The Daimoku as Hu'a-t'ou (head and tail)

I was always a bit troubled about the phrase Namu Myoho Renge Kyo.

Here was something claiming to be unconditioned ultimate reality, and yet it was clearly a product of language and culture.

As a young man I remember sitting amongst the trees, listening for the sound of this phrase but I couldn’t even detect it in the original conditioning of nature

Embracing it anyway, for its therapeutic value, gradually it became internalized as part of my own nature.

In more recent years when those doubts have arisen, I’ve learned to dismiss them as dual thinking. The conditioned and unconditioned, after all, are two but not two, aren’t they?

Then Rev. Ryuei McCormick’s recent Dharma talk, blew a breath of fresh insight at me.

Ah! the words have a head and tail. Of course.

What I was listening for in the woods was the tail, manifesting in syllables and sounds as an expression of the unconditioned. But actually, the head was the part eluding me; the unconditioned itself.

And now I’m chanting a bit differently.

Grasping the tail to begin with, by mustering if I can, the mindful attention needed for that.

And then opening my heart/mind to the perfect fullness of the moment that the words express.

And there in that moment is perhaps, I believe, where understanding and joy and the power of prayer, through time and space, arise.

By John Marder