies first and foremost in pilgrimage to Taiseiki-ji. No one can develop true faith unless and until he faces and worships the Daigohonzon directly” (Seikyo Times, Aug. 1971), logic states the we have become cut off from the very magical lineage or true lifeblood of faith, as if such a thing could possibly exist.
So in other words we depend on magical transmissions to make NSS the only correct sect but ignore being deprived of those very transmissions. Now we are left to make the bridge to how we have inherited this lineage and we do so by then RE-devaluing Nichiren Shoshu and thereby presenting the theory that what Nichiren Shoshu lost through evil acts, we have found. This is truly magic of the most dangerous sort.
So what is the truth? The truth is that Nichiren’s Buddhism is whole and complete without lineages, without magical objects, single disciples, or head temples. Nichiren’s Buddhism has no need for Number One teams, or High Priests, forged transfer documents, or fighting amongst sects and sub-sects. Neither does Nichiren’s spirit, will or teachings revolve around heated debates pertaining to the fine points of unknowable history, or the translation of obscure documents that prove or disprove qualities of human beings we can never be sure of, and are themselves unimportant.
We have the Gosho, we have the Gohonzon, and we have the Lotus Sutra. We ourselves are only removed from the time of Nichiren’s life by mere centuries, barely measurable in geological time. We have documents persevered in Nichiren own hand and now accessible over the intenet for all to see.
Further more, for many Nichiren believers we have the SGI.
In fact the SGI’s own introductory pamphlet entitled “A Winning Life” contains no mention of any controversial issue pertaining to Nichiren’s Buddhism. It states, simply;
“It was Nichiren Daishonin in Japan, however, who took the final all-important step to transform profound theory into a somple practice and thereby enable ordinary people to reveal their highest state of life in the midst of day-to-day realities.”
“The Daishonin realized his purpose was to reveal this ultimate truth to the people of his time and for all eternity. Hence, Nichiren Daishonin’s Buddhism is for the present age, and Shakyamuni and T’ien-T’ai prepared the way.”
“Nichiren Daishonin lived from 1222 to 1282 during a tumulturous time of social unreast and natural catastrophe. The son of a fishman, he became a religious acolyte and after a period of intensive study he came to realize that the Lotus Sutra constitutes the heart of Buddhist teachings.”
“He subsequently dedicated his life to sharing his realization, despite facing numerous persecutions for preaching what was considered a subversive doctrine. By declaring that embracing this law had the power to allow all individuals to attain enlightenment, the Daishonin disturbed the ruling class of politicians and priests who adhered to other forms of Buddhism. Nonetheless, he gained a loyal following of believers. He especially embraced ordinary people from all walks of life.
“After Nichiren Daishonin’s passing, his closest disciple, Nikko, kept the true spirit of Buddhism alive. For the next six centuries, the Daishonin’s Buddhism was maintained by a relatively small religious groups until the early part if the twentieth century.”
And so that’s it. There is the official voice of SGI. What “parallel universe” SGI do those such as Eugene Hirahara belong to? I do not know. I do not mean to criticize someone I have never met, but my heart aches at the thought that Eugene’s article has set us back from TRULY BEING FREE for years to come.
In the world of Buddhism and universal truth and human freedom, there is no such thing as NUMBER ONE! NUMBER ONE! This “we are best” is a mindset that belongs in the world of professional sports and marketing.
I do not know exactly what the future holds for the SGI. I know I am in for the duration. I do believe however that regardless of whether or not one practices this beautiful Buddhism of Nichiren Daishonin, nothing can save us from remaining prisoners of our own minds and egos.
Rev. Greg, Shidoshi
(Subtitled 'Would Blackwater Security hire Anakin Skywalker?"
I worked with a young woman years ago who had never seen the Star Wars movies. She had never seen Star Trek, original series or otherwise, and pretty much hadn’t seen any of the movies that figure so predominantly in modern pop-culture. She had been raised by parents who didn’t believe in TV, and as she grew up she apparently found solice in her counter-culture status as someone whose head wasn’t full of all the popular movie and TV mythology that most of ours is. Even as an adult she chose not to see movies, and had only very recently begin to consider renting videos in a weak effort to “catch up”.
