I first heard the name Nichijo Shaka in 2017. It came up in a discussion about a one-time shami of Rev. Kenjo Igarashi of the Sacramento Nichiren Buddhist Church. As far as I know this was Rev. Igarashi’s first and last attempt to train an American to become a Nichiren Shu priest. It did not end well. When the shami left, he became a follower of Nichijo Shaka of Hawaii. The impression I was given was that Nichijo Shaka was a Nichiren priest who sought to strip out everything Japanese from Nichiren Buddhism and to create an American Lotus Sutra teaching. He called his effort the Buddhist School of America. I imagined a renegade Japanese priest running an unsanctioned operation. I was wrong on several counts.
Available for purchase on Amazon
Wanting to know more, I found Nichijo: The Testimony of John Provoo, a book published in 2014. Reading the book in 2021, I learned that Nichijo Shaka, who was born John David Provoo on Aug. 6, 1917, in San Francisco, had another connection to the Sacramento Nichiren Buddhist Church. Before Provoo sailed to Minobu in 1966 to complete his training as a Nichiren Shu priest, he spent the last five months of 1965 studying with Bishop Nippo Aoyagi Shaku, who served in the Sacramento Church from 1964 to 1968. According to the book, Provoo conducted Sunday school in English at the Sacramento Nichiren Buddhist Church, lectured to English-speaking groups outside the church and worked at a local hospital during that period.
I have tried to find collaborating information on the life of John Provoo and especially Nichijo Shaka’s efforts to create an American Buddhism, but I haven’t found anything. No one who attends the Sacramento Nichiren Buddhist Church today remembers a blue-eyed Caucasian priest-in-training running the Sunday school 55 years ago. Rev. Igarashi, who came to Sacramento in 1989, dismisses Nichijo Shaka as a trouble-maker. I’m told followers of Nichijo Shaka still gather, but I’ve been unable to find one who who is willing to talk to me about his teachings. Nichijo Shaka died in 2001.
But these connections to Sacramento are not what makes John David Provoo famous. As the book’s back-cover blurb explains:
This is the personal saga of John David Provoo. In 1940, the young American Buddhist studying at an ancient monastery in Japan was urged by the U.S. Embassy to return home. In 1941, he enlisted in the US Army in San Francisco, and was soon stationed in the Philippines. Within six months of the outbreak of war, he was captured along with thousands of others on the island fortress of Corregidor, in the mouth of Manila Bay.
In the early months after capture, the Japanese used him as an interpreter, a role that created suspicion in the minds of some that he had become a collaborator. After years of privations in POW camps in Taiwan, he was moved to Bunkwa Camp in downtown Tokyo, and forced to make propaganda broadcasts with others, including Iva Toguri, from Radio Tokyo, until the end of the war.
In the post war years, he was continually harassed by the FBI throughout a second Army enlistment. In 1949, he was discharged, taken immediately into federal custody and charged with treason for events on Corregidor and taking part in radio programs. His trial was foreshadowed by the conviction of Iva Toguri, cast by the government as the non-existent “Tokyo Rose”.
This book is his personal narrative of the events that led up to his prosecution and his final return to the training for the Buddhist priesthood.
Nichijo: The Testimony of John Provoo is written as a first-person tale told by John David Provoo, but the final version of the book was rewritten by John Oliver. Here’s the About the Author blurb:
John Oliver earned Bachelor degrees in Political Science and Religious Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, in 1969. In the 1970s, he discovered his passion for homebuilding, and has spent most of his life as an artisan building contractor in California and Hawaii. In a chance encounter with Bishop Nichijo Shaka on the rural Big Island in 1983, he found a direct use for his liberal arts education. His collaboration with Rev. Shaka resulted in the biography, “Nichijo”, copyrighted in 1986, but never published. In 2014, living in semi-retirement in Sonoma County, California, he finally found the time to complete the thoughtful rewrite that was begun nearly 30 years before. “Nichijo: The Testimony of John Provoo” was released in October of 2014.
Having read the book for a second time, I’m going to attempt to set aside by journalistic skepticism, and accept as fact what is written in Nichijo: The Testimony of John Provoo. There are some fascinating aspects of how Provoo came to be a Nichiren Shu Buddhist priest.
John David Provoo was a gay man. Much of the Post War effort by the federal government to convict him of treason was inflamed by institutional homophobia. But none of that is discussed in Nichijo: The Testimony of John Provoo.
John Oliver, who co-wrote the book with Nichijo Shaka and who revised and published the book after Nichijo’s death in 2001, says plainly:
He was gay, of course. He had enjoyed relations with several serious girlfriends, including three marriages, but he made no secret that his preference was for men. “Gay as a tree full of owls!” he would say of himself. I don’t quite understand the reference, but I quote it here faithfully, as his self-portrait.
We decided to skirt the gay issue in the telling of his story. In the decision of the Appellate Court, “…No authority has been cited that homosexuality indicates a propensity to disregard the obligation of an oath. The sole purpose and effect of this examination was to humiliate and degrade the defendant and increase the probability that he would be convicted, not for the crime charged, but for his general unsavory character.” It was prosecution dirty tricks that tried to connect the facts of his sexual orientation with treasonous acts, and should never have been part of the trial and, hence, not part of the chapters we call “The Testimony of John Provoo.” In a more enlightened time, it would not have mattered.
Today is that “more enlightened time,” and I believe that removing Provoo’s sexual orientation from his testimony distorts the picture of the life presented in the book, especially Provoo’s journey to Minobu.
In the 1930s Provoo started a lucrative career in broadcast radio:
This was 1933 and 1934, at the end of alcohol prohibition, a time when a speakeasy in San Francisco was easier to find than a water fountain. I floated into my brother’s high life of big paychecks, flashy cars, smoke-filled studios and highballs for lunch, with ease. I did my parts at KFRC, learned that I had affinity for debauchery, scattered the money like flower petals, spent too much time in those nightclubs.
I continued with my Buddhist studies but two parts of my nature were developing, at odds with each other. Just when I had taken vows accepting poverty, I had been steered into San Francisco’s fast lane. I was the sincere, searching, scholarly mystic … a Buddhist Priest; and I was the flamboyant and theatrical prodigy of materialistic America. I was becoming a man with two heads, irreconcilable heads.
At the time he conquered this “affinity for debauchery” by abandoning his radio career and taking a clerk’s post in the San Francisco Federal Reserve.
Nichijo’s book alludes to this conflict between the material world and the spiritual one, but readers are left without a realistic understanding of this complex man if the impact of Provoo’s closeted gay life is left unexplored.
Recalling the overturning of his conviction, he says:
I hadn’t been victorious, I hadn’t won acquittal; I had merely maneuvered the government to a stalemate. In the public eye, I had gotten off on a technicality. In my own mind, I had deserved to win an acquittal: it was the government that had gotten off on a technicality.
