My son thinks I’m odd, but I really enjoy saying goodbye to the closing year and hello to the new year with back-to-back services at the Sacramento Nichiren Buddhist Church.

The evening begins at 11pm with a standard Nichiren Shu service of chanting Hoben Pon and Ji Ga Ge followed by chanting Daimoku. The priest says special prayers.

Following the service is a snack break. Traditionally brown noodles are served, but this year the priest’s wife provided tea and Japanese pastries.

At midnight everyone gathers outside to ring the church bell 108 times. Where does 108 come from? These are the 108 worldly desires. Starting with sight, sound, smell, taste, touch and consciousness you have positive, negative and indifferent. That’s 18. Those are all either attached to pleasure, detached from pleasure. That’s 36. These span all time – past, present, future – which totals 108.

Following the bell ringing a New Year service is held. During this service Rev. Igarashi performs a special purification ceremony for the members’ home altars.

The evening ends with a saki toast to the New Year.

The end of one year and the beginning of the next has always been my favorite time of year. You get to review the causes made in the previous year and look ahead to the coming effects of those causes in the new year.

I began my day decorating my altar with a kasane offering of mochi topped with a Mandarin tangerine. Funny thing about that tangerine: Normally we get bags and bags of tangerines from the tree in our backyard. The harvest normally comes in around Thanksgiving. This year we had just one tangerine and that tangerine didn’t ripen until this week. Not sure of what to make of that, but there is on my altar.

At 10:30am I joined Rev. Shoda Kanai at the Nichiren Buddhist Kannon Temple of Nevada for the end of year service and the striking of the temple bell 108 times to chase out any lingering bad karma and prepare for the new year.

Speaking of a kalpa, suppose there is a huge blue agate, an 80,000 ri cube, which does not erode even if it were filed for aeons. Suppose an angel descends once in three years to caress it with her extremely beautiful and light robe. The length of time required for the angel to wear out the blue agate is referred to as a kalpa.

Matsuno-dono Goshōsoku, Letter to Lord Matsuno, Writings of Nichiren Shōnin, Volume 7, Followers II, Page 66

Today the wife and I helped out at the Sacramento Nichiren Buddhist Church for the annual year-end cleaning. Rev. Igarashi and his son clean the altar. Other church members mop the church floor. My job is always polishing the brasswork.

I was laughing with the wife today about how her enthusiastic polishing would greatly accelerate the definition of a kalpa. Imagine if every three years that angel buffed the 80,000 ri cube the way she was rubbing that brass vase. Then it occurred to me that this was an example of the Sutra of Innumerable Meanings’ fifth unimaginable power for beneficial effect – “abbreviating one hundred kalpas into one day—thereby inspiring other living beings to become joyful and trusting.”

I’ve decided to mark an interesting conjunction of numbers today. First, today marks the start of my 70th cycle through the Threefold Lotus Sutra. Well, actually yesterday was the start but today my “Day 1” post will be 500yojanas.org/day-1-70. That counter at the end of the URL is automatically added each time I post my 32 Days of the Lotus Sutra.

That’s interesting by itself, but this December also happens to be the month I turned 70. It’s that conjunction I’m marking.

I can remember a day back in the 1980s when I decided to figure how old I’d be in 2000. The answer turned out to be 48 until December, when I would turn 49. That sure seemed old at the time. But now that I’m 70, I’m not sure what old should feel like. My health is good. (Picturing me knocking on my wooden head). I certainly don’t have the same ability to lift heavy objects that I once had and I’d rather pay someone to dig up my yard and install sprinklers, but old?

The 70 times through the Lotus Sutra is more interesting. I was inspired to start the practice by Ryusho Jeffus. Ryusho writes in his Physician’s Good Medicine: “Perhaps our challenge today is to hear the stories again from a more modern perspective. This is an invitation to make the sutra your own, to possess it in your life and use it to tell your own story.” When I mentioned to him my intention to make reading the sutra a part of my daily practice, he encouraged me to note what stood out each day.

I started my morning practice of reciting the sutra in shindoku on March 6, 2015. It wasn’t until July that I received my copy of Senchu Murano’s translation of the Lotus Sutra and started reading in English in the evening what I had recited in shindoku in the morning. For the first couple of times I tried taking notes but that was too distracting. On Sept. 14, 2015, I introduced my 32 Days of the Lotus Sutra practice in a blog post.

When I think of having read the Lotus Sutra 70 times, I always remind myself of the time I told Rev. Igarashi at the Sacramento Nichiren Buddhist Church of my new practice. He was quite impressed. He mentioned that he performs his personal practice three times a day. At each time he recites one entire fascicle. Three fascicles a day means he completes the entire eight fascicles every two and two-thirds days. I remember him mentioning that Chapter 3 was way too long. Breaking it up across three days makes it much more manageable. Dividing the entire Threefold Lotus Sutra into 34 days makes reading a breeze.

Having read the sutra 70 times in this manner is really unremarkable just as living 70 years isn’t much of an accomplishment by itself. But I believe my practice has been immensely beneficial to me and, by extension, my family.

