Waking the Buddha (8 page)

That new way of living was based on an awareness of the fundamental dignity of human life. But to attain that awareness, one first had to identify oneself as fundamentally
human
rather than being merely a member of a nation, a religion, or a tribe.

At the beginning of his life mission, when Josei Toda stated his value-creating philosophy with the simple words “the Buddha is life itself,” he did not mean that the Buddha's life was the life of a person living in Japan. Though in the beginning his mission was directed toward the impoverished and downtrodden people of postwar Japan, it was never restricted to purely nationalistic concerns. It was simply the right place to start—with his own devastated country and his own suffering people. But from the beginning, his religious vision broke the tribal mode. Even in his later struggles with various adversaries—with the Nichiren Shoshu hierarchy and with the Japanese government—he was aware that the true nature of his struggle was with “the claws of evil” hidden in the depths of the human heart itself. This was his only adversary in life, and in truth the only real adversary of humanity itself. When he called for the death penalty for anyone who ventured to use weapons of mass destruction, he was calling for all of humanity to unite in resisting the only force that could possibly destroy them—the roots of the three poisons: greed, anger, and ignorance.

These were the hidden claws in the depths of the human heart that needed to be eradicated. They needed to be ripped out. They actually needed to be sentenced to death. Buddhism has sometimes been criticized for its arms-length approach to the problem of evil. In fact, religious scholars sometimes question whether Buddhism, which shows such sober, analytical detachment on the issue, has any doctrine of evil at all. But Toda's Buddhism had no such problem. He wasn't afraid to identify evil or to grapple with it. In his cell in Toyotama Prison, he had grasped the fundamental life force of the universe, an energy that existed equally in the life of every individual and therefore affirmed the dignity and value of all. To champion that dignity in the world—not just as a religious theory but
actively
—meant being willing to engage with its opposite. That opposite was the bomb. For what is a nuclear warhead—even when it is stockpiled—if not the ultimate symbol of a heartless and indifferent attitude toward life? Could you be enlightened without being awake to the presence of such an “enemy”? Could you be a Buddha and sleep soundly while thousands of warheads were poised and waiting, pointed at human beings all across the globe?

In making his declaration calling for the abolition of nuclear weapons, Toda called for all humanity to unite, crossing traditional boundaries of tribe and country, victor and vanquished, in opposing a force that was truly the enemy of all. It was the first time in human history that the shape and contour of that enemy had become fully apparent. Until then, human beings had always been content to war among themselves, satisfied with the traditional notion of “enemy as other.” Now, for the first time, they faced an enemy with the power to destroy them all.

At first it must have seemed to Toda's listeners that he was talking about the scientists who had developed such weapons, or politicians who had authorized their use, or perhaps the soldiers who had deployed them. But they quickly realized that the real enemy, whom Toda referred to as “a devil incarnate, a fiend, a monster,” was much vaster and more powerful than that. Storm the palace or the presidium and you might find its minions, but the demon itself could be found only by searching out the deepest recesses of the human psyche. This enemy was far more dangerous than any single nation, territory, or tribe. That was because it had the power to destroy
all
nations,
all
territories, and
all
tribes—and given the freedom to exercise its influence over humanity, it was almost certain to do exactly that.

In retrospect, the new paradigm bequeathed by Josei Toda to his successor, Daisaku Ikeda, and to the rest of the Soka Gakkai youth was more than an antidote to the single problem of nuclear proliferation. In truth, Toda was offering the solution to all other manner of global problems—from terrorism to economic expansionism to global climate change. For none of these problems can even be addressed unless men and women across the globe become empowered as individuals through a process like Human Revolution. Only a paradigm that expands their vision beyond the traditional boundaries separating human beings and defining their interests apart from one another can possibly address problems that exist on a truly global scale.