The ten years following my release from legal jeopardy was an unhappy odyssey, which I would come to describe as dragging an enormous shipwreck of a reputation through the hostile swamps the government and the media had created for me.
Following his release from jail, Provoo describes his inability to keep jobs each time his past is brought to light. He married only to divorce a few years later. But the depth of his misery during this period is absent from his telling.
ONE Magazine, self-described as the first gay magazine in the United States, reported in its June-July 1956 issue that the Baltimore Sun had reported Provoo was assaulted and robbed by a youth he invited to his apartment one morning.
One year later, on Sept. 8, 1957, the New York Times printed on page 58 an Associated Press article reporting that Provoo, then 40 years old, had pleaded guilty to contributing to the delinquency of a minor.
“He blamed a ‘misguided conscience’ for leading him to accompany a 16-year-old Annapolis, Md., youth who ran away from home last week.
“He said the youth had a home life that ‘leaves a great deal to be desired’ and he felt sorry for him.
“Provoo and the youth, Robert H. Lane, were found at a rooming house here [Lincoln, Neb.] about midnight last night.”
On Aug. 30, 1958, the New York Times published on page 32 a single paragraph from an Associated Press story under the headline, Treason Trial Figure Jailed. The Times reported that Provoo, then 41, had been sentenced to three years in the Nebraska men’s reformatory on a morals charge that involved an 18-year-old Lincoln boy. (The discrepancy in the age of Robert Lane is unexplained.)
The conviction and prison sentence aren’t mentioned in this book, but their impact was clearly felt:
It was the winter of 1964, and I was unable to keep up the payments on our car by myself, so I let it go. I had no money and worse, I had no inspiration. I just left one day heading north. I had enough bus fare to make it to Washington, D.C., and that’s all. I stayed overnight in a gospel mission there, and the next day hitchhiked north to Baltimore, where I had found work before. I checked the situation at all the hospitals with no luck. I spent the night in a rescue mission again. The next day I continued hitchhiking north into Pennsylvania. I was dropped off near the town of Williamsport and began walking, I didn’t know where to. It was snowing and my clothes were inadequate for the cold and my shipwreck seemed especially burdensome. I was walking along the road in the snow reviewing all the times someone had been trying to kill me and I began entertaining the idea that it would have been just as well if I had allowed it to happen… if I had been killed long ago. If a bomb had fallen on me running across the smoldering moonscape of Corregidor, if I had been judged a spy by the Japanese tribunal and shot down like Captain Thomson; if I had been beheaded for offering ice water to a Japanese field marshal; if I had succumbed to the injection given me in Malinta Hospital; if I had died of beri-beri at Karenko; if American bombs had fallen on Radio Tokyo; if I had burned in the electric chair at Sing-Sing like the Rosenbergs. Finally, there was no other motive to put one foot in front of the other, and I stopped. I moved myself a short distance off the road and lay down in the snow. Snow fell lightly on my face and began to cover me and I just let myself go.
A family that lived nearby found me several hours later. They had seen my shoulder sticking out of a mound of snow by the roadside. I was stiff and nearly dead. I awoke in a warm bed piled high with blankets and hot water bottles. I was in the home of a family of devout Christians more than willing to nurse a helpless stranger back to health. I remembered the icy heart with which I had resolved to die, but I could not prevent it from thawing in the warm bed of their unselfishness. I had truly been reborn. …
Their love was all that I had needed. Like all of my darkest moments, help had appeared from an unexpected source. I had reached the bottom, the very bottom, and it had found me there, too. I found a job at the Polyclinic Hospital in Williamsport, sometimes working in the emergency room and on ambulance runs, and life was slowly rebuilt in the material sense; my inner strength had been totally renewed by the family of good Samaritans.
On April 26, 1968, before Nichijo Shaka had established his temple in Puna, Hawaii, the Honolulu Star-Bulletin published an interview with him. As a retired newspaperman, I find this article a fitting way to conclude my exploration of Nichijo: The Testimony of John Provoo
Buddhist Priest ‘Towed Shipwreck’ Many Years
Photo of Nichijo Shaka that accompanied the article.
By Nadine Wharton
Star-Bulletin Writer
A man who spent many of the years of his life “towing a shipwreck” is bringing the teachings of Nichiren Shu Buddhism to Hawaii.He is Shaka Provoo Nichijo, an ordained priest in the Buddhist sect, who teaches classes each Wednesday at 8 p.m. in the Temple of the Eternal Buddha, 32-A Kepola Place, in Nuuanu.
The “shipwreck” belongs to John David Provoo, a U.S. Army Sergeant who was convicted of treason against the government of his country.
They are one and the same person.
Provoo was confined, off and on, from the end of World War II until 1955 — 10 years. Six of those years he spent in the concrete basement maximum security cells of the West Street Detention Center in New York City.
He won his freedom in 1955 on the treason charge. But his lengthy and sensational trial made him a marked man. In the years after his release from prison he had great difficulty in getting and keeping a job.
“It was like towing a shipwreck after you,” he said.
“It was extremely difficult living with it and there was no living without it,” he said of the years between then and now.
He made no attempt to change his name. And he said, “I have never really been estranged from my country. I was disenchanted with the jury that convicted me of treason, but I never gave up faith in America. I never had any idea of changing my allegiance to my country.”
Perhaps the story should begin when Provoo, now about 51, started studying Buddhism at a small temple near his home in Burlingame, Calif. He was 11 years old.
“I am no convert. I have always been a Buddhist,” he said.
As the years went on he studied in Japan. And he studied in Hawaii with the Rev. Ernest Shin Kaku Hunt for several summers.
During the war, he was captured by the Japanese when Corregidor fell. He was later accused of collaborating with the enemy, when he was a prisoner of war and he was convicted of treason.
Nichijo is in Hawaii for several reasons. He feels there is a definite need for
Buddhist teachers who are competent in English. He says the University of Hawaii “is such a live force in the community.”
“Hawaii really has a kind of civilization that is unique in many ways,” he said. “Life generally is better here for everybody than on the Mainland.”
Every night except Wednesday, Nichijo works at the Lavada Nursing Home. “I tend the sick,” he said. “I have been doing that for many years.”
He said he hopes to build a temple and a “dojo” or retreat temple here. “I work so I can make a temple for the people,” he said.
Nichijo said he is not dependent on anyone, and does not ask for contributions. He said he does not require much money. “I lived most recently in Japan on an income of $14 a month.”
He said he hopes to dispel some of the popular illusions about Buddhism. “Buddhism is no ism,” he said. “It is not a system of ethics or dogma and it is not a creed—it is a way of life, the aware way of life,” he said.
And the man who once felt his life consisted of “towing a shipwreck” said: “My heart is overflowing with gratitude for the way things really are.”
