Our mission is to support individuals personal journey for self discovery and Awakening through chanting Namu Myoho Renge Kyo. To share the highs and lows of each others journey and to join hands together as we all seek an Awakened life of peace, joy and happiness.
Most people’s experience and awareness of Buddhism is around sitting in silent mediation. While silent mediation is a Buddhist practice, sometimes it isn’t for everyone. It can be very hard to sit still in today’s frenetic, noisy, chaotic World. And, counter-intuitively for some it causes anxiety.
Chanting is a wonderfully engaging meditation practice that is invigorating, calming and centering. It is a very powerful feeling of inclusion and fullness chanting with others along with the taiko drums in a safe and supportive community.
Chanting meditation cultivates “Clarity” for us to:
Feel Clearly, so we avoid damaging emotional attachments.
See Clearly, so we respond to circumstances in a positive and healthy manner.
Think Clearly, so we act with wisdom and compassion.
Chanting cultivates and nurtures our inner capacity to advance from darkness to light, from debilitating attachments to a knowing wisdom, from blind selfishness to insightful compassion.
Chanting gives us insight into cause and effect and the inter-being of all things giving rise to genuine love and compassion, for ourself and others, as we realize our connection with everything around us.
It gives us the greatest gift of all: The Freedom From Fear.
What is Nichiren Buddhism?
The Buddhist Religion is over 2500 years old offering a way for every person to become Awakened and realize their own buddha-nature. The Buddha never said he was a god nor that we should follow him to a heaven outside our own daily life. Instead he said, come try this and see for yourself. Buddha emphasized personal responsibility and accountability. In essence Buddhism teaches; save yourself, save the World. Mindfulness and compassion are noble human qualities that we all can cultivate and live through practice with trust and confidence that the way we live; our actions, words, and thoughts - can change us and influence those around us.
The Nichiren Buddhist School shares much with the other schools, we take refuge in the Three Treasures:
The Buddha,
The Dharma,
The Sangha.
The Buddha’s first teaching was the Four Noble Truths and is the foundation of his whole doctrine:
There is suffering in life.
Suffering has a cause.
Suffering has an end.
The Way is the Eightfold Path: Right View, Right Intention, Right Speech, Right Action, Right Livelihood, Right Effort, Right Mindfulness and Right Concentration.
The Mahayana tradition evolved the Eightfold Path into The Six Perfections: Generosity, Discipline, Patience, Endeavor, Meditation and Wisdom. The main difference is adding Generosity and Patience. Practice for others is critical to everyone's benefit and without Patience hatred and anger can overwhelm us.
Mahayana clarified the Buddha’s teaching on emptiness as The Three Truths:
Emptiness, no person, place, thing, observation or event has a permanent, unchanging “self.”
Provisional, every thing is conditioned by other things and are interdependent, interconnected arising through cause and effect. Our experience, and ourselves, exist in a single moment as a complex interplay of impermanence, interdependent cause and conditions and mental our perceptions.
Middle Way, all things are both Empty and Provisional. We do exist in a this moment but it is impermanent and we do not have an underlying, unchanging self. Understanding the Middle Way liberates us to experience the moment fully yet not be trapped in aversion or attraction which gives rise to suffering.
Nichiren’s great gift to us all was encapsulating all the Buddha’s teachings into a form accessible to all of us living in Today’s modern world; the Three Great Secret Laws:
Object of Devotion
Namu Myoho Renge Kyo
Place of Practice
Nichiren believed that Wisdom, the sixth perfection was key to awakening and yet nearly impossible to realize in the modern world, because life is too difficult and distracting for Wisdom to arise through all the noise and chaos. He believed that chanting of the title of the Lotus Sutra, Namu Myoho Renge Kyo, as the center of one’s practice was more accessible, easier and effective for non-monastic people, than traditional meditation.
Chanting Namu Myoho Renge Kyo
Nichiren taught a fully immersive, devotional style of practice chanting Namu Myoho Renge Kyo. Namu Myoho Renge Kyo is called Odaimoku, or “Sacred Title,” of the Lotus Sutra.
In mystical traditions the title of something encompasses the entirely of that thing. Nichiren believed that all the Buddha’s Teachings, Practices and Awakening was wrapped in the five jeweled characters of Myo Ho Ren Ge Kyo.
Nichiren taught that single-mindedly chanting Namu Myoho Renge Kyo with deep trust and confidence that the Buddha showed us the way and left behind a mantric formula that we too could attain the same awakening as the Buddha.
When we chant Namu Myoho Renge Kyo we plant the seed for Awakening deep in our sub-conscious where it can grow into a beautiful Lotus Flower of our own Awakening. When we chant Namu Myoho Renge Kyo we call upon our own inherent Buddha-nature to come forth so we too can enjoy all the qualities of the buddhas: Virtues, Wisdom, Power, Fearlessness, Meditations, Concentrations and Liberations.
Chanting Namu Myoho Renge Kyo creates the space around us and inside us so our inner Wisdom arises and guides us in our practice and life; giving us the power and capability to practice the Six Perfections and Eightfold Path.
By concentrating and visualizing enlightenment, while chanting Namu Myoho Rengo Kyo in our place of practice it creates a mystical feedback loop giving space for our Wisdom to grow and develop.
”Shodaigyo (literally Shodai: Chanting and Gyo: Practice) is to chant Namu Myoho Renge Kyo (the Odaimoku) intently, staring deeply into the heart of the Self, in identification of the purified mind.”
Single-mindedly chanting Namu Myoho Renge Kyo with humility, repentance, gratitude and devotion deeply trusting Myoho Renge Kyo as if our lives depended on it.
This is the Way.