I hesitate to delete anyone’s sincere expressions of faith, but I find Nichiren’s claims to exclusive legitimacy ugly and offensive and very un-Buddhist. I’m turning off comments to prevent further attempts to proselytize.

Not really. I have no experience with Theravada, but the whole point of Zen and many of the other meditative Mahayana sects is direct and intimate experience of the Absolute. Nothin’ like a little kensho to knock your socks off, son.

I’m very happy for you that you’ve found your practice. However, the wisdom of the many different forms of practice is that some practices work better for some people than for other people. As we say, different strokes for different folks. The Nichiren approach leaves me dead stone cold, and if that were the only form of Buddhism available I’d still be a Unitarian today. But if it works for you, then stick with it and chant away.

The act of chanting exercises that nature, which results in it getting stronger over time and enables a person to positively influence their environment. We are always in relationship with the environment and sometimes it’s pretty negative and ugly. How that negativity and ugliness affects us is clear, if you think about it. Imagine being able to have a strong enough condition of happiness which positively influences that negativity and ugliness around you rather than the other way around. That’s the essence of the practice. Daisaku Ikeda has always referred to this as the Human Revolution and stresses that the goal of the practice and the organization is to enable people (empower them) to become happy and positively influence their communities. It’s the ultimate in grass roots campaigns to change the world into a humanistic, peaceful, happy world, one person at a time.

I recommend that people try chanting and I have seen many positive results over the years when they do. And none of the teachings contain any commandments or mandates that create inconsistencies with other established religions. So you don’t have to worry about hell or damnation if you try it, any more than you would worry about it if you were exercising your muscles at the gym. Exercise your Buddha nature by chanting Nam Myoho Renge Kyo and look for the actual proof that will follow.

That said, one day I decided, for the heckuvit, to try out Nom Yo Ho Renge Kyo with a focus on changing my financial situation. I sat down on the cushion and spent about 15 minutes chanting and paying attention to my physiological/emotional changes.

I quit after that short stint, because the effect was a burning power building in me. I thought, “Man, this is playing with fire.” I learned from some friends, afterwards, about “Buddhist” relatives or acquaintances who had become truly vile, ugly people while involved in SGI. The intolerance may be part of it, but my thought is, check the motivation - whatever is the core motivation of your practice with this chant, it will be expanded an multiplied until it becomes your entire life. So if you go in saying, “I lack money, I want more,” that lack and wanting will be your primary life view, no matter how much wealth you have. If you could have a Mahayana motivation, bodhicitta, love and compassion for all beings, maybe the outcome would be different.

The group was led by a former Catholic nun, who seemed to have either been attracted to, or brought with her, all the elements of Catholicism that most former Catholics I know left to get away from. The central authority, the demand that the laity not think, the mindless ritual (for example, we were told not to wonder, much less ask, what the chant means), all that stuff.

I did not attend a second gathering. Maybe good for some people, not my kind of thing.

Shouldn’t a good Buddhist have been cleaning stuff?
Anyway, I long for the day when somebody gets elected who refuses to discuss religion and insists that because they serve a diversified secular state their views on religion are nobody’s business. It’ll never happen, but maybe, someday..
Regards,
Griff