You run across people like that still these days. It’s a kind of cool that is a counter-cool. Where as most my age can easily slip in a funny comment such as “it’s only a flesh wound” and instantly connect on some level with those around them, there are those few who take a strange pride in being “a brother from another planet” so to speak.
I was 17 or 18 years old (I don’t care to do the math) when Star Wars was first released. It wasn’t called “Episode IV, A New Hope” at first, just Star Wars. I recall on two occasions actually seeing the TV trailer. Star Wars is so much a part of my own psyche it's difficult to recall a time prior.
Our society is young in many respects. We sorely lack the ancient mythology that teaches our people morals, ethics, and the basic principles by which we may live our lives. Many think that religion should provide the guiding principles by which we behave, however I think that such an obvious source is rejected by youth in the natural process of rebellion and the quest for individualism. Those attracted to those religions and sub-sects of religions who seem to be hyper-focused on current marketing trends such as family values normally belong to that section of society that is simply not at ease with themselves and seek constant validation by the larger whole forever searching for the sense that they are normal and acceptable. Individuals who possess strong self-esteem and a confident self-image – on a deeper level – often have no use for religious paths that strive to tell them how to act.
It is mythology, the ancient stories and tales passed down within social groups and world societies that truly transmit the qualities of courage, bravery, honesty and loyalty. People naturally seek to draw out their own lessons rather than be told directly. This is human nature and the natural human learning process. I believe we all like to think we’re doing it ourselves.
And so where is our mythology? When talking about all things Joseph Campbell it’s easy to disregard modern cinema as a valid source of mythological transmission, but in fact the only thing differentiating the mythology of Star Wars from the ancient tales told around the camp fire in Aboriginal society is the fact that Star Wars is ours, and it is now. This is an important point. Star Wars contains a large market share for our current mythological lessons, despite it’s use of modern cinematic technology and computer graphics. These things don’t change the validity in the slightest. The message and the lessons are as valid as the most ancient tale told.
When we first saw the first Star Wars movie Darth Vader made his initial appearance into our lives. The ultimate prototypical villain, he was dark, disguised and dehumanized, in essence all the qualities Joseph Campbell has defined as necessary for a mythological bad-guy. We do not want to see the humanity in either Darth Vader or his Storm Troopers. Bad guys should be shot and then immediately disappear from the screen. They are not our concern.
However, as the mythology unfolds, we very unfortunately now must witness Anakin Skywalker’s walk to the side of evil.
Anakin suffers from serious personality disorders, most likely brought about by a lack of a Father figure and his enslavement on the planet of Tantooine. He is recruited by the Jedi, but his personal quest for power obscures the basic mission of the Jedi Knights and he is unable to control his temper. His Mother is kidnapped and murdered by the Sand People (in itself uncharacteristic and suspicious, I suspect somehow the Sith Lord even caused this to happen) and he kills every last one of them in revenge.
Later he is denied the rank he feels he so richly deserves and he finally becomes Darth Sidious’ disciple and begins to exterminate the Jedi Knights. In the end he looses his fight with Obiwan and is nearly burned to death. Sidious gets his minion, but Anakin pays the ultimate prices for power – his freedom.
Great story, eh?
How far will modern Americans go for personal power? My brief and ill-fated dealings with a paramilitary group in the early 90’s – the Phoenix Group- lead me to begin to begin understand that grown-up modern adults will take the wrong path if it promises them the training and power they seek.
And now we have ex-Military being hired by private security companies as bodyguards and other security personnel in Iraq. Some of these guys are not Spring Chickens and are even in the forties and older. While it is debatable whether or not our young soldiers and Marines are “fighting for our freedom” directly, our young American’s are not to blame. They are following an honorable path regardless of the outcome.
But I wonder, in terms of Anakin and the dark side, what motivates a forty-something ex-military professional to leave behind relationships, careers, and the comfort of US soil to work and fight again in one of the most dangerous regions of the world? Blackwater Security employees are being shot and blown up regularly.
I know the answer to this question in my heart, though I am not an investigative reporter and will not attempt in the least to validate my beliefs…
These guys are loosers. Some may indeed be serious professionals, yet others surely must have been unable to secure lasting relationships, or careers following military servce and now are seduced to the dark side by promises of being allowed to kick ass once again in Iraq.