Nichijo Shaku died Aug. 28, 2001, at the age of 84. He was inurned Oct. 8, 2001, at the Hawaii Veterans Cemetery No. 2.
After his ordination, Nichijo Shaka sought to create a training program for foreign students in Japan.
I had been trying to arrange a program for foreign students to be established at Minobu, and though I had the support of the Lord Abbot, I was meeting some resistance from the administrative hierarchy. A few days before my departure for America, I went to meet with the order’s leaders at Shumuin headquarters in Tokyo. When they repeated their reluctance I confronted them head on and harangued them for their provincial attitude. I said that when I had established a temple in America, I would open the gates wide to all who wished to study the Lotus; Chinese, Koreans, Caucasians, anyone – Nichiren was a saint for the world, not just Japan.
As Nichijo Shaka prepared to return to America he received some telling advice when he questioned Archbishop Nichijo Fujii about establishing his temple in America.
How would the temple survive, how would I know where to build it, how would I raise the funds? The Lord Abbot answered, “If your teaching is valid, everything will support you; if it is not, nothing will.”
Nichijo Shaka sailed for America this time with a sense of meaning and mission.
Much had been resolved inwardly and outwardly during my training. I felt that the very nature of reality almost by conscious design, had guided me through the worst ordeals of life to reveal the innate symmetry of karmic justice: That whenever I had abandoned my fate, something unexpected had come to my rescue; that each time I was placed in captivity, among my captors there had been an ally; that within every destructive thing lies the seeds of its own destruction; that the machinations and maneuvers of my legal defense had not been able to prevent my conviction, it was the ruthlessness and dirty tricks of the prosecution that had ultimately freed me; that within a seemingly omnipotent government, dispassionately bent on my execution, there were men of justice. The perfect void within which all visible things exist acts as a mirror that reflects hatred and evil back on themselves; and love, giving and compassion back on themselves, too. Hatred need not be reciprocated, it is self-destructive; and love need not be rewarded, the giving of it is the source of happiness.
In 1967, he had intended to sail from Japan to San Francisco but during a layover in Honolulu he was instead enticed to stay in Hawaii. Nichijo Shakya eventually received some heavily forested land in the Puna District of the Big Island and established the Buddhist School of America. According to a Honolulu Advertiser newspaper article, by 1981 he had trained and ordained 17 priests, many of them women.
Nichijo Shakya concludes his testimony:
This is photo of Nichijo Shaka provided by David L Schroeder in an Amazon review of “Nichijo: The Testimony of John Provoo”
For years, I had been burdened with feelings of guilt, rage and resentment. Now a major change was taking place within me. Everything began to fit. I was increasingly aware of that vast area above and beyond self-centeredness: When I was young, and for marked periods thereafter, this consciousness had been my usual state. Now it was returning, and in greater depth.How marvelous that change, the constantly evolving process of life, never ceases! We go towards the light. “The Kingdom of God is spread upon the earth, and men do not see it.” The idea took on new depth and imminent meaning. As tears of anguish bring clearer sight, so do years of justice denied bring glorious vision and some glimmer of knowingness. Life is the real trial, and without this insubstantial phantasmagoria of phenomenal existence, there can be no Nirvana. The ceaseless burden of expiation, alienation and exile has been lightened. The forest is filled with birdsong, and the faded flowers thrown from my little shrine cabinet take root and flourish in abundance. I think continually of the wonderful people who have come to my forest retreat to share with me the loving care and friendship while learning of the Dharma teaching. Each one is to me a perfect Lotus of truth.
“All things work together for good” has become electrically real. The higher power, intelligence, grace, eternal-that-which-is by whatever term we might employ, recreated the entire spectrum of the universe in splendor and in peace. Clarity resulted from meditation, and I became aware of the beautiful cosmic creativity and spontaneous nature of existence. In all of this, everything happened just as it should, without any preordained plan or intention of my own. It was as if I had spent the major portion of my existence trying to bring life to an arid plot of wasteland, and at long last miraculously there appeared flourishing fields of grain. Now my entire being resonates with a gratitude beyond understanding or expression. Words fail.
All praise and adoration be to all things, such as they now are; ever were; and ever will be.
Daniel Montgomery’s Fire in the Lotus contains a section on Nichijo Shaka. For purposes of comparison with Nichijo’s testimony, I offer Montgomery’s error-prone view of Nichijo’s Buddhist School of America.
As part of my series of articles discussing the book,Nichijo: The Testimony of John Provoo, I’m reprinting here the portion of Daniel Montgomery’s Fire in the Lotus discussing Nichijo Shakya. This material, which was published in 1991, has several factual errors. For example Montgomery suggests Rev. Shobo Aoyagi was at the Sacramento Nichiren Buddhist Church in 1940 when John Provoo formally converted to Nichiren Buddhism. Aoyagi was in San Francisco. Montgomery also mischaracterizes why Provoo’s conviction for treason was overturned. Several other facts differ from those in Nichijo’s book.
Buddhist School of America
Nichijo Shaka is the most colorful and controversial Nichiren leader in America. In spite of his Japanese name, he is a Caucasian American from San Francisco. Born John D. Provoo in 1917. He was introduced to Oriental philosophy by his mother, who was an early Montessori advocate. She later converted to Buddhism under the guidance of her son. Provoo was so impressed by Buddhism that in 1940 he accepted the Precepts (formally converted) under the Rev. Shobo Aoyagi of the Sacramento Nichiren Buddhist Church. Never one to do things by halves, he went to Japan to study for the priesthood at Mount Minobu. He had been there seven months when his studies were cut short by a call from his draft board back in California (Young East, Autumn 1965, 13).
The draft board ignored his claim to be a theological student and assigned him to the army, which soon shipped him back to the Orient, this time to the Philippines. When the Japanese invaded the Philippines in 1941, Provoo suddenly found himself in the thick of desperate fighting. However, with the fall of the American fortress of Corregidor, he was taken prisoner.
Provoo was one of the few American prisoners who could speak Japanese. Moreover, he had a lively interest in Buddhism and Japanese culture. The Japanese found him a willing spokesman for the prisoners — perhaps too willing. Within two days of his capture, he was thought to have made accusations against an American lieutenant which led to the latter’s execution. As the weary years passed, many American prisoners, who were living under appalling conditions, came to resent Provoo’s behavior and favored treatment from their Japanese captors. They believed that his cooperation with the enemy had passed over to collaboration. “The consensus among the men on Corregidor,” says Lt. Gen. John Wright, a former fellow-prisoner, “was that Provoo was a traitor, a turncoat, a self-centered individual not to be trusted.”
