my buddhist blog number 129

Hi Everybody,
We can't leave this brief account of thr daily practice of Nichiren Buddhism without a touching upon the meaning and the implications of the Gohonzon as a central feature of that practice. The Gohonzon is a simple rice paper scroll, and it marks out Nichiren Buddhism from all other Buddhist schools. It is its distuingishing characteristic. Hinayana or Theravada Buddhism is very much focused on the person of Shakyamuni Buddha and the worshipping or honouring of him as a unique human being, almost to the point of deifying him. Mahayana Buddhism, which embraces Nichiren Buddhism is, by contrast, very much more concerned to bring Buddhist teachings into the daily of ordinary people everywhere. That in essence is what Mahayana means, it translates as roughly the greater vehicle. And in Nichiren Buddhism, the Gohonzon as a point of focus, and as we've seen over the past few episodes, the chanting of the title of the Lotus Sutra, myoho renge kyo, make up the primary means of achieving that aim.

The word ' go' in classical Japanese means ' worthy of honour,' and the word ' honzon' means ' object of fundamental respect.' So it is clearly an object that is held in the highest esteem in Nichiren Buddhism. With it's bold and graceful calligraphy it is also I have to say, a work of considerable beauty.

The Dai Gohonzon ( dai means 'great' or  'original' )was inscribed by Nichiren on 12th October 1279. The original Gohonzon that he inscribed is still extant in Japan at a place not far from Tokyo, but anyone who is prepared to make the commitment to practice in accordance with the principles of Nichiren Buddhism , and to look after their own Gohonzon as an object of fundamental respect receives a smaller block print version to enshrine in their own home, as a focal point for the daily practice. This is how members of the Soka Gakkai practice. Soka Gakkai means esentially Value Creating Organisation, and it's important to emphasise that it is an entirely lay organisation. No priests, no temples. Nichiren himself during his lifetime established this pattern of committed individuals receiving a personal Gohonzon to make it easier for them to practice in a place of their own chosing. Not long afterwards he wrote in one of his letters,

' I Nichiren have insctibed my life in sumi ink, so believe in this Gohonzon with your whole heart.' 

Sumi is the form of ink used particularly in Japanese calligraphy, and with this immensely simple phrase Nichiren sums up the scale of the task he had accomplished; he regarded it as nothing less than the fulfilment of his life-long mission as a teacher of Buddhist principles.

Enough for today I think.
Thanks for reading thus far.
Next week we discuss the symbols inscribed on the Gohonzo scroll.
Best wishes,

William
The case for Buddhism is available from Amazon and as a download on Kindle.

MY BUDDHIST BLOG NUMBER 128

Hi Everybody,
Easter Sunday. A time for peace and friendship. Lets hope in the next few months we see peace breaking out in Syria and the pain and suffering of so many people brought to an end.

The ground we've covered in the past dozen or so episodes has been a necesssarily brief account of the many meanings locked up within nam myoho renge kyo. But having a more comprehensive understanding of those meanings isn't really the key to unlocking the value that it embodies. The fact is that it's this practice focused around the chanting of this phrase that is Nichiren's great legacy to all of us. Nichiren was in many ways a great modernist, and he makes it clear in his writings that this practice was fashioned for ordinary people no matter what place or period they inhabit, 13th Century Japan or 21st century Europe. People with busy everyday lives and much else to grab their attention, to enable them to get to grips with the values and the principles of Buddhism, and so to understand that even in the very midst of life's difficulties and challenges, it is possible to build lives filled with hope and optimism and resilience, and yes...great happiness too.

That's it. Done for today. It's shorter than normal I know but it brings us to a neat end for the discussion of nam myoho renge kyo, and next time we can launch off into a discussion about the gohonzon.

Hope to see you then.
All my best wishes,
William
PS The Case for Buddhism is available from Amazon and as a download on Kindle.
Very soon out in Spanish!!!

my buddhist blog number 127

Hi Everybody,
Hope all is well with you.
We're closing in on the end of this chapter and this book. Only half a dozen pages to go.
I've just learned that the Spanish version is about to be published! Which is really great news. It makes the book available to the huge Spanish speaking audience in the US and in South America.
Right well we've been explorign the meaning of the mantra that Nichiren Buddhists chant, nam myoho renge kyo. It is the title of the Lotus Sutra, which contains the key teachings of Mahaayna Buddhism in classical Japanese. Over the past few episodes we've looked in detail at the underlying meanings of nam, and myoho and renge. So you can revisit those episodes if you wish to refresh your memory, and in this one we're talking about kyo.

