Mantra · Buddhist practice
Daimoku
Homage to the Lotus Sūtra
南無妙法蓮華経
Namu Myōhō Renge Kyō
The title of the Lotus Sūtra, invoked as the practice itself. Nichiren taught that the sūtra's whole merit is contained in its name, so that chanting the title — the daimoku — is the complete practice for the present age.
Source: Nichiren, Risshō ankoku ron and letters (13th c.); title of the Saddharmapuṇḍarīka Sūtra
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南無妙法蓮華経
Namu Myōhō Renge Kyō
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What the words say
Namu is homage. Myōhō is the Wonderful Dharma, renge the lotus flower, kyō the sūtra: together, Kumārajīva's Chinese title for the Lotus Sūtra. The characters are read in the old Sino-Japanese pronunciation used for chanting, which is why a general Japanese voice mispronounces them.
Where it comes from
Nichiren (1222–1282) set out the practice in thirteenth-century Japan, holding that in a degenerate age the title alone remains effective. The schools descending from him — Nichiren Shū, Nichiren Shōshū, and the lay movement Sōka Gakkai — all keep it as the central practice, though they differ sharply on much else.
How it is practised
Chanted before a gohonzon, often for a set period rather than a set number, and preceded in most schools by recitation of portions of the sūtra's second and sixteenth chapters.
References
- Nichiren, Risshō ankoku ron (1260)
- Jacqueline I. Stone, Original Enlightenment and the Transformation of Medieval Japanese Buddhism (University of Hawai'i Press, 1999)
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