"Silence": Film Review

Back in the early '80s, I bought Shusaku Endo's novel Sílence. Finally issued in paperback, and with me enrolled at a Jesuit university, I rushed to savor it. A harrowing novel (see my linked review), this angered at least on Amazon the likes of sensitive Catholics unable to accept that a priest under pressure after witnessing the torture and death of others who died for one's presence might succumb.

The end of that same decade, Martin Scorsese read it. It was recommended by New York's Episcopal bishop in the wake of the controversy over his adaptation of another controversial work, The Last Temptation of Christ. Marty vowed to make it a movie, if he could figure out how to capture its hold.

He did, and as the scholar of American Catholicism Paul Elie's The Passion of Martin Scorsese in The New York Times Magazine observes: the book and the film join well. For the subject "locates, in the missionary past, so many of the religious matters that vex us in the postsecular present — the claims to universal truths in diverse societies, the conflict between a profession of faith and the expression of it, and the seeming silence of God while believers are drawn into violence on his behalf." Elie locates in the filmmaker's oeuvre a pursuit of the "poisoned arrow of religious conflict" and poison indeed surfaces in the film. I saw it at a premiere in Westwood, a block from the bookstore where I found the novel decades ago. The excitement of seeing this in the Regency, a cavernous 1931 Art Deco palace filled with maybe a thousand people, was palpable, for the director would be there for a panel afterwards. But I was unsure if many there knew what a story they'd face.

Face, as the image of Christ, in the film as Scorsese explained taken from El Greco --for the original work's use of Piero della Francesca did not transfer to the big screen when tested-- confides a human trust in its viewer, that He would accompany its beholder through whatever moral perils lay ahead. The divinity of Jesus is of course in Christian orthodoxy inseparable from his humanity, but for the director, the eyes had it. They convey the distance and the direction proper to a bold Jesuit follower.

The film itself, 2:40, unfolded slowly. It was difficult for me to gain full immersion as a woman two seats down connected as she proclaimed to the producer checked her smartphone regularly, and a man behind me kept chuckling at dramatic moments perhaps taken by the nervous or shallow as comedy. There is a bit of levity, in the tragic Judas-figure of Kichijiro keeps popping up at tense moments begging for the protagonist Fr. Sebastian Rodrigues' confession, Yet that moved me, not to laughter, but to their poignant bond, which gains significance as the narrative turns to the priest's struggles.

That Japanese convert-traitor asks where is the place for a weak man in this world. A common plaint. Scorsese's vision raises up Rodrigues as an alter Christus in Passion Play form, entering twice cities on a donkey while being pelted with stones and abuse. I suppose this fits, on the other hand, any priest. Yet the acting skills and the power of the necessarily didactic script by Jay Cocks and Scorsese project Endo's investigation well. As a child he was baptized, and he questioned here and in The Samurai (set among Franciscans of the Mexican conquest) the ability of a foreign people to truly give in to an invader, or a promise of liberation for the poor within a peaceful and carefree paradise, when the basic tenets of this faith were garbled, as the "Son of God" comes rendered from their native Sun.

As Rodrigues replies, that land is poisoned. Nothing can grow there, the Japanese powers reason, as all rots in this island swamp. The tension between apostasy and martyrdom, fidelity and surrender tightens the energy. Early on, all is painterly fog in the cold and chilly islands where the renegade Christians have gone underground as relentless crackdowns have reduced the 300,000-strong community in the wake of St. Francis Xavier to a remnant, hunted down and all burnt or drowned.

Later, in Nagasaki, clarity returns, amidst the regimented architecture, ranks, and sumptuary distinctions. Rodrigues' predecessor, Ferrara, speaks eloquently for moral compromise, to spare pain. As their translator adds, no man should take away another's spirit. I watched this with engagement. I presume it may not have swayed all (my wife advised cutting twenty minutes and squirmed at the debates I found in jesuitical tutelage as fascinating and stimulating). But as Scorsese mentioned in the after-film panel (joined by production designer Dante Ferretti, actors Liam Neeson, Adam Driver, Andrew Garfield, Issei Ogata, editor Thelma Schoonmaker, and producer Irwin Winkler--and a fawning host who called the director "Maestro"), he hoped the film would bring "peace of mind."

I second his ambition. Elie's skillful article locates the film within the inculturation aims of imperialism and religious missions. (But he overlooks as do many that the novel was translated by a Belfast Jesuit, Fr. William Johnston, who taught at Sophia University run by the Society in Tokyo, and who himself embraced Zen.) Do we insist the newcomers to a practice go over to the practices of the faith? Or as the Jesuits did in China, do we accommodate the faith to indigenous folkways and traditions? St. Boniface, when he preached to the Frisians in the 8th century, was told he should not destroy the temples and groves, but make them into centers of worship and pilgrimage for a new generation. Clever, as this supplants rather than terminates the sacred connection. But the fervent and fundamentalists may refuse compromise, and thus this challenging film and novel remain relevant.

As Pope Francis, the first Jesuit installed in the Vatican as such, told Scorsese on the film's first showing in Rome, may the film bear much fruit. That's a message all of us can applaud, this season.

David Mitchell's "The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet": Book Review

Certainly, the ambitious tales David Mitchell tells, by this his fifth novel, involve dreams, culture clashes, and searches for immortality, creepy or seductive. As parts of "Ghostwritten" and "Cloud Atlas" took place in Asia, so "Number 9 Dream" emerged within Japan. As with "Cloud," a British adventurer and Low Countries contexts appear, and as with "Black Swan Green," a study of an empire at war hovers in the margins, and here these contexts become the center stage, 1800 Nagasaki.

"The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet" follows an ordinary Zeelander clerk in the employ of the Dutch East India Company to Japan, to clean up the books of Dejima, the trading outlet kept apart from the Japanese mainland, an outlet in the harbor, for the rulers strive to keep Christian impacts away, after the natives had eradicated the converts from well over a century earlier (Shusaku Endo's "Silence" (Amazon; see blog) powerfully conveys this era, when Portuguese Jesuits tried to colonize the proud islands.)

Mitchell opens this novel with one of two great set-pieces, a childbirth operation and then a removal of a bladder stone, with graphic imagery, tense medical action, and well-elaborated, gruesome details. His research, as with the many stories told by sailors pressed into Dutch service, adds verisimilitude. I admit the title does not seem to apply: "a thousand autumns" sounds nice, but it doesn't match the duration. The pace moves cleanly, and Mitchell as with his other novels does not show off his prose. He employs it diligently to elaborate characters in believable fashion, and he juggles a lot of factual knowledge that must be inserted into the narrative adroitly, although a few scenes find even garrulous sailors or conniving diplomats reciting lengthy explanations that seem to stretch credulity just a bit.

You get to know those on the ship gradually, and like Jacob, you are introduced step-by-step to the predicament faced by the Dutch traders as forces on the mainland and in Britain encircle their outpost. Mitchell keeps the pace of this sprawling historical narrative relatively brisk. The first parts alternate between Jacob and a Ogawa, a Japanese noble, for reasons that I cannot divulge, but which draw in Orito, a midwife, and a mysterious monastery with suitably eerie rituals and menacing presence. Mitchell enjoys the machinations that he sets in motion, and you will too, in a old-fashioned story full of longing, adventure, backstabbing, and court intrigue. While some parts slow down, the latter third, as one key character's fate is left dramatically hanging, opens up more perspectives, such as the slaves, and allows one to see more into both the Japanese setting often left at a distance from the Dutch and onboard the British vessel which enters to complicate matters far more.

It's always fun to trace character lineages from novel to novel in Mitchell. Here, I caught an ancestor of "Number 9" protagonist Eiyi Miyake, a housekeeper from the same island whom Orito knows. Also, Mo Muntervary of "Ghostwritten" finds a Co. Cork ancestor who roams very far from Ireland.

Suffice to say that this remained a lively, often tense, story. I might have trimmed a bit from the final chapter, which felt compressed and rushed, although Mitchell limns mortality well in more than one character's brave fate, and he hones a deft touch which expresses emotion and ethics insightfully. He does not preach, but he lets moral considerations come forward as the characters debate their fates, and he enriches an expansive story when in many parts you have no idea what happens next with a reflection on enduring themes of loyalty, fidelity, aspiration, and determination: always relevant ones.
(Amazon US 5-27-14)

David Mitchell's "Number9Dream": Book Review

This is my fourth David Mitchell novel, and by now, the pattern's familiar. I enjoy once again Mitchell's fidelity to a young narrator's voice. He evokes in Eiji Miyake, twenty and fresh to Tokyo from an idyllic rural setting where nothing ever happens, the raw shyness and perpetual uneasiness of a fine coming-of-age story. The title, of course, alludes to John Lennon's pastoral, warbling song, and no surprise, Miyake's a big fan. Late in one of the many, many dreams, Lennon tells him: "The ninth dream begins after every ending." Mitchell aspires to re-create the dream patterns in his typically overlapping and interlinked (more or less) narratives, as in "Ghostwritten" and "Cloud Atlas"; it anticipates the troubled teen in "Black Swan Green" and the continuing look into Japan's past, torn between modernity and tradition, which will be "The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet."

The challenge is, like dreams themselves, when they comprise so much of the storyline, their appeal dissipates when set down. Reading those inspired by the Goatwriter series is dull. Those sparked by the protagonist's fearful bowling alley and card game run-ins with the Yakuza are more apropos. But, as the novel goes on, inevitably reality and fantasy blur and it's hard to care much.