So justas with myoho and renge, the word kyo embodies many meanings. It is literally translated as ' sutra' or the voice or teaching of the Buddha. But it also measn vibration or sound, so can be taken to represent the vibrations that spread out from someone in the process of chanting. Indeed there is a well-known Buddhist saying that ' the voice does the Buddha's work,' and there is no question that the sound or the vibration that is created by a group of people chanting, even quite a small group, can be very powerful.
I can still recall with great clarity for example, the very first Buddhist meeting I went to, some time before I actually started practising. It was a dark cold winter's evening I remember and we were walking along this street of narrow Victorian houses in West London, with me thinking not particularly positive thoughts such as, ' Oh well, it can't last much more than an hour this meeting!' And then, as we turned up the short garden path to the house, coming through the closed front door was this wonderful resonant sound. Strong. Confident. Vibrant. It actually made the hair tingle on the back of my neck I recall. A sound produced by just a dozen or so ordinary people, chanting nam myoho renge kyo.'

Enough for today I think.
I have to say re-writing that passage I can still recall that first meeting. And I've been chanting every day since then. When I say that this practice has profondly changed my life, I mean precisely that. It has changed my life in more ways than I can recount, all of them immensely beneficial.
See you next time,
William
The Case for Buddhism is available in paperback from Amazon and as a download on Kindle.

my buddhist blog number 126

Hi Everybody,
On this beautiful spring day. Well it is in southern England. Clear skies. Soft slightly hazy sunshine. Birds everywhere kicking up a spring-type fuss. Beautiful. Runnning in the park with Gatsby early this morning and we even suprised a few spring baby rabbits back into their burrows! We're in the middle of the detailed explanation of the meaning of the mantra Nichiren Buddhists chant morning and evening, nam myoho renge kyo. We've talked about nam at asome length, and myoho at even greater length, and we're into renge, which means essentially cause and effect.

Basically Buddhism argues that every cause we make, good bad or indifferent, plants a balancingeffect in our lives. Thus there is for all of us an on-going chain of causes and effects. That is if you like the fundamental dynamic of our lives. Good causes good effects. Bad causes bad effects.

I think it's pretty easy to see how even a superficial understanding of this principle can have a powerful effect on our behaviour, on our awareness of the kind of causes that we are making. And since that process of linked causes and effects is going on all the time, you can see that where we are now in our lives, who we are now in our lives, is the sum of all the causes we have made in the past, that have planted effects in our lives.

By the same token the causes that we are making now, Buddhism reminds us, contain the seeds of our future. So you might say, the key factor in shaping our on-going lives is how we respond to the situations and events and encounters that face us now, today and tomorrow and the next day.

What that is saying so powerfully is that however much we might feel it to be the case, we are not simply subject to chance and accident and encounter that come at us out of our environment. The decisive factor is how we respond to those situations. The causes that we make and therefore the effects that we plant in our lives.

The basic message is therefore on eof immense hope and optimism. Whateverhas happened in the past good positive causes made now, will plant good positive effects, into our future.

Enough to absorb for one go  I think.
Next time we will be looking at kyo.
All my best wishes,
William
PS The Case for Buddhism is available as a paper back on Amazon and as a downlaod on Kindle.
The good news is that the Spanish version is about to be launched for all those Spanish speakers in US and South America.

my buddhist blog number 125

Hi Everybody,
Thanks so much for visiting my blog. It's really appreciated when there is so much else to grab your attention. We're in the middle of a detailed discussion on the meaning of nam myoho renge kyo, the mantra that we chant as Nichiren Buddhists morningn and evening. It is the title of the Lotus Sutra written in classical Japanese, with the addition of what is called the committal word, nam, which means basically I commit to, or I believe in. So we've talked about nam. We've talked at some length about myoho. And we've come to renge.

Renge means lotus flower, but most significantly it also means cause and effect. The lotus flower adopted as the title of Shakyamuni's ultimate teaching is an immensely significant symbol in Buddhism for many reasons. It is a plant with a particularly beautiful flower and it happens to grow and flourish with its flower and leaves floating on the surface of the water and its roots dangling into the mucky muddy conditions on the bottom of the pond. In this sense it is seen to symbolise the great potential locked up in every human life; the promise that we can build strong and positive and flourishing lives, however difficult the circumstances and environments we find our lives rooted in. Moreover the lotus happens to carry both blossoms and seed pods at the same time, simultaneously today's flower and the seeds of tomorrow's plants. In this sense it is seen to symbolise one of the fundamental and most important principles of Buddhism known as the simultaneity of cause and effect.

Once again it is a principle with which Buddhism asks us to challenge the way we are accustomed to thinking about everyday lives and relationships. Basically it argues every cause we make, good bad and indifferent, plants a balancing effect in our lives. That effect Buddhism argues, will, sooner or later, make itself felt in our lives, without fail. Thus there is for all of us an on-going chain of causes and effect. That is if you like thr fundamental dynamic of our lives. It ties together for each one of us, the past, the present and the future.

Buddhism argues that it is only be coming to understand this constant linkage, that we can grasp fully what it means to take responsibility for our actions, and to seek to change those inherent tendencies in our life that are causing us to suffer. So it is a fundamental teaching that carries with it all sorts of implications, since we are of course, making causes all the time, both within our own lives and in relation to those us, all day every day, in everything we think and say and do. Good causes, good effects. Bad causes, bad effects.

