And so it starts, bright and early Sunday morning, September 17, 2006.

I am joining my friend Troy for a very special meeting at the San Francisco chapter of Soka Gakkai International, a fast spreading international Buddhist network dedicated to promoting “peace, culture and education though personal change and social contribution.” Lofty goals. I, for the morning, was dealing with a much simpler problem. After a lifetime of Sunday mornings, it seems I lost my morning worship rhythm. By the time I climbed my way over Petraro Hill and towards the simple, stately compound, I was just about ready to fall dead asleep right then and there. It was a start though, and nothing starts easy, so pushing my shades up my nose and munching on a fresh piece of gum, I went meet with Troy inside of the Ikeda auditorium.

“I hope that when you experience hardship, you will always change it into something better to fuel your dreams. I myself have experienced malicious slander and criticism many times. But I consider these experiences as the honor of life presented to me for fulfilling my mission. Because I think in this manner, I fear nothing and joyfully advance along the path that I have chosen.”

These are the words of Daisaku Ikeda, Nichiren Buddhism practitioner, writer, and president of SGI. Born of a poor parents and hard work, his is both a remarkable and familiar story. The cloud of World War 2 loomed large in his early life, killing off his brother and providing the seed for a lifelong quest for peace. Like many influential movers of the people, this quest leaded neatly into a search for spiritual fulfillment. In his late teens he met peace activist and Nichiren Buddhist monk Josei Toda. His journey from then to now has led to a range of books, a UN Peace Medal, the record for the most honorary doctorates held by one person and of course, me, walking into a dark room laced with gold and off-white.

I rush in, slide in the back beside Troy and yawn a bit too loud. In a low sound that I almost mistake for the background hum of the radio, chants fill in the space between the greetings of friends. Troy sits unnoticing of me, washing sky blue beads together between his raised hands and training his eyes on the scroll mounted in the middle of the stage.

Nam-myoho-renge-kyo Nam-myoho-renge-kyo Nam-myoho-renge-kyo

The room fills at it’s own pace and the lights rise slowly on stage. A man in black walks on with a microphone, knells before the scroll and intones along with us.

Nam-myoho-renge-kyo Nam-myoho-renge-kyo Nam-myoho-renge-kyo

The scroll, scrawled in black ink with Sanskrit and Chinese characters of various sizes, is the Gohonzon. It was intended as a pure expression of enlightenment and looking at it, I couldn’t help but think of standing front of big Jackson Pollock painting. The criss-crossing patterns of character strokes left my eyes always exploring, subtracting out sections and meshing them back together again. The invocation rose to a roar around me.

Dong

Naammm
Mmyooo
hoooooo
Rennnnn
geeeeeee
kkkyooo

The man in black hits a dark glazed bell and guides us out the chorus and into a rapid-fire recitation of the Lotus Sutra, the height of Buddhist wisdom in this particular tradition. Troy whips out a small booklet and follows along the roller-coaster of long vowels sounds. The level of commitment was evident here, as some with eye locked on the Gohonzon rattled of the words with effortless focus, while some, heads down, reserved to scan across the page and mumble what they could. Before long the bell ranged out once again and the audience sat in silence as its trembling afterglow trialed off into nothing. Open my eyes, the man in black was gone, in his place tall young women in a flowing layer skirt grinned like a 5 year old.

“Hellooo,” she said warmly, “My name’s Gloria and I would like to welcome you to the 3rd Annual SGI Art Conference. This years theme: ☺ Let your dreams take flight!”

It was a weird contrast, but she was pretty and I liked art. I immediately assumed modern reproductions of the Gohonzon, vast picture planes of green with a little black stroke in middle to meditate on, or clever canvas bare and raw hold only the word “Nothing” in the middle in ink. The true was much realer then that. Dimming the light and turning on a projector, the room is filled with the smooth jazz stylings of “The Rimshots” as handmade newsletters and photo portraits from weddings flash across the screen. Some of it impressed me more, but it struck me fairly quickly that the point was not what was “good” or not. The focus seems more on the work of the community in whatever form it took. It was reflected in the crowd, all in comfortable, casual wear, laughing at pictures from that events and hooting when their friend’s work flashed on the screen. As is probably the central lesson of this project, the more one strips off the falseness of the mystical, the more one comes the truth: that religion, ultimately, is just about people coming together in whatever way they can.

I fell asleep sometime between the aria and the start of live feed of one of organization’s teachers. I didn’t mean to. I fought to keep focus all through the long slideshows and praising the work of organization. But it was, you know, dark. And they had comfy chairs.

“People go though life feeling they are making big changes. Yes, lets go get that new job, react this new plateau. When they get there, though, they find it is eventual the same movie, with different characters swapped in. Life become ever repeating chore.”

I snapped back into attention at this. I myself has just started work again after a four-month hiatus. I expected things to come together better this time. But ultimately, it seems you are always left with what you had in the first place. A job. A means to an end you would gladly do without if you could. Same shit, a different day.

“But, by learning to let go these…these expectations of life; by instead focusing on the inside life, the peace that lives within; here we can truly take control our path and live the dreams we have held inside of us since childhood. This is why….”

“Brother, it is one a clock and I’m getting hungry.” Troy’s beads are all packed up inside a little red embroidered case. I look at my cell phone and rub my eyes as the crowd’s claps see off the speaker. The screen arise and in the middle of the stage, the Gohonzon shines brilliantly.

“Let’s go.”

[SGI San Francisco Cultural office]
[2450 17th Street, San Francisco CA 94110]
[(415) 255 - 6007]