Notes from Ven. Kenjo Igarashi‘s sermon following the July 29, 2018, Kaji Kito service.
“What is the religion? What is the faith?” Rev. Igarashi began.
When Rev. Igarashi first came to the Sacramento Nichiren Buddhist Church he would visit the homes of each of the members at the end of the year. He recalled one occasion when he tried to start chanting the Lotus Sutra before the family altar but was interrupted by an elderly woman chanting Namu-Amida. He explained to the woman that he was a Nichiren minister and he was holding a Nichiren Buddhist service and she was supposed to chant Namu-Myoho-Renge-Kyo. The woman apologized for her mistake. In other homes he would find both the Nichiren Shu mandala and another mandala in a butsudan.
“I think everyone doesn’t know what is our faith,” Rev. Igarashi said. “What is the religion. Religion is your spirit and your spirit is just one. If you have two or three or five spirits, then maybe you can believe a lot of other religions. But everyone has just one spirit and just one faith.”
Those people who travel from church to church ignore the teaching of Sakyamuni Buddha and Nichiren Shonin, he said.
“Everybody has Buddha nature. Everybody will become a Buddha. If you chant Namu-Myoho-Renge-Kyo you will get enlightenment. That’s one religion for one spirit. People who don’t understand this have two or three religions.”
Rev. Igarashi then mentioned the March 20, 1995, terrorist sarin attack on the Tokyo subway by members of the doomsday cult Aum Shinrikyo. (Wikipedia), explaining that the cult leader took advantage of young people, especially college students. Earlier this month, the members of the cult who had been on death row since their convictions were executed by hanging. (See news reports)
“If young people have strong faith, if the young ones know we have just one spirit and one religion, then I believe that they would never join this kind of cult,” Rev. Igarashi said. “That’s why I like to talk about how you have to have strong faith. Your spirit has one spirit. You have one spirit. One spirit with one religion is fine. So otherwise all the time you are thinking this religion is good or that religion is good. So that’s all the time your spirit and mind moves along. And that’s why all the time you have a chance to get caught up with a cult. So that’s why you have to be careful.
“We have the supreme teaching of Sakyamuni Buddha and Lotus Sutra and Nichiren Shonin doctrine. If you chant Namu-Myoho-Renge-Kyo your Buddha nature is going to open and you are going to get enlightenment. Then you’ll never come back to this suffering world. …
“You have just one spirit, one religion. We have Nichiren Buddhism, Lotus Sutra, and chant Namu-Myoho-Renge-Kyo. Everybody can get enlightenment. Everybody has Buddha nature. … That’s why if you chant Namu-Myoho-Renge-Kyo you are going to get enlightenment someday, maybe today or tomorrow or it takes a hundred years or 1000 years later. We don’t know but you have to keep upholding Nichiren Buddhism and the Lotus Sutra.”