However, the strength for Mitchell in his second novel remains from "Ghostwritten" as he loves interlinking stories, and the mingling of quiet ones about growing up insecure, and falling in love, and liking music or video games or films, make Miyake one of us. Still, betraying some formulaic moments in the thriller sections, there is a deus ex machina, labeled as such, and a hi-tech revenge that is far too neat. Perhaps these elements borrow from films themselves? Flights of fancy, shown off well in the Panopticon opening sections, shift into films themselves, and it's unclear at a first reading where that storyline stops or resumes later on, a typical fudge factor for the writer here. Such tricks--and no wonder Haruki Murakami is mentioned as a book half-finished that Miyake found in the unclaimed items of his railway job--can weary over the course of a novel. But, the terror of some portions, when Miyake faces cruel fate and moral retribution, and the haunting, powerful subplot of his forebear, on a doomed mission as a human torpedo late in WWII, balance the feel of the hellish pizzeria where Miyake toils at night, in scenes that again feel real. Mitchell uses a very British slang to portray his narrator, and this may seem odd for us, but he tries to evoke the differences in dialect and register, avoiding overtly Japanese imitations of conversation or idiom, probably a wise move.

The tale feels true in much of the everyday sections: "I like the glimpses of commuters in parallel windows--two stories being remembered at the same time" speaks not only for subway travelers but for the shape of the novel itself. The main plot, a boy's search for his father, is classic, and although his mother's laments wore me down as they did her son here, the quest does again seem realistic, and sometimes mundane: "A dirty rag of bleached sky-- the morning forgets it is raining, as suddenly as a child forgetting a sulk she planned to last years." This seems more Mitchell than Miyake, but it shows his ability for fresh phrases.

Ending suddenly, and here recalling Mitchell's first novel in similar evocations of possible doom emanating from an ecologically wrecked, materialistic, paved-over Japanese society with few redeeming aspects, the novel may not please anyone wanting a clearly delineated read. What kept me on was Miyake's winning presence, the power of the WWII subplot and the thrill of the Yakuza scenes, and the natural curiosity sparked by a quest for origins. Out of such elements, Number9Dream mostly succeeds. (See earlier Mitchell reviews linked above; Amazon US 5-18-14)

Fáilte go Nestor

Cheannaigh Léna mo triú bonsai le déanaí. Bhuel, bíonn seo difriúl é go fírinne. Mar sin, tá sé bláthanna agus níl sé buaircíneach beag chomh Bráthair Áitil agus Páidí.

Déanaim mé a cheangail idir Léna agus mé ag dul go Naomh Crios ag fhéiceail ár chairde Bob agus Crios ansuid. Sheolaidh siad Bráthair Áitil chuichi riamh an marbh na mathair na Léna. Thúg muid Páidí nua go Naomh Crios ar leath bealach an bliana seo caite agus go dtí ár bhaile a dhéanamh cara nua chun Bráthair thuas staighre sa ghrian, lenar dhá cait ag coladh.

Ainmithe Léna sé do Nestor. Dúirt sí mé go raibh sé mar gheall go bhfuil sí "empty nester" an bliana seo. Mar sin féin, shíl mé faoi an Íliad...agus "Ulysses" le Seoigh, ar ndóigh, go tapaidh.

Fuair sí é ag an áit céanna, nuair áit a mbíodh Páidí ar feadh Mhárta seo caite. Bíonn seanfhear tSeapáinis faoi chúram na plandaí ag an taobh na bhóthair go Coalinga ann. Measaim faoi sé gach uair a théann mé an comhartha buí B-O-N-S-A-I ann.

Tá suiomh ag fás na crannaí beag ag imeall Bóthar Cúig ag trasna ó Feirm Harris in aice leis an sli amach go Coalinga ann. Tá áit mór leis béilí úr, ach tá eallach chruinniú agus maríodh ansin. Tá trua agam nuair a théann.

Is féidir leat boladh an boladh láidir ó an Bóthar Mór. Bhain mé úsaid as feoil a ithe go leor an chuid is mó de mo shaol.  Anois, is dóigh liom ciontach as ithe iasc! B'fhéidir, is cuimhne liom Nestor agus a chairde ag fás faoi an spiorad na beatha ansin, agus ina bhaile anseo.

Welcome to Nestor.

Layne bought me a third bonsai recently. Well, it's different, really. That is, it's a flowering and not a little coniferous like Brother Juniper and Paddy.

I make a connection between Layne and me going to Santa Cruz to see our friends Bob and Chris up there. They sent Brother Juniper to us after the death of Layne's mother.  We took new Paddy along halfway to Santa Cruz last year and back to our home to make a friend for Brother upstairs in the sun, by our two cats sleeping.

Layne named it for Nestor. She told me that it was because she's an "empty nester" this year. Nevertheless, I thought about the Iliad...and "Ulysses" by Joyce, of course, immediately.

She got it in the same place, where Paddy was from during last March. An old Japanese man takes care of the plants on the side of the highway to Coalinga there. I think of him each time I go past the yellow sign B-O-N-S-A-I there.

It's a site growing the little trees next to Interstate 5 across from Harris Ranch at the Coalinga exit there. It's a big site with fresh meals, but the cattle are raised and killed there. It saddens me when I pass.

You can smell the strong odor from the Interstate. I used to eat lots of meat most of my life. Now, I feel guilty eating fish! Perhaps, Nestor and his friends are a reminder of growing concerning the spirit of life there, and now here at home.

David Chadwick's "Thank You and OK!": Book Review

After 22 years studying with Shunryu Suzuki-- whom he'd later write very fluently about in "Crooked Cucumber" (see my July 2009 review)--Texan-turned-San Franciscan Chadwick decamps for Japan in 1988. Interspersing an account of his second marriage, to Elin, and the birth of their son there with an immediately prior stint as a practitioner at the tiny temple he calls here (names are disguised) Hogo-ji with another teacher he knew back in the U.S, the elderly Katagiri, the results aren't truly what the subtitle reckons as "an American Zen failure" there. The point that he's already spent decades sitting and that he's ordained speaks for itself. The back-and-forth twinned threads can be unsettling as one constantly veers from a monastic situation to everyday encounters in the bustling place he calls Maruyama. 

Perhaps these shifts replicate the familiar tale of a foreigner struggling to find a place in Japan. A lovely moment comes as, comforting a Filipina barmaid, she asks him as a "priest" for a blessing. She takes his hands and puts them on top of her hair. "I felt the hands of a woman who has pulled men down on her many times." (20) Twice, black butterflies will hover together to express beauty. The fearsome incursions of giant wasps and enormous centipedes Chadwick summons up well, as well as more mundane encounters. The title itself comes from a ubiquitous box of matches. As he tells his fellow monk Norman: "'Thank you' is the gratitude, the gateway to religious joy, and 'OK,' which comes from 'all correct,' represents the perfection of wisdom. This is our mantra." Of course, Norman responds that David's infected with, using his friend's favored phrase, "brain weevils." (311)

His added Zen however wobbly enables him to be more patient than many would coming to the Far East from the Far West. There's an off-kilter sense often present here. A funny anecdote about the ridiculously pedantic forms required for his driver's license, the motions assumed one has to go through even if faking it, make for a great story about a rigid system that (as when he gets his visa extended) can still be bent. Late in this series of rambling vignettes, he reflects that Katagiri was suspected on coming back to his native land from his work in America, and that Japan tries to resist outside influences. "It's pretty obvious that the extent to which foreigners suffer here is the extent to which they try to belong." (386)

The push against innovation pulls against the subtly more gentle, more humane attempts of the few monks to lighten the weight of discipline and hierarchy that impose their presence on those at Hogo-ji.  Lightly, he critiques the way (this is delineated well in the "Crooked Cucumber") that for Japanese, Zen means the stick, the pain of sitting, and the hardship endured. As for "helping anyone or offering anything accessible to the average person in terms of daily practice," he wonders what the Buddha would have thought. He doesn't delve deep into Buddhism itself, but he suggests in zazen that one's "just finding out a hint of what we are beyond our little boxes of unfolding thought." (369) 

Chadwick does not come down too hard on Japanese Zen, but as the book progresses, you sense the need for American versions to adjust to their own culture. There's a telling scene after Katagiri's ashes are returned to his native terrain: the village has lost its young to the cities and the allure of the Western-imported ways; meanwhile, Americans clad in monastic garb, half of them women, attend the funeral in the dying rural village. 

The book is marketed as humorous, and it's in a light tone that helps readability. Yet, while for me it went on far too long, it's worthwhile to a patient reader for the subtler cultural differences. These need not be sent up always as folly. Surely Chadwick with his own relative fluency in the language he diligently studies accounts for more insight than many visitors possess. (5-2-13 Amazon US)

Bernard Fauré's "The Red Thread": Book Review

From this French post-modernist professor, it's no surprise that this collection of essays (more than a seamlessly argued or tightly assembled study) roams over not only the map but the territory into his "own private" excursions and byways. Bernard Fauré warns as he introduces "The Red Thread: Buddhist Approaches to Sexuality" that it's not systematic, and that he favors Japanese sources for their own historiographical contexts over those of India and China, unlike many Buddhist or Asian scholars who try to cover this ideological and cultural realm. The result, as he promises, is more his "own private" record of what he finds, often in the nooks and crannies of monastic proscriptions, tall tales of mystics, and transgressive parables by Zen masters (male, at least).