Enough I think to chew over for today.
Back during the week to conclude the renge section.
All my best wishes, and gratitude for your being here.
William
PS The Case for Buddhism is available as a hold in the hand paper back from Amazon or as a read-on-the-screen download from Kindle.

my buddhist blog number 124

Hi Everybody,

Hope all is well with you. Thanks for coming to the blog. I try hard to keep it going at least once a week, but it's been really busy this week completing a script. So to recap, we're in the middle of what I think is a really important section exploring the meaning of myoho in the mantra we chant, nam myoho renge kyo. I notice I give fully 5 pages to this section which is an indication of how important an understanding of this phrase is to the practice. Anyway, we've reached the cart and horses!! This is an analogy that is often used because it presents such a graphic picture of the relationship between the myo and the ho aspects of our life.

So, our life is the cart and it's pulled along by our myo horse, or our deepest spiritual energy, and our ho horse, our physical life. In general it's true to say that we are accustomed to spending a great deal of time and effort nurturing the strength and the well-being of our ho horse, because of course it is so visible and so accessible to us. We can look at it in the mirror for example and worry about its shape! We can feed it three times a day and take it to the gym to work out and off to play sports to ensure that it is kept fit and healthy and suitably diverted. As a result we tend very much to equate our happiness and our sense of satisfaction with life with how well we are getting on with looking after our ho horse.

By contrast we tend to spend relatively little time, if any, nurturing and exercising our myo horse, because of course it is wholly unseen and and in general has a less powerful presence. The result is a gross imbalance in the pulling power of these two dimensions of our life. The wagon of our life is pulled off strongly in one direction dictated by our physical needs, our strong ho horse. Indeed it is often pulled round in circles, repeating patterns of behaviour, because the spiritual side of our make-up hasn't been nurtured enough to influence, to change that is, our habitual behaviour. We can, as we all know so well, become very much creatures of habit, tending to repeat patterns of thought and behaviour even when they lead to considerable pain and suffering in our lives. People very often for example, go through a whole series of similar relationships each one of which might follow a very similar pattern of rise and fall.

What we need to do, Buddhism tells us, is to become aware of the effects of this gross imbalance between the strength of our physical and spiritual lives, and so allocate more time and energy to keeping both horses, the myo as well as the ho, in a fit and active and healthy state.

That is very much the role that is played by the daily Buddhist practice, it is the regular daily work out for our myo horse.

That's plenty enough for this episode.
Next time we are on to renge.
Hope to see you then.
With all my best wishes,
William
PS The Case for Buddhism is available on Amazon and as a download on Kindle and if you read it and enjoy it, I would be immensely grateful if you would be prepared to put a few words into into the review section. Readers reviews are apparently a very powerful factor in encouraging new readers. And please accept my gratitude in advance!

my buddhist blog number 123

Hi Everybody,
We've been exploring the meaning of the mantra nam myoho renge kyo that we chant as a central part of our practice as Nichiren Buddhists. We've talked about nam which is the committal word which has a range of meanings such as I summon up  or  I make great effort. And we went on to talk about the meaning of myoho which essentailly describes the relationship between the myo or spiritual aspects of our life and the ho or physical aspects. And we touched upon the way in which the regularity of the practice strengthens the vitality of this spiritual diemnsion in our lives. That's basically where we pick up the theme today.

Rather more difficult to accept, indeed one of the most difficult concepts to understand, particularly if you have a background in science I suspect, is the Buddhist belief that all material existence, everything on Earth both animate and inanimate hasa physical and a spiritual aspect. Everything but everything we are told, has both myo and ho; the tree, the rock, the river, the mountain.

That is undoubtedly a difficult idea to take on board, although Buddhism is by no means alone in holding this view. Throughout the length and breadth of human history, artists and poets have been constantly seeking to open our eyes to this view of reality, in all languages and in all cultures. Wordworth for example, the great English romantic poet, when he famously described the myoho of a lake and a bunch of daffodils.

The waves beside them danced but they outdid the sparklin g waves in glee,
A poet could not be but gay,
In such a jocund company,
I gazed...and gazed..but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought;
For oft when on my couch I lie,
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon my inner eye
Which is the bliss of solitude,
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

Buddhism simply stresses this aspect of the continuity and the close association that runs through all things, so it teaches that we are not separate from, but closely linked to everything around us. Thus in Buddhist terms, statements such as being in harmony with, or being at odds with one's environment are not simply figures of speech. They are held to represent a fundamental truth, a truth that is the basis for the Buddhist principle of oneness of self and environment. Essentially this argues that as we change, as we gradually strengthen and reveal our Buddha nature through our practice, so that change resonates through our environment.

Right. Enough said I think for one day!
I'll be back mid week to continue the thread.
I nust say I'm really enjoying going over the ground again.
I learn somethingnew every time I do it.
Best wishes,
William
PS The Case for Buddhism is available from Amazon and on Kindle.