Published by Soka Spirit Editor
Posted on August 21, 2009
Ralph Waldo Emerson gave up the ministry at age 29, in 1832. He could no longer accept the overemphasis on formality in his church. He felt people’s spiritual needs were being dismissed.
In a sermon, he revealed his thoughts: “Freedom is the essence of this faith. It has for its object simply to make men good and wise. Its institutions should be as flexible as the wants of men. That form out of which the life and suitableness have departed should be as worthless in its eyes as dead leaves that are falling around us.” With that, he was off to another life — as essayist, lecturer, and poet — off to become the Emerson we remember today.
He had not “lost his religion.” His faith had expanded beyond the confines of that conservative institution. Emerson’s heart could no longer be contained within church walls.
In this youthful struggle for freedom, we see the struggle of many religious people in America. Our impulse has always been to break out of the box — to go further, deeper — when it comes to matters of faith. A greater spiritual freedom awaits us, we believe, over the next hill, around the next bend. Freedom is the essence of our national faith; our faith lies in freedom.
The SGI-USA has had ample experience with “dead leaves” over our 49-year history. In our case, the biggest dead leaves have been the anachronistic ideas of the Nichiren Shoshu priesthood, which “excommunicated” the SGI-USA and our entire worldwide organization in 1991. As Phillip Hammond and David Machacek write in Soka Gakkai in America, “Nichiren Shoshu is a product of feudal Japanese culture — an era when values of duty, loyalty, obedience, and tradition reigned.” The feudal lord stood over the serf; the priest stood over the lay believer.
But not anymore. Not for us. When Nichiren Shoshu made its move for complete control over the SGI in 1990–91, most SGI members decided to pursue their Buddhist practice free of priests. Most members already knew what Nichiren, the founder, had taught from the beginning: “There should be no discrimination among those who propagate the five characters of Myoho-renge-kyo in the Latter Day of the Law, be they men or women.”
The more that U.S. members thought about it, the less the priests’ “holier than thou” attitude made sense. In America, too, the vast majority of members took the Emerson route: beyond the confines. Sayonara to the priests.
Six years after leaving his church, in 1838, Emerson delivered his “Divinity School Address” at Harvard University. Continuing the train of thought of his 1832 sermon, Emerson encouraged the students “first of all, to go alone; to refuse the good models, even those which are sacred in the imagination of men, and dare to love God without mediator or veil.” The establishment was not happy to hear this, and Emerson was not invited back to Harvard for 30 years.
But his very American take on faith, in both this lecture and the previous sermon, now looks nothing but prophetic. It is an understanding that has grown with the country. Over the course of our 233 years, Americans have increasingly oriented themselves toward an “inner-directed spirituality,” as SGI President Daisaku Ikeda described in his first Harvard lecture, in 1991. Especially over the past three decades, Americans have left traditional religious institutions in a steady stream, searching for something more.
The move of SGI-USA members away from the temple fits this template perfectly. It was the American thing to do.
A February 2008 survey by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life shows Americans continuing to shift from religion to religion (and in and out of religion) at a rapid clip. Every major group is gaining and losing ground at the same time. Those having the most trouble, though, are the most traditional. Roughly 10 percent of Americans today call themselves “former Catholics,” for instance. The adherence to “outer-directed spirituality” in some long-standing faiths — with the attempted enforcement of age-old “commandments” by a priestly class — is continuing to push Americans toward Emersonian leaps of faith.
Dead leaves are to be leaped over. Cleared away. Watching them fall from the trees can make you feel like a poet, but eventually they turn to garbage on the ground, to gunk. You must do something about them.
There is nothing like a clean sidewalk at the beginning of spring — a sidewalk that seems to head off not just down the street but out to the world. No dead leaves to clutter the view.
Revisiting Emerson’s words, we see this American impulse toward spring, toward the world. It is the same impulse beating in the hearts of SGI-USA members who, especially since the excommunication, have been heading straight toward a greater spiritual freedom.
— By Jeff Farr