This is another in a series of articles discussing the book, Nichijo: The Testimony of John Provoo.
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.
Nichijo: The Testimony of John Provoo, p16Buddhism 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.
Nichijo: The Testimony of John Provoo, p18In 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.
In his childish way, he sought the Buddha’s path:
Nichijo: The Testimony of John Provoo, p19One 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.
Nichijo: The Testimony of John Provoo, p20I 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.
Nichijo: The Testimony of John Provoo, p24I 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:
Nichijo: The Testimony of John Provoo, p24-25My 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.
Nichijo: The Testimony of John Provoo, p27-28For 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.