Waking the Buddha (13 page)

Just as the discussion seemed to be winding down, he asked a question I had never considered before. “Really, what is the difference between chanting and meditation? And does that difference really account for the different experiences of American meditators and members of the SGI? Maybe there are also other factors involved.”

At first I insisted that the dynamic experience of vocal sound and the vigor with which SGI members chanted accounted for their more active, hands-on approach to life. Meditation was relaxing—and it could certainly give rise to feelings of peace and contentment—but wasn't it for these very reasons less likely to leave you feeling determined or “fired up”? Wasn't it less likely to make you truly energized and “awake”? He pointed out that there were meditative practices in the Tibetan tradition that produced the same feelings, even though they often involved no audible chanting. Practitioners of tantric meditation employed visualization exercises that led to higher levels of energy, greater physical and emotional vitality, and the determination to break through obstacles. These were well known and now widely practiced throughout the world, even though they tended to be focused on abstract spiritual goals like fulfilling the obligations of a bodhisattva way of life, rather than on the practical challenges and difficulties of daily life. He wondered if there might be some other factor at work in producing the “actual proof” that Soka Gakkai members claimed. That was when the conversation took an unexpected turn and we began to talk about mentor and disciple.

As we compared notes about interviewing Asian and American Buddhists about their experiences of Buddhist practice, we discovered that we'd both noticed the same anomaly. Ask an American convert and an Asian Buddhist the same question about their practice, and you'd get two completely different kinds of answer.

The difference was this. A person raised in America would speak frankly and openly about their individual experience with Buddhism and the spiritual benefits they felt they had gained from it. Ask someone raised in Asia, and they would speak about their teacher—the spiritual mentor who had taught them the practice— and the benefits of their
relationship
with that person. If they had experienced significant gains or improvements in their life, these would be explained in the context of that relationship, as if the relationship itself had been what made these things happen.

In the minds of Asian Buddhists we had interviewed, there was no sense of their spiritual practice as a thing belonging to themselves alone. It was part of a transmission. Ask them a question about their practice, and invariably you got the
story
of that transmission. It made sense to American Buddhist converts to speak of their practice in highly personalized, individualistic terms as something they had done themselves and gained benefit from. To Asian Buddhists, it was not an isolated practice that had changed or inspired them—it was the person. The difference was profound.

I had experienced this again and again over the ten-year period when I interviewed SGI members about their practice. Non-Asian SGI-USA members were more likely than their Japanese counterparts to report their experiences in individualistic terms. Even so, they nearly always mentioned within the first minute or two the leadership, inspiration, and encouragement offered to them by Daisaku Ikeda or other SGI members who had helped or inspired them as a key factor in their experience. In Japan, a typical conversation would begin with words like, “I first heard Sensei speak when I was twenty-eight” or “Everything I have achieved in my life is due to my relationship with Sensei.” Both SGI-USA members and their Japanese spiritual cousins had found in the mentor-disciple relationship a sense of personal connection and inspiration that had inspired them to seek happiness and fulfillment in their lives.

Admittedly, the mentor-disciple relationship is the most commonly misunderstood aspect of Soka Gakkai culture in the West today. Partly, this is due to the terminology involved. In English the term “mentor” is rarely used in spiritual settings, and “disciple” is used primarily to refer to the first twelve followers of Jesus. Christians may speak of “discipleship” as a religious ideal to aspire to, but they call themselves disciples at the risk of being thought spiritually presumptuous or psychologically unhinged. Applied to a living person, the word
disciple
usually has a secular meaning. It refers to a person whose devotion to a cause is so fervent it assumes an almost fanatical religious quality. Its religious uses are therefore often negative. Americans view discipleship as a psychologically perilous undertaking that may cost them their individuality and their will. Mentors are usually professors, business people, or artisans from whom there is something useful or practical to learn. Neither term means to the average American what it means to the SGI. Getting to know an SGI member or attending discussion meetings can eventually demonstrate for the average person the dynamic power of the mentor-disciple relationship, distinguishing it from, say, the guru-disciple relationship, which is usually much less centered on the life of the individual. But first he or she has to overcome an almost inborn cultural prejudice, reflected in our language itself, against the idea that the quality of a devotional relationship can be the determining factor in one's experience of success or failure in life.

As a people, Americans tend to be resourceful, individualistic, and self-reliant. Such virtues are commendable in themselves—a necessary aspect of the pioneer spirit that led our original settlers here. And yet, in embracing those very virtues we run the risk of isolating ourselves. Competition, which leads to greater economy, productivity, and efficiency in society at large, becomes a detriment to the individual when it keeps us from realizing that, as living beings, we stand or fall based on the quality of our relationship to others and to the world. Not one of us exists alone.

Though its wisdom is simple and universal, this principle has been the foundation of Buddhist teachings from its very earliest days. The Buddha taught a doctrine of interdependence and inclusivity that delivers suffering beings from loneliness and isolation, allowing them to build a life based on those positive, progressive values that are of benefit not only to the individual but to society at large. But that wisdom begins with a relationship, and the quality of that relationship determines whether we can attain such wisdom or not. If it is a relationship of mutual trust and devotion, that relationship becomes the foundation for a happy life. If it is built on suspicion or contempt, there is no basis for progress. There is no way out of suffering and loneliness. In which case life really
is
suffering, just as the Buddha taught—because then we live and die alone.

