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Errors Corrected: The Zen Cemetery )

Subject: One mo' time: the Zen cemetery
From: derekjuhl@netscape.net (Derek N.P.F. Juhl)
Date: 11/23/2002 11:38 AM Pacific Standard Time
Message-id: <35f999f2.0211231138.3dfad3b5@posting.google.com >

The Zen Cemetery

Soka Gakkai propagandists [Hi, Denise!] saw an opportunity to attack
Nikken Shonin when they realised that his family had an ancestral
grave located on grounds in a Zen cemetery. Soka Gakkai members were
soon given the impression that Nikken Shonin had performed a Zen
ceremony for his father - another previous High Priest of Nichiren
Shoshu - on these grounds. In reality the High Priest had performed a
Nichiren Shoshu ceremony for his ancestors at the grave.

It is an inevitable fact of life in Japan that Buddhists will have
ancestors whose graves are located in grounds of temples aligned with
different sects to their own. It is NOT against the Daishonin's
Buddhism for Buddhists to chant for their deceased ancestors and
maintain their graves. Such actions are described as acceptable in the
Kegisho - an early, exhaustive record of the practices of Nichiren


ordered the attendance of his own priesthood at the Nembutsu grave of
his late master Dozen-bo.

It is particularly hypocritical for the Soka Gakkai to attack Nikken
Shonin for having an ancestral tomb in a Zen Cemetery when it's own
President Ikeda has an ancestral grave in a Shingon cemetery -
maintained according to the rites of that religion !!!.

[photograph]

The Ikeda family grave - maintained according to the rites of the
Shingon religion.<<<<<

Derek Juhl

__________________________________________________ ____________

If High Priest Nichiu wrote such a thing, then he did not adhere to
the teachings of High Priest Nikko Shonin who founded the Nichiren Shu
Komon School (Fuji School), or the Gosho. Then that part of the
Kegisho of Nichiu should be considered an accretion by Nikko's School,
and discarded posthaste. Here is Nikko's 6th Admonition which
describes behavior of priests following the School he founded:

"Admonition 6. Lay believers should be strictly prohibited from
visiting [heretical] temples and shrines. Moreover, priests should not
visit slanderous temples or shrines, which are inhabited by demons,
even if only to have a look around. To do so would be a pitiful
violation [of the Daishonin's Buddhism]. This is not my own personal
view: it wholly derives from the sutras [of Shakyamuni] and the
writings [of Nichiren Daishonin]."

This is all explained in the following quote from the Gosho:

From "Opening the Eyes of Wooden and Painted Images" WND pg. 87

"Unless one who has grasped the essence of the Lotus Sutra conducts
the eye-opening ceremony for a wooden or painted image, it will be as
if a masterless house were to be occupied by a thief, or as if, upon
death, a demon were to enter one's body. When, in present-day Japan,
eye-opening ceremonies for the Buddha images are conducted according
to the True Word rite, demons occupy them and deprive people of their
lives, for a demon is also known as a robber of life. Moreover, devils
enter those images and deprive people of benefits; another name for a
devil is a robber of benefit. Because the people worship demons, they
will bring the country to ruin in their present lifetime, and because
they revere devils, they will fall into the hell of incessant
suffering in the next.

When the spirit departs from the body after death, a demon may enter
in its place and destroy one's descendants. This is what is meant by a
hungry demon that devours even itself."

So doing ceremonies at graveyards is a practice generally to be
avoided, if one does not know the life condition of the departed.
Perilous !!!

Slander is slander, no matter who asks you to commit it, it is wrong.

None of us is perfect. We are all real human beings who make mistakes,
but if we cling to the ideals sincerely, and do not discard them, then
our mistakes will work out.

If any real person were perfect and slander-free, then by the
principle of esho funi (oneness of person and environment), the real
world would be slander-free and we would have Kosen Rufu immediately.
It is our slanders that we take on, that allow us to exist in the Saha
(Impure) World.

What is really a grave slander is regression: making things worse,
dimming our life condition through ac***ulating yet another slander:
piling slander upon slander.

Hence the 26 Admonitions, to maintain a separate leading group of
priests, by setting rules of behavior very high, which allow the lay
people to discern what is a good priest and what is not even anymore a
priest.

Nikken and the other priests of Nichiren Shoshu are not priests, since
they do not strictly follow any of the 26 Admonitions of Nikko, they
are not priests of the Nichiren Shu Komon School (Fuji School).

They are Nikken School priests, and hence lay people are not enjoined
to follow them in any way, by the statements directed towards the
behavior of lay people towards priests of the Nichiren School, made by
Nichiren, Nikko, or anyone else.

One might as well follow any passersby on the street, perhaps even
that would be better than a corrupted Nichiren School priest. ( Is
this tautologically correct? Let me think...)

-Chas.

_________________________________________

From "The Entity of the Mystic Law", Writings of Nichiren Daishonin,
p. 418:

The Complete and Final Teaching on Perfect Enlightenment Sutra
declares, "The beginningless illusions and ignorance that beset all
living beings are all produced by the perfectly enlightened mind of
the Thus Come Ones."