This does drift into engaging moments. The "two truths" theory that ultimate revelation may necessarily override fidelity to the here-and-now conventions allows wiggle room for monks (for better or worse, this book focuses on male and monastic contexts as these tend to survive down to our times as obsessing most over violations of the precepts, sacred and profane). This underlying direction--it bobs up and down, submerged by hundreds of notes which appear to have been built into a chain of associated examples more than a tight thesis--does not prevent Fauré from digressions. These may be underwhelming--much more on Bhutan's Drukpa Kinley appears to be relevant to Fauré's study than the snippet he sums up meagerly. Or, as in the Japanese poet Ikkyu, emotion emerges as we read spare verse to share his bold vision.

Ultimately, after chapters on homosexual behavior in Japanese monasteries, and tales that promote a subversive (or maybe not) male archetype, Fauré's accounts end with more a whimper than a bang. Dutiful research offers few surprises: the yin/yang oscillates as do the Two Truths. Marginal nods to Martin Luther, Alison Lurie, Borges, the classics, and clerical casuists from the Catholic tradition demonstrate his broad learning as fun or sly asides.

However, his "Afterthoughts" allude if in haste to his most intriguing interpretations. He rejects any "'pure,' atemporal, and changeless doctrine." Flexibility rules. As he anticipated in his denial of the easy trope of anticlericalism and decadent monasteries as a reliable genre for East or West, he later opens up for scrutiny a preconception of a normative Buddhism. Given the Middle Way's path between desire and non-desire, interdiction and transgression, Fauré tracks it as itself "double tracked and double edged: maintaining in principle a precarious balance between the the two extremes, yet constantly torn in practice between these two centrifugal tendencies." (279)

Feminists offer a bold alternative. Instead of awakening "as a rupture, a reversal, a social drama" as in hagiographical treatments, feminine practices "tend to insist on the progressive, nondramatic, intimate character of their religious experience." (282) He promises a follow-up volume on this subject.

Finally, what of another direction? Earlier he quotes Georges Bataille's "Eroticism" (1947, p. 42; cited p. 98): "The knowledge of eroticism, or of religion, requires a personal experience equal and contradictory, of taboo and transgression." He muses perhaps both aspects may remain in a fuller consideration of religious impact upon the realms of the red thread which connects us all by blood. (Amazon US 4-7-13)

I dTóiceo Beag

Cheannaigh muid an triúr seo i dTóicio Beag faoi deireadh. Bhí Léna agus mé ag fánacht lasmuigh as siopa mór nuair bhreathnaim Leon, ár mhac is sine, isteach an siopa céanna iomlán na bréagáin anime ón tSeapáin, ar ndóigh.

Bhí maith liom an bhó bhocht ar dtús. Ansin, thug Léna faoi deara an cailín ó spás. Ar deireadh, dá haire mé an úlchabháin ag eitlilt.

Mar sin, bhí trí againn. Dúirt an comhartha: "trí haghaidh ar an praghas de deich dollar." D'iarr sí an cléireach chun iad a fháil amach as an fhinneoig domhain.

Beidh siad a bheith ina cuimhneacháin ar ár dinear go Suehiro agus ár siúl a chéile mar triúr ag imeall ar lár ann i gCathair na hÁingeal. Beidh Leon ar ais go an Ollscoil i dTailte Dearg go luath. Agus, beidh ag dul ár mhac is óige Niall go Colaiste na Mac an Bhaird ar an am a léifidh tú seo freisin chomh maith. 

Suí na deilbhiní sa seomhra folctha. Thúg mé grianghraf in aice leis doirteal thuas staighre. Tá súil agam nach bhfuil na cáit iad a ionsaí.

In Little Tokyo.

We bought this trio in Little Tokyo recently. Layne and me waited outside the large store when Leo, our older son, looked inside the same shop full of anime toys from Japan, of course.

I liked the poor cow first. Then, the space girl drew the attention of Layne. Finally, I took note of the owl flying.

Therefore, we had three. The sign said: "three for the price of ten dollars." She asked the clerk to get them out of the deep window.

They will be a souvenir of our dinner at Suehiro and our walk as a trio together around the center of Los Angeles. Leo will go back to the University of Redlands soon. And also, our younger son Niall will be going to Bard College by the time you read this, as well.

The figurines sit in the bathroom. I took a photo near the sink upstairs. I hope the cats will not attack them.

"The Gary Snyder Reader": Book Review

Over six hundred pages, two-thirds of these essays, articles, journals, and interviews, the rest original poetry and Asian translations, this anthology 1999 offers a deep introduction and thorough investigation of a writer I regard as a thinker but also as a worker. As a poem about Japanese loggers ends: "the pain/ of the work/ of wrecking the world" infuses his perspective. He's freer of the usual academic traps, even though he lectures at UC Davis, and his residence in the Sierras and his forestry, logging, and Zen monk training provide richer material for him to excavate, sift, ponder, and return to for half a century.

Early on, he stayed wary of temptation: "(Beware of anything that promises freedom or enlightenment-- traps for eager and clever fools-- a dog has a keener nose-- every creature in a cave can justify itself. Three-fourths of philosophy and literature is the talk of people trying to convince themselves that they really like the cage they were tricked into entering.)" [24:X (1956, Kyoto) p. 29]

This may let off of a whiff of an air that many well-schooled and meditatively "cool" Beats to me possessed, a dash at least of reverse snobbery by a 1951 graduate of Reed, as in a revealing 1977 East-West Journal interview. "I can pride myself on the fact I've worked nine months on a tanker at sea and nobody once ever guessed I had been to college." (105) Still, on the hundred acres he and Allen Ginsberg bought around 1969 and he named Kitkitdizze after the Nisenan word for an aromatic shrub, Snyder reified his back-to-nature convictions. He never explains why he chose to build on open space (if logged generations before) rather than, say, settle on already occupied land in his native Northwest, but he surely provides better care for his Shasta Nation Yuba River watershed than those who, attracted as he and then early-1970s hippies to the same terrain nearby, have torn it up for golf courses, tract homes, and retirement communities. The tension between development and sustainability underlies many essays here, as Snyder labors to improve the quality of his residence and to educate his neighbors on this small ridge of Turtle Island.

In it for the long haul, as a native Californian I understand Snyder's appeal to all of us who live here. No matter where we've come from, or our ancestors, he encourages us to recognize this fragile series of bioregions as a wonderful and lovely new home. The price paid for this settling (no matter how ecologically educated or real-estate flipping?) is very apparent. He cites a "friend who still gets emotional when he recalls how the avocado orchards of his southern Californian youth landscape were transformed into hillside after hillside of suburbs." (184) He avers that between the ages of about six and ten, a childhood place enters us. For me, it was between eight and eleven, and lemons instead of avocados, but I suffer the same enduring impact as a local witness to what replaced my memories.

These excerpts from 1990's The Practice of the Wild alert one to the sensitivity needed to hear our locale's presence. Rocks as well as trees can speak if the imprint of humans is not too heavy, even for those of us who live in the city. Bioregionalism, for those in the "flat crowded lowlands" as well as the fewer lucky enough to make a living in the less hectic highlands or on the cooler, pricier coasts, can recognize how our political and social structures fight against the place we wish to settle down in. Digging in, for Snyder in the Sierra Nevada foothills, represents a stand. True republicanism, he reminds us, means not distancing squabbles to be arbitrated by monied or judicial entities. It means working out differences with adversaries.

This ties to the "Buddhism and the Possibilities of a Planetary Culture" principles, the 1969 version reprinted here of his 1961 manifesto for a principled anarcho-pacifism. Utopian as it may sound then or now, it remains a prescient call for resisting, anticipating what the Occupy Movement tried to replace forty/fifty years later. As he expands his stance in The Practice of the Wild: "People fear the small society and the critique of the State. It is difficult to see, when one has been raised under it, that it is the State itself which is inherently greedy, destabilizing, entropic, disorderly, and illegitimate." (195) Critics throw back "parochialism, regional strife, 'unacceptable' expressions of cultural diversity," but Snyder ripostes: "Our philosophies, world religions, and histories are biased towards uniformity, universality, and centralization-- in a word, the ideology of monotheism." (195) As a Buddhist, Snyder counters with small-scale economics of a householder, eco-activist, and cultivator.

He finds this "earth house hold" in the swoop from Big Sur up through his place of birth on a dairy farm north of Seattle that came up against second-growth woods, and then into British Columbia, and over Alaska down to Hokkaido across the Japanese islands where he studied as a monk, and over to China. This, his chosen Pacific Rim regional affiliation, draws him in many journals and essays excerpted here into its past (he evokes the largest city of medieval times, Hang-chou, marvelously as he shows us its archived chronicles down to where to find the tastiest pig roasted in coals) and its present traces of its ancient, indigenous mindset.

Alert to contradictions beneath the surface we see and tread, Snyder's earth never sleeps. "Life in the wild is not just eating berries in sunlight," he warns. (209) Depth ecology demands scrutiny of what's fermenting and digesting in the dark. This may require him to open up his Sierra home to bugs and deer, squirrels and ticks. In threat, decay, and migration, life's rhythms also pulse. Insights may emerge for those bold enough to look inside. "The other side of the 'sacred' is the sight of your beloved in the underworld, dripping with maggots." (210) In this spirit world, he seeks communication. Poetry, myth, lore amassed to be critiqued not only in seminars but in the field: Snyder takes the reader out into the wilderness, and unlike all but a few scholars, he practices what he preaches as he leaves trails behind, and literally crawls where bears do to figure out what they do do.

