Here Sensei writes wittily about trying to organize the succession as chief mentor within SGI
TO MY SON HIRO by World Poet Laureate Daisaku Ikeda
Hiro son, is it not best
That one day you might leave the nest?
Instead you scrounge my shaving foam
And eat us out of house and home!
Why cling on to dad and mom?
And dwindle our retirement income?
Why must I write all this bunkum?
To get some damn retirement income!
We shop and stack up on our noodles
Which Kaneko knocks back in oodles
But you purloin them and thereby trouble
The autumn years of this old couple!
Is this the way you thank your Pa
By ransacking his cookie jar?
And starving out us poor old timers?
Is this your "Arigato gozaimas"?
We often wonder what is worse
All your girlfriends' stop-overs
Or the constant stealing, in the kitchen or
Sometimes too my hair conditioner
From the bathroom, so my locks
Look mangy for my dialogues
And so those geeks with whom I'm nattering
Think my hairstyle's most unflattering!
While I am quoting old John Milton
You just gawp at Paris Hilton
Living off the Gakkai's dole
And hogging the remote control
So I can't turn it on and see me
And then you clean up my sashimi
And then you scoff up all my pickles
I tell you son, it damn well niggles!
Why don't you try your hand at
Farming seaweed, like your grandad?
(Whose shade I never fail to laud
When getting some august award)
But while I love my doctorates
Its gameshows for my compatriots
So why not be a great compere
Instead of cadging off "ton pere"?
A few steps down the social ladder
Folks like you are much much badder!
Think of all those unwed mothers
Whose brood are each-to-each, half-brothers!
Where all you'll find on their CVs
Is picking locks and burgling TVs!
Watch it Hiro! Look and scream!
Its time to wake up from this dream!
For that you must learn discipline
And this I vow I will drum in!
(When I was young and crazy Toda'd
Treat me like the meanest goat-herd
And kick my butt till it was blue
Now I must do the same to you!)
So though I risk a heart attack I
Will make you leader of the Gakkai!
You'll be forced to find your mojo
In the footsteps of "Mr" Hojo!
Sort out food-fights like Izumi
And jolly up the sad and gloomy!
Maybe President Akiya
Won't be that pleased to have you near
But in the end he'll just make do
Cos I choose chiefs and I chose you!
(God knows how many times the Gakkai
Leaders got from me a black-eye
But even they might mutiny
And want some better scrutiny
And voice a twinge of disappointment
When they all hear of your appointment!
Even that lot never reckoned
With a Daisaku the Second!)
But usually they all come round!
However so pissed off they sound!
Sure you'll hear them carp and moaning
Comparing me to Nikken Shonin.
And truly it was well damn shabby
The rise to power of Nikken Abe
But is anything that that schmuck did
As bad as enthroning your kid?
Think of all those Gakkai daughters
Pouring out their teas and waters
To earnest study lecturers
Who never fail to hector us
Or young men standing on street corners
Trying to surpress a yawn as
They take the Hancocks and the Shorters
To hoe-downs in Gakkai Headquarters...
Did all these folks just slave their guts out?
To merely help old you, you klutz, out?
Put up posters damning Nikken
For giving a masseuse a dickin'?
Might they not go quite ballistic
At something so damn nepotistic
Might they think this shit's as gross
As old man Nikken, dickin' hos?
I tell you son, it won't go down
That well, you taking on my crown
But I'm assured that its the best
Way to put hairs on your chest!
I'll say though son, that when I go
I'll be a damn hard act to follow
But I feel that though, son, just a tad
You do down bad your dear old Dad...
It needs a special kind of guy
To make all those young men scream "HAI"
Or write my odes (they're hard enough)
But then find guys to print the stuff!
It might seem posh and glamourous
To randomly point cameras
And have their stills transmogrify
To grim books of photography!
(All those pics where I have cut off
A member's head or arm or foot off
So they all seem like grisly stumps
Without their hats or shoes or pumps
So badly framed they all seem tilting
Together with the whole damn building
Yet when I'm back, by some grim humor
They hang it in the main Butsuma!)
But I say son there's sweat and toil
Behind a lot of this snake oil
Dredging up some petty nation's
Poets to flatter their delegation
When they're in the memorial hall
And I must give a "howdy y'all"
You think all this stuff grows on trees?
No son, it needs elbow grease
But now go find yourself a boiler
Like Kaneko - a doughty toiler!
Not your usual rich heiresses
Who only want your warm caresses
As ways in to the Gakkai's coffers
So they could take our greenbacks off us
No - find yourself a woman who'd
Enlarge the whole Ikeda brood!
So go forth, multiply my son!
This dynasty has just begun
There will be some who'll roll their eyeballs
To think I'd pass down my disciples
But lets not worry about their trammels
Just as Bedouins pass down camels
And other Bedouins keep their tempers
So will they when I leave members!
