Good morning. It is a very long time since I spoke here. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to transform my destiny and develop good fortune by speaking about the priesthood issue and the spirit of the Soka Gakkai. I am very happy to hear that the Tuesday morning daimoku crew have been studying about these issues.
Talking about the priesthood issue is not some boring history lesson. Rather, it is about today and it is about tomorrow. It goes to the heart of our individual practice and it goes to the question of whether our movement will endure.
In your districts, for several months you've been studying Sensei's lecture on the gosho, Letter to the Brothers. The Ikegami brothers were faced with an intricate and extraordinarily cunning manifestation of fundamental darkness. What is fundamental darkness? It is the belief that one person is better then another person. It is the belief that one group is better than another group. That you are better than or worse than, others.
Fundamental darkness divides us, makes us feel unworthy, alienated, arrogant or diminished. In today's terms it is something like the Occupy Wall Street's 1% versus 99%.
By contrast, the Lotus Sutra teaches us that we all equally have the great inner potentiality of Buddhahood. We all equally have a tremendous energy within. That is the energy of transformation, of revolution and liberation.
Fundamental illusion says, no, you don't have that energy. You aren't good enough. The spirit of Soka is the spirit to fight that fundamental darkness, to believe in and stand up for ourselves and our communities and our world.
In “Letter to the Brothers,” Nichiren writes, “The great demon of fundamental darkness can even enter the bodies of bodhisattvas who have reached near-perfect enlightenment.” Sensei explains that this possession takes place, not from the outside but from within. His lecture reads, “They are defeated by the darkness that is innate to life itself....this devilish nature gives rise to the desire to control others, or even take others lives, and causes destruction and war.”
So Sensei identifies fundamental darkness with the desire to control or manipulate others. Fundamental illusion is the belief that your will, your needs, are more important than, the needs of others.
A couple of years ago a friend of mine met with some top youth leaders of SGI USA. He asked them the following question. “After Sensei's passing, how will you be certain that our movement continues to follow the path of kosen-rufu? How will you make sure we do not fall into corruption and lose our way? How will you know our members are being led correctly?”
Good questions, aren't they? Serious questions, worthy of serious consideration. In fact, I believe these are the only questions worth asking today. As Sensei comes to the end of his life, we need to be engaged in a earnest dialogue on this topic. I am sure those young people thought carefully about my friend's questions. One of the young leaders answered, “I believe in cause and effect. I will find the person who shows the most actual proof and follow that person.” Another answered, “I believe in unity. I will find the person who has the most followers and follow them.” A third answered. “I trust the organization. I will follow whomever is the president.”
My friend found these answers unsatisfactory. He could easily imagine a future where a charismatic leader, with a lot of fortune, becomes president and leads us all to ruin. So my friend went to the writings of Nichiren to find its answer. The gosho was very clear. It says that to identify the votary of the Lotus Sutra you must find the person, or persons, who fight against fundamental darkness at the risk of their own lives. The true practitioner is the one who challenges great enemies for the sake of the happiness and the equality of all.
The gosho reads, “if I do not call forth these three enemies of the Lotus Sutra, then I will not be the votary of the Lotus Sutra. Only by making them appear can I be the votary. And yet if I do so, I am almost certain to lose my life.” WNDI Pg 53
This is what the writings of Nichiren teach us about identifying the practitioners of the Lotus and this is the spirit of Soka, the spirit to defeat fundamental darkness, to fight unyielding for your own happiness and the happiness of others. It is to believe in others' potentiality for enlightenment even when they've lost that belief themselves. As a side note, you may find it difficult from time to time to maintain that belief. You may occasionally doubt your own dignity and potentiality, or you may come to doubt it in your boss, your partner or your district coordinator. When those times come, I suggest you plunge into activities with your fellow SGI members. Because together we are taking action based on the Soka spirit, even when as individuals we falter. Your happiness, your families happiness and the future of our movement, depend on this struggle.
I will share a tiny bit of my experience with you, not because I have a particular attachment to the past; I don't; but because I am concerned for the future.
When I was young I had a remarkable experience. I wanted to meet our great mentor more than anything. I wanted to meet him more than I wanted to live. I was a sickly, sad and lonely boy. Not much different than the man who stands before you. Amazingly I was even more obnoxious, more self-righteous and more pompous then, than now.
It is a long and bizarre story how I came to meet Ikeda Sensei. And I don't have time to tell it here. But at the age of seventeen, just out of high-school, I spent a week with the greatest philosopher of our age. It was in a suburb of Paris in May of 1972. Ikeda Sensei was there to prepare for his dialogues with the English historian, Arnold Toynbee. He and Mrs. Ikeda also celebrated their wedding anniversary and for the first time outside Japan he celebrated his inauguration as Soka Gakkai President on May 3. I was there looking for him and with all the passion and clumsiness and arrogance of my youth I tried to help him for that week. I witnessed how, with his every step and every breath, he worked to encourage others.
From that one week with our great mentor I decided that my life was worth living. And I made a determination and decided that I would try to support him and try to protect the great work he was engaged in.
Life is long and has many ups and downs and unexpected twists and turns. I came to Calgary. Here the organization was led by a charismatic man who had great mental powers and influence. Unfortunately he lacked the mentor-disciple relationship and subsequently did not understand the spirit of Nichiren's writings and the Soka Gakkai. He sought division between people instead of equality and ultimately he fell into ruin, wounding many people in the process.
For some reason, in those days, whenever the priests came to Calgary, I was tasked with taking care of them and making arrangements for their ceremonies and events. So I got to know quite a few of them over the years. And when the high priest Nikken came to visit Vancouver I went there to assist in that movement. I witnessed a few small incidents that revealed the true nature of the Nichiren Shoshu priesthood. For example, there was a labour dispute in the hotel that the priest was staying. We had to make a change in their schedule as a result. It was very minor, as I recall, like what door the high priest would exit from or something else quite trivial. We met the high priest at the elevator and someone explained the change to him. His response was a stream of expletives. Now, I understand a wee bit of Japanese but I was unsure of it meant. But I remembered what I heard and later asked Yoshiko. She said she'd only heard such language in grade B Japanese gangster movies.
Finally in 1990 and 1991, fundamental darkness manifest as the priests tried to destroy our precious organization and destroy our precious teacher. I fought with all my heart and all my energy and time to protect our organization in my own small way. I did everything I could to visit every member and communicate with people in the community and university to explain what was going on. I started to write to six people via the new technology of Internet. The six became more and more, until finally I was writing to over 2,000 people around the world.
Of course, together with Ikeda Sensei, the members of SGI won the battle with the Nichiren Shoshu priesthood. Our victory was so decisive that many people today are only vaguely aware of the 'priesthood issue' and what I speak of may sound like ancient history.
But I believe that our struggle with the Nichiren Shoshu priests was only a warm-up for far more difficult battles ahead. Fundamental darkness, the belief in power and control and division, has not been defeated. It is alive in our society and in our lives. As a community of great Bodhisattvas we must experience and confront these dark functions both inside and out. It will manifest again. And we must prepare with the Gosho and with a serious internal struggle. Thank you very much for listening to me.
