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4. Q&A on the Demolition of
the Grand Main Temple |
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Why
are Nikken and the other priests wrong in demolishing
the Grand Main Temple?
They are wrong because their act is a betrayal of the
8 million people whose sincerity, correct faith in the
Daishonin’s teachings and dedication to kosen-rufu
made the Main Temple possible. More than 30 years ago,
these millions of people believed the priests when they
said that they would cherish the Main Temple as the high
sanctuary and would house the Dai-Gohonzon there for hundreds
of years. These believers donated to its construction
trusting the priesthood’s intentions.
Now these priests are completely betraying that trust.
After years of proclaiming it as the high sanctuary, Nikken
is now contradicting himself and the previous high priests,
saying it is not. The Dai-Gohonzon has been moved; the
Main Temple is coming down.
In April, when Nikken announced his plan to transfer the
Dai-Gohonzon from the Main Temple and then demolish the
building, he said that he would do so in order to “completely
refute the great slander of [SGI President] Ikeda and
others.” In effect, Nikken is saying that he’s
demolishing the Main Temple to reject and debase the long-standing
efforts of SGI members to support the priesthood and widely
spread the Daishonin’s Buddhism.
The wrongness of this stance can also be seen in the priesthood’s
unwillingness to be up front about it from the outset.
They felt they needed a more reasonable sounding pretext.
Therefore, first, stories of corrosion, faulty construction
and seismic danger were floated in temple-related publications
such as Emyo.
But when these assertions were solidly refuted, the high
priest himself began citing the fact that it was built
by Daisaku Ikeda and SGI members as the reason for destroying
it.
In short, by demolishing the Main Temple, the priesthood
is trying to demean the faith of the SGI members and the
SGI movement; it is a childish act.
This symbolic action is meant to discourage SGI members
in their faith and amounts to an attempt — an obviously
failed one — to undermine this harmoniously united
order of believers, an offense that Buddhism regards as
the most serious of all.
Whose idea was building the
Main Temple?
The construction of the Main Temple was originally conceived
by the late Josei Toda, the Soka Gakkai’s second
president, and achieved by his successor, President Ikeda.
In 1964, President Ikeda proposed a plan, which was accepted
with delight by both Soka Gakkai members and the priesthood,
to actualize his mentor’s dream to create a grand
sanctuary where people from around the world could come
to worship the Dai- Gohonzon. In 1965, some 8 million
people donated ¥35.5 billion ($100 million at the
time; $270 million at today’s exchange rate) for
the project, which was completed in 1972.
Regarding the religious significance of the building,
Nittatsu Hosoi, the 66th high priest (Nikken is the 67th),
stated in an “Admonition” dated April 28,
1972, that it indeed was “the supreme edifice that
shall be the high sanctuary of the temple of true Buddhism.”
In the late ’60s and early ’70s, the priesthood
repeatedly stated that the Main Temple would fulfill this
role of the high sanctuary — in accord with the
Daishonin’s mandate, expressed in his writings such
as “On the Three Great Secret Laws” and the
“Minobu Transfer Document,” that such a sanctuary
be established.
This interpretation of the building’s significance
— agreed on by both laity and priesthood —
became an integral part of the construction and opening
of the Main Temple.
What does ‘high sanctuary’
mean?
The high sanctuary is one of the Three Great Secret Laws
(called secret because they had never been revealed before);
that is, one of the three core elements of the Daishonin’s
Buddhism. They are the object of devotion of true Buddhism
(the Gohonzon), the invocation of true Buddhism (chanting
Nam-myoho-renge-kyo) and the high sanctuary of true Buddhism.
High sanctuary originally meant a place of religious practice
where people accept various ascetic precepts — rules
of practice and discipline — which they agree to
uphold to achieve enlightenment.
In the Daishonin’s Buddhism, however, there is no
need to keep such austere precepts, because having sincere
faith in the Gohonzon is alone equivalent to accepting
all the Buddhist precepts. All we need to attain enlightenment
is our faith and practice.
For this reason, wherever people practice the Daishonin’s
Buddhism with faith in the Gohonzon is generally regarded
as the high sanctuary of true Buddhism. But the Daishonin
also talks of the high sanctuary in the specific sense
in documents like the “Minobu Transfer Document”:
“When the sovereign of the nation establishes this
Law, the high sanctuary of the temple of true Buddhism
shall be built at Mount Fuji” (Gosho Zenshu, p.
1600).
So, while the high sanctuary is generally wherever people
practice this Buddhism correctly, he also imagined a very
specific place where those committed to the propagation
of the Mystic Law would gather.
What does “When the sovereign of the nation establishes
the Law” mean? In a democratic age like ours, the
people are sovereign. Since the Daishonin’s mandate
is that the high sanctuary be built on the condition that
the sovereign of the nation — in our day, the people
— establish the Law, the raison d’être
of this temple’s establishment is that the people
are widely spreading the Daishonin’s Buddhism.
Put simply, the Daishonin established the Gohonzon and
Nam-myoho-renge-kyo and entrusted his future disciples
to spread his teaching widely — as a result of which
the high sanctuary would be built.
The Main Temple was built, then, to be the high sanctuary,
testifying to the unprecedented spread of the Daishonin’s
Buddhism through the efforts of Soka Gakkai members after
World War II. It was, as well, the crystallization of
their resolve to continue their efforts on a global scale.
Now that the demolition,
which we have protested, is well under way, what is the
SGI-USA’s stance toward this action?
The rallies that we held last summer to protest the demolition
were a great success; we raised awareness both inside
and outside the SGI-USA of the priesthood’s unjust
action. As a direct result of our protest, many non-members,
including noted architects, politicians and scholars,
also started to voice their opposition to the priesthood’s
plan.
It is important, both from the standpoint of Buddhism
and from that of ordinary human conscience, to not allow
the Main Temple’s demolition to proceed unchallenged.
If this action goes unopposed, faced with no vehement
voice of protest, people both now and in the future will
think that the priesthood’s action was simply tolerated.
Worse yet, they will fail to see the priesthood’s
grave betrayal of the Daishonin’s intent to always
cherish those dedicated to spreading his Buddhism.
To set the record straight, we will continue to raise
our voices of protest against the priesthood’s action.
It may be too late to save the structure, but it is never
too late to save people, including future generations,
from unfortunate misunderstandings of this event and,
more important, from misunderstandings of the Daishonin’s
Buddhism itself.
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(Originally published, World
Tribune, Oct. 30, 1998)
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