The Power of Positive Chanting

Most of them are young and modishly dressed. They kneel Oriental-style on a living-room floor in West Hollywood, some 20 strong, facing a homemade altar and rolling Buddhist prayer beads between their hands. "Nam-myo-ho-renge-kyo," they chant over and over. "Nam-myoho-renge-kyo." Suddenly four pretty girls leap up in cheerleading animation. Stealing a popular rock tune, they sing: "Yeh, yeh, yeh, yeh, yeh." Hips snap, arms flash. "Chant Daimoku!"* Snap. "Yeh, yeh, yeh, yeh, yeh." Flash. "Dai-Gohonzon!"

Thus went one of the nightly prayer meetings of a new and fast-growing U.S. religious cult, the American version of Japan's Soka Gakkai, or "Value Creation Society." An odd blend of militant Buddhism, the power of positive thinking and showbiz uplift, Soka Gakkai in the U.S. has grown from some 30,000 members in 1965 to more than 170,000 today. The sect, which is known in the U.S. as Nichiren Shoshu of America (The True Church of Nichiren), claims to be gaining at least 2,000 converts a month. In the New York general chapter alone, there were 552 converts during October. Moreover, more than 95% of the new converts are not of Japanese origin.

Clean Government. Soka Gakkai was founded in Japan in the early 1930s by an evangelizing Japanese schoolteacher named Tsunesaburo Makiguchi, who blended the theology of a militant 13th century Buddhist monk named Nichiren with a philosophy of this-worldly benefit that stressed personal success. The sect now claims a membership of at least 16 million in Japan, and its Clean Government Party is the third largest political group within the Diet. In the U.S., Soka Gakkai at first concentrated on winning converts among Japanese-Americans or G.I.s who had married Japanese girls. About 1967, because the movement had virtually exhausted the available Japanese in the country, its focus shifted to whites and Negroes who had no previous Oriental affiliations.

The sect promotes its cause--as it does in Japan--with a revivalist fervor that suggests an Oriental version of Moral Re-Armament. Its Youth Division has a flashy fife-and-drum corps replete with majorettes. Its thrice-weekly newspaper, the World Tribune, is filled with ardent testimonials of what conversion has meant. Every member is expected to help expand the rolls by the practice of shakubuku*--proselytizing --wherever he goes. Those who can afford it are urged to make one of the chartered-jet pilgrimages to the head temple of Taisekiji in Japan, which more than 10,000 members visit daily.

Converts to Soka Gakkai are a mixed assortment of religion seekers. Some were first attracted to Oriental thought by an exposure to Zen; others have worked their way through a number of religions without finding spiritual satisfaction. The most notable seeker to date is a onetime Mormon elder who tried 30 different religions before joining the sect. Negroes who join the movement claim to be impressed by the absence of racial prejudice. Whatever their motives for joining, converts generally admire the warmth and zeal of the sect's prayer meetings. "I felt like I wasn't really alone any more," says Linda Chernov, 25, a Hollywood costume designer. "I was surrounded by people who were going to protect me." Initiates sometimes attend as many as five or six evening meetings a week, usually in members' homes.

Soka Gakkai makes few demands on its converts: beyond shakubuku, all a person has to do is practice Gongyo--the morning and evening recitation of Buddhist sutras and the chanting of the Daimoku "until they feel satisfied." "It's a matter of practicing," explains one young member. "As long as you're chanting, you're in. If you stop chanting, you're out." Members can chant for anything, any time, and the newer ones often concentrate on material wants: a better apartment, a new job, a new car. Members even testify to such minor miracles as praying a traffic cop out of a ticket, or a professor into a passing grade. One San Francisco hippie who joined the sect prayed for--and got --"a pocketful of drugs," then tried for something harder: a girl named Sue. "That week," he disclosed in an English-language monthly published by the sect, "I met five girls named Sue."

As they develop, though, members of the sect are expected to chant for spiritual blessings, such as moral rectitude and deeper understanding of the faith. "Your desires get higher and higher," says Sandi Mytinger, 25, "and your life gets higher and higher." Ultimately, the goal of Soka Gakkai is the establishment of an earthly kingdom come --an era of world peace that will be achieved when at least one-third of mankind adopts the sect's version of true Buddhism. The movement clearly has a long way to go.

* The Daimoku is a ritual prayer whose Sanskrit and Chinese words, "Nam-myoho-renge-kyo," are roughly translatable as "Glory to the Lotus Sutra of the Mystical Law." In homes, it is usually chanted in front of a Go-honzon, a small wooden altar containing a replica of the original prayer scroll, the Dai-Gohonzon, still enshrined in Japan. * One Soka Gakkai song--to the tune of I've Been Working on the Railroad--immortalizes the practice: "I've been doing shakubuku all the livelong day . . ."

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