Had a full Sunday today. After my personal morning service, I attended the Nichiren Buddhist Kannon Temple of Nevada Shodaigyo service offered via Zoom by Rev. Shoda Kanai.

After a brief break it was back on Zoom for the Nichiren Buddhist Sangha of the San Francisco Bay Area weekly service.

Bay Area Nichiren Buddhist Sangha services currently feature discussion of the Lotus Sutra on the first and third Sundays and general discussions on the second, fourth and, when called for, the fifth Sundays.

Ryugan Mark Herrick, the shami who coordinates the services, and Rev. Ryuei Michael McCormick accepted my suggested topic for today’s discussion.

For the meeting I needed to set the stage for the question. Here’s how I did that:

Imagine you have received a phone call from a woman you know. She has been chanting Namu Myoho Renge Kyo for nearly 50 years. She is calling you because the man who guided her practice for most of those years died last year. She is feeling lost with his passing.

She is calling because her younger sister’s grandson, an 18-year-old straight-A high school senior, was shot and killed by gang-bangers who mistook him for someone else.

This woman is the matriarch of her large family. The day before she called she presided over a memorial vigil at the sight of the shooting. Now she was seeking spiritual help for herself.

My question for discussion today:

What can you say that will ease her distress and empower her to move forward?

This is not the sort of call I get regularly. I was unsure what I could say to help. In passing I mentioned to her that this was certainly a challenge to her faith and she accepted that as something she could focus on. But I didn’t want that to be the only thing she took from the call. I wanted something more positive and constructive.

The merit of chanting came to mind. Here was a woman with nearly a half-century of merit from which to draw.

In Chapter 21, the Supernatural Powers of the Tathāgatas, the Buddha says:

[A]ll the teachings of the Tathāgata, all the unhindered, supernatural powers of the Tathāgata, all the treasury of the hidden core of the Tathāgata, and all the profound achievements of the Tathāgata are revealed and expounded explicitly in this sūtra.

In Kanjin Honzon-shō, A Treatise Revealing the Spiritual Contemplation and the Most Venerable One (Writings of Nichiren Shōnin, Doctrine 2, Page 146), Nichiren writes:

Śākyamuni Buddha’s merit of practicing the bodhisattva way leading to Buddhahood, as well as that of preaching and saving all living beings since His attainment of Buddhahood are altogether contained in the five words of myō, hō, ren, ge, and kyō and that consequently, when we uphold the five words, the merits which He accumulated before and after His attainment of Buddhahood are naturally transferred to us.

I suggested to the woman that this vast pool of merit she had obtained from years of chanting Namu Myōhō Renge Kyō could be put to use to help her sister’s grandson in his journey after death.

Rev. Kenjo Igarashi of the Sacramento Nichiren Buddhist Church wrote an essay back in May 2016 on the 49-day journey after death in which we said:

While it may seem as if we take little part in the deceased individual’s 49-day journey, this is not the case. One way we can assist them, is by chanting ”Namu myo ho renge kyo,” which as you know, is the name of the Buddha nature that we all possess. We chant this odaimoku throughout the 49 days to call upon the deceased individual’s Buddha nature. If you recall, the Buddha nature can be imagined as the inside of a seed, while the outer shell represents bad karma resulting primarily from previous actions. Whenever we chant the odaimoku, the Buddha nature slowly grows. While this is a slow process, the more we chant, the more the Buddha nature shows, until it finally appears by sprouting through the outer shell.

I suggested that she hold a memorial service every seven days for seven weeks. The Memorial Prayer is available in the daily service book. This was something she could do, a concrete expression of her faith and her hope for her sister’s grandson.

I’m aware that some people fear that focusing on funerary services will somehow weaken Buddhism in America. And I will admit that those funerary services – Ohigan in the spring and fall, Obon in the summer, individual memorial services throughout the year – play a prominent role at the Sacramento Nichiren Buddhist Church, which was founded by five Japanese immigrant families in 1931. But  funerary services do not require a diminishment of Buddhist studies or practice. We can have both, and I would argue that Buddhism is stronger for it.