This morning just as I was going to start chanting Daimoku the power went out. I added a few candles to illuminate the altar and resumed chanting Daimoku. A half-hour later, just as I was concluding my morning service with a final Namu Myoho Renge Kyo, the power returned and the lights snapped on. We need the rain here in California but I’m not sure we need this much wind.

Sunday was something of an East meets West day of practice. I began the day with a 10:30am online kito blessing service from the Nichiren Buddhist Kannon Temple of Nevada, with Rev. Shoda Kanai demonstrating the mystical powers of a priest who has completed two 100-day Aragyo ascetic practice training. I followed that at 3pm with a two-hour lecture and Q&A session that sought to reach westerners whose scientific view of daily reality has stunted their ability to imagine something more.

The lecture was sponsored by Rissho Kosei-kai International of North America and featured Dr. Dominick Scarangello. The title of the lecture was “Actualize Your Inner Potential By Modeling the Lotus Sutra’s Bodhisattvas,” but the main emphasis was to encourage westerners to use their imagination.

In the concluding slide of Dr. Scarangello’s presentation, he said:

What I’ve been trying to do so far is to draw upon modern scholars and philosophers to make the case for the value of interacting with the Lotus Sutra’s symbolic personifications of the teaching and engaging the sutra’s mythological stories in the sphere of the imaginal.

And I think if we can be open to this practice, more of the teachings of Founder Niwano and Rissho Kosei-kai will make sense to people in contemporary western cultures.

Founder Niwano was convinced that Buddhism is rational and compatible with modernity, but there is very much of the imaginal in his approach to practice, and I think it’s those aspects of his teachings and guidance the prove difficult for people in other cultures today.

The contrast between the Kaji Kito blessing and the academic discussion of contemporary western cultures couldn’t have been more stark. I found it fascinating.

I attended the Komasubara Persecution service at the Sacramento Nichiren Buddhist Church today after which Rev. Kenjo Igarashi explained why he hesitates to perform funeral services for non-church members.

The subject came up recently after a director for a Catholic funeral service asked Rev. Igarashi if he could officiate a “Buddhist service” at their funeral home. He mentioned that they had already secured an altar for the service. I ended up helping to translate the request after the funeral director tried using the church email address when calling didn’t resolve the question.

Apparently, the deceased had most recently been a Shinshu practitioner but had previously been a member of the Sacramento Nichiren Buddhist Church. The director had contacted the Jodo Shinshu Buddhist Church in Sacramento but they had a conflict on the day the family requested. He then contacted Rev. Igarashi.

I forwarded the email to Rev. Igarashi and he called me to explain that if a member of the family were to call the church – not the funeral director – and ask that he perform a funeral service, then he would be obligated to perform the service. I passed that information on and heard nothing else until today, when Rev. Igarashi said he had performed the service the day before.

Rev. Igarashi laughed today at the situation he found himself in. Ten years ago, the man had stopped attending the Sacramento Nichiren Buddhist Church, saying Rev. Igarashi was too mean. The Shinshu priest was nicer, the man said. “It had nothing to do with the religion,” Rev. Igarashi said.

There’s a reason Rev. Igarashi prefers not to perform services for people who do not have faith in the Lotus Sutra. Below is a summary of his explanation in his words. (Not verbatim but accurate.)

I do not want to perform services for non-members because it is very hard. People think that performing a funeral service is just a ceremony, not important. It’s just meaningful for the family, for their satisfaction.

But these services are not just ceremonial. A funeral service is very important because I have to carry off the deceased’s bad karma and erase their bad actions and then I send them to a Buddha’s place.

It is very hard for me. When they ask me already the deceased’s karma comes to me. I am hurt by the very heavy karma and kind of sick. Already this comes to me, and after that I perform a funeral service and clean up the deceased’ bad karma. That’s why funeral services are very important.

If church members have pretty strong faith, then it is easier for me, but if not, it is very hard.

It is my responsibility to send the deceased to a good realm. If I perform a service for somebody who fell into hell, I have to go to hell and save their spirit. This is not just ceremonial. This is serious.

I attended the Oeshiki Service at the Sacramento Nichiren Buddhist Church Sunday. Oeshiki marks the passing of Nichiren, who died on Oct. 13, 1282. Rev. Igarashi made the point in his sermon that the memorial service for Nichiren is different than the ones we hold for our ancestors. The difference, Rev. Igarashi explained, is that we know where Nichiren went after he died. He returned to his existence as Honnge Jogyo, one of the four leaders of the Bodhisattvas who rose from the earth in Chapter 15.

Since I began reading and re-reading the Lotus Sutra as part of my 32 Days of the Lotus Sutra Practice  I’ve enjoyed playing with what I read. For example, consider where all those bodhisattvas who rose up from the earth came from.

They lived in the sky below this Sahā-World.

At the Sacramento Nichiren Buddhist Church we have a new member who lived in Melbourne Australia before moving to Sacramento. One of the first things I asked her was whether she saw anything unusual in the sky Down Under. She was very confused by my question.