Why Respect for Ancestors Is Important

Why Respect for Ancestors Is Important

by Kotaro Suzuki

As head of a Rissho Kosei-kai branch for ten years, until 2006, I interacted with many members and dealt with various people's life problems. Speaking on the basis of that experience, I can say that all those who overcame their problems and achieved happiness, without exception, valued their parents and diligently practiced daily devotions for the benefit of ancestors (senzo kuyo), placing offerings of flowers, food, and drink on the home Buddhist altar and reciting sutra passages. Interestingly, even people who had resented their parents found happiness when they repented of their resentment and began practicing daily devotions.

Traditionally, the Japanese have valued home Buddhist altars and Shinto shrines. These may have functioned directly as a tool for enshrining the spirits of departed parents and ancestors and offering them thanks. But they were also an extremely important device for confirming people's connection with the gods and buddhas, in other words, the great invisible life force.

After World War II, however, Japanese homes rapidly lost that device. Due to the concentration of population in urban areas that began with postwar reconstruction and the accompanying change in housing patterns, Buddhist altars and Shinto shrines disappeared from more and more homes.

This process was accelerated by the shift in family structure from the extended family to the nuclear family. The spread of the nuclear family weakened awareness of ancestors, and with the loss of home Buddhist altars and Shinto shrines went the opportunity for home-based rites. As a result, many Japanese lost the sense of family cohesion and eventually confronted the grave problem of family breakdown.

Nor did it end there. With the diversification of values many people lost their spiritual moorings, which exacerbated egoism. Today, appalling cases of children killing parents and parents killing children are no longer unusual. The rise in such crimes, I believe, is not unconnected with the loss of home-based rites.

Rissho Kosei-kai President Nichiko Niwano, aware of the state of Japanese society, is calling on members to practice "regulation of the family" and a lifestyle centered on the home Buddhist altar. "Regulation of the family" means improving attitudes at home, ordering the home by, for example, instilling the habit of family members exchanging greetings and expressing thanks to one another. A lifestyle centered on the home Buddhist altar means the practice of gratitude toward ancestors and of sutra recitation for their benefit.

As a lay Buddhist organization, though, Rissho Kosei-kai aims for more than just the revival of home-based rites. Even without invoking the truth that all things are devoid of self, the bedrock of Buddhism, human beings owe their lives to the benefits of nature, the blessings of the sun, air, water, and so on. They are also beneficiaries of many other people. If we posit this fact as the warp, we can define our parents and ancestors, who have given us life, as the weft. In other words, people's lives are sustained by this warp and weft. The bodhisattva way advocated by Mahayana Buddhism is the way of life drawn from this immutable truth, and expressing gratitude to our ancestors and practicing sutra recitation for their benefit can be called the matrix of the bodhisattva way.

Going further, to the source of this warp and weft, we owe the very fact of our existence today to the great life force, the Eternal Original Buddha. In other words, respect for ancestors goes beyond the expression of gratitude; it is a "skillful means" guiding us to awaken to the great life force, the Original Buddha, that sustains all life. This being so, I believe there is a need to reconfirm the significance of daily devotions in society today.

Kotaro Suzuki is director of Kosei-kai International. He has formerly served as the director of the Secretaries' Office of Rissho Kosei-kai and the head of the organization's Nerima Branch in Tokyo.

This article was originally published in the July-September 2007 issue of Dharma World.


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