Let’s define kicking ass…
I’m talking about intentionally going to Iraq as a non-US military contractor with the intention of killing Iraqi’s. Sure they’re bad Iraqi’s but private security contractors aren’t fighting a war, they’re making large sums of money protecting and killing for the highest bidder, so to speak.
Now, in the 70’s and 80’s people engaging in this shady profession were called mercenaries. Foreign nationals fighting in places such as Rhodesia were paid well by the employers not to fight for some ideological goal rather merely for the money.
Now these contractors are sanctioned by the US Government. They’re better equipped than our own US military and they operate with impunity – in essence with a license to kill. They’re partying, killing, and in general whooping it up. If they make it back alive they should have made a nice chunk of change as well. Many of them indeed will burn to death and with no Sith Lord to rescue them.
This is our modern mythology in action. This is the journey to the dark side. I wonder what some of these individuals will do years from now when it finally dawns on them that they shot other human beings just for money, and that they had no real business in Iraq, other than business itself?
There are worse punishments than living the rest of your life in an ugly life-support suit. As vets return intact and less-so from Iraq, most will have the knowledge that they did what they were called to do for their country, in essence they followed the mythology of bravery and honor.
Others… well – we’ll just see…
Rev. Greg
So it turns out Senator Palpatine is secretly a Sith Lord….
“An ancient order of Force-practitioners devoted to the dark side and determined to destroy the Jedi, the Sith were a menace long thought extinct. The current incarnation of the Sith is the result of a rogue Jedi dissident from the order. Two thousand years ago, this Jedi had come to the understanding that the true power of the Force lay not through contemplation and passivity. Only by tapping its dark side could its true potential be gained. The Jedi Council at the time balked at this new direction. The Dark Jedi was outcast, but he eventually gained followers to his new order. Awakening beliefs from the dark past, the new Sith cult continued to grow. With the promise of new powers attainable by tapping into the hateful energies of the dark side, it was only a matter of time before the order self-destructed. Internecine struggle by power-hungry Sith practitioners dwindled their numbers.
One Sith had the cunning to survive. Darth Bane restructured the cult, so that there could only be two -- no more, no less -- a master, and an apprentice. Bane adopted cunning, subterfuge, and stealth as the fundamental tenets of the Sith order. Bane took an apprentice. When that apprentice succeeded him, that new Sith Lord would take an apprentice.”
Darth Sidious seeks to rule his known Universe, by power. To accomplish this he needed a plan that would take decades to unfold. The plan was simple; get an army, become Supreme Chancellor, and most important of all, kill all the Jedi. Sounds simple really when you look at it in those terms. The problem was how to do it without alerting anyone to his plan until it was too late. Isn’t that how all schemes work though? Timing is everything.
Darth Sidious schemed to manipulate a Jedi named Sifo-Dyas to commission to have a clone army created, one big and powerful enough with which to achieve and maintain forced military control. The only way to do this was to create the threat of some future conflict, get a Jedi to do it (someone above suspicion) then kill the one who did it. Leave the army to grow for some later date and tend to other matters.
Then he could manipulate the trade Union into some sort of conflict under the secret identity of Darth Sidious while fighting the conflict under the identity of Senator Palpatine playing both sides against each other, while at the same time training his personal minion, Darth Maul, to kill everyone in the Jedi order. Further conflict forces the Republic to elect Palpatine Supreme Chancellor (just for the duration of the conflict) and so a project milestone is accomplished.
Problem no.1- Maul gets his ass killed. Crap. This is a BIG unforeseen problem.
*Note to self – get new minion*
Well, you know the rest, if you’ve been watching. Sidious is unveiled, and indeed too late. His new apprentice, Anakin, is trained and ready to wreak havoc amongst the peaceful Jedi. Sidious has his army, which he will command from his alter ego Palpatine until the right moment finally approaches.
Sure, Anakin gets thrashed within an inch of his life, but enough is left to resurrect. Darth Vader will kick some ass. No wonder he’s in such a bad mood all of the time. His very life hangs on the life-support suit and the dark-side life support of the Emperor. It’s a bum deal. You know he knows he’s been had. He got what he asked for, but the price was wayyyyy more than he may have originally been willing to pay, had he known.