When the war ended, Provoo was at first overlooked in the flush of victory, but his fellow prisoners of war had not forgotten him. Eventually some of them managed to get him charged with collaboration with the enemy — treason — and brought to trial. Throughout the trial Provoo steadfastly maintained his innocence, but former prisoners lined up against him. Among them was no less a personage than General Wainwright, the highest ranking American prisoner of war. Provoo was found guilty and condemned to a federal prison. His lawyers, however, had not yet given up, and carried his case to the Supreme Court of the United States. There he was declared innocent on a technicality: the statute of limitations had expired. Provoo’s conviction was reversed, and he was set free.
In 1965 a large Japanese delegation came to the United States to participate in the 12th Congress of the World Association of World Federalists. The delegation was headed by Archbishop Nichijo Fujii, the highest ranking abbot of Nichiren Shu. After the close of the congress some of the delegates, including Archbishop Fujii and Professor Senchu Murano, made a tour of the United States to meet American Buddhists. In New York City Professor Murano was approached by John Provoo, who asked to be introduced to the Archbishop. The two got on well. Provoo became the personal disciple of the Archbishop, who took him back to Japan to continue his studies at Mount Minobu.
Provoo concluded his studies satisfactorily. He was ordained a priest, and in 1968 the Archbishop gave him the right to train and ordain future American aspirants. Provoo changed his name to Nichijo Shaka — Nichijo in honor of the Archbishop and Shaka for Shakyamuni Buddha. By 1981, when he came to the “Big Island” of Hawaii, he had trained and ordained 17 priests, of whom many were women. (The Honolulu Advertiser, 30 August 1981)
Nichijo Shaka never attempted to start a mass movement. His aim was to establish an American training center for serious students who would then bring orthodox Nichiren Buddhism back to their home towns. Because he wanted his center to be purely American, he refused to accept official support for it as a Nichiren Shu foreign mission. He lived simply as a Buddhist monk, and it was not until Dr Richard E. Peterson of the University of Hawaii gave him the use of three acres on the “Big Island” that he was able to build a permanent center.
Like Nichiren, who was finally granted land on Minobu only to find his health deteriorating, Nichijo Shaka found himself in the same predicament. He founded the “Buddhist School of America: Perfect Law of the Lotus Teaching” when he was too ill to supervise it properly. Therefore he ordained the Rev. Nichizo Finney as his successor, and took him to Minobu to complete his training. (History of Nichiren Buddhism in Hawaii, 34, in Japanese)
Nichijo Shaka’s career is drawing to its close. The success or failure of his efforts now rests with those he trained, and their impact remains to be seen.
He took Nichijo from Archbishop Nichijo Fujii, his master when he was studying at Minobu after the war, and Shaku from Nippo Shaku, the teacher who guided him on his journey to Minobu.
Clearly that’s wrong on its face since Nichijo’s name is Nichijo Shaka, not Shaku. I also misspelled Shaka as Shakya in another article.
If I find any other obvious errors I will correct them.
On Saturday, Jan. 1, 1966, John Provoo sailed for Japan to resume his training at Minobu to become a Nichiren Shu priest.
Again my ship docked at Yokohama, this time in an era of peace. There was an enthusiastic reception for me, the prodigal “Furobo-san,” as they called me, since they could not pronounce “Provoo,” and a banquet in a fine hotel. Many among the Japanese population who knew my story had adopted me as their own, and I felt fondness in their welcome. Then the train ride to Minobu: I was overjoyed to find that it had been untouched by the war.
Provoo was raised to the rank of Sozu (Right Reverend) and began his instruction with Archbishop Nichijo Fujii.
Each morning after the otsutome, I would go to the Lord Abbot’s villa. Every two or three days the Abbot would say, “is there something you wish to ask?” and I would offer my interpretation of a particular point and ask if it was correct. I also began to ask if I might be included in a very high training, the “Arai Gyodo” – the “One Hundred Days in Winter,” an ordeal of cleansing and purification. The Lord Abbot would put me off.
I had easily entered into the life of the monastery. The regimen that had been difficult and harsh to me as a young novice [in 1940-41] was now easy. I didn’t have the pressure of being in a strange country that was preparing for war against my own, and the students in my English classes at Minobusan College were not sickly and green from malnutrition.
Eventually the Abbott relented on Provoo’s request to participate in Arai Gyodo and he was allowed to enter the 100-day ascetic practice.
After three-quarters of the hundred days had elapsed, I had reached the state of mind that I wanted this to go on forever, and I could understand why the old ones had come again and again. One old monk died during the ritual, and I could see what a sublime death it was, and we were certain that the old monk had been happy to have ended that way.
Having been prepared in this manner, the participants were ready to receive the highest teachings of the order. The attendant masters delivered occult training in the healing arts based on the 16th Chapter of the Lotus Sutra. The teachings of the Arai Gyodo are secret and are not described to outsiders.
After completing the 100-day ascetic training, Provoo was promoted to rank of “Bishop” with the authority to ordain priests and given the name Nichijo Shaka.
Following my ordination ceremony, I walked down to the village of Minobu’s outer gate, to make the traditional procession up through the winding main street of Minobu chanting “Namu Myoho-renge-kyo.”
I was known to everyone in the village, and today, wearing my new insignia of high rank, I was honored and congratulated by all. The proprietors of every shop and inn asked me to stop and chant a sutra before each of their shrines. It was a triumphant procession, Minobu’s version of a ticker tape parade. After some hours, I reached the huge Sammon Gate, entrance to the temple grounds, and retired to my quarters.
My first official function with my new rank came a few days later, when late one cold evening a schoolboy came to my quarters. The boy had come all the way up the dark stairs and through the monastery grounds to find me. There was an emergency in an old woman’s home down by the river in the poorest part of the village. The woman wanted the “blue-eyed priest and no other.”
I got robed, banked the ashes over the coals in my hibachi to keep them going until I returned, and gathered my sutras and my cape. Guided by the schoolboy, we made our way down the mountain to the old woman’s hut. The dilapidated thatched building was in an advanced state of disrepair. The old woman greeted me at the door and invited me to enter. She was bent way over from age and wore an old padded robe that was faded and had the stuffing coming out in several places. The straw mats on the floor were unraveling and her feet were bare; she hadn’t even tabi. In her hibachi there were only a few small lumps of charcoal and it wasn’t enough to keep the cottage warm, not with the holes in the walls.
Her tragedy was that her hibari bird was dead in its cage. It had died from the cold. She wanted the Lotus Sutra chanted for the happy transfiguration of her dead bird’s spirit. I was touched by this and agreed.
Her shrine was clean, there were artificial flowers and a glass of water as an offering, and there was incense there for me to light. I took off my cape and began the service. I opened my sutra and chanted at least five chapters, the long version of the ceremony.
When it was over, the woman seemed much moved and had become very peaceful. She tried to make tea, but with her small amount of charcoal she could only make the water lukewarm, and the tea was weak when she served it.
