The Gazette
by Christine Benvenlto
We’re chanting for world peace and individual happiness,” says Buddhist Helena Dooley-Mehta.
“Chanting gives you the power to pull yourself together.”
Dooley-Mehta, an artist and Amherst resident, is describing Nichiren Shoshu Buddhism, a form of Mahayana Buddhism that she has practiced for seven years and that she credits with changing her life. “I was introduced to it nine years ago, but I didn’t get it,” Dooley-Mehta recalls. Despite her skepticism, she decided to give chanting a try, doing a little each day facing a small plant. “It’s incredible what happened. For one thing the plant grew really big,” she laughs. For another thing, she says, her life has taken some definite turns in the years she’s been chanting – turns in the directions she wanted it to go. “For me, it’s taken the direction of art. I have a lot of confidence. I married the man I loved but wasn’t getting along with.”
Based on a 3,000-year-oid text, the “Lotus Suira,” the sect was founded in the 13th century by a Japanese priest called Nichiren Daishonin. The basic practice consists of chanting twice each day
before a Gohonzon, a scroll written mostly in Chinese characters with some Sanskrit. Practitioners chant two chapters of the Lotus Sutra, as well as the words “Nam-myoho-rengekyo,” which literally means “I devote myself to the mystic law of the Lotus Sutra,” and which is also translated as “I devote myself to the mystic (or universal) law of cause and effect.”
Daily chanting is a solo effort, with practitioners coming together to pool their voices once a week
in each other’s homes. Dooley-Mehta belongs to a local group of some 30 members who are scattered
all over the valley. She says the number who show up at any given meeting is usually about 10, and
that new members are welcome to join by contacting anyone in the group. According to Dooley-Mehta, “A lot of jazz musicians do it and a lot of artists. It appeals to your need for rhythm.”
Dooley-Mehta herself was introduced to the religion by fellow artist Donna Estabrooks, a West
Cummington resident who has been practicing for eight years and is currently trying to start a group in the Berkshires. “I remember thinking I would never join a religious organization.” Estabrooks says. “I was going to do it for three weeks, and here it is eight years later.”
Like Dooley-Mehta, Estrabrooks reports that she began to see the effect chanting had on her life
right away. “I had a year of everything being happy and fun,” she says. “It seemed like my life was
going to be so such easier. The practice was like a magic box.” But the magic box turned into Pandora’s box when Estabrooks started to have memories of being molested as a child. “I thought I was hallucinating. I almost quit because chanting became very painful to me.”
Now she sees the memories of molestation as the first in a series of challenges Buddhism would bring her face to face with, and give her the strength to deal with at the same time. “The most important thing about my practice is being in touch with who I really am,” she explains. “I think for me, chanting gives me the courage to continue going toward my dreams and desires.”
Estabrooks was raised a Universalist Christian and says that although she was attracted to spirituality and religion, she didn’t view religion as something with the potential to powerfully effect her life in the here and now. In this respect, she may be typical of Americans involved in Mahayana Buddhism.
“In the United States, even though the religious landscape is changing so much, usually people have grown up with Judeo-Christian teachings,” says Buddhist Rob Epsteiner. “They’re not totally satisfied with what they’re doing, or they wouldn’t be coming to Buddhism.”
Epsteiner works for the Boston Community Center of Soka Gakkai International, the international lay organization of Nichiren Shoshu Buddhism. He says the religion has been practiced in this country since I960, and currently has a membership of somewhere from 300,000 to 500,000, with over 3,000 members here in New England. Epsteiner himself began chanting 26 years ago, as a student at Boston University. “If something is good for you, usually you will stick with it,” he says.
Soka Gakkai’s work is not only concerned with what is good for individuals, but also far the planet as a whole. According to Epsteiner, they sponsor cultural and educational events, with a particular focus on peace-oriented activities. “As a Buddhist movement, naturally issues of peace and war are very important to us,” he notes.
When Epsteiner talks about the practice of Buddhism and its effect on people’s lives, he uses two key words, words that crop up repeatedly in Dooley-Mehta and Estabrooks’s stones as well: happiness and responsibility. “We encourage people through their Buddhist practice to have a happier life,” Epsteiner says. As people practice, adds, they will see their lives changing, and a part of that change will be a resolve to make deeper human commitments, to take on more responsibility for the suffering of others.
Estrabrooks talks about happiness and responsibility in terms of two other favorite Buddhist concepts: cause and effect, “Whatever comes up in this life, this is what I have to deal with,” she explains. “From day to day, take one hundred percent responsibility for what’s going on in front of you. The cause that you make today is going to create your future. When you chant for whatever it is you desire, from that time you’ve made the cause, it’s absolute.”
For Dooley-Mehta, chanting works with a kind of domino effect, touching her own life, the lives of those connected to her, and then on beyond her immediate surroundings. For example, chanting for
family harmony between herself and her three grown children, she says, she is also seeing her
husband’s relationships with his children getting better.
“It isn’t magical or anything,” she says. “They claim it gets you in rhythm with the universe. Things are easier for you, so you get happy. The way to world peace is each person has to get happy, get peaceful, get straightened out.”
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