Finally, after more than a year, Rev. Kenjo Igarashi ventured into the congregation of the Sacramento Nichiren Buddhist Church to give his monthly Kito Blessing. During the pandemic Rev. Igarashi had to provide the purification blessing remotely from the altar stage without moving about the congregation.

Rev. Igarashi said afterward during his sermon that this had been a special kito blessing in which he “looked into your mind” to see if those he was blessing were being affected by harmful spirits. In my case, he pulled me aside after the service to say that he felt the presence of a deity working on my behalf and asked if I had any ideas on which deity it might be. No clue, I said, but I pointed out that it was quite possible that a deity had been working to bring me and him together since he arrived in Sacramento in 1989. At that time I was recently divorced and looking to buy a new home. By chance (read: helped by deity?) I found a house just down the street from the Sacramento Nichiren Buddhist Church. I didn’t know anything about Nichiren Shu at the time, having only just joined Nichiren Shoshu, but I’m sure it would not have taken 25 years for me to start attending Rev. Igarashi’s services. Alas, unhelpful spirits working at the CalVet Loan agency discouraged me from buying that home.

During the sermon Rev. Igarashi stressed the importance of his purification ceremony, especially for new members. He said he has resumed his monthly trips to Chicago, where he ministers to “the young ones.” The oldest member, he said, is maybe 38. That’s close to the age of the youngest person who regularly attends services in Sacramento. At 69, I’m in the middle of the average. Our oldest active member is 93, and she still drives herself to services.

Rev. Igarashi contrasted the motivation of the “young ones” to get benefits to the people who attend in Sacramento because their parents and grandparents attended. That seemed harsh to me, but you can’t deny that Sacramento is sorely lacking in “young ones” seeking immediate benefits.

Rev. Igarashi pointed out that everyone who practices is equipped with the same tools with which to reach their goals, whatever those goals may be. Each person who practices has a strong bow and a straight arrow with which to hit their target. These are the Lotus Sutra and the Daimoku. The only difference is in the strength of the archer. That strength – the ability to bend the bow to the archer’s will and send the arrow flying to pierce the target – is a measure of our faith. Those who chant and practice develop strong faith and that faith allows those people to hit their targets.

Why do you suppose it is that I read something again and again and then suddenly realize I haven’t been paying attention.

Today’s Daily Dharma says, “Superior-Practice is the embodiment of the fourth vow of a Bodhisattva: The Buddha’s teachings are immeasurable; I vow to attain supreme enlightenment.”

The Four Great Vows of the Bodhisattva are:

1. SHUJO-MUHEN SEIGANDO – Sentient beings are innumerable: I vow to save them all.
2. BONNO-MUSHU-SEIGANDAN – Our evil desires are inexhaustible: I vow to quench them all.
3. HO-MON MUJIN SEIGANCHI – The Buddha’s teachings are immeasurable: I vow to study them all.
4. BUTSUDO-MUJO-SEIGANJO – The way of the Buddha is unexcelled: I vow to attain the Path Sublime.

The Fourth Vow is the Buddha’s way, not his immeasurable teachings.

Gene Reeve’s “Stories of the Lotus Sutra” explains the correspondence between the Four Great Leaders of the Bodhisattvas from Underground and the Four Great Bodhisattva Vows:

[T]he four great bodhisattvas – Superior Practice, Unlimited Practice, Pure Practice, and Firm Practice – who lead the great horde of bodhisattvas who emerge from the earth are said to display, or correspond to, the four great bodhisattva vows:

Firm Practice: However innumerable living beings are, I vow to save them all;

Pure Practice: However innumerable hindrances are, I vow to overcome them all;

Unlimited Practice: However innumerable the Buddha’s teachings are, I vow to master them all;

Superior Practice: However supreme the Buddha Way is, I vow to reach it.

So I guess I wasn’t paying attention on March 7, 2021, or July 8, 2019, or May 14, 2018 or Feb. 13, 2018, or April 16, 2016, or Aug. 14, 2015.

I probably didn’t know the Four Great Vows by heart in August 2015, but that doesn’t excuse not noticing this error until today. Just Not Paying Attention.

My father is dead. He died in 2009. Now I have no role on Father’s Day other than to be appreciative of whatever my wife and son cook up to mark the occasion. At least that was my outlook before Rev. Shoda Kanai’s Shodaigo service from the Nichiren Buddhist Kannon Temple of Nevada.

Following the service, Rev. Kanai discussed our other father, the Eternal Śākyamuni, who has been teaching us since the remotest past. The sermon was something of a revelation for me. While I am very familiar with Chapter 7’s lesson about our link to Śākyamuni when he was among the 16 śramaṇeras who were the sons of Great-Universal-Wisdom-Excellence Tathāgata, the lens of Father’s Day brought this relationship into focus.

“These sixteen Bodhisattvas willingly expounded the Sūtra of the Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Dharma. Each of them taught six hundred billion nayutas of living beings, that is, as many living beings as there are sands in the River Ganges. Those living beings were always accompanied by the Bodhisattva[, by whom they were taught,] in their consecutive existences. [In each of their consecutive existences,] they heard the Dharma from him, and understood it by faith. By the merits [they had thus accumulated], they were given a privilege to see four billion Buddhas, that is, four billion World­Honored Ones. They have not yet seen all of them. …

“Those living beings who followed me, heard the Dharma from me in order to attain Anuttara-samyak-saṃbodhi. Some of them are still in Śrāvakahood. I now teach them the Way to Anuttara-samyak-saṃbodhi. They will be able to enter the Way to Buddhahood by my teaching, but not immediately because the wisdom of the Tathāgata is difficult to believe and difficult to understand. Those living beings as many as there are sands in the River Ganges, whom I taught [ when I was a śramaṇera], included you bhikṣus and those who will be reborn as my disciples in Śrāvakahood after my extinction.

