Finding My Path

Welcome

Zumacraig, congrats on beginning your journey with the spirit to "find out" for yourself.

This may be slightly off-topic, but mroaks made a comments several threads ago re: misappropriating the mantra Namu-myoho-renge-kyo (or NMRK for short.)

I do feel it's unskillful and even offensive for a corporation to claim the mantra as its property, and for members of any group to claim exclusive ownership of NMRK.

On the individual level, though, I feel it's important that we feel NMRK belongs to us in a very personal way. It does not belong to us uniquely, obviously, since others also chant. We develop our own relationship with NMRK, though, and no one else is responsible for our relationship and no one else can take it away.

My two cents.

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by: beryl @ Fri Oct 17, 2008 at 19:43:44 PM UTC

agree

Beryl we are on the same page. NMRK is owned by all who invoke it.

Zumacraig I have no advice for you but it sounds like you don't need any advice. My friend always said to me, "Keep going."

Which brings up so-called Dharma Teachers. Nichiren Buddhism is different than other kinds of Buddhism because it does not require Dharma Teachers. Har...get ready for Nichiren Priests and Ministers and other Dharma Careerists to disagree.

We are all on the path, and in light of ichinen sanzen, no one is more advanced on the path than anyone else. Buddhahood is no closer to a guy who has been chanting 20 years and someone who just started chanting. This is hard to grasp because we believe in the concepts of progress and attainment. (shout out to auntie.)

Mentor/member or teacher/student or master/disciple -- whatever you want to call the concept -- It has no meaning in Nichiren Buddhism. Followers want so much to believe that they can find a teacher who will guide them, but it does not happen in Nichiren Buddhism.

What Nichiren has done is so radical and wonderful that lots of Nichiren Buddhists just can't hang with it. They try to shoehorn it into the traditional master/student relationship that seems logical.

THINK ABOUT IT. The mantra NMRK is the teacher, path, etc., but the mantra doesn't chant itself. That means the chanter is both teacher and student, leader and follower, enlightened and unenlightened, awake and groggy.

When a bunch of us practice or talk together, we take on varying roles and different times. Sometimes "the new guy" reveals lessons to "the old timer." Some chanters may have experiential knowledge or academic understanding, and that's super because it all contributes to the community.

But it all boils down to YOU chanting NMRK, no one else can chant it for you. It will take you on your journey as you take it on your journey.

Word.

"If only I had a nickel for every time I've heard someone say that the Soka skunk has changed its stripe." -- auntie

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by: mroaks @ Fri Oct 17, 2008 at 21:22:54 PM UTC

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Great points!

thanks so much for the comments.  writing that diary was helpful for me to summarize where i am at right now.  you make two excellent points that i hadn't thought of before.  one is that Nichiren was so radical in that his ideas about buddhism don't require a teacher.  how liberating.  the other point is that no one owns any of the practices, including chanting.  again, how liberating and how buddhist.  it's ironic how so many traditions require such devotion to a teacher and seem to think they own the dharma when buddhism is ultimately about working out our own salvation.  and, as you say, professional dharma folk have their livelihood's invested in it, as do many cultures.  anyway, great points!

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by: zumacraig @ Sat Oct 18, 2008 at 21:01:05 PM UTC

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