A rare free evening. I wandered over to a local school hall and sat at the very back of a room with about fifty friendly people in it. My local Nichiren Buddhists. These meetings happen very frequently and I only occasionally go. Last time it was functional, to jettison a very unwell man who might otherwise have attached himself to my sofa. This time it was purely to connect to the thinking of it all. An opportunity to embrace the mystic and the human at the joins.
It’s great to chant in a room full of people. I am slightly ashamed that I’m not able to get through Daimoku (the long bit of the chant) as fluently as I could a few years ago, but I wasn’t leading so it’s all good. I just mumbled into my prayer hands. “Jim iffl mim ho aho no ku jin mmpf flippy pff noo” Didn’t think to bring my little book where it is all written down phonetically. Poor woman in front of me. Then we all sat there and shouted Nam Myo Ho Renge Kyo at a scroll for ages. Loosely we are just saying “DEDICATE MYSTIC LAW LOTUS SUTRA” over and over. It’s a thing.
Then a guy did a talk.
Loads of our local Nichiren Buddhists are Italian. I have no idea if it’s the Italians in Chelsea or the Italians more widely with Nam Myo Ho Renge Kyo. But the guy who did the talk was certainly from Southern Europe.
We were thinking about “On Establishing the Correct Teaching for the Peace of the Land,” which is the zingy title our Nichiren came up with to speak truth to power in Kamakura whilst simultaneously scoring points against that douchebag Honen. Honen was running around trying to tell people that they could only attain Buddhahood in a tranquil pure land after death. Nichiren crucially held out that anyone and everyone can achieve Buddhahood in this lifetime. And what’s more you can do it without being a toady to a load of inevitably corrupt priests.
There’s a big old drive towards Kosen Rufu (world peace) which is great despite the fact that things haven’t really improved since back then. Back then Genghis Khan was wondering if he could get across to Japan. Now we’ve got Putin Trump and Netanyahu playing “Who’s gonna push it?” So anything I can do to try and shift the energy to peace is a good thing. So I chanted and then connected to the talk.
Dialogue – there’s a lot about dialogue, and being sensitive but honest and firm with people who are entrenched in worldviews we think are foolish or backwards. The evangelical drive in this secular sect to try and get more people to just be chilled out peaceful kind people who brainwash themselves into being simpler by saying a tiny fragment of a sutra over and over and over again. Mantras definitely have power, I’m not knocking it, I’m curious about it.
You can’t really do this Buddhist thing and still have the spite to get all hateyjealous. If we had everyone praying for peace and tranquility it would give ’em something to do instead of throwing bins at cops or shooting cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon off the fence again.