She rummaged around in her belongings and found two 100-yen notes, wrinkled and dirty, were worth about six cents. She didn’t have the proper envelope, so she wrapped the notes in white paper and knelt down to offer them to me. It was the hardest danna I would ever have to accept. Danna is a Sanskrit term denoting that offering given to a priest which bears the connotation “…where it is understood that there is neither gift, giver nor recipient.” To have refused to accept it from the old woman would have been unthinkable. It would have been a cruel insult.
I returned to my quarters in the monastery. In the following days I arranged, in an indirect way, to have charcoal sent to the old woman’s house as well as some nonperishable foodstuffs.
In 1940, John Provoo took up residence at Minobu to begin his studies. While he took instruction from the Lord Abbot Mochizuki Nichiken, Provoo was employed teaching English to the novice students attending Minobu College. His English teaching duties would eventually be expanded to include students in middle school, where he saw evidence of widespread malnutrition.
The world at Minobusan was everything I had hoped it would be. It was the ancient and classical Buddhist training in every sense. It was completely separated from the outside world. It was harmonious, it was beautiful, it was immaculately clean, it was calm; it was so well run that I always knew exactly where I should be at any given moment and what my duties were. There was time for study, there was time for meditation, there was time for work, there was time for ceremony, time for eating, time for bathing and even time, if I stayed up late enough, to write letters home.
The diet provided to novice monks was by design minimal as a part of their often-harsh training. It was barely adequate for the typical Japanese novice, but for my somewhat larger occidental frame it represented malnutrition. As a rare Caucasian, my training was made extra harsh; I was not expected to complete the rigors of the novices’ monastic experience. I was given the daily job of cleaning the toilets for nearly a year. I became thin and frail, and when finally it became apparent that I would persevere even though I was literally wasting away, I was allowed to go to the Tamaya Inn in Minobu Village once a week to eat meat.
Minobu may have been separated from the outside world, but that world still pulled at Provoo.
My dream of monastic utopia and the unification of my own psyche had become a new fitful conflict. I saw it as two distinct choices: To remain in Japan, continue my studies for the priesthood and dedicate my life to peace and enlightenment; or, to return to America, abandon Buddhist training and probably be drafted into the Army.
I did feel a call to action; to somehow use the tools I had gained, however naïve my feeble efforts might be. If I were to remain in Japan, I would have to find a way to publicly counter the officially orchestrated war hysteria with words of compassion and understanding. On a trip to the detached temple of Minobu in Tokyo with several junior monks, I entered Hibaya Park, just outside the walls of the Imperial Palace, and found a spot in the plaza where the traffic of pedestrians converged. With the junior monks holding a banner, which read “Namu Myoho-renge-kyo,” I began to preach peace. Peace depends on one’s state of awareness: Within the turmoil and warmongering that appears on the surface, there is a land of harmony wherein good people worked to ease tensions and resolve conflicts. I exhorted the passersby to uproot the hatred that was being cultivated by propagandists and instead to sow understanding among their families and friends. I emphasized that President Roosevelt was not mad and didn’t want war.
It didn’t take long to draw a crowd, and a few moments later, plainclothes police appeared and led me away to headquarters of the Tokyo police. I was held for several hours and questioned with new intensity. When I was released that afternoon, I went directly to the American embassy and reported the incident.
It was a very disturbing series of events and left me very nearly resolved to abandon my goals to stay and become a priest. The focus of my monastic training at that point was the teaching of Kannon, the all compassionate one, “regarder of the cries of the world”; but outside the monastery, the Japanese Imperial military and propaganda machines were exhibiting the opposite of compassion.
It was in this mood that I spent a restless night in a friend’s house near the river in the village of Minobu. In the morning, I was awakened by the screams of a rat. It sounded to me as if the rat was calling to me for help. I rushed outside to find two villagers with a rat in a wire cage trap, carrying it down to the river to drown it. I ran to them and pleaded with them to show compassion and release it, quoting from the teaching of Kannon. They agreed to let it go and as they did and it scampered away, I realized that some door within my internal conflict had been opened as well. I could return to America and still be a Buddhist priest; they were not mutually exclusive ideas. I would continue in my vows and studies, and return to Japan and Minobu when it was possible. I credited the rat for recalling me to my vows, and saving me from drowning in my own cage.
Still, it was not easy to leave, and in May 1941, I made two trips to Yokohama with my trunks packed for departure, only to return to Minobu. On the third trip, I did in fact depart, with the blessing of the Lord Abbot and the promise that I could return when possible to complete my training.
With each illumination I gained, the world offered a greater darkness. The Buddha had renounced the world to understand the truth of sickness, old age, suffering and death: I had renounced materialism in favor of a deeper knowledge, and through my choices, I was going to learn of racism, suspicion, war, hate, brutality, starvation, treachery, injustice and persecution. From the mud, the lotus grows.
Provoo returned to San Francisco to find a notice that he was to be drafted into the Army. Eventually Provoo enlisted in the Army and, without a day’s military training, he was sent by ship to the Philippines, arriving in Manilla in 1941. There’s a great deal of detail in the book about the period before Japan invaded, but I want to focus on Provoo’s efforts as a novice priest and how these raised the suspicion of his fellow prisoners. This began during the Japanese battle to capture Corregidor.
Outside the tunnels, the once beautiful island looked like a cratered desert. No building remained standing and all the vegetation and wildlife had been completely blasted away.
A change was taking place in me as the fate of Corregidor became more obvious. To assimilate it all, and coming to grips with the impending doom, I had become Increasingly conscious of the description of a perfect world In the Lotus Sutra. Here that thesis could be examined under the most extreme circumstances. Putting my trust in the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha, I found moments during the night bombardments when I felt so calmed by this, I began to leave the tunnel and walk down to a rocky promontory on the south shore and intone my chant as the bombs fell, its meaning never more vivid:
“Beneath the dark surface of this crumbling illusion,
My perfect world shimmers with light.
Though this illusion seems burning,
And these suffering beings lie broken and bleeding,
Believing the end of the kalpa is near.
My perfect peaceful world is here,
And these beings are whole and filled with light.”
I did this dozens of times. And returning calmly to the safety of the tunnels after these sojourns, the MP’s gave me strange and ominous glares. I must have seemed too serene and contented; and why would I leave the tunnel during air raids?
After the fall of Corregidor, the Japanese soon learned that Provoo spoke fluent Japanese, and he was made an interpreter for the prisoners.
Scapegoating is a major pastime of a population preoccupied with its own misery. In a prison or a POW camp situation any individual who is removed from the general population for any length of time has gained the suspicion of all who have been left behind to speculate. In such a situation as this, where so many privations and assaults had no apparent motive or logic, how easy it would be to focus on a scapegoat to make order of it all.
