"If you are a devout Christian, i don’t mean to offend you by posting this. Actually, i don’t consider true Buddhism to be a religion. It’s actually a Life Philosophy practiced by a large number of Christians. Since Quantum Physics now proves with out a doubt, that everything is really just Energy disguised as physical matter; Nam Myoho Renga Kyo (the Chant) is simply a very high vibration, that gives more power to that which you desire. Because it is of such a positive frequency, when you repeat it over and over again, it can only give off a harmonizing effect, grounded in Causality. In other words if you make good positive causes, you will receive positive results more frequently and faster. But, if you continue to foster negativity the effect will also come much faster. This is actually a good thing if you need a mirror to see what's wrong with you. This is the Law Of Attraction on steroids so to speak." -- Ikeda cult member
Dear Mark, about these bits when people force themselves to mistake modern science for Buddhism, I always tend to look at it as very westernly thing to do. Whatever it’s worth, here’s my observations on the subject.
ReplyDeleteI don’t think Gautama Buddha was very much into Quantum physics, neither was Nichiren, and they weren’t much into the Big Bang Theory or explaining creation itself either. The Sutras do measure thing’s in an uncountable way, like countless Kalpas, inumerous Ganges sand’s, land’s of the ten directions – but that is something borrowed from the Indian culture itself, no big deal. On the opposite side of the world tough, the Greeks measured things like triangles, the Egyptians built pyramids supposed to last forever and the Arab system was invented with the purpose of counting physical objects – which only reinforces the idea that the western world view was one of a finite place with fixed boundaries, up to some point even a square or a rectangle and the room for non-existence just wasn’t much. The physical world did not mix with the spiritual world and these two realities were kept separate (burning people alive was a valid option for the ones that tried to counter this in one way or another). This is what we inherit from the fabric of western society, and just maybe, that’s why we built the first Large Hadron Collider, because we like to measure things up like Newton or Eddington or Albert … and it’s hard to let go of it.
When Ikeda (?) writes that very clever western appealing book in the mid 70’s – A Dialogue on Life – in an attempt to merge modern particle physics and Nichiren’s Buddhism, the end result is the publication of a pile of utter rubbish and nonsense. No scientist is gonna write a formula or an equation to describe the existence of Great Bodhisattva Hachiman, the Ceremony in the Air, The Avicci Hell or how many dudes in blue emerged from the earth - and no one is ever going to bother either. That is just confusing to people and deliberately leading them astray from real Buddhism - and people obviously buy into it because it appeals to their own personal sense of keeping up with the demand to accept an updated view of the universe promoted by the Discovery Chanel, so they don’t get left behind or feel held back by their religion.
That’s my first point here. The second one goes to the way this post is addressing “Nam Myoho Renge Kyo (the Chant) as simply a very high vibration”. Well, if you look at it that way, then there are a million other things that have a very high vibration and we don’t seem to have the urge to reproduce them a thousand times a day, and without correct guidance, the Daimoku of the SGI is as much as a cosmic vibration as a fart can be … and in some cases, a dangerous one.
ReplyDeleteSo my next point is - would you go to a trash metal gig everyday of your life if you had a heart condition?
And I can relate to that question with two very pragmatic experiences:
(Note: I’m not adding or omitting a single fact in my following lines, it is as plain as it is.)
On the evening of the 24th on November SGI was celebrating the grand opening of their new Shohondon in Japan, even if SGI members were not aware of this as such (that bit is a funny because the official publications say that the building is the epicentre of kosenrufu but the members don’t need to rush to Japan to visit, although they should one day - it’s Taiseki-ji all over again but not Taiseki-ji all over again - it’s not a replacement for the old Shohondon that no one likes to talk about around here, but it is a replacement for the old Shohondon).
Anyhow, we get together at my mates house (cool British top-notch classical musician) because the local SG association didn’t manage to go ahead with The Big event (due to lack of adherents I suppose), and there’s about eight of us gathered together to chant, including an elderly couple that moved here some six months earlier (a very common move amongst well-off Europeans). He is a vibrant a 60’ish Swedish retiree and she is a mid-sixties African American woman that at some point practiced with the Shoshu sanga in NY, as she likes to put it. Then she shares an experience that goes more or less like this:
“My psychiatrist told me to stop chanting because it’s putting a strain in my nervous system, but I’m going to continue cause I know what’s best for me”.
I looked at her in tears and she just couldn’t control her hands properly - that woman was in a right mess and you could see she was on some heavy medication (still, people nodded in agreement thinking, what does that psychiatrist know about chanting?). My partner was sat beside me in shock, we didn’t say a word but we’d been reading an article about something like that not long ago – and if we were already committed towards taking the exit from SGI through the backdoor, that nailed it on the right spot. Two months later the same couple appears on the cover page of the New Kadampa (Modern day Honen’s Pure Land as far as I can tell) Tradition website (good luck for them both on that trip).
The other experience goes some 10 yrs back.
ReplyDeleteIt’s about a current member that was devout Christian prior to being introduced to SGI’s Buddhism by an old college classmate. At that time, he was going through a period of unimaginable grief and suffering as he’d just lost both parents in a very short space of time.
His father passed away peacefully at the old age of 84 and two months later his mom died in a terrible state – kidney cancer consumed her 67 yr/old body in less than 6 months, didn't even get as far as second chemo.
Three months later, he starts chanting to a Nichikan Honzon and over the course of the next 10 years, he chanted and chanted. One million Daimoku book after the other filled the drawer of his Buddhist alter. The ball-cancer test came about, and he panicked - OMG I'm gonna die! and chanted even harder (false alarm, it was only a routine procedure).
Melanoma came in the form of a mole in his upper thigh - and he panicked - OMG I' gonna die. No big deal, it was too small and a localized surgery followed by a test in the lab cleared even the most remote possibility of contamination. And he dedicates another million to that cause as well.
Years later, he gets tested for H-Pylori Bacteria after an elderly local SG member he was supporting died from bowel cancer and tipped him off to get the test done - he panicked and then got the all clear from the doctors again.
The bottom line is - he panicked and he chanted, and he panicked and he chanted and that evil demon called Cancer, filled his thoughts all the way through that process.
Then I lost contact for a while.
It's 2014 - he's doing Chemo for Lymphoma. It´s proper sad, I really hope he gets better - but at the same time - it's so out of order. The chances he chanted his way into a state of poor health is just a terrifying thought.
Thanks for sharing Pedro your experiences. The Buddha estimated the size of a carbon atom through deductive reasoning: http://www.tricycle.com/blog/did-buddha-correctly-estimate-size-atom
ReplyDeleteThat is so dam clever, debatable, but very clever... love it, thank you.
ReplyDeleteStill ancient deductive reasoning thou, not modern physics by any remote chance in the same sense that Epicurus' school isn't - and they (The Greeks) got there using the very same tools available in India, deduction.
"Epicurus's (341-270 BC) teachings represented a departure from the other major Greek thinkers of his period, and before, but was nevertheless founded on many of the same principles as Democritus. Like Democritus, he was an atomist, believing that the fundamental constituents of the world were indivisible little bits of matter (atoms, Greek atomos, indivisible) flying through empty space (kenon). Everything that occurs is the result of the atoms colliding, rebounding, and becoming entangled with one another, with no purpose or plan behind their motions."
What made Einstein's General Theory of Relativity widely accepted - Eddington's instrumental observations - he was The best measuring man in the whole of Europe and the heir to Newton's model of the Universe. That's science. Science is instrumental - that's the big breakthrough - the departure point from philosophy.