Real Life with Ryuei

If you put words in Nichiren's mouth, use an elegant font

So, I saw the new layout for fraughtwithperil the other day and I have to admit that it made me chuckle. But then I am one of those kind of people who really enjoys irreverant humor. South Park literally has me in convulsions laughing whenever they make fun of religion. I guess it is because I myself have a love/hate relationship with religion in general. On the one hand it can inspire us, edify us, and help draw out our finest qualities and develop our ideals and aspirations. On the other hand it makes us take ourselves and certain people of the past too seriously, even idolatrously, and it can even heighten our clinging, aggression, and misery. Religion is too often used to manipulate people as well, by other people whose agendas are not religious at all but who are clever enough to appreciate how easy it is to push people's religious buttons. So sometimes I love religion and other times I truly despise it. And in this, Buddhism can sometimes be not much better than Christianity or Islam or other monotheistic religions.

However, I have discovered a sensibility in Buddhism, and particularly in some forms of it where iconoclasm is deliberately cultivated, and deconstruction of doctrines and beliefs is at the core of what being a Buddhist is all about. While this is particularly so in many Zen stories (and the iconoclasm of Zen is very much exaggerated and overemphasized actually) one also finds it in the Pali Canon. I remember when the San Francisco Sutra Salon was reading the Connected Discourses of the Buddha (Samyutta Nikaya) there was one passage where a monk asks the Buddha to give him a teaching. The Buddha turns around and basically says, "Why should I do that?All you will do is follow me around all day anyway." I was a bit taken aback by this, here was the Buddha in one of the historically credible records of his teaching telling people to back off a bit. It's like in the Gospel account of the resurrection where the Risen Lord says to Mary, "Don't cling to me." And of course many centuries later the Ch'an teacher Lin-chi told his monks that if they should meet the Buddha they should kill the Buddha. In other words, don't cling to images and concepts of holiness, or superstitously revere some external figure, you need to (as the Buddha said) work out your own salvation with diligence.

So does this mean we should turn around and have no reverance for the great teachers of the past or that we should treat them lightly? At this time I don't have an answer to that. When I see the South Park episode where Jesus and the Devil have a boxing match, and then the Devil wins by throwing the game after everyone has bet on him because he is buffer than Jesus I can't help but laugh. When I read the account in the Pali Canon of the monk who ascends into heaven to ask Brahma (aka God the Creator) where the four elements come from and return to and instead Brahma pulls the monk aside so the other heavenly beings don't hear and tells him that he doesn't know and that the monk should have asked the Buddha in the first place, I get a chuckle from that. So on the one hand I can't come out against jokes at the expense of God or Jesus or some revered teacher of the past because I find them funny too.

But does this lessen my respect for them? Does it mean that what Jesus, or Buddha, or Nichiren, or some other revered person of the past taught will have less impact on me? Or that the inspiring example they set will be lessened for me, because I no longer take them so seriously? I think that is perhaps a legitimate concern.

One thought I have is that these stories don't so much make fun or light of the people themselves (who if they are truly selfless might appreciate a light hearted jest at their expense) as they make light of the exaggerated way in which we worship and cling to them. For instance, I understand the story about the monk and Brahma to be not so much about making fun of God as it is about making fun of the way people think of God as a person and presume to speak for God when they don't actually know more than anyone else. In other words, I think it is making fun more of the images people have of God that are often presented by self-serving people and organizations with their own agendas. In the Buddha's time it was the brahmin caste who had presented God as a kind of Wizard of Oz type figure. This story is simply pulling the curtain back to show the brahmin manipulating the control panel and creating the light show so that they can pretend to speak for God.

Still, people do revere these figures and images: God (Brahma), Buddha, Jesus, Nichiren, Mohammed, etc... And one should be mindful of people's feelings. Buddhism in general shows great reverence to the buddhas, bodhisattvas, and great teachers of the past. In Nichiren Shu we offer them flowers and water and light and incense. We make these offerings out of respect and out of recognition that these beings personify the awakened nature of things and embody for us our own finest qualities so that we too will begin reclaims and express those qualities.

Even in Zen, which has a long tradition of stories and rhetoric that often seems very dismissive or even disprespectful, makes such offerings and treat the icons representing the buddhas, bodhisattvas, and figures of the past in a reverential manner. They even recite the list of the ancestors as part of their regular services out of respect and gratitude. So while Zen may be iconoclastic at times they do it in order to shake people out of unthinking idolatrous attitudes, not in order to make disrespect the order of the day. There is one story where a man comes to visit a Buddhist temple and begins dropping the ashes of his cigarette onto a statue of the Buddha. The Zen Master there asks him why he has done this, and the man tells him, "I am just showing that all is empty, nothing is more sacred than anything else." The Master says, "That may be so, but for my part I will express that by offering flowers and being respectful to all."

So I offer that as some of my own thoughts and reflections on the new layout for fraughtwithperil and its depiction of Nichiren Shonin which got a shocked chuckle from me the first time I saw it. But I do have a great respect for Nichiren despite some of my own ambivalence towards him that I feel at times, and I wonder if he would approve of this light-hearted co-opting of his image to promote this sight - a sight that is afterall dedicated to Nichiren Buddhism. Or perhaps he would take a more fuju fuse (don't give/don't receive) attitude, perhaps other Nichiren Buddhists might take a more fuju fuse attitude to this site because of that image. I know that I showed it to several other Nichiren Shu ministers. A couple were silent about it, perhaps not knowing what to think or not wanting to voice approval or disapproval; one told me he didn't find it funny as it was too irreverant; one made it clear he disapproved but then said, "At least they should give him a more elegant font."

Namu Myoho Renge Kyo,
Ryuei