In one such lair, where the rock art left thousands of years ago in caves of the Dordogne and the Pyrenees beckons, Snyder demonstrates the wonder of what our ancestors knew and left even as their language faded. He quotes T.S. Eliot on the Magdalenian discoveries of his own decade: "art never improves." (393) Instead of assuming progress, Snyder counters that primitive creators already had found their truths.  "The deep past confounds the future by suggesting how little we are agreed upon on what is good." The humans were not depicted; aurochs were. Men and women did not need to paint themselves into their environment, not long after they emerged to portray it 35,000 years ago.

Similarly, the verses Snyder follows his prose with, opening with seven strong selections from Riprap (1959), depict his self-assurance as he climbs mountains and looks down on his own traces there. The first one, "Mid-August at Sourdough Mountain Lookout," returns to the first pages, with his 1952 journal as a Forestry Surface lookout for fires (before he fell foul of McCarthyism and had to take the side of the loggers to make his living). It scans the space he has chosen to explore ever since his teens: "I cannot remember things I once read/ A few friends, but they are in cities./ Drinking cold snow-water from a tin cup/ Looking down for miles/ Through high still air." (399)

Two hundred-plus pages follow but already the path is clear in his poems. That first inclusion as lodestar or compass directs us. He aligns the precise suggestion of Asian approaches, which diverge from the symbolic weight of Western contemporary verse, while he lengthens the suggestive lines of simpler spoken predecessors such as Williams. (See more on this in the letters with Allen Ginsberg here reviewed by me.) Snyder edges past the natural settings of the Golden State familiar if made more looming and ominous to Jeffers, and skates over the gnomic density of Pound, Yet he shares Pound's knack for dangling the reader within a suddenly visual suspension. Analyzing natural (are any truly inorganic?) components within the environs he passes through, Snyder reveals by his long crunchy or mulchy march across the world's surface its gaps and its seams. He distances himself from his own footfall; he waits for us to join him--as he listens to the echoes. (Amazon US 4-24-13)

Brad Warner's "Hardcore Zen Strikes Again!": Book Review

I've reviewed all four of Brad Warner's "hardcore Zen" memoir-explications since I found his "original" version dog-eared, a good sign, I figured. As he writes in this "demos" and "bonus tracks" sort of sequel (I'd been thinking just that when he made the same comparison in these pages), he as of around 2001 had not found anyone who'd made a punk-Buddhist comparison. Neither had I, years later, until I read his spirited book. Since then, he and I found out about Noah Levine's "dharma punx" coming out on the West Coast, and as with punk once upon a time, the regional quality of its versions apparently keeps some of us hearing what others don't early on. That changed, however, with the Net, and these seventeen "blasts from the past" feature entries from his "Sit Down and Shut Up" blog. They blend ambitious searches with conversational topics.

He prefaces all of them, and a chapter excised from "Hardcore Zen" on vegetarianism that merits reincarnation, with a nod to his angrier, testier past. Like many of us, he's matured since an initial encounter with an alternative movement or two. This insight, coupled with characteristic determination to encourage his readers to practice zazen and experience Buddhism as it must be, firsthand, infuses this short collection with energy. Some entries have afterwords, and there's a final section on Ultraman and Warner's monster movie job in Japan. I liked the diversity of this "director's cut" edition, as in typically diverse nods to the Monkees' "Head," Mother Teresa (not "Theresa"!), 9/11, the Sugarhill Gang, and hypnotism. 

I assume most readers will seek this out after his earlier accounts. These delved gradually deeper into what as of a decade ago in some blog entries was forming as a more brittle, confrontational, and less nuanced exposition of the truths Warner finds at the heart of Dogen and his own teacher in Japan, Guru Nishijima. Particularly refreshing are Warner's takes on the too-often blindly accepted assertions of reincarnation, belief, faith, afterlives, and carefree if naive optimism. As with his other popular books, he's able to refine his writing skills as he goes along the past ten years. He corrects some overreaching here and his chapter on writing advice is casual but sensible, and often funny. Certainly, he deploys a casual sense of humor well. This is not as jokey as parts of his memoirs tend to be, and this may work better, in fact. I like his wit, still. (I've read his "serious" translation of Nagarjuna's the "Middle Way" with Nishijima but that's very advanced.)

Warner fits well between the stoic, more dogged, skate-punk turned sobriety Tibetan-trained stance of Levine, who is also coming of age in his writings (also reviewed by me) and (the guitarist from 80s Philadelphia hardcore band Ruin) Glenn Wallis' intellectual editions of Pali suttas and his erudite, anarchic approach to the fundamental representations of the dharma. These three, despite differences ideologically and philosophically, stand for inquiry from punks who grew up after the hippies and blissed-out years, and who may in my opinion stand for the now middle-aged (but still younger!) generation confronting the illusions and delusions of what has been packaged and made safely Buddhist teaching in America today. (E-book via Amazon US 6-24-12. Check this blog for entries on Warner, Levine, Wallis by typing their names in a search box, and mentions proliferate!)

Pico Iyer's "The Global Soul": Book Review

I liked Pico Iyer's debut collection of essays "Video Nights in Kathmandu" and his recent "The Open Road" on the Dalai Lama (the latter reviewed 10/08). A friend of mine leaving the U.S. to live in Ireland over a decade ago recommended this exploration of globalism from Iyer's perspective. I found it predictable, better read perhaps in its original version as magazine form rather than as seven essays.

The reason is, as a passing phrase such as Iyer claiming to be "middle-class" despite coming from an academic family in tony Santa Barbara who sent him to boarding school and then Cambridge, or his "whenever I attend an Olympics" about his reporting on many of these events, betrays his privilege. That alone cannot justify a critique of what he conveys in his journalism, but it does repeat a note of what he finds in Toronto as "rootless cosmopolitanism" and this note sounds on nearly every page, until it dulls the senses. 

He works hard to evoke his settings: the house on fire and amid flood atop a Santa Barbara hilltop; the hideous LAX where an Ethiopian arrives to find herself surrounded by her former enemies, the Tigreans, in a city where nothing matches the movies seen abroad of the palm tree celebrity paradise; his friend in Hong Kong who roams the world as, of course, a management consultant; Toronto's similar megapolis of new arrivals and "visible minorities" in a "postmodern Commonwealth"; Atlanta's Coca-Cola sponsored Olympics amidst a sprawl that's the "urban equivalent to bottled water"; London as seen through his semi-deracinated perspective; and finally a graceful depiction of his home in the Japanese locale of Nara.

Not to say moments emerge of insight or wit. "One curiosity of being a foreigner everywhere is that one finds oneself discerning Edens where the locals see only Purgatory." So he sums up Toronto (159), although naturally this could be anywhere he visits. I wish he'd tightened, as Toronto compared and contrasted with Los Angeles begs for an extended treatment, the connections between essays. The one on Toronto and the one on Atlanta drag on endlessly, when a revised version of these articles might have looked at all three, cut many of the vignettes and conversations, and focused on the best examples from the dozens that stuff each chapter.

That way, his identification as "full-time citizen of nowhere" might have sharpened, as the closing chapter shows best, when a customs officer as he comes back to Japan grills him: "What prompted me to bring antihistamines into a peace-loving island?" (277) Lighter, more streamlined, moments such as these in more abundance might have lightened the load of an ambitious but ultimately predictable array of observations on the global soul. (5-3-12 to Amazon US)

"Thinking myself into certitude"

I've spent much of the past month reading up on Soka Gakkai's Buddhism. This advocates a self-actualizing, pragmatic, and this-world orientation rather than an introspective, detached, and renouncing one. I'm curious about how its globalizing, humanistic, and multicultural aims might enrich my study of Buddhism in the West, and how it's marketed, transmitted, and adapted by seekers and scholars today.

You can find six basic works on its teachings in the past six entries on this blog (and Amazon US). What intrigues me, as a sympathetic skeptic, is how its message via medieval Japanese reformer Nichiren makes sense for those who join SG International today. SGI affirms, as do other sects of Nichirenism, a direct channelling of a cosmic life-force via an inscribed mandala, a Gohonzon, and by recitation twice daily of a daimoku invocation of to what these Buddhists regard as a mystic law. This law, excerpted in the gongyo passages from the Lotus Sutra, is taken by believers to energize them and to bring about both "conspicuous benefits" in material gain and achieved results as well as more altruistic fulfillments leading to world peace, cultural enrichment, and environmental healing.

I began with Daniel B. Montgomery's "Fire in the Lotus" about Nichiren, his times, and his followers. I then entered the academic survey "Global Citizens" by Bryan Wilson, David Machacek, and colleagues which verified how initially converts often seek to gain material goods but then progress into less tangible but more lasting (perhaps?) gains in better relationships, communal harmony, and inner confidence. I also found out in "Soka Gakkai in America" how perhaps 10% of members stick with the program, but how this committed core works all the more diligently in terms of an ethos aligned with American values, to generate visible results that better one's self and others for practical goals. Its members tend to come from creative, entrepreneurial, or corporate fields. They're open-minded, ethnically diverse, liberal or even (morally) libertarian, "post-materialist," bookish if wonky types. Finally, I learned how believers interviewed by leader Richard Causton in "Buddha in Everyday Life" and academic observer Richard Hughes Seager in "Encountering the Dharma" support the SGI ideals as beneficial to good works built on an earnest faith.

