A Time to Chant: The Soka Gakkai Buddhists in Britain
Reviewed by Eileen Barker
Sociology of Religion
Vol.57 No.3
Pp.323-324
Fall 1996
COPYRIGHT 1996 Association for the Sociology of Religion
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The Soka Gakkai International (SGI) is a lay organization that
developed out of Nichiren Shoshu Buddhism, one of the traditions
within Japanese Mahayana Buddhism. The thirteenth-century monk,
Nichiren, challenged the then (and still) popular belief that
salvation entails entering the "Pure Land" after death, and that
this depends upon the mercy of Amida Buddha. instead, Nichiren
taught, the land of true happiness ... is not to be found anywhere
apart from this world. It can only be created within the realities
of actual society, after people have firmly established an awareness
of the True Law within their own lives" (p. 5). Furthermore, it is
believed that Nichiren, an incarnation of the Gautama Buddha,
revealed the True or Mystic Law., Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, from the
previously hidden depths of the Lotus Sutra. It is through the
chanting of Nam-myoho-renge-kyo in front of a scroll or mandala --
the Gohonzon -- that one can hope to attain Buddahood -- and, modern
practitioners tell us, a wide range of other spiritual, social, and
material rewards such as better health, improved relationships, a
more lucrative job, a new guitar, or a sports car.
After the Second World War, at the start of what McFarland has
evocatively termed The Rush Hour of the Gods, Soka Gakkai numbered
but a few hundred Japanese followers. Today it is one of the
best-known and, in terms of numbers, the most successful of the new
movements in Japan and of all the Buddhist groups that have come to
the West, claiming several millions of members in Japan and some
hundreds of thousands throughout the rest of the world -- around
4,000 of whom are to be found in Britain.
Wilson and Dobbelaere introduce us to the history of the movement's
Japanese origins and to its current international flavor. We are
told of the relationship of British members with the not altogether
uncontroversial figure of President Ikeda. An interesting appendix
details the 1990-1992 schism between on the one hand, Ikeda and Soka
Gakkai and, on the other hand, the Nichiren Shoshu priests, based at
Taiseku-ji, the head temple in the foothills of Mount Fuji where the
original Gohonzon, inscribed in 1253, is enshrined.
The information on the British movement was gathered through
extensive contact with the movement and its literature over a number
of years. As the result of a 62 percent usable response rate to an
85-question postal survey from a random sample of 1,000
(non-Japanese) members, we have an abundance of statistics with 27
tables containing demographic details and information about members'
attitudes to the movement and to life in general. Many of the
findings are placed in a comparative perspective with data about the
general population. The figures are peppered with a wealth of
quotations both from the open questions of the questionnaires and
from some thirty interviews conducted by the authors.
Unlike the participants in many other Buddhist groups, members of
Soka Gakkai are not distinguishable by their clothes or through any
particular lifestyle. Nearly all live in their own homes and earn
their income in the outside world -- often being self-employed an/or
connected to some middle-class service occupation such as teaching,
therapy, the arts, or the mass media. In Britain, almost half the
members live in the London area; women outnumber men by 3:2.
Although half the respondents had started chanting while in their
twenties or (in the case of 7 percent, earlier), the mean age at
which Wilson and Dobbelaere's respondents had begun chanting was 31.
The joiners as a group were, thus, somewhat older than persons
joining new religions such as the Unification Church, ISKCON or the
Children of God, or those practicing Transcendental Meditation, -
although not, perhaps, all that different in age from those who
became neo-sannyasins within the Osho (Rajneesh) movement.
The monograph is clearly structured, informative, and pleasantly
written. It provides a comprehensive and comprehensible study of the
origins, beliefs, practices, organization, and appeal of the Soka
Gakkai Buddhists in Britain. One ends up with a "feel" for the
movement and its members, and those who are familiar with SGI-UK
will have little difficulty in recognizing it.
But we are offered more than the description of a Buddhist sect in
Britain. Anyone interested in modern society and its relationship
with religion is strongly recommended to read the Epilogue. In the
course of these 15 pages, the authors present us with an analysis,
based on their own and other empirical data, of ways in which
changes in contemporary society have given rise to a new demand and
new supply of religious beliefs, practices, and organization.
The argument is that SGI-UK is "in tune with the times" in so far as
its members have a radically different experience of life from those
engaged in, say, the extractive or manufacturing industries of
producer societies. With the shift from an economic structure in
which the goals of a production-oriented economy "demanded a moral
order in which the work ethic had a central role" (p. 217) to one in
which a consumer economy "demanded the abandonment of the regulation
of personal comportment" (p. 218); "Ideals of duty to the state, or
action for the corporate good, were subordinated to the search for
personal fulfillment and the desire to enjoy life to the full" p.
(219). The image of a personal God was increasingly replaced by the
idea of an impersonal force or spirit; and rewards came to be sought
in this life in this world -- and/or, via reincarnation, in the next
life in this world -- rather than through salvation in some other
world. Wilson and Dobbelaere, frequently pointed to as staunch
upholders of "the secularization thesis," illustrate unambigously
how they are fully aware that the desacralization of societal
organizations may lead not to the disappearance of religion at a
personal level, but to its persistence in forms more functionally
compatible with modern -- or post-modern -- society. A Time to Chant
is, argue the authors, now.