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.