As Śāriputra says in Chapter 3:

Today I have realized that I am your son, that I was born from your mouth, that I was born in [the world of] the Dharma, and that I have obtained the Dharma of the Buddha.”

Rev. Kanai used a quote from Chapter 28 to illustrate his point:

Universal-Sage! Anyone who keeps, reads and recites this Sūtra of the Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Dharma, memorizes it correctly, studies it, practices it, and copies it, should be considered to see me, and hear this sūtra from my mouth. He should be considered to be making offerings to me. He should be considered to be praised by me with the word ‘Excellent!’ He should be considered to be caressed by me on the head. He should be considered to be covered with my robe.

Happy Father’s Day.

Back when I was active in Soka Gakkai, especially in the early 1990s, I would attend monthly district meetings. These were always held in someone’s home and they would always feature someone’s elaborate experience demonstrating actual proof of the power of chanting the Daimoku.

These experiences never had anything to with Buddhism, per se. They were more like fun coincidences.

Fast-forward 30-odd years to yesterday, Friday, June 11. On Saturday, today, The Sacramento Nichiren Buddhist Church was having its summer fund-raiser, a drive-through, no contact Bento box sale. The meals were sold in advance and specific pick up times were assigned. It was a Covid-era innovation.

My first job at these fundraisers is to prepare the barbecue pit so that the grill is ready at 7am to begin cooking the 500 or so half chickens marinated over night in teriyaki sauce.

To meet that deadline I need to be preparing the piles of charcoal briquets by 6am. The distance from my house to the church is normally a 20-minute mostly freeway drive. But Saturday was the first day of a weeklong shutdown of the highway I use. That necessitated a surface street detour that I estimated would stretch that commute from 20 minutes to 35 minutes.

Going to bed at 10 pm, I set my alarm for 5am, figuring that I would get up, dress and do a portion of my regular morning service and then be on the road by 5:25am.

At least that was the plan.

I awoke at 4:50am and decided there wasn’t much point of trying to fall back asleep until the alarm went off. By 5:05am I had dressed, posted the Daily Dharma quote and  “watered” my altar – Kishimojin, Daikoku and Kannon Bodhisattva in the form of Kuan Yin have their personal cups and I have one more for good measure – and was considering how to abbreviate my morning service.

My routine normally takes a little under an hour to complete. I decided I would set a 15-minute timer and then do as much of that morning’s shindoku recitation as I could fit. Today is Day 9 of my 32 Days of the Lotus Sutra practice. I opened up the Nichiren Buddhist Sangha of Greater New England’s Myoho Renge Kyo Romanized and began reciting Chapter 5, The Simile of Herbs.

When I finished with Day 9’s portion of Chapter 6, Assurance of Future Buddhahood, thus completing Day 9’s shindoku practice, I looked at the time and realized that I had failed to set my timer. It was now 5:30am.

I made a quick cup of tea in a travel cup and raced out the door.

With a lot of help from the protective deities who control the traffic signals and the dearth of traffic at 5:30 on a Saturday morning, I was able to arrive at Sacramento Nichiren Buddhist Church by 6am.

When the cooking crew arrived at 7am everything was ready to begin the day’s task.

And that’s my experience with the power of chanting Namu Myoho Renge Kyo.

After more than a year of forced online-only services, it was nice to witness the return of the hybrid service. Sunday’s service from Nichiren Buddhist Kannon Temple of Nevada marked the official return to in-person services in Las Vegas. While the camera was fixed and didn’t allow a view of the attendees, it was nice to hear their voices and the uchiwa daiko drumming during Daimoku chanting.

While a hybrid service may seem new now, back in 2015, when I first joined Nichiren Shu, a combination of local and online attendees had been commonplace for years for Rev. Ryusho Jeffus at his Charlotte, NC, temple.

Today’s service in Las Vegas was the monthly purification ceremony combined with a jukai service (lay person taking of vows) and gohonzon bestowal.

Rev. Shoda Kanai used the illustration from Lotus World to show how the 10 Worlds are all depicted in the Mandala Gohonzon. Back when I was with Soka Gakkai I had studied who was represented on their Gohonzon. Missing from that Gohonzon is Devadatta, who represents the hell realm. SGI said it was no big deal, but it always struck me as significant since the Gohonzon without Devadatta cannot represent the 10 realms of existence.

Enjoyed attending the Kaji Kito service at the Sacramento Nichiren Buddhist Church Sunday. By the time the next Kaji Kito service is held on June 27 Rev. Kenjo Igarashi hopes to be able to return to individual blessings. For more than a year now, the group blessings has had to suffice.

Following the blessing Rev. Igarashi gave a sermon that covered a number of points. For me, the most notable point was the difference in the motivation of Nichiren to become a monk in comparison to the other Kamakura-era reformers – Honen, Shinran and Dogen. Nichiren had questions he wanted resolved, most important why people are born into this suffering world. The other reformers were placed by their families or because their parents had died.

That search for answers brought Nichiren to the realization that the greatest sin one can commit is to slander the Lotus Sutra.

The Lotus Sutra, Nichiren found, was the Supreme Teaching. In the Lotus Sutra everyone is equal. Everybody can become a Buddha because everyone has the Buddha nature in their mind.

“That’s why we chant Namu Myoho Renge Kyo, Namu Myoho Renge Kyo to awaken our Buddha nature,” Rev. Igarashi said. “That’s why we chant Namu Myoho Renge Kyo, Namu Myoho Renge Kyo so that our Buddha nature will come out some day. Then we can make a paradise in this world.”