Still, none of the six works solved for me a problem. If you chant and you don't get what you want, what then? As with our hopes however secular or our prayers however sincere, we're left with what Robert Wright in "The Evolution of God" calls "explanatory loopholes." No religion survives without qualifiers to its claims.

SGI-UK members report to Professors Wilson and Karel Dobbelaere how if they failed to get what they asked for in chanting, it was not meant to be, or they lacked faith, or the time was not right, or the request came about in an unexpectedly altered fashion. Of course, the scholar or skeptic might respond. W & D's "A Time to Chant" briefly examines a sociological interpretation of what might be prevarication, compromise, coincidence. Causton's insider's view stresses the necessity for diligence, and he narrates inspiring accounts of those considerably beaten down by life who in chanting find renewal and hope. One haunted me: a man loses a child to stillbirth and then another's stricken by cerebral palsy. Other Job-like afflictions come, yet this man reasons that they all happened because this was the path by which he found his way to Buddhism.

No religion, even a technically non-theistic (in theory often more than practice as Rodney Stark's "Discovering God" reminds us), can survive long except for intellectuals and a few hardy monastics. Ordinary folks need comfort, and SGI gives them a way towards buddha-hood in this life, not deferring it to an endless delay of rebirths as, say, Tibetan versions might present, or the conundrums of severe Zen, or even the more amenable self-reflections of "insight" Vipassana Buddhism deliver to many Westerners who cotton to analysis.

Yet I wonder, inescapably, how a system can lead to results. The fine print (you failed to believe enough; the time was not right; it may happen later but not when you asked) puts paid to the affirmations by SGI's millions that it works now and works reliably if only you are committed enough to make it happen by your diligence. This attitude fascinates me, as it's at odds with a lot of Buddhism I've been studying, but it remains for me a desideratum, with the same countercultural resonance that brings me back to 1972 when I saw the poster of Desiderata on the wall of a hippie-ish pair of dog breeders my parents went to visit (on business) up by Big Bear. I wish SGI well and I understand it much better. It can't be reduced to a "personality cult" as media stereotypes have claimed as it spread from postwar Japan among blacks, Asians, and whites the world over. I take note of its reportedly transformational powers, even as inevitably my own intellectual distance persists. I wryly recall a bumper sticker no car dares sport in my 'hood: "Nothing Fails Like Prayer."

This reading and reflection finds me at a very difficult time personally. The question mark, faint but indelible, imprints itself on my soul or spirit or mind. Maybe Providence might have played its sly role, speaking of coincidence or there are no coincidences, via the professor at San Jose State who after my talk on Maura O'Halloran's Irish Zen quest introduced herself as an SG member, who'd gained her doctorate in Ireland.

I never knew SGI existed there; Laurence Cox and Maria Griffin's newest research on Irish Buddhism alerts me in a note (on pg. 48) that a temple had existed in Dublin a while ago, and its membership's as in many lands a combination of multicultural immigrants and emigres from Japan with natives. The professor at SJSU told me that they numbered now around 300, doubling from mid-decade. While I had mentioned Daisaku Ikeda's claim in my "Celtic Buddhism" essay (pg. 69 of ibid, "Ireland's New Religious Movements") that the dharma had perhaps been transmitted via Alexandria to the ancient Western realm, Cox & Griffin's earlier article, which I had consulted in my own research, had not included SGI. So, thanks to her (I'll keep her anonymous) for alerting me to this presence, and for encouraging another direction for my research.

This blog entry's title comes via its own detour. On John W. Smart's political site, I'd posted at "Eyes of Newt" Gingrich's explanation of his conversion to Catholicism. I'd added that the legions of JWS's liberals and Newt detractors might consider the 150+ comments, as they comprised a perfect cross-section of pro-con reactions to Newt's decision. I encouraged JWS's political junkies to consider how the remarks boded well or not for his campaign, as economically and ideologically (contrary to past patterns or persistent stereotypes) Catholics represent a perfect sample across the voting spectrum and class system in our nation.

"Sophie," who shares my own ethnic background and my marital blending, replied how one commenter had cited of all converts Hilaire Belloc. I posted about him, with a bit of surprise that anyone knew of this doughty Catholic apologist of nearly a century ago, and she commented on his prescient perspective on the rise of Islam in Europe. Anyhow, I then told her I'd been a cradle Catholic but had wound up walking on my own, and she mentioned how hard it had always been politically or spiritually "to think myself into certitude." I concur, and it seems the perfect phrase for me to typically adopt or pause upon in my own endless search.

As I wrap this up along with a challenging 2011, it occurs to me how that installation depicted here resembles a butsudan, the cabinet housing for Nichiren Buddhists not an icon of Shakyamuni, but instead, in its denomination's reforming and aniconic light, the written scroll itself. In that, it reminds me of a Torah, and a synagogue faithful in its lack of figurative art to the First Commandment. I chose the illustration before I knew what I'd write today, and it shows its own coincidence, or lack of such. It also aligns with its artist's own mission for "active engagement" rather than a separate "work of art." For Nichiren's followers hold that the Buddha to be followed, not as an object of veneration so much as a mirror of one's own buddha-hood, is not a statue or an amulet anymore, but truly within one's self, as one finds and shares self-realized enlightenment.


Illustration by Julius Koller. Tate Gallery information:

Question Mark b. (Anti-Painting, Anti-Text)  1969
Otáznik b. (Anti-Obraz, Text-Obraz)

Latex paint on wood. Object: 50 x 500 x 330 mm. Sculpture, T13312.

Described by the artist as an ‘anti-painting’, this object was made using a wooden tray, which he covered in white latex paint. Koller’s techniques and choice of materials were intended to position his work as an active engagement with everyday life, rather than existing as a separate ‘work of art’. The question mark inscribed upon the object’s surface was a recurring motif in Koller’s work, reflecting the atmosphere of uncertainty in his native Czechoslovakia during the years of Communist rule.

Richard Hughes Seager's "Encountering the Dharma": Book Review

This sympathetic survey of "Daisaku Ikeda, Soka Gakkai, and the Globalization of Buddhist Humanism" combines a personal narrative of this professor's encounters in Japan, Brazil, and America with an accessible introduction to its function as a modernizing "vehicle" (98) for change. This small reform movement spread from a 1930s "value creation" in education society to a postwar missionary effort bent on a self-actualizing Buddhism to an export via war brides and immigrants and businesspeople to hundreds of locales today. As a professor specializing in Asian religions in America, he's well-suited to study this phenomenon, even if as he admits he has a lot of catching up to do about Japan.

Richard Hughes Seager, as a secularized scholar and a somewhat lapsed Catholic, confesses how his "capacity to entertain faith while remaining the skeptic" (6-7) allows him critical distance. Yet, he finds himself, after the sudden death of his wife and his own midlife predicament, warming to the earnestly presented if impressive achievements of Ikeda and his followers. He learns to regard Soka Gakkai as benevolent rather than calculating, and he finds its outreach to the "favelas" in Brazilian slums, its energy from its encounters with the civil rights and countercultural upheavals of the 1960s in America, and its Japanese endurance despite media suspicion all worthy of respect.

He meets Ikeda, the president of SG, and the professor overcomes his skepticism, if unable to make the "leap of faith" himself. Hughes accepts the Japanese model of a "mentor-disciple relationship" as benign, and he watches carefully as a scholar how Ikeda and supporters react and respond before relaxing into an appreciation of SG's Japanese presence and power. Still, he remains a scholar, trained to observe, even if he wonders early on "whether my critical disdain is related to my intelligence and academic education, as I like to think it is. It may be that I'm just spiritually indolent and existentially lazy." (122)

This admission enriches this investigation. One aspect that remained underexamined is how the chanting and good intentions of SG members transform into altruistic projects, seeing they demand so much of those who often volunteer funds and time. (The finances raised aren't examined in much detail--this appears odd, as both supporters and critics might wish for this professor's unbiased coverage of this issue.) His visit to Soka University in California doesn't elaborate its Pacific Rim aura or explain his allusion to why faculty were at odds with administration as the school opened.

I also wished that, given a reported high rate of SGI attrition (see my review of "Soka Gakkai in America"), that more context was provided in how members convert, and why many may not persist. How Buddhists from other denominations relate, or don't, to SGI could have been integrated, given the author's earlier "Buddhism in America" study. A lot of SGI's material appears filtered by its directors; he acknowledges this but at times it feels an "authorized" version. Everyday folk who support SGI tend to come later in the storyline, in a current-events style which feels more journalistic than analytical, even if it remains always readable.

However, his loneliness and his own quest deepen the relevance, in 2001-02, of this series of encounters. As he sums up SG's appeal: "its teaching of empowerment of self and other to achieve happiness." It's a "modernist spin" on ancient and medieval dharma. It adds to that teaching's "quiet contemplation" the "energizing power of daimoku and gohonzon, the former the performance of Buddha nature, the latter its graphical representation, the two mirroring in each other what Buddhists understand to be a liberating power inherent in the fabric of the universe." (205) Professor Seager's ability to sum up complex theories helps to convey this movement's ethos and accomplishments for a wider, scholarly--and perhaps popular--audience.

