Chanting Odaimoku is not an activity of quantity but of quality. We should be thinking of how much of our lives we can fill with Odaimoku and not how much of our time. I will not say it is wrong to chant fast, but I will say it is wrong to chant sloppily, lazily, or distractedly. Yes, we may loose our focus at times; we may feel the tug of day-to-day life and distractions. This whole chanting thing is meditation and so just as we do when we are in silent meditation we do when chanting, which is to come back to the present and return our focus whether it is breath or Odaimoku. But if we start out in a rush, in a hurry, or with mixed objectives then it will be more difficult if not impossible to move to a more deliberate, contemplative practice that allows us to nurture and absorb the benefit of the Lotus Sutra.

I am a firm believer in chanting slowly and deliberately, which invites the pronunciation of the whole collection of seven characters Na Mu Myo Ho Ren Ge Kyo. Namu is not an appended sound but a condition of our being. So with the mindfulness and deliberative intent of opening myself, emptying myself, and absorbing, I try to take care of how I pronounce and view not just Myo Ho Ren Ge Kyo but also Na Mu. I do not believe we can genuinely and authentically say we “believe” in or “revere,” or “respect” something that we are going to rush through. If I think about being in the presence of someone I respect and admire and wish to learn from, I am not in a rush. I am not looking at my watch. I am not counting the words they say. Instead, I am cherishing each moment, wishing them to linger longer even.

On to which way is correct: Is it Nam, or Namu? First Namu is two characters, so technically there is no such word or character as nam. There is either na or namu. I won’t go into great length here to talk about some of the characteristics of spoken Japanese except to say that frequently a final vowel sound such as ‘u’ is unvoiced. I say unvoiced because Japanese speakers are adamant that the sound still exists. So, though we do not hear it, to them it doesn’t go away. It still remains. From that perspective, no matter how you end up saying it, it still remains Namu. And that is how we should hold it in our minds as well. We should never let go of the whole word Namu, regardless whether we voice the entire word or not.

An ongoing topic of discussion among some folks concerns how to chant the Odaimoku. Is it Nam or Namu that precedes Myoho Renge Kyo? First, it is important to understand something about Namu as Namaste from which it derives. Namu is actually two characters in Chinese consisting of Na and Mu. This Namu is not a prefix to Myoho Renge Kyo, which is the full title to the Lotus Sutra. It is not merely an appending of one word, Namaste, to the other words of the title. Instead, it is a relational marker, which ties us, and our invocation of the title, to the contents of the Lotus Sutra. As such, it is important, regardless of how we say it, to be mindful of the implication of its use in the Odaimoku we recite. … [W]e open our self up in greeting, we empty our self in respect, and we fill our self up with devotion. I am not sure you will necessarily see this exactly the same way as I do, that is fair. I do think though that this is an important issue when one thinks about Namu.

The practice of chanting the Odaimoku was not intended to completely replace either the study of the sutra or the reading of the sutra, though it could replace the practice of reciting each of the twenty-eight chapters as a practice. In one of his letters to a believer he said it was permissible to replace the practice of reciting a chapter a day for twenty-eight days with the single practice of chanting the Odaimoku. It is important to note that he did not say it was wrong to chant the twenty-eight chapters, in fact in Nichiren Shu temples the entire Lotus Sutra is chanted on various cycles of twenty-eight days or in some cases fewer.