Thousands were in this situation, and outside of a few headquarters personnel and scattered individuals, numbering perhaps 50, if that many, no one knew me personally, knew my character. I was a nobody: a desk clerk. Here I was then, within 72 hours of capture, speaking fluent Japanese, appearing at each event of rising hostility, bowing politely to the guards, wearing an armband with Japanese characters, seeming to have such exceptional rapport with them that I could actually hold small talk and compliment them on their families, while an unfortunate captive’s fate hung in the balance. And when I was successful in ending the danger, the suspicious could make note of the influence I seemed to have with their otherwise intransigent and cruel captors.
Worse, and perhaps most damning of all of the accusations that would be one day hurled at me, was that I would chant a Buddhist chant in Japanese over the bodies of the dead, which I did, of course. “Heathen chants” they would be called, and evidence of something despicable. In the ten years that followed those horrible and chaotic days, rumor and suspicion would be nurtured and embellished, so that by the time these tales were told, vague rumor would become vivid testimony, and dark suspicion would become glaring accusation.
The prisoners on Corregidor were eventually transferred to a prison in Manila and then to the Karenko POW camp on Taiwan. Provoo’s status at Karenko was just one of the lower-ranking prisoners. It was here that Provoo got his one and only chance to escape.
There arrived at the camp one day two Japanese civilians and they called a few prisoners to be interviewed. I was one of those to be called. Apparently when my story about being a Buddhist priest was checked out through Tokyo, the Buddhist authorities of the Nichirenshu at Minobu had discovered I was a prisoner of war. Since that time they had been doing what they could to intercede. The Japanese civilians offered me the opportunity to return to Minobu and continue my training for the priesthood. I could return to Minobu, the misty and serene culmination of my childhood dreams. It was a chance to escape this life of cruel oppression and to return to the life that was of my own choosing. I would be fed, clothed and nurtured again in an atmosphere of wisdom and compassion.
There was no real choice in my mind. I didn’t hesitate to say no. My place was with my fellow prisoners. I couldn’t leave them and abandon my oath of allegiance to the Army. In spite of what my military service had been, I loved the Army. The many fine officers I had met at Karenko inspired me. I admired their devotion to duty in the face of the most humiliating and debasing circumstances. It was my opportunity to demonstrate to myself that I was worthy of being in their company and receiving their tutelage. I had to say no. I was now a sergeant in the U.S. Army, and my loyalties were to my fellow enlisted men, my commanding officers and my country.
Minobu would still be there if I survived the war. Minobu would shimmer in my dreams and the face of my Lord Abbot, my master, would beckon, but awake I felt more strongly about Colonel Menzies and General Wainwright and the many friends I had found amidst starvation and brutality. It was a decision I never regretted during the final years of the war. It wasn’t until my own government turned against me after liberation, that I would ever even doubt that I had done the right thing. Even so, it was the right thing.
For my purposes I want to gather everything about John Provoo’s mentor into one spot since he comes to Provoo’s aid in his journey to becoming a Nichiren priest at several places.
In Nichijo: The Testimony of John Provoo the name of Provoo’s mentor is said to be Aoiyagi Shoho, who later became Bishop Nippo Aoiyagi Shoho. A photo at the Sacramento Nichiren Buddhist Church, where he served from 1964 to 1968, is captioned Rev. Nippo Aoyagi Syaku. His photo is displayed in the anteroom inside the entrance to the temple along with the 12 other priests and priests in training who served the Sacramento church since its founding in September 1931.
However, a history of Worldwide Propagation of Nichiren Buddhism written by Ryuei Michael McCormick, spells his name Nippo Shaku. This spelling helps explain where John Provoo later got his Buddhist name. He took Nichijo from Archbishop Nichijo Fujii, his master when he was studying at Minobu after the war, and Shaku from Nippo Shaku, the teacher who guided him on his journey to Minobu.See note at end.
In 1935 Provoo gave up his lush life as a radio entertainer and took a lowly clerk’s job at the Federal Reserve Bank in San Francisco in order to focus on his Buddhist studies. For several years, Rev. Aoiyagi and Provoo studied.
Reverend Aoiyagi had written to the temple authorities in Japan, telling them of my conversion and desire to enter the monastery there. It was Reverend Aoiyagi’s wish to accompany me in order to introduce me, sponsor me and facilitate my entry into formal training. I gave notice at the bank and paid my fare on the NYR line to Yokohama, Japan.
In March of 1940, the day of my embarkation arrived, several robed priests came to my house, a temporary altar was erected in my living room, and incense and prayers were offered. The entourage left in a caravan of automobiles, stopping at several temples on the way. When we arrived at dockside, several hundred well wishers, many of them Japanese, were there to see Reverend Aoiyagi and myself off.
During the cruise from America to Japan, Provoo developed a deep feeling that his mission would be to bridge East and West, an ambition that would end up getting him tried by the U.S. government on charges of treason.
Our arrival as young priest and master in Yokohama was on one of those rare days when Mt. Fuji is visible. The lower slopes were covered with clouds, and the ancient volcano shone brightly above giving it the appearance of floating in the air. There was a reception for Reverend Aoiyagi and me at the hotel in Yokohama where we spent the first night. The following day we made the 100-mile train ride to the beautiful valley on the far side of Mt. Fuji.
We arrived in the town of Minobu in the late afternoon and found a room in the Tamaya Inn. In the morning we arose long before dawn to climb Mt. Minobu to the temple to arrive in time for the morning otsutome, the worship service conducted each day in the founder’s hall.
Following the service, Provoo was coached on what would happen when he had his audience with Mochizuki Nichiken, the Lord Abbot of Minobu.
I was then taken to a huge reception hall. At the far end of the hall the Lord Abbot was seated on a raised dais. I was required to make several bows as I proceeded down this long, massive hall toward him. I felt as though I were growing smaller and smaller as I approached and the Abbot loomed larger and more formidable. Finally I reached the dais and made my last bow and looked up. The Abbot said to me, in Japanese, “It is well you have come. You are my disciple. Now get out.” It was not until that moment that I knew that I would be accepted. It was a great honor to be accepted as a novitiate by a master who was over thousands of monks and priests.
Before Rev. Aoiyagi left to return to the United States, he and Provoo explored the temple complex together.
We climbed the mountains behind the main temple. We were going to a small temple very high up the slopes of Mt. Minobu.
I had gone on some distance ahead, since my legs were much longer than Aoiyagi’s and reached the temple a few minutes before him. The priestess of the temple bowed as I approached but as soon as she could see me closely, her eyes grew large, and her expressionless face could not mask her anxiety. I bowed and greeted her in Japanese. As she made tea and prepared oranges for her guest, she did not turn her back or take her eyes off of me for one second.