The advent of nuclear weapons brought with it the necessity for a new way of thinking. For the first time in history, human beings became capable of destroying all human life. Likewise today, the problem of global climate change cannot be solved by nationalities or special interest groups acting alone. Global problems require global solutions, even though they must be implemented locally. And global solutions require a global consciousness—and the willingness of all humanity to work together as one. But as with all radical shifts in consciousness, it has to begin somewhere. In Buddhism, I believe we can trace that beginning to September 8, 1957.

T
ODA'S
HEALTH
deteriorated rapidly in the months following his anti-nuclear declaration until his death in a Tokyo hospital on April 2, 1958. But his diminished vitality seemed to sharpen his resolve. In his final decisions as leader of the Soka Gakkai we can find a much more discerning sense of mission, as though certain problems had become perfectly clear to him only with his passing of the torch.

The first was his decision to remove those Soka Gakkai leaders who routinely used the organization for their own monetary benefit. In the early days, some leaders took advantage of their influence among a rapidly growing membership to peddle insurance policies and other goods and services. The sheer size of the Soka Gakkai, Toda observed, virtually ensured that it would attract a certain number of parasites who, if left unchecked, would devour the organization from within. The second was to eliminate the system of allowing “courtesy positions” to certain individuals, rather than awarding such leadership roles based on effort and ability. These recommendations were instantly followed, resulting in the dismissal of forty-six leaders on March 28, less than a week before Toda's death.

These were reasonable recommendations that came as a relief to most of the members. But their real significance lies in the fact that both were safeguards against stagnation. Having passed the flame of the Soka Gakkai's teachings on to its younger members, Toda was concerned about any problems within the organization that might lead to it going out. For there are only two ways a candle flame can be extinguished. The first is when a wind or some other force acts upon it. Toda had taken precautions against this already by building a very strong “housing” for his flame in the structure of the Soka Gakkai itself. The second was more dangerous, however, and far more insidious. That is because it simply involved letting the candle continue to burn. For even if no other force acted against it, eventually the wax would be exhausted, and the candle would go out. The only protection against this second danger was continuous outreach—spreading the teaching to others, “even to the fiftieth person,” to see how far it would go. The flame must be continuously passed along.

It was this last problem that Toda wrestled with and sought to address by ensuring that the Soka Gakkai leadership would remain actively involved in spreading the teachings of Nichiren Buddhism instead of degenerating into a commercial or authoritarian structure—a destiny that is almost inevitable in religious organizations of a certain size, unless measures are taken to prevent it. Sharing the practice with others was already integral to Nichiren Buddhism; thus Toda felt doubly justified in making it the principal aim of the Soka Gakkai going forward. But it served a practical purpose as well. Toda's genius lay in the bringing together of just these two considerations—the spiritual and the practical—and joining them as one. His spiritual journey may have had its beginning in the “Ceremony in the Air” of the Lotus Sutra, but over the course of that journey, true to the spirit of a Bodhisattva of the Earth, his feet never left the ground.

It was this practical spirituality that Toda passed along to Daisaku Ikeda, the young man he met in August 1947, who became his closest disciple and confidant for the remainder of his life. According to Ikeda, Toda spoke to him a number of times during his final days about the need to spread Nichiren Buddhism beyond the shores of Japan. Then, sometime in late March 1958, just a week or so before he died, Toda woke from a dream in which he had arrived in Mexico to find many people waiting for him. “I want to go,” he said enthusiastically but then quickly recovered his wits, reminding Ikeda, and perhaps himself as well, that the younger man would have to complete that mission. A while later, having given the matter more thought, he said to Ikeda: “The world is your challenge; it is your true stage. It is a vast world. There are many peoples, many races. Some nations are democratic and some socialist. And religious beliefs differ from country to country as well. Some do not permit religious propagation. We'll have to start thinking about how to disseminate the Mystic Law in such places. After all, realizing peace and happiness for humanity is the fundamental aim of Buddhism.” Toda left in Ikeda's hands a national organization on the verge of going global—an organization which, moreover, would
have
to spread globally in order to remain healthy and fulfill its greater mission. But there remained one urgent matter to attend to before Toda could die in peace.

