Nichidatsu Fujii

Nichidatsu Fujii (藤井 日達, Fujii Nichidatsu, 1885–1985) was a Japanese Buddhist monk, and founder of the Nipponzan-Myōhōji order of Buddhism. He is best known world-wide for his decision in 1947, to begin constructing Peace Pagodas in many locations around the world, as shrines to world peace.

Fujii was born into a peasant family in the wilderness of the Aso caldera. At the age of 19, he was ordained a monk in the unusually ascetic and intellectual tradition of Hōon-ji in Usuki, Ōita. Reading of Nichiren's declaration that the Lotus Sutra would one day be preached in India, he decided to go there. He arrived in Calcutta in January 1931 and walked throughout the town chanting the daimoku and beating a drum, a practice known as gyakku shōdai.

In 1933 he met Mahatma Gandhi at his ashram in Wardha. Gandhi was honored by his presence, and added the daimoku to his ashram's prayers. Initially, Fujii wrote a letter to Gandhi defending the Japanese invasion of Manchuria as just war. Around this time Fujii sent monks to preach to Chinese people during the Nanking Massacre, out of his belief that Chinese and Japanese people could find unity in Buddhism. However, after Japan's defeat in 1945, Fujii realized that Japanese imperialism had produced nothing but suffering and anger, and that Japan had been much more peaceful during the Heian period when Buddhism was widespread.

Peace pagodas

Main article: Peace Pagoda

Beginning in the Cold War period, he preached noninvolvement and did hunger strikes for peace. He wrote:

The reason I came to espouse nonviolent resistance and the antiwar, antiarms position was not because I met with Mr. Gandhi. Rather, it was because the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing hundreds of thousands of innocent women and children, burning and poisoning [the population], a tragedy without precedent in human history, leading Japan to sue for unconditional surrender. In this we see the mad, stupid, barbaric nature of modern warfare.

The first Peace Pagodas were built as a symbol of peace in the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki where the atomic bombs took the lives of over 150,000 people, almost all of whom were civilian, at the end of World War II. Fujii returned to India and built a World Peace Pagoda in Rajgir, in 1965. He also built a Japanese style temple in Rajgir which is still inhabited today.

By 2000, at least 80 Peace Pagodas had been built around the world in Europe, Asia, and the United States, though not all are due to his movement.

While the Pagodas have been one expression of their call for peace, Nipponzan-Myōhōji also has carried its prayers to the world in numerous walks. Since 1976, when a group joined the Continental Walk for Disarmament and Social Justice across the United States, their presence has been an important part of many movements for peace and justice. "We must go out among the people." Fujii taught. "In the Sutra there is a line that states, 'So this man, practicing in the world, shall disperse the gloom of living.' Religion, which does not 'go' will not be able to provide the relief which must be brought about." The prayers of the Daimoku are to disperse this gloom. "Religion becomes isolated from the happenings of the world because it tends to be occupied in seeking solutions to one's own spiritual matters. If we fall to prevent a nuclear holocaust one's desire for security is nothing but a dream. All must be awakened."

Quote

"Civilization is not to kill human beings, not to destroy things, not to make war; civilization is to hold mutual affection and to respect one another." -Nichidatsu Fujii

See also

• Peace pagoda
• Peace walk

External links

• Dharmawalk.org Information on Nichidatsu Fujii (Guruji) and the continuing work of the order that he founded.
• Some photos of Hōon-ji