Soon Aoiyagi approached the temple and the priestess looked anxiously back and forth as between he and I as we conversed in English. When Aoiyagi explained to the woman that I was a priest from America, she asked, “What’s that?” Aoiyagi replied that America was a land far across the ocean, and she said, “But his eyes … They’re blue.” Aoiyagi explained that there were many in America that looked like me. Only then did the priestess relax. She said that when I first walked up, she had thought that I was the fox-god. I was the first Caucasian she had ever seen. Imagine, she thought she was in the presence of the fox god, and she served him tea and oranges.
Provoo did not hear from Bishop Nippo again until 1950. In the interim, Provoo had spent three and a half years in Japanese prison camps. Following the war, he had been held for eight months without charges or counsel in postwar Japan. He had been honorably discharged from the Army and re-enlisted only to spend three years under a cloud, the last six months of which he was held without charges or counsel in military stockades. He would spend a full three years at West Street federal detention center in New York City without bail awaiting trial for treason.
Another event [in 1950] raised my spirits even further. One day I heard a familiar voice chanting on the sidewalk outside West Street. It was the voice of Bishop Nippo, my beloved master. “Namu Myoho-renge-kyo,” he chanted, finding a tone that resonated against the grey brick walls. Inside, I began chanting, too.
Nippo had come all the way from Argentina, having heard of my plight through the international press. He had come as soon as he found out that I was in trouble. He had gone to the authorities at West Street and identified himself as my spiritual advisor, but had been told that they had spiritual advisors on the prison staff, a Protestant and a Catholic, and that was all that were allowed in the facility. In their minds, that seemed to cover all bases. Nippo returned to Argentina without seeing me, but just our voices resonating through the brick walls and iron bars had been an uplift.
Bishop Nippo, according to Provoo, spent the war in the Tokyo area, often living in subway stations, caring for homeless children, orphans of the American bombing raids. After the war, he had returned to the United States, had started a temple in Salt Lake City, and then one in Argentina.
Even though the Army had investigated Provoo’s actions during his captivity immediately after the war and cleared him of all charges – they’d given him an honorable discharge and even allowed him to re-enlist – the federal government tried Provoo on four counts of treason.
I held little hope that I would ever escape my situation alive. It was being a prisoner of war all over again. But, understanding that, I knew how to deal with it. I had spent three and half years as a prisoner of the Japanese brutal military machine, never believing that I would live to see the end of the war; and so, I had learned to function with goals that didn’t assume that I would survive. There is a certain freedom in actually abandoning your own physical existence. I had done so over and over again since 1941 and now, I found myself in a dire predicament again. Each time, finding that I had survived, the cloak of mortality had descended over me again, renewing my attachment for living, and with it, the belief that I had something to lose. Now I was free again, free to act fearlessly, the freedom of the doomed.
The book details the delays and missteps of the prosecution. Eventually he was convicted and sentenced to life in prison on Feb. 17, 1953. His conviction was overturned on appeal on Aug. 27, 1954, and he was finally released on March 14, 1955, after the judge in his second trial tossed out all of the charges.
In 1965, Provoo received an invitation to return to Minobu.
It had been over twenty years since I left Minobu, and the Lord Abbot who had been my master had passed away and there had been several others in the meantime. One day, I received a message from Murano Senchu, a priest of the Nichiren school in Japan. The message announced that the present Lord Abbot, Fujii Nichijo, was coming to America as a representative of the world’s Buddhists to a special session of the United Nations. The message outlined the Lord Abbot’s itinerary and invited me to join his entourage.
I was unable to join them at the special U.N. session in San Francisco’s Cow Palace, or at the conference with top Mormons in Salt Lake City. When the party arrived in New York, I caught up with them in the lobby of the Waldorf Hotel. I kneeled on the carpeted floor before the Lord Abbot. The Lord Abbot helped me up and greeted me warmly. I was invited to join the entourage on their trip to Canada, where the Lord Abbot was to conduct services for a large Japanese community there. The services were followed by a banquet and sitting with a magnificent Japanese feast before me, I was handed a note, written in the Lord Abbot’s own hand: “We are waiting for you at Minobu.”
Of course I wanted to go, it would take a little while to prepare myself but I definitely would go. Returning to Pennsylvania I quickly settled my affairs and got in contact with my old master, Reverend Aoiyagi Shoho, now the Bishop Nippo. I had last seen Nippo at Minobu in 1941. In 1951, while I was being held at West Street, Nippo had come all the way from Argentina but hadn’t been allowed to see me. I had heard Nippo’s voice chanting from the sidewalk below. Now, in 1965, Nippo was in Sacramento, California, and I arranged to join him there.
Nippo Shaku (1910-1991) was another missionary to the United States who established temples and actively taught Odaimoku. He was one of the first Nichiren Shu ministers to attempt to teach Nichiren Buddhism to the general population of the U.S. He came to assist the Los Angeles temple in 1935 and then became the head minister of San Francisco in 1936. In 1954 he established the Salt Lake City temple. Beginning in 1962 he began to teach Nichiren Buddhism in the southwestern U.S. In 1969 he established the American Buddhist Center in San Francisco and also taught at the California Institute of Asian Studies and throughout the San Francisco Bay Area from 1969–1981.
For purposes of my own narrative, I assume Nippo Shaku’s 1964 to 1968 stint in Sacramento was part of what McCormick calls his teaching in the southwestern U.S.
I’m clearly wrong when I suggest that Nichijo chose his second name, Shaka, from Nippo Shaku. No excuse. Not paying attention. Other sources suggest Shaka stands for Shakyamuni and that’s why he chose the name.
Sometime in 1936 John Provoo’s search for someone who could teach him about the Lotus Sutra led him to Bishop Ishida Nitten, who helped found the Nichiren Hokke Buddhist Church at 2016 Pine Street in San Francisco.
Bishop Ishida spoke very little English, and in the style typical of teacher-student relations in the East, he would put me off, saying, “Go away,” or “I am much too busy,” or “Come back another time.” A prospective disciple is tested and prepared in this way. I kept going back. Finally the Bishop gave me a collection of letters that he had laboriously translated from the Chinese into English. I had been accepted and instruction had begun, but slowly.
But Provoo had the good fortune to find another Nichiren teacher.