That the Soka Gakkai's teachings were too big for any one country to contain—including Japan—was clear to Toda by the end of this life. Human Revolution was a model of spiritual practice that could—and
should—
spread around the world to whoever could benefit from it. But there remained one barrier to spreading those teachings outside of Japan. That was the Nichiren Shoshu priesthood which, until that time, had served as the Soka Gakkai's “anchor” to traditional Buddhism in Japan.

In the beginning that anchor was necessary. It provided continuity with the past through ritual and through its focus on the teachings of Nichiren. Its temples also served as meeting places for larger Soka Gakkai gatherings. And, then, both Makiguchi and Toda had become converts to Nichiren Shoshu Buddhism at the beginning of their respective paths. Each reinterpreted the Lotus Sutra-based teachings of Nichiren Buddhism in ways that the priesthood would never have dreamed of, especially to the degree they used those teachings to empower lay people to think and act for themselves. Nevertheless, there was a real connection—at least in the beginning. But there was no way that connection could last.

The truth is,
no
traditional religious organization could have maintained its connection to the Soka Gakkai as it grew and spread. The Soka Gakkai's teachings on individual self-empowerment, coupled with a model of practice centered on discussion meetings, would have broken free of virtually
any
school of Buddhism. Had Zen or Pure Land Buddhism resisted the forces of wartime fascism and evolved a paradigm like the Soka Gakkai's, the result would have been exactly the same. Implicit to the Soka Gakkai's ongoing critique of the Nichiren Shoshu sect is an idea that Nichiren Shoshu and the Soka Gakkai could have remained one had the priesthood behaved in a more virtuous manner—had it been less grasping, less obsessed with exerting priestly control over the activities of the lay organization. The problem with this view is its failure to recognize that the Soka Gakkai, in following the first stirrings of an inclusive, humanitarian-based global ethic, had broadened the idea of religious virtue to such a degree that the priesthood could no longer understand it. Virtue was no longer a matter of properly tending to rituals and rules of a priestly religion. In fact, it involved forgoing a lot of outworn rules and ritual in order to spread the teaching more widely than ever before. There was no way that a small priestly sect was going to give up control over an increasingly prosperous and influential lay group without a fight, nor could it exert much influence over a group thousands of times its size, especially one that grew as fast as the Soka Gakkai. They'd never have been able to keep up. Nichiren Shoshu finally solved the problem in 1991 with a preemptive strike, excommunicating the Soka Gakkai's entire membership, an act that a religion professor friend of mine once compared to the flea divorcing the dog.

Jesus of Nazareth, who once initiated a new religious paradigm of his own, described the inevitable war between the new and the old in this way:

And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the wine will burst the skins, and both the wine and the wineskins will be ruined. No, he pours new wine into new wineskins. (Mark 2:22)

All of which suggests that there are deeper and far more powerful spiritual and historical forces at work in the separation of the Soka Gakkai from Nichiren Shoshu. After all, it was only when the Soka Gakkai slipped the cultural moorings of traditional Nichiren Buddhism that it was able to travel to 192 other countries around the globe.

It's all there, in Josei Toda's words to the young Ikeda, “The world is your challenge.” He might have added that that world, and the Soka Gakkai's proper relationship to it, was a profound and puzzling enigma Ikeda would have to solve.

O
N
A
UGUST
14, 1947, ten years to the day before I was born in a small town called Mexico, Missouri, Daisaku Ikeda met Josei Toda for the first time. When I first discovered the date of that meeting, and then learned of Toda's dying wish to travel to Mexico, I reflected on the humorous coincidence. The tiny town of my birth was, of course, not the Mexico of Toda's dream, and the image of those 1950s Missouri “Mexicans” waiting in rapt anticipation for the arrival of Nichiren Buddhism was unlikely to say the least. Nevertheless, I couldn't help wondering if, as the result of Daisaku Ikeda's tireless efforts to internationalize the movement, sixty years later the Soka Gakkai International hadn't spread even there. How far could it go?