Our mission is to support those who wish to embark on the path to awakening by sharing the practice of chanting Namu Myoho Renge Kyo. We endeavor to share the highs and lows of each other’s journey and to join hands together as we all seek an awakened life of peace, joy, and happiness.
Most people’s experience and awareness of Buddhism is around sitting in silent meditation. While silent mediation is a Buddhist practice, sometimes it isn’t for everyone. It can be very hard to sit still in today’s frenetic, noisy, chaotic world. And, counter-intuitively for some, it causes anxiety.
Chanting is a wonderfully engaging meditation practice that is invigorating, calming, and centering. It is a very powerful feeling of inclusion and fullness chanting along with others in a safe and supportive community.
Chanting meditation cultivates “Clarity” for us to:
Feel Clearly, so we avoid damaging emotional attachments.
See Clearly, so we respond to circumstances in a positive and healthy manner.
Think Clearly, so we act with wisdom and compassion.
Chanting cultivates and nurtures our inner capacity to advance from darkness to light, from debilitating attachments to a knowing wisdom, from blind selfishness to insightful compassion.
Chanting gives us insight into cause and effect and the inter-being of all things giving rise to genuine love and compassion, for ourselves and others, as we realize our connection with everything in and around us.
It gives us the greatest gift of all: a life of Selfless Compassion.
What is Nichiren Buddhism?
For over 2500 years the Buddhist tradition has been offering a way for every person to become awakened, thereby realizing and actualizing one’s own buddha-nature. The Buddha never said he was a god nor did he say that we should follow him to an otherworldly heaven. Instead, he said, “Come try this and see for yourself.” The Buddha emphasized personal responsibility and accountability. In essence, Buddhism teaches that if we liberate ourselves, we can liberate the world. Mindfulness and compassion are noble human qualities that all can cultivate. Through practice, we can live with trust and confidence, so that our thoughts, words, and actions can transform us and positively influence everyone and everything around us.
The Nichiren Buddhist School shares much with the other schools, we take refuge in the Three Treasures:
The Buddha,
The Dharma,
The Sangha.
We acknowledge the Buddha’s foundational teaching of the Four Noble Truths:
❖ Life is suffering (when infinite happiness is sought from finite things).
❖ Suffering is caused by greed, hatred, and delusion.
❖ We can end suffering.
❖ We do this by following the Eightfold Path of Right View, Right Intention, Right Speech, Right Action, Right Livelihood, Right Effort, Right Mindfulness, and Right Concentration.
The Mahayana tradition evolved the Eightfold Path into The Six Perfections of Generosity, Morality, Patience, Energy, Meditation, and Wisdom, by emphasizing Generosity and Patience. Generosity for others is critical for everyone's benefit. Without Patience, hatred and anger can overwhelm us.
In Nichiren Buddhism, following the teachings of Tiantai Zhiyi (538-597), we believe that we can awaken to the following three truths:
❖ Truth of Emptiness: no person, place, thing, principle, or event has an unchanging, independent “essence” or “self-nature.”
❖ Truth of Provisionality: yet all phenomena are constantly arising, changing, and ceasing in accordance with causes and conditions. All phenomena have a provisional existence that is impermanent, interdependently composed of other phenomena, and subjectively apprehended by our mental perceptions.
❖ Truth of the Middle Way: all phenomena are both empty and provisional. We are empty of self-nature because we are provisionally existing in every moment as a flow of causes and conditions with no fixed or independent self-nature. The first two truths necessarily imply each other. A complete understanding of any one of the Three Truths will lead to an understanding of the other two. Understanding the Middle Way allows us to experience each moment fully without being entangled by aversion or attraction which gives rise to suffering. By awakening to the Middle Way, we can be fully liberated and also fully engaged with the world.
Nichiren (1222-1282) established the tradition that now bears his name on April 28, 1253. Nichiren’s genius and great gift to us all was encapsulating all the Buddha’s teachings into a form of practice accessible to all of us living in today’s world. The three parts of his practice are called the Three Great Secret Dharmas:
❖ The Gohonzon or Focus of Devotion
❖ The Odaimoku of Namu Myoho Renge Kyo
❖ The Kaidan or Place of Practice
Nichiren believed that wisdom, the sixth perfection was the goal of Buddhist practice, and yet nearly impossible to attain when life is so difficult and filled with so many distractions. Therefore, he taught that one must initially approach wisdom through faith, which is to say trust and confidence, in the Wonderful Dharma itself. If people found traditional meditation and calming practices too difficult, they could attain calming and contemplation of the Wonderful Dharma through a devotional practice of joyful trust in the Buddha’s teaching of the Lotus Sutra.
Chanting Namu Myoho Renge Kyo
Nichiren taught a fully immersive, devotional style of practice in the chanting of Namu Myoho Renge Kyo. Namu Myoho Renge Kyo is called the Odaimoku, or “Sacred Title,” of the Lotus Sutra. In many ancient wisdom traditions, the complete presence of a being or thing is encapsulated by its name or title. Nichiren taught that chanting Namu Myoho Renge Kyo creates the space inside and around us that can give the wisdom within our lives the opportunity to emerge and guide us. This gives us the power and ability to express the Six Perfections and Eightfold Path. In this way, we can live the life of a bodhisattva, practicing for the benefit of both ourselves and others.
The way whereby we sow the seeds of buddhahood in our lives as Nichiren Buddhists is to place our palms together in the mudra of reverence as we chant the mantra Namu Myoho Renge Kyo in a consecrated place of practice wherein we have enshrined the mandala that is the focus of devotion. Our continued practice nurtures those seeds and allows the inner wisdom of our buddha-nature to grow and develop. This is the positive feedback loop of Buddhist practice: The wisdom of our buddha-nature inspires us to practice, our practice sows and nurtures the seeds of buddhahood, as those seeds of awakening ripen our wisdom grows, and our wisdom in turn inspires us to continue cultivating our practice and to share its fruits with others.
In general, the only things we can truly control in our lives are our perceptions and reactions to the world. We can change our perceptions by training our minds to develop a correct view of the reality around and inside ourselves. As a result, our behavior gradually transforms, moving towards wholesome activities and mind-states and doing less harm to others and ourselves. As we endeavor on this path, we, and the people around us, become happier.
To ensure that we have a firm basis for our continued cultivation of joyful trust in the Wonderful Dharma, as well as our practice and study of the Wonderful Dharma motivated by that joyful trust, we should also keep in mind the Four Reliances that Shakyamuni Buddha taught, which he emphasized in his final sutra, the Mahaparinirvana Sutra:
Rely on the Dharma,
not upon the person;
Rely on the meaning,
not upon the words;
Rely on wisdom,
not upon discriminative consciousness;
Rely on the definitive meaning,
not upon the provisional meaning.