P.S. I've also reviewed complimentary studies: Daniel B. Montgomery's "Fire in the Lotus" on Nichiren Buddhism; "A Time to Chant" on SGI-UK; "Global Citizens" by various scholars, ed. Bryan Wilson & David Machacek; and "Soka Gakkai in America" by Machacek & Phillip Hammond. Also see from an insider's p-o-v a book not cited by Hughes, "The Buddha in Everyday Life" by British SGI leader Richard Causton. (Amazon 12-9-11)

Hammond & Machacek's "Soka Gakkai in America:" Book Review

How does a Japanese "new religious movement" replicate the Reformation, as it exports a global Buddhism bent on world peace, self-actualization, post-materialism and transmodern values? Two UCSB sociologists survey 400 Soka Gakkai members in 1997, and their findings compliment those for British counterparts in "A Time to Chant" (1994; see my review). There, Bryan Wilson and Karel Dobbelaere found many SGI-UK converts from self-employed and creative, artistic professions. Those in America who answered Phillip Hammond and David Machacek's questionnaire tend to be more from corporate and knowledge-industry occupations, but the members' outlooks and scholars' findings resemble each other.

"Accommodation" examines the evolution into 35,000-odd U.S. members, of diverse ethnicities and religious or spiritual backgrounds, of a movement imported in the mid-1950s with a few Japanese wives married to U.S. servicemen. It outgrew its immigrant roots and flourished in the counterculture when its post-war seekers found a spiritual match for discerning "postmoderns." This refers to one of four responses to modernity by American religions. Modernists reject religion as superstition and favor reason and science, breaking up cohesion of past loyalties. Counter-modernists reject modernity for tradition. In between, some take a liberal balance, as mainstream Protestants, that accepts science to "enhance religious understanding." (127)

That leaves SGI-USA among postmodernists, who affirm modernity's limits regarding scientific progress, the human condition's humility, environmental harmony, and a "therapeutic orientation" on "healing and wholeness." They also have "a fascination with the exotic" (128) which celebrates matter joined with spirit, male with female, and culture with nature. This openness also invites consumerism, but more for cultural and artistic pursuits rewarding self-improvement rather than mere acquisition.

This also connects with the outward direction of committed members. While chanting for material benefits has been assumed by observers to be a primary motivation, Hammond and Machacek lean towards data which show a shift from marginal to active to core members that draws SGI's faithful into more communal service as their chanting draws them into work and action that optimistically helps others along with themselves. It's an "ascetic" worldview which converts do not form on joining, but which attracted them as jibing with their previous perspective, as these often young, single, uprooted people found a congenial fit with SGI.

Soka Gakkai's orientation does not reject American culture but reinterprets it. SGI offers a framework that "is now coherent and endowed with sacred meaning." (140) SGI's promise of chanting offers a way to tap into a life-force and to channel energy into not material benefits but a promise of "compensators such as faith, a sense of personal happiness, and confidence" (76) Hammond and Machacek sensitively examine how what members chant for relates to and differs from SGI's collective goals, and why benefits gained may not equal the goals sought. However defined, success makes the convert feel at home with an accommodating force for change that aligns with American beliefs in human potential and responsible use of an optimistic attitude.

The authors explore how SGI-USA aimed not at a foreign-looking, lifestyle-altering, anti-mainstream "cult" status, but a "soft-sell, low-tension strategy" (178) that resulted in less growth but more sustained adjustment to American mainstream society, where SGI blended in rather than stood out. 

While the authors estimate, on the high side, 90% of those who've "received the Gohonzon" (56; the venerated mandala that serves as a mirror for one's practice defining Nicherin Buddhism) from SGI-USA have lapsed from membership (if not practice, for this is hard to tell in a survey drawn from the organization's own list), those who remain turn out to be more committed. The investment in learning chants in archaic Japanese, in attending meetings, and in giving time and donations to SGI pays off for a smaller, but more convinced, cadre. Unlike other Eastern imported movements, SGI-USA appeals by tailoring its mystical  philosophy to a pragmatic set of rewards combined with an altruistic appeal. (The authors downplay criticism of its president's influence, which detractors have charged as nearing a "personality cult.")

SG enriches the "mundane world of daily life with religious significance." (140) Conversion reinforces social values as SGI members socialize "with like-minded others, and legitimates them with a Buddhist religious tradition." (140) The authors demonstrate this by excerpting interviews with marginal, active, wavering, and core members--and a few defectors gleaned admittedly (more than in Wilson & Dobbelaere) from a small sample, given scholars relied on membership lists from SGI for research. One difficulty shared by both reports is this built-in lack of context for more of those disenchanted, but "Soka Gakkai in America" improves upon its British predecessor by trying to document as completely as possible the range of members and outlooks.

This makes a fitting companion to "A Time to Chant"; that book's recommended for its deeper historical context of Nichiren Buddhism, and its study of the split with the priestly caste in 1991. I also note that Wilson with Machacek followed this with "Global Citizens" (2000; see my review), an academic collection of essays by scholars on SGI worldwide, past and present. There's far less background in this very slim volume, but with these two other books as supplements, readers may easily look up more. (Also see Daniel B. Montgomery's "Fire in the Lotus" on Nichiren and all varieties of Nicherinism; it too's reviewed by me.)

One fresh element added by Machacek and Hammond: supply-side and demand-side economics are mooted as models for SGI, one for the availability of late 20c options in a spiritual marketplace, the other for its ability to meet the needs of seekers. While less vibrant in its narrative than the British version, full of articulate informants, this American successor, even with more "textbook"-toned interpretations of the surveys, incorporates the same conclusions as before that match SGI abroad to a shift into a consumerist, yet ethical and practical, social phenomenon and religious movement. (Amazon US 12-1-11)

Richard Causton's "The Buddha in Everyday Life": Book Review

After evaluating three scholarly studies of Nichiren Buddhism, I compared this insider's version aimed at inquirers. Causton was Soka Gakkai's British leader; this revision was finished the year of his death, 1995. It revamps his 1989 "Nichiren Shoshu Buddhism: A Popular Introduction to the Worldwide Religious Movement That's Showing Millions How to Find Peace and Prosperity in Everyday Life." This merits mention, for the schism that separated the lay-led SGInt'l from priestly Shoshu control in Japan shifted how an affirmation of this pragmatic, ethically flexible, peace-promoting, diverse, international society would be conveyed to Western readers.


Bryan Wilson (quoted here as a sociologist of religion; this lacks paginated citations but lists a few references) analyzed what's now SGI-UK in "A Time to Chant" (1994, with Karel Dobbelaere) and in a 2000 collection edited (with David Machacek) as "Global Citizens." Wilson (who cited Causton's earlier ed.) found that British SGI adopts a freer, libertarian bent, as it's far from Japanese influence and considerably multicultural. Causton's rendering of SGI's neither analytical nor academic, in contrast with the two above (reviewed by me). His can be very philosophical and complex. He aims to convince seekers of SG's merits. This provides strengths and shortcomings for one seeking a balanced view of SGI. It's informed by members, not critics.


Strengths are its friendly tone, its use of vivid narratives by members of how they overcame difficulties, and its insights from such sources as Hardy, Donne, Dostoevsky, Einstein, Proust, Tolstoy, Wordsworth, Primo Levi, and Tom Wolfe. Good for savvy, clever, creative folks, curious about SGI's message. Causton assures that chanting as practice equals no "magical cure" (91; cf. 194), but a transforming power of "daimoku" (125) tapping into what's released as a "cosmic life-force" (193) sparks environmental and personal change. SGI uses this to prove how chanting creates, by greater energy and practical benefits, "value." A neutral observer may wonder if "success" comes by the chanter's compromise, prevarication, or coincidence, as Wilson & Dobbelaere aver; note p. 194 again. SGI believes a member will see the "conspicuous benefits."

This is not to diminish the sincerity and good works of this sometimes controversial movement. I wish to discuss what other {Amazon} reviews by those convinced have not: such a book is not by definition going to contain objections, for after all, it's aimed at persuasion. But some critical material might have strengthened it; one finds here a sharp, rapid tilt away from conventional Buddhism to Nichirenism. It displays a minimal foundation in earlier Buddhism before it reconstructs it with SGI's reformed "testament." Everyone can become enlightened; Nichiren supplants Shakyamuni as the latter-day Buddha model. Attributing radical changes in personal and communal success (see the subtitle of the original work) by chanting is the promise at the heart of SGI's interpretation of Nichiren's radical message which keeps only the Lotus Sutra as the "Middle Way" between latent and manifest effects that can literally alter the course of karma for the better.

This book's openness to rationalism and science enrich its contents, which can be challenging even as this simplifies Nichiren philosophy, itself no easy task. (Compare my review of a work aimed at a similar level on this subject, Daniel Montgomery's "Fire in the Lotus.") It elaborates karma intriguingly; it compares life and death, manifest and latent powers to a black cat, seen and not seen as it walks a "zebra crossing"! (138) I found its explication of the Ten Worlds doctrine sensible and engaging; SGI-UK's study guide online sums up this version of Causton's presentation. Ten Factors earn analogies to a knife, a lover's breakup, and a Van Gogh painting, for example. Also, its ties to physics, sleep research, and anger management prove valuable.

The modern vs. the ancient in light of what scholars say about the origins of the "Mystic Law," on the other hand, comes free from the critical examination that might be wished for by a reader looking for an intellectual context to accompany the inspirational one dominating here. The Lotus Sutra's understood by scholars to have been composed hundreds of years after Shakyamuni Buddha is said here to have delivered it as his definitive teaching. "Roughly 3,000 years ago" is given for the historical Buddha's career, further back than conventional estimations. This implies (255-6) wiggle room for periods of 500 years that comprise Nichiren chronology, but Causton never mentions those widely accepted birth-death ballpark figures for the Buddha.

