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2. How Can We Say for Sure
That the SGI Is Right? |
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By Jeff Farr
Associate Editor
The SGI's position is that Nichiren Shoshu is wrong. And
Nichiren Shoshu's position is that the SGI is wrong. How
can we explain that the SGI is right - beyond just saying
that the temple is wrong? What evidence do we have to
support what we say?
The real question underlying this is whether the SGI or
Nichiren Shoshu is correctly practicing Nichiren Daishonin's
Buddhism. Which side is right about what the Daishonin's
Buddhism teaches? How do we know this for sure?
The answer can only be found in one place: the Daishonin's
writings. The SGI is teaching a Buddhist practice completely
in accord with what the Daishonin writes.
For example, the SGI believes, exactly as the Daishonin
writes, that all people are equal. All people are essentially
Buddhas.
The Daishonin states in "Heritage of the Ultimate
Law of Life" that "Shakyamuni who attained enlightenment
countless aeons ago, the Lotus Sutra which leads all people
to Buddhahood, and we ordinary human beings are in no
way different or separate from each other" (Writings
of Nichiren Daishonin, p. 216).
In "Letter to Niike," he says, "becoming
a Buddha is nothing extraordinary. If you chant Nam-myoho-renge-kyo
with your whole heart, you will naturally become endowed
with the Buddha's thirty-two features and eighty characteristics.
As the sutra says, 'hoping to make all persons equal to
me, without any distinction between us,' you can readily
become as noble a Buddha as Shakyamuni." (WND, p.
1030).
The Daishonin's writings are full of passages like these
that declare we are Buddhas. The SGI puts these passages
into practice, sharing this message with the world.
Nichiren Shoshu's message, by contrast, is that we have
to have priests - especially the high priest - to attain
Buddhahood. We are incapable of doing it on our own, incomplete
without that priestly intervention. But this idea is found
nowhere in the Daishonin's writings. It's at odds with
the Daishonin's writings, almost all of which were written
to ordinary people, not to priests. Yet the priests suggest
that Nikken is the only real Buddha, that he's the only
one who can really understand this Buddhism, that ordinary
people never can.
But we can, and we do. In "The True Aspect of All
Phenomena, " the Daishonin says, "if you are
of the same mind as Nichiren, you must be a Bodhisattva
of the Earth." (WND, p. 385) Of course, we do not
become of the same mind as him just by being SGI members
or just by chanting. It's when we have the same reverence
for the people that he did - the same passion that he
did for introducing all people to the liberation of Nam-myoho-renge-kyo
- that we become "of the same mind" as him.
The priests have separated themselves from the Daishonin's
mind by rigidly sticking to their misconception that they
are "above" us.
The temple issue calls on us to move closer and closer
to the core of this Buddhism, to reverence for people.
Closer and closer to the people, the one and only reason
that the Daishonin founded this Buddhism. Closer and closer
to the truth of this Buddhism.
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(Originally published in the World
Tribune, March 26, 1999)
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