And I leave members in my debt!
Many here would not have led
The lives they have: just look around us
All these cheapskates, cads and bounders
Turned to upright citizens!
Rescued by the Buddha's medicines
Creating doctors, shrinks and lawyers
All proud, erect as huge sequoias!
For anglers who're in dotai-ishin
I bring them jihi when they're fishing
To daughters struggling with their mothers
Or golfers struggling with their putters
Or pimps who struggle with their "bitches"
Whose "homies" sleep among the fishes
Whose lives are now in latency
Whose karma is like "wait-and-see"
I bring relief! For can't in principle
Pimps become like us, invincible?
And chant, instead of being jailed
They might get cautioned or just bailed?
Use wisdom or just cash enticements
Hid inside their driving licence
Instead of pleading with Jehovah
To soothe the cop who pulls them over?
And might these lords of roadside hoochie
Have their own Tatsonokuchi?
When suddenly a great big orb
Across the sky makes some cop gawp?
And make him want to fast flee from it
And yet so transfixed by that comet
He turns from being stern and surly
To simpler like a star struck girly!
The lightbeam from the Buddha's tuft
Gleams on the frog-marched and the handcuffed!
Buddhahood has no restrictions
And calms those with unspent convictions!
The Buddha comes down to encourage
Even those who're doing porridge
And gives protection when they grope
Round shower floors to pick up soap!
I know I've made mistakes but I've
Also changed round many a life
To those I could - I gave out succour
And helped them fight, if not dig, dukkha!
My words turned the odd lunatic
To someone merely eccentric
And gave those who can't sink much lower
A friendly hug, a kind "aloha"
And so I know my legacy
Is not that Gandhi, King and me
Baloney that they haul round malls
To highly justified cat-calls
Its all those who'd messed up their lives
But now look round at kids and wives
And lives now great and rich and full
That once were inconceivable
But vanity of human wishes
I too will soon sleep with the fishes!
This voice that lifted multitudes
Gave guidances to all those faulty dudes
Gave stressed out housewives hope and solace
When they got hot under their collars
This voice must cease: I'm all loved out
And so my flame must be puffed out!
Saito! Saito! come Katsuji!
I'm dreaming of Tatsonokuchi!
Of strange things wild, of hoochie coochie
In the wilds of old Mount Fuji!
I see the shades of VP Tsuji
And "Mr" Hojo looming huge! He
Wants to steal my fresh made sushi
And run off with my leather gucci
Sandals! Oh the Sandalwood
Log, the Turtle, the Camphor Wood
Of Minobu, that makes the Dai Gohonz
on - Oh the TV - look the Fonz
On Happy Days - "These Happy Days are Yours
And Mine!" - and Nikken's on all fours
Before his geisha consiglieri
Those cherry tress chopped down, those cherry
Blossoms unreleased in air
The Sho-Hondo, like me, not there!
Toda, me and Makiguchi
Every one a Mensch! a Duce!
Nikken not. Kimono decked out
In! I haunt the hotels he's checked out
In! I see he's still foments his chakras
Wild with geishas and viagras
Sand-irons and Sudoku! Frickin
Holy Men! Frickin Hojo! Nikken!
You cannot go against the flow
Of these great times? Hey "Mr" Hojo?
Last time I will say Moshi
Moshi to you - you bitch Horishi!
Such time has passed, but still those words
"Against the time" like quick-lime hurts
Me to the quick! But then again...
This world is mine! This world of men
Is mine! This world of action! Deeds
Power! Like Baby Moses in the reeds
I will return! The sufferings
Of birth and death - to me small things!
Water off a duck's back - because I'm
"The man who flows against the time!"
But now across this great big atlas
I see great shoals of Boddhisatvas!
The thing that once my time is up
I'll be bigged up for training up!
Cos I'm your man! Your Kosen-Ruffian
Who hauled the Dharma from oblivion
Who told you all to bet on Nichiren
To haul you up from the shit you're in!
And now you see these gimps and losers
Low-lifes, junkies, grifters, boozers
Have now become respectable
(If not always delectable)
So Hiro, I pass you the baton
Which I hope will not get shat on
So that I won't have to doff,
In my next life, a plastic glove
When I must pick it up again!
But will find a world of men
Much better than the one I'm quitting
So Hiro, do Buddha's bidding
Go uplift the miserable
Go correct the risible
Take all losers 'neath your wing
And give em all a good tongue-lashing!
That my work, continue it
But now son, I just leave you to it
May our members grow like rabbits
And trounce Nikken and all his slap-heads!
Erect statues of Mom and me
That stretch as far as eyes can see
Carve out plaques of all my spiels
And make me taller (but not with heels!)
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