So personally I had a bad day. For the past few services I’ve been trying to learn the basics of using the uchiwa daiko, a traditional fan drum, during the service when everyone is chanting Namu Myoho Renge Kyo.
It’s not really complicated. Pause on the namu and then strike the drum on myo-ho-ren-ge-kyo. Pause on the namu and then strike the drum on myo-ho-ren-ge-kyo. Pause on the namu and then strike the drum on myo-ho-ren-ge-kyo. Rinse and repeat. Then at the end, after the bell is rung, you strike the drum for every character – na-mu-myo-ho-ren-ge-kyo.
So today I was sitting between the two women who regularly use the drums and I swear it sounded like they were striking the drum on Na, pausing on mu and myo, and striking the drum on ho-ren-ge-kyo. I was completely flummoxed.
No idea what my problem was.
Each time I’ve sat in the front with the uchiwa daiko ladies, Ven. Kenjo Igarashi has offered his own experiences with the drum. The first time we learned What A Young Monk Did For Summer Vacation and this time he recalled his experiences as a young priest in San Francisco in the mid-1970s.
The San Francisco Nichiren Shu services were held in a small apartment belonging to one of the members. Rev. Igarashi lived in the apartment.
When there were no services he had no other responsibilities. He tried to do his personal services in the morning, noon and evening but soon learned that the walls of the apartment were just too thin. His neighbors would pound on his door, yelling at him to knock it off.
Unable to practice at home, he took to the streets of downtown San Francisco, loudly chanting Namu Myoho Renge Kyo as he pounded on his uchiwa daiko. He wasn’t soliciting donations, the way he had during his trip from Minobu to Tokyo. He was just spreading the Daimoku.
In Japan, he said, people would understand what he was doing. In San Francisco, not so much. He said he was scared at times. On one occasion a woman came up to him and waved her index finger in his face and shouted “There is only ONE God.” Rev. Igarashi, a firm believer in many deities, found this behavior odd. He also discovered that a restaurant wouldn’t serve him because it was owned by Soka Gakkai members.
Not exactly the persecutions of Nichiren, which was the subject of the day’s services. The Matsubagayatsu Persecution recounts the attack that followed shortly after Nichiren submitted his famous Rissho Ankoku-ron. Nichiren’s efforts to promote reform aroused the resentment of the Buddhist establishment and members of the shogunate. On the night of Aug. 27, 1260, an angry mob burned down Nichiren’s hut in Kamakura. A protective deity in the form of a white monkey warned Nichiren of the danger and led him to safety.