This is, I believe, the real message behind the mentor-disciple relationship now said to be the foundation of the Soka Gakkai and the heart of its message. On the one hand, that message consists of the one word
life
that Josei Toda saw flash before his mind's eye in prison during a moment of sudden illumination. It is likewise the message that Daisaku Ikeda has affirmed countless times, and in myriad ways, in his speeches, dialogues, and writings. But what is life if not an ever-widening circle of dynamic, interdependent relationships? And what will the
quality
of those relationships be without a model for them? That is the purpose of the mentor—to provide the model for life.

T
HE
FAMILY
is the basic social unit in all human societies. It has therefore long been the glue that holds spiritual traditions together. No spiritual tradition has ever survived in the absence of family. Even those that did not directly support or condone family life— celibate orders like Theravada Buddhism in South Asia or Shakerism in America—were still dependent for their continued survival on families who sponsored their practice financially or provided an influx of new members with each passing generation. The life of the family is intimately connected with religion—or should be. A religion that ignores the role of the family, or that offers nothing of value for families, is not long for this world.

Several years ago I wrote an article that gained wide attention in America, eventually making its way into the
Wall Street Journal
and the
New York Times.
The article was called “Dharma Family Values (Or, Why American Buddhism Must Change or Die),” and its premise was simple: In America, Buddhism tended to be a solitary pursuit rather than a family affair; therefore, its days were probably numbered. The current generation of “Boomer Buddhists” would die, leaving no lasting American Buddhist movement behind.

The problem was that fathers or mothers would go off on meditation retreats once or twice a year, or attend regular meetings at their local Zen center or Tibetan Buddhist temple, but they seldom took their children along. Few Buddhist centers in America had regularly scheduled activities for families. They didn't even have Buddhist holidays to build a family culture around, like Jews did with Passover and Christians with Easter and Christmas. Perhaps most significant of all, they tended not to offer christenings, weddings, or funerals. You could meditate as a Buddhist in America, and you could chant, drum, and in some places even beg for alms, but you couldn't get born or married. In many cases, you couldn't even die as a Buddhist. When it came to the kinds of observances that are sacred to families, Buddhism had little to offer.

The article generated a remarkable range of responses. Some American Buddhists were angry at me for what they regarded as an unjust attack. Others, mostly young Buddhists with families, wrote to thank me for pointing out the obvious flaw in the American Buddhist fabric. Years later, the article continues to get cited in newspapers and magazine articles about Buddhism, and the debate it started continues in American Buddhist centers and temples around the country.

In the year it appeared, there was only one American Buddhist group that responded enthusiastically to what I wrote in “Dharma Family Values,” and that was the SGI-USA. Admittedly, I had praised the SGI for its efforts to include young people. The SGI met mostly in members' homes, had meetings for teens, and even very young children were often included in its activities. It hadn't evolved any yearly Buddhist holidays that I knew of (though the SGI had plenty of celebrations of its own), and I didn't think it had a formal ceremony in place for christenings, but on the whole they were doing better than most. Not only that, when the article came out, the SGI was the only organization to seek advice on how they might do more for families than they were already doing. They cared about families and about young people and wanted to be sure they felt included in the movement's activities.

This was the most hopeful sign for the future I had seen from any group, and it was about that time I began advising other American Buddhist organizations to study the SGI and imitate as many of its practices and policies as possible. As I wrote to a Buddhist teacher friend, “You don't have to agree with their teachings or adopt their style of practice, but you'd be a fool not to notice where they're succeeding and learn from it.”

In Japan, where the Soka Gakkai originated, there is a long tradition of what might be called “Family Buddhism”—so long, in fact, that many now consider it an intractable problem. The term “Funeral Buddhism” has been used in recent years to describe institutions which, having outlived their use and therefore no longer relevant to life in a modern, secular state, are now only a shell of their former selves. Such institutions offer funerals and memorial services but little else, and these at exorbitant prices. Recently, some Japanese families have felt so financially abused by the Buddhist temples that their families have maintained an affiliation with, sometimes for many centuries, that they have gone so far as to hire freelance priests to say the services instead. These families believe that their temple priest has nothing real or legitimate to offer them, and so they simply pay for the service itself. Any priest will do. In such cases, the relationship that once existed between family and temple is itself in need of a funeral. It is now officially dead.

The vitality of the Soka Gakkai stands in stark contrast to the “Funeral Buddhism” so prevalent in Japan. Generations of Soka Gakkai members have now attended schools founded upon Makiguchi's theory of value-creating education, and Soka University now has graduates of its various institutions teaching in its halls, both in the United States and in Japan. As time goes on, perhaps these institutions will no longer be so closely identified with the Soka Gakkai as a religious institution, just as today, in America, a student can attend a four-year university without every learning that it was originally a religiously sponsored institution or that it maintains a religious affiliation today. For now, however, there remains a lively and inspired sense among the students at these institutions that their experience at home, at school, and in some cases even at work, are all coherently focused.

I would maintain that this cohesive kind of experience is possible because the Soka Gakkai has introduced a new paradigm—both in religion and in religiously inspired education—that embraces the full range of life enthusiasms. Within Soka Gakkai families, there are surely children who grow up and move on to other things, just as there are in all families. But this tends to happen more in families that have lost their spark, families that are so bound by tradition that the only way to experience freedom is to
break
with that tradition, renouncing some aspect of it, if for no other reason than to make room for something new. For now the Soka Gakkai
is
that new thing. In fact, the Soka Gakkai may well be the newest thing in the world.

In the end, it was that new thing that led me to study the Soka Gakkai International in depth and conduct dialogues with so many of its members. At the beginning of that study I posed myself a question: What does a religious movement like the SGI mean for the larger economy of religious cultures? What does the appearance of the SGI mean spiritually for the world at large?