A traditional saying in the East is “when the disciple is ready, the master will appear.” I came across another smaller temple in a two-story house with the garage underneath made into an orthodox Nichiren temple. The priest was a cheerful round-faced man with glasses named Aoiyagi Shoho, who later became Bishop Nippo. He was from a priestly family whose ancestral home is at Ichinose, not far from one of the major temples of the Nichiren sect. This time my reception was entirely different. On my first visit the priest welcomed me warmly. “Please come, come in,” which was practically the extent of his English. It was a relationship that seemed to be fully developed at the first meeting, although neither of us could speak the other’s language, and the relationship would last with the same strength for our lifetimes. We taught each other our respective languages, and night after night we studied the Lotus Sutra, often until after midnight. My understanding of this highest teaching was intertwined with the learning of the Japanese language and most of the realizations came to me without first being translated into English. I had quickly reached the stage where I could think in Japanese. I could think and express my deepest thoughts in Japanese. At times I felt that East and West were unified within me, but in the external world events were pulling East and West apart. The Lotus seemed the only thing that resolved all contradictions. I memorized the 16th chapter in Japanese, and often chanted it from that day forward. In it, Buddha says to his audience:
Beneath the dark surface of this crumbling illusion,
My perfect world shimmers with light.
Though this illusion seems burning,
And these suffering beings lie broken and bleeding,
My perfect world is here,
And these beings are whole and filled with light.
I have revealed the fate of the world:
That all beings shall be illumined.”
At this point I need to renege on my promise to set aside my journalist’s skepticism.
I’m puzzled by Provoo’s quote from the gāthās of Chapter 16. There are verses similar, for example Senchu Murano’s translation offers:
The [perverted] people think:
“This world is in a great fire.
The end of the kalpa [of destruction] is coming.”
In reality this world of mine is peaceful.
It is filled with gods and men.
The gardens, forests and stately buildings
Are adorned with various treasures;
The jeweled trees have many flowers and fruits;
The living beings are enjoying themselves;
And the gods are beating heavenly drums,
Making various kinds of music,
And raining mandārava-flowers on the great multitude and me.
[This] pure world of mine is indestructible.
But the [perverted] people think:
“It is full of sorrow, fear, and other sufferings.
It will soon burn away.”
Because of their evil karmas,
These sinful people will not be able
To hear even the names of the Three Treasures
During asaṃkhya kalpas.
None of the English translations of the Lotus Sutra has verses similar to those Provoo offers referencing the light of the Buddha in Chapter 16. Is this because he is translating the Japanese into English rather than translating Kumārajīva’s fifth-century Chinese translation into English? I like the sentiment expressed in Provoo’s verses, but I’m too much of a literalist to allow this discrepancy to stand without comment.
John David Provoo grew up in San Francisco’s Richmond district to the north of Golden Gate Park. He often played in the park’s Tea Garden and regularly visited San Francisco’s Japan Town. As a child he was a fan of all things Japanese and that, as a result, led him to Buddhism.
Buddhism rang a bell for me at a very early age. The very first time I heard the chant of a Buddhist priest, though I could not translate a single word into English, I had the distinct feeling that I understood exactly what was being said.
The chant meant that there was another reality within the common one, obscured from awareness. Just as the words of what I was hearing were in my ears but not understood; a greater reality was all around us, within our ordinary perceptions, but unintelligible. I felt that the chant called out to learn the secrets.
As a priest, Nichijo would later understand that what he felt as a child was the meaning he would learn from Chapter 16 of the Lotus Sutra – this world is the Buddha’s Pure Land.
Without anyone to lead him, the young Provoo made up his own Buddhism.
In 1926, my family moved twenty miles south to Burlingame. I couldn’t visit the park as often and made efforts to recreate the experience. I made a shrine in my room, and bought little Buddha incense burners at Woolworth’s. I clipped from the pages of National Geographic whatever pictures of Buddhist statues and temples I could find and displayed them on my altar. I would stand before this array, light incense, bow and chant my made-up chants.
One day when I was eleven, I used scissors to cut off all my hair, as short as I could, wrapped myself in an orange bedspread, and with a small bowl, walked into the hills. I was trying it on, play-acting how it was to be the young prince embarking upon a spiritual path. I sat down beneath an oak tree to meditate. By dinnertime I returned. A little too young to depart for Asia, but that was my childhood dream. The path would be ready for me, when I was ready for it.
By the time he reached high school, Provoo could imagine himself studying in Asia. After his family moved back to San Francisco, Provoo began exploring the city’s existing Buddhist temples.
I learned about the Triple Jewel: The Buddha, the Dharma (the Teachings) and the Sangha (the Community). You do not find enlightenment on your own. I had realized that I needed to find genuine instruction in order to progress. I finally met Bishop Masuyama Kenju at the Hongwanji temple in San Francisco and under him took the next step to become formally accepted as a novice priest.
Eventually Provoo was elevated to a full priest of the Jodo Shinshu, but he found himself lured away from his priestly life.
I continued with my Buddhist studies but two parts of my nature were developing, at odds with each other. Just when I had taken vows accepting poverty, I had been steered into San Francisco’s fast lane. I was the sincere, searching, scholarly mystic …a Buddhist Priest; and I was the flamboyant and theatrical prodigy of materialistic America. I was becoming a man with two heads, irreconcilable heads.
In the midst of this conflict between Provoo’s two natures, he approached his Jodo Shinshu mentor, Bishop Masuyama:
My horizons were expanding. I explained to Bishop Masuyama that I wished to go to Japan and pursue further studies in the Shin school of which the Bishop was a part. The Bishop explained that his position in the Shinshu was a hereditary one and that in his own mind he felt that I was beyond that teaching already and that I was ready for the Lotus Sutra, the highest teaching, which the Buddha had taught during the last eight years of his life.
This all sounds apocryphal to my trained journalistic ear, but I’m setting aside those misgivings to celebrate the conversion of Provoo.
For a short time, I took up the study of Zen under the great Zen Master, Nyogen Senzaki, mentor to the “Beat” generation a decade later, but then I became aware of the Lotus Sutra.
Sometime in 1936, I received a copy of the latest translation into English of the Lotus Sutra, by H. Kerns. It came as a complete revelation to me. It was one of those experiences in which someone else had verbalized my innermost thoughts and put them into print. There are hundreds of schools of Buddhist teaching, each one emphasizing a certain sutra in a certain way. I discovered my own innate concurrence with the Lotus Sutra, it became clear that I should focus my studies through the Nichiren School, which is based in Japan and formulated almost entirely around the Lotus teaching. The Lotus Sutra is the final teaching of the historic Buddha, transmitted to a multitude of followers on Vulture Peak. It proclaims the Buddha to be the embodiment of eternal enlightenment; the realization that this is the perfect world: and that Nirvana and the everyday world are one in the same. The Nichiren School was established to reaffirm this as the ultimate doctrine.
“Namu myoho-renge-kyo”, literally, “Adoration to the Lotus Sutra.”
Or, as I say after my years sculpting my understanding of this sutra, I ‘ve come to think of it this way:
“Adoration to the Lotus Sutra, Adoration to the mysterious perfection of everything,
just as it is.”
That chant, with that meaning, is as deeply ingrained in me as breathing, and it has been a vision that comforted me through years of the most terrifying events in the most horrible circumstances.