I know that SG and Nichiren ease the impact of the historical Buddha, to elevate Nichiren and the Mystic Law, but those opening this book to find out about "Buddhism" as conventionally rendered may not glean much, compared to SGI's insistence on how Buddha-hood for all has been manifested by Nichiren and his followers since the 1200s. You understand, say, "Four Higher Powers" but "Four Noble Truths" gain a cursory mention; "Six Lower Worlds" earn abundant detail, but how they emerge via "Six Realms of Existence" gets little attention. (It's like reading about the Catholic Mass with barely a glance at a Passover Seder. Even in a defense of a denomination today, more credit of nonsectarian influences might be expected.)

If this sounds like quibbling, it's central in fact to how SGI leans towards a more exclusive, if globally accessible, "mission" with their Buddhism as the ultimate, definitive version. This book tends to blur dharma's historical context and denominational varieties; it's akin to a work introducing one to evangelical Lutherans which skims over the control of the medieval papacy, or how the 95 theses were composed. Daisaku Ikeda, revered SGI president, gains many quotes and serves as Causton's role model. Therefore, Causton provides as expected the "authorized" expression of SGI, but for those curious about what religious scholars have to say about the historical creation and textual evolution of the Lotus Sutra and Nichiren, his account will not offer much critical context. This book's meant to welcome one into SGI, not to dissect its ideological claims. 


Therefore, if you want an introduction to SGI from one convinced, this is recommended. If you prefer an academic study, check out Montgomery for Nicherinism, and Wilson's co-authored two studies above. (Amazon US 11-29-11)

Wilson & Dobbelaere's "A Time to Chant": Book Review

I didn't expect such an engrossing, engaging sociological survey of British "votaries" of this Buddhist self-actualizing, libertarian-tinged, socially aware and creatively populated movement. These two professors interviewed hundreds of Soka Gakkai ("value-creation society") members around 1990, and they place SG within a response to a secularized Britain and a post-Christian ethos based on not an externally imposed system of moral codes but an emerging commitment to personal responsibility and communal action in peace studies, the environment, and global harmony. While for some critics this has smacked of a personality cult and an eerie Japanese export, Bryan Wilson (Oxford) and Karel Dobbelaere (Louvain/Leuven) argue that SG represents a reasonable reaction to an era when Christian morality emphasizing delayed gratification and an ascetic work ethic has been replaced by a consuming culture encouraging rapid fulfillment and "psychic liberation" from guilt and sin.

Nichiren Buddhism, defined as a "permissive, optimistic, and positively oriented religion," (33) takes its impetus from a thirteenth-century reformer who challenged the emerging feudal system. (See my review of Daniel Montgomery's "Fire in the Lotus" for more context.) Some of its followers, in the 1930s, began a lay-led society that eventually, by the time of this book in 1990-91, broke with their sponsoring Japanese priesthood in a controversial schism. An appendix explores the ramifications of this split, and the writers compare it usefully to the Protestant Reformation and modernizing tendencies. What they have in common is a move towards lay control, and less ritual and authority placed in a hierarchy. 

Of course, a system of local and global leadership is the reason for SG International. Therefore, part of the interest in the interviews transcribed and the data arrayed is to see how SGI members in Britain gravitated, all being converts, to a situation where their own libertarian, generally anti-authoritarian outlooks fit into a democratic system based on local circles of "votaries" who then serve their own structured system for mutual support and globalized goals of reform. It may reflect my own bias, but I would have liked more investigation of how a membership composed of those intellectuals, creative types, self-employed, artists and fringe occupations found a congenial mix of a self-motivated chanting and D.I.Y approach to morality within a structured, communal, and mutual-support society stressing cooperation.

Wilson and Dobbelaere separately contributed essays to a subsequent collection of essays, "Global Citizens," [see my review] and these can be consulted for more of their scholarship on this intriguing movement. "A Time to Chant" due to its depth allows a more nuanced examination of SGI, however, and some of the questions that I had when reading their essays in "Global Citizens" are better answered in "A Time." That is, I wondered how chanting for goods or success aligned with altruism or less-selfish or individualized goals, and the interviews and data included here examine this topic.

It may or may not be the fault of this book, but I remain hazy on how traditional Buddhist ideals of letting go of goods and attachments square off against SGI's encouragement of using chanting to generate goods as part of its acceptable goals, but I understand somewhat better the process of how chanting works to spark action, from these interviews. (One note: nearly none of those responding had exposure to other Buddhist practices before SGI, so useful research here as of 1990 was not truly possible.) Chanting, the scholars propose, may serve adherents as a means and an end, that is, those who attribute the fulfillment of their goals to the practice that is at the heart of SGI (and the larger Nichiren Buddhist approach) may express the dual methods of "self-examination and self-help" (186) at the core of the daily practice.

Naturally, the self-selecting limits of such a study, based on a list of members, is itself a predicament, for those responding tend (90%) to be regular practitioners. But even here, the professors take pains to share the honest answers of the few dissidents and skeptics that they can glean, as they seek to make this study the best it can be. Granted the boundaries of this report, its introduction provides a great overview of the organization's history and background, and its conclusion (however briefly) places SGI within countercultural and secularizing trends that in the two subsequent decades have rapidly accelerated in much of our society. (Amazon US 11-22-11)

David Machacek & Bryan Wilson's "Global Citizens": Book Review

This collects scholarly articles on Soka Gakkai's Japanese, reformed Buddhist ethos and worldwide expansion. Most of the pieces, therefore, examine its growth in the later part of the 20th century. Emphasizing cultural (and also political) contexts, it combines theory with narrative histories, and then multicultural, sociological case studies.

Jane Hurst's "A Buddhist Reformation" cogently parallels the Protestant rebellion with the Soka Gakkai movement's rejection of a "priestly" for a "pragmatic" religious form (85-6). Collective ritual gives way to individual faith, and sacraments to practicality. Traditions recede while mysticism fades. Scripture trumps tradition. While a lack of authority may diminish an engaged, lay-led system's clout, and while ideological purity can be diluted, a global and rational enterprise gains by harnessing individual action to achieve progressive, egalitarian goals in a time of technological transformation and humanistic engagement.

David Machacek studies with Kerry Mitchell how Japanese immigrants spurred initial growth of Soka Gakkai in America. This began as war brides took the movement overseas after WWII. (259) The authors note how declining zeal of those raised in a such a radicalizing version of a faith often occurs, contrary to their parents who may have been converts, but they record how second-generation members appear to be steady with, if less diligent towards, practice. Unlike "world-rejecting" religions, Machacek and Mitchell see in SGI a heartening engagement with repairing social and environmental problems that bodes well for its future sustainability. (279)

In a related article, Machacek studies how "isomorphism" accounts for why SG sparked little controversy as opposed to other Eastern imported varieties of religious experience: SG parallels better the social bonding expected of hard-working Americans, even as its celebration of happiness and success appears to be at odds with Judeo-Christian practices oriented towards self-denial and otherworldly reward. (282) It looks legitimate, it acts respectably, its members keep a low profile. They do not undergo outwardly dramatic or exotic changes; the movement's progress, along often volunteer and now totally non-clerical lines, continues.

Instead of Jan Nattier's claim (qtd. 301) that evangelical Buddhism best defines SG, David Chapell substitutes "socially inclusive" (325) as distinguishing the notable presence of Americans and immigrants of European, African, and Asian descent in its ranks. Unlike the overwhelmingly white presence in Zen, Tibetan, and vipassana "elite" or "ethnic" Japanese cohorts, those involved in SG in the U.S. represent great diversity. Social development, he concludes, accounts for this prominence, as solidarity grows among members encouraged by welcoming and supportive circles of five or six, these in turn answerable to a district, a local chapter, and so on up a pyramidal structure, all led by laypeople (303-4). Abilities are encouraged, and while materialistic or selfish goals may seem to be accepted as legitimate reasons for initial practice or chanting, these are channeled with time and maturity into transformative skills better suited to one's lasting improvement, and that of those around one's self, in the faith and in the wider community. (324-5)

"Changing one's karma" rather than being bound by it distinguishes SG from other forms of Buddhism. Peter Clarke shows in Brazil how SG's third president, Daisaku Ikeda, in 1960 explained for the first time this notion to a Japanese immigrant, recently widowed, burdened with children. Her adversity was instead inspirational; her predicament became a way to overturn adversity rather than be a victim of fate. (337) Using a Nichiren Buddhist concept of "ganken ogo," Ikeda interpreted this as a method of turning difficulties into a vocation to change one's life by one's reaction to karma, and to overcome fatalism by committed action.

In postwar Britain, Bryan Wilson explains, a post-Christian residue of an "ascetic" outlook was overturned for a few by SG's appeal to a consumerist, individually flexible ethos. How traditional Buddhist discouragement of material accumulation squares with SG's "licensed hedonism" (369) puzzles me, but it redistributes restraint with reward. (353) He lauds the compassionate and secular approach that aligns SG with a community open to members allowed to seek happiness and enjoy fulfillment. A quarter of British adherents, from forty countries, were born overseas, a remarkable fact; some informants were introduced to SG by an encounter at a pub or a nightclub or an astrology class. (361) 3/4 of newcomers were not "seekers," and did not belong to another religion at the time of their first encounter. (363) As in America and Japan, the tilt upwards towards the more educated and professional cohorts appears over the decades to be accelerating, although economic, class, and cultural diversity remain hallmarks of global SGI.

