Question

I was also thinking about the meaning of the word prayer, that is to say. when the Christian I was, went to church to pray, he was addressing an external god. As for us, we recite texts to ourselves and often use the term prayer. Obviously, this term, from a vocabulary point of view, is not adequate to what we do when we recite Nam Myōhōrengekyō where we do Gongyō facing the Gohonzon and I think this is something that should give us pause for thought. There's a lot of work to be done on vocabulary, if we want to be understood.

Answer

When I used to take the metro to work, I'd pick up a free newspaper called 20 minutes, I think, and at the end there'd always be a prayer to this or that saint of the day, saying "Saint what's-his-name, do that, do that". I think that unfortunately, even in our school, there are people who still have this attitude of praying to the Gohonzon, saying "please, make that...". In fact, if you look closely at the Japanese version of the "silent prayers", Er, I meant the sittings, you'll see that there are two words: "Kinen" and "Kitō". I wondered why and in particular, for the first part of the fourth sitting where we pray or rather hope, we wish for the vast propagation, we say at the end "no on tame ni" which is an honorific term, that is, we take up for ourselves the Buddha's wish which is the realization of the vast propagation and we wish that this wish comes true. This term doesn't exist in our practice for our personal wishes. So I looked it up in the Japanese dictionary. There are actually three words that mean pretty much the same thing: "Kigan", "Kinen" and "Kitō". "Kigan" means praying to God, as Catholics do, and as some Buddhists still do towards the Gohonzon, while "Kinen", which is in our text, evokes a wish. As for Kitō, it would be the wish, the aspiration of the Buddha. So effectively there is no prayer as such. The prayers we can formulate, or rather the aspiration we can have, is only to become Buddha and realize Kōsen-Rufu. In fact, the greater our wish, i.e. to become Buddha and the vast propagation, the more everything that goes with it to help us achieve it manifests. If we want to become Buddha, well, we need a house to set up the Gohonzon, we need a bit of money to go to the temple, and so this wish to become Buddha, if we express it sincerely, well, everything that goes with it - work, money, a house - comes with it, and so there's no need for intermediate prayer. My master told me: "In Buddhism, there is no prayer. The only thing we aspire to is Buddhahood and the vast propagation of it". I pointed out to him: "That's all well and good, but at the reception desk of your temple, there are prayer forms for passing such and such an exam, prayers for curing such and such an illness, prayers for this and that. I told him it was a bit contradictory to what he was telling me. He replied, "Yeah, but if we didn't do that, they'd go elsewhere. So that's how far we've come, even in Japan. People have fallen into the outside world. Fortunately, the monks keep the teachings as they are. But even their words are misunderstood by us. The other day, on the occasion of the temple's 20th anniversary, we had a disabled person visiting from another country, and just then the elevator broke down. The front door broke down too. So I remarked to the reverend "it's odd that this kind of problem happens just when we're having an important moment". He replied, laughing, "it's sanshō shima". But in his mind obviously, sanshō shima are not external things it's not like "I didn't hear the alarm clock it's sanshō shima. It was in the second degree that he said that, and we tend to take it in the first degree and from then on, everything that happens to us is sanshō shima: I don't want to go to work is sanshō shima. We mix everything up, so it's true that the important thing is to rephrase all the vocabulary and explain the concepts they imply.

We don't have much time left, so I just want to remind you that you can listen to all these questions and answers on the Podcast that will soon be produced from the recording that has just been made, and that you will be notified by e-mail when you can listen to them. I'd like to thank Gérard for all his hard work, and I'd say that after what he's just said, I still have a lot of questions to ask myself. I'd like you to share your questions with us. So, I wish you a very good day, and for me a good evening, as I'm in the southern hemisphere. Good evening to you all and see you soon.