But you see, the perfect minion is one that can’t change his mind and break his contract and so I wonder if indeed the Emperor foresaw Anakin’s little “mishap” with Obiwan.
If nothing else, ya gotta admit the Sith’s project management skills are truly something to behold. If we had him running the war in Iraq, we’d already have ourselves a lot more cheap oil and a brand new parking lot the size of – well – Iraq.
At what cost though…. That’s another blog…
Rev. Greg
They don’t appreciate you, never did…. And what really pisses you off is they know you’re better than they are, always have been… You should have been the team captain, numero uno, the big cheese…
Sure, your teacher talks about the dark side but hey, let’s face it, it’s all relative, it’s all about the food chain. You’re either the prey or the predator, they’re not fooling you. That’s the way life is, no matter what they say.
It’s just that… that… you’re under ranked. Why are they holding you back? Why won’t they give you the rank you deserve? You’ve earned it; you’ve put in the work. Yeah, you’re young, but you’re good, and they know it.
And then you find a teacher that really understands you, understands who you are, and what you can do. Understands what you deserve.
At first there’s a voice that says don’t do it, you know it’s wrong but that voice isn’t yours after all, it’s theirs. You finally block it out.
Life is about power, you either have it, or others have it and use it against you. It’s as simple as that.
So you sign on, you go for it. You have the teacher, you have the power, you have everything you wanted, everything you deserve.
And somewhere down really deep you remember that little voice that was telling you be careful what you wish for, you may get it.
What an asshole you are. You got all the power you could ever possibly want and now you live in an hideous life support suit. You don’t even recognize yourself in a mirror, you avoid mirrors all together. And what’s worse? You were used and you know it and all the power in the world can’t change that – you were had.
So now you feel like a sick joke, an ugly freakish demon. Everyone is frightened of you and while power is good, you wonder how long the novelty will last. You feel the power, it surges through you but you never imagined the price would be so high. Sometimes you would give anything to simply start over again and do it differently.
More than anything, you just feel so sad. It wasn't suppose to be like this.
Just like they said, forever will it rule your destiny. They were right, but hey - they’re all dead. Well, most of them…
To whom it may concern;
There’s nothing worse than realizing a relationship you thought was going well, isn’t. There’s still nothing worse than finding out life doesn’t work at all the way you thought it did, or would, or should.
These are problems with being a human being. Some religions simply don’t match reality, but being a religion it’s easy enough to simply say reality is wrong, or evil. When one’s life doesn’t match one’s religion, life may simply be labeled evil, or corrupt or a product of the devil. It’s simpler to alter one’s perceptional view of the world than it is to admit you’re just simply mistaken.
This process of labeling and compartmentalization is a very useful tool in life, religion, business – everything. If it doesn’t fit, simply call it wrong. That way you can never be the one that is wrong and nearly anything you decide to do can feel right.
I depend on relationships, not merely my own but also relationships between others as my fundamental metric in judging what’s real and what’s not. The problem is people lie. We lie to each other and to ourselves. I learned long ago in my corporate incarnation that the key to successfully managing a professional relationship was to learn how that special other person view themselves, and based on that view, how they wish to be treated.
It doesn’t mean people are truthful or accurate about their perception of themselves; it’s just that if you treat people in accordance to how you think they deserve to be treated they will feel you are unreasonably attacking them, even though perhaps you may feel that you are defending yourself. This is a corporate analogy. Obviously this scenario is a fairly negative one, based on dealing with difficult employees and difficult managers, something I have quite a lot of experience with.
Being human beings we simply are limited to how clear our view of the world around us can actually be. We have a life time of strange and unique experiences that create individual filters from which we all view our own personal universe.
It is a fearsome thing however when you encounter that breed of human that truly may perceive the success of their relationships, or lack thereof, and through a process of sheer will and determination choose to ignore clear signs of trouble in favor of some financial or ego-based goal. What is worse is realizing that someone you have had a successful relationship with has just flat-out changed their goals, or refocused all their energies in a direction that simply doesn’t include your participation any longer.
And so how do you know when this is happened? What tool can you use to judge whether someone is genuine, or deceptive? You simply need look no further than to their relationships.
Truthfully, we lie with our words. But our relationships reflect what is truly inside us all.
Rev. Greg, Shidoshi