Maria Immacolata Macioti looks at comments by guides and visitors left by those attending a 1990s human rights exhibit sponsored by SGI in a Roman museum as part of a chapter on Italian contexts; Metraux pursues the movement's spread into Southeast Asia. Whether into Buddhist, Protestant or Catholic nations, it appears a few committed members manage to convince thousands of others of SGI's advantages. Even in Islamic Malaysia or Indian communities abroad, a few decide to make the commitment to change and chant.

The remaining essays merit mention: Noriyoshi Tamaru on the historical perspective; Dayle Bethel on Makiguchi's educational message; Hiroshi Aruga on Japanese political ties; Daniel Metraux on the Komeito party; Atsuko Usui on women's roles; Takesato Watanabe on Japanese media coverage; Karel Dobbelaere on the "pillar" organization of SG.

Intermittently, I sensed re: SGI an uncritical bias. The generosity of many members is credited; these scholars support the movement's aims. This may not be a drawback for some readers, but I register how criticism of SGI here remains minimal. These scholars examine the evidence, assert their arguments, and defend SGI.

A few authors roamed into side topics or current issues (as of the year 2000) which neared indulgence or stridency. The results can be dry at times, but essays such as Chapell's despite statistics convince by their incorporation of interviews and testimonial enthusiasm. Overall, this is an accessible (if expensive even by university press standards) volume, aimed at the academic with a sociological slant, but newcomers (such as myself) needing an overview will also find this beneficial. (Oxford UP site.; Amazon US 11-18-11)

Daniel Montgomery's "Fire in the Lotus": Book Review

This erudite but thoughtful survey looks at Japan's contribution to religious unity and global harmony--amidst seven hundred years of dissension, suppression, antagonism, and idealism. Nichiren Buddhism, founded by a thirteenth-century reformer, challenged the priestly traditions and feudal hierarchies. It served as a parallel of sorts to the Protestant Reformation, in that it elevated lay participation, and confronted clerical dominance in league with political imposition. It very roughly compares to Christian supplanting of Jewish power, via reformer Nichiren--according to many who interpret his own enlightenment as he faced execution, and as he escaped death, as a transformational moment. This rekindled this restive rebel into another Buddha, some say replacing the historical Shakyamuni as the ultimate One who has woken up, and who wants all to awaken.

It's a very complicated story. Filled with splits and schisms, as strong-willed dreamers match their wills against imperious Japanese social structures, Montgomery narrates, with plenty of unobtrusive but solid documentation drawn from a wide variety of sources, how Nichirenism has become, in postwar Japan, its fastest-growing religion and one that appeals to those abroad who have little or no connection with Japanese roots. This globalizing dimension expands the Asian-centered dharma of most Buddhist movements. Human potential for change--and sometimes financial gain and material success as some varieties promise to dedicated devotees--spurs many to missionize, contrary to the mainstream Buddhism of East or West.

This "universal truth, manifested in Japan but applicable everywhere" according to Nichiren's followers as Montgomery introduces the concept, comes from directing "a philosophy of action" (12). It focuses on motivating people towards Buddhist-based enlightenment. Its controversial and energetic (and sometimes aggressive) methods, especially through the largest branch, Soka Gakkai, have sparked controversy and resentment in and out of its homeland, but Nichirenism "remains the most important indigenous expression of the Japanese indigenous spirit" (13) and one that, at least as of this 1991 publication, accounts for some of the same intensity that fueled Japan's postwar rise as an economic superpower.

This aspect does not gain as much coverage as I expected later on, (one drawback in a generally strong study), but in this relatively compact survey, Montgomery prefers to concentrate on the many debates, schisms, and revivals of Nichirinism since its founding. He delves too into the message of the historical Buddha in a marvelously told chapter, full of vigor; his accounts of Central Asian translator of Indian into Chinese texts Kumarajiva, of the bold and rebellious Nichiren himself in his epic life story, and the careers of such disciples as earnest Daisaku Ikeda of Soka and peaceable Nichidatsu Fujii "Guriji" deserve equal acclaim.

Montgomery carefully documents each of the denominations, and he reasons that so many versions exist due to natural tendency in an early religion to engage in fiery bickering as doctrines are contested and scriptures formed, whereas in the later times, of a decaying sect: "The white-hot volcanic eruptions of yesterday are the lifeless subsoil of today." (247) Nichiren had six schools immediately inheriting different interpretations or communal loyalties, and this contention over territory, continuity, and control of the teachings defines then and the centuries since.

Often opposed by the Japanese feudal system and its heirs, today's Nichiren missionaries are freer to promote their energetic message--in Japan, this now involves political campaigns promoting a party representing pacifist, environmental, and humanistic issues in a nation that had fought or co-opted Nichiren's earlier adherents. Elsewhere: "The goal is straightforward: to gain peace for the world and salvation for themselves." (263) The potential lies within the individual to change, however, and this is why, Montgomery shows, the movement's emphasis on one's own conscience and no intermediaries between the believer and the dharma have impelled its often headstrong followers towards strong personalities and self-expression.

The book moves efficiently, but it can be extremely dense in how compacted and intricate can be descriptions of Nichiren's understanding of advanced commentaries on the Lotus Sutra, the core teaching, as well as the multiple and multiplying schools of his followers. It's tough for a uninitiated reader to keep straight Nicho from Nichiko, Niko from Nikko, Nichiren Shu from Nichiren Shoshu. An index, glossary, "how-to" and statistics appendices, and bibliography help. Montgomery keeps control of quite a large amount of data and history and dogma in 300 pages.

This is a work that will please those looking for an introduction that stays unbiased but delves deeply into this movement. "Fire in the Lotus" as of this writing is no longer in print, but it's worth seeking out as a rewarding and balanced introduction to Nichiren's origins and rise as a national and now global phenomenon. (Amazon US 11-14-11)

Janwillem van de Wetering's "The Empty Mirror": Book Review

This iconoclastic memoir provides one of the earliest "I went to Asia and tried to find enlightenment" narratives from what became the counterculture. After philosophy studies, affairs, working here and there, at 25 or so, in postwar Japan, van de Wetering winds up in Kyoto, ringing a bell he should not to enter a monastery to study Zen as a voluntary monk. As a Dutchman with no knowledge of the language or culture, he stands out in many ways; he says that he was among only 27 Westerners in Kyoto in 1958. His brisk, reflective, but restless and anarchic account shows what few back then witnessed: how, just as for others Zen met Beats, a fidgety young man seeks to better himself and to find truth amidst a world he seeks and flees from alternately.


Buddhism appeals to him as "a possible path, not a vague theory" that refuses certainty but eschews "questions about the why of everything" by "a disregard of doubt." (32) If the Buddha could do it, and others could follow this way, van de Wetering figures it aligns better with his skeptical mindset than other methods. He seeks to cut down his self without committing suicide.

He tries to get over logical ruminations or god-centered ideas. His master, once a neurotic boy, now a composed presence, encourages his wayward student: "The intellect is a beautiful instrument and has a purpose, but here you will discover a different instrument. When you solve 'koans' you will have answers which are no longer questions." (51)

Unlike his fellow, native monks, who get a somewhat easier way to solve koans to speed their way along the standard three-year stint required before they are ordained to take over temples and make their careers, as a volunteer monk and a foreigner, van de Wetering struggles against the regimen. He feels like a "circus bear" compared to the native-born monks apart from whom he lives in a tattered dirty cell. He knows that the Japanese work by many written laws, but also unwritten ones that keep them from killing themselves too often, so he learns with Peter and Gerald, fellow Zen "gaijin," how to balance his life with the monastic rigor. 

He barely masters the half-lotus position, and how he can meditate remains to him and to the reader a mystery. He tries to stick with it for a year and a half. Anticipating the regular sessions of intensified practice: "that was why I had come, to visit an old Japanese gentleman who ridiculed everything I said or could say, and to sit still for fifteen hours a day on a mate, for seven days on end, while the monks whacked me on the back with a four-foot log lath made of strong wood." (79)


Peter reasons about "now" being synonymous with eternity, and doing what one must "now" for it to happen. Van de Wetering muses how so many answers given in Zen seem "brilliant, deduced from the one and only reality, but which I couldn't make use of because as soon as I started to have a good look at such an answer its message proved to be well outside my reach." (113) He seems to resist giving in to the compassion and detachment he admires and which he knows must be sought in dharma. But, in typical Zen form as non-form, is his master even a Buddhist? Han-san answers his pupil: "Is a cloud a member of the sky?" (140)

The later part of his stay gets blurred over. A shift inside's weakened him, but I felt this stayed too distant from the reader. It means he lives outside the walls of the monastery, with Peter as his tutor, but Janwillem appears to slacken in his discipline, as his wanderlust appears to return, and eventually he leaves Kyoto with little formal notice. He respects those he leaves behind, however, and this remains a jittery, self-deprecating, and honest attempt to make sense, fifteen years later, of what must have marked the author indelibly. For at his departure into where the "world is a school where the sleeping are woken up," the master tells him that he "is now a little awake, so awake that you can never fall asleep again." (146) 

(For another account, see my review of Kaoru Nonomura's fine narrative. At thirty, he enters forty years later at Eihei-ji: "Eat Sit Sleep: My Year at Japan's Most Rigorous Zen Temple".) (Posted to Amazon 3-27-11 & Lunch.com 4-21)