Daimoku: chanting Nam Myoho Renge Kyo

On April 28, 1253, a monk named Nichiren climbed a hill near Seicho-ji temple in Japan's Awa province and, before dawn, chanted Nam Myoho Renge Kyo aloud for the first time. Myoho renge kyo is the Japanese title of the Lotus Sutra, and nam, drawn from the Sanskrit namas, means to devote or dedicate oneself. Nichiren's claim was that the sutra's title already contains the whole of what the text teaches, so that chanting the title with sincere faith conveys the same benefit as reading, copying or memorizing its entire text, a far more demanding practice the older Buddhist schools of his day still expected of practitioners. He placed this practice inside a larger claim about time itself, the doctrine that history had entered mappo, the Latter Day of the Law, an era he and other Buddhist thinkers of the period dated from roughly 1052, in which the contemplative and meditative disciplines of earlier ages had lost their power to lead people to enlightenment. Daimoku, he taught, was the one practice suited to this degenerate age precisely because it required no scholarly training and was open to any person regardless of standing. His first sermon that same day opened with a direct attack on the popular Pure Land, or Nembutsu, teaching of calling on Amida Buddha, a challenge that cost him exile and two attempts on his life within the following decade.

Daimoku names the chant itself, gongyo names the fuller daily liturgy built around it. A practitioner recites portions of the Lotus Sutra's second and sixteenth chapters, the Expedient Means and Life Span chapters, facing an object of devotion called the Gohonzon, a paper mandala inscribed with Nam Myoho Renge Kyo at its center surrounded by the names of Buddhist and Shinto figures. That recitation is normally followed by daimoku itself, repeated chanting of the title alone, for a length of time each practitioner sets. Soka Gakkai, the lay movement now the largest body descending from Nichiren, revised gongyo's format in 2004 and again in 2015, each time shortening the sutra recitation portion and simplifying the accompanying silent prayers, changes the organization explained as making the practice more accessible to new members while leaving the daimoku chanting at its center untouched. Nichiren Shoshu, the priestly denomination that excommunicated Soka Gakkai's ten million members in November 1991, kept the older, longer liturgical form and requires a Nichiren Shoshu priest to inscribe a Gohonzon; Soka Gakkai has instead conferred its own Gohonzon, reproduced from a version transcribed by an earlier high priest, Nichikan, since 1993. The two bodies still agree on the object of the practice even where they now disagree sharply on who has authority to produce one.