Talk:Gongyo

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

WikiProject Buddhism This article falls within the scope of WikiProject Buddhism, an attempt to promote better coordination, content distribution, and cross-referencing between pages dealing with Buddhism. Please participate by editing the article Gongyo, or visit the project page for more details on the projects.
??? This article has not yet received a rating on the quality scale.
??? This article has not yet received a rating on the importance scale.

Article Grading:
The article has not been rated for quality and/or importance yet. Please rate the article and then leave comments here to explain the ratings and/or to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the article.

[edit] Shoshu and SGI styles

Okay, I have some rough idea of the Nichiren Shoshu style of recital. It's very slow.It nearly took me an hour and a half to go through as the enunciation of the words are very accurate. The fastest record of me finishing recital of the hoben and juryo chapters is 3 minutes at the prescribed galloping horse pace but the Shoshu style is killer slow. BTW, I went to a friend's funeral wake who's a Shoshu believer to learn the Shoshu style. Next, the Juryo chapter is totally recited, including the prose section. Can any Shoshu believer verify the speed fact and the prose section fact for me? I really would like to include it in the main article.TY. Gammadion 19:57, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

Nichiren Shoshu gongyo probably averages about 10–15 minutes for the three-prayer style done in the evening and about 20–25 minutes for the five-prayer style done in the morning, though it can take longer depending on who is leading and who is participating. The morning version is often done at a faster pace; younger people usually go faster and older people, slower. There is no "set" speed.
An abbreviated format, in which only the Hoben-pon and Jigage sections are recited, takes about 3–5 minutes depending on the situation. There are other variations as well, such as a single recitation of the Hoben-pon followed by the full Juryo-hon and then recitation of the Jigage repeatedly as the dōshi (導師, the officiating priest) reads through, e.g., a list of the names of everyone present or other prayers.
The gongyo performed at funerals falls under this final format and usually continues for as long as attendees are offering incense for the deceased. This may apply to other Nichiren schools as well, but I don't know; I'm also not familiar with the Soka Gakkai/SGI format(s) since they changed it.
To my knowledge (this needs to be fact-checked), the major format difference between Nichiren schools is which parts of the Lotus Sutra are recited, and whether or when they are recited in Japanese (訓読, kundoku) or in the Japanese pronunciation of the Chinese version (白文読み, hakubun yomi My mistake: this is called 音読, ondoku).
Some day I will get around to writing a section on the Nichiren Shoshu gongyo and how it developed. HTH, Jim_Lockhart 09:13, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

JALockhart, OK, gotcha, the common format for a shoshu gongyo is 3 mins, but as I recorded the time for last funeral gongyo which was an evening one, it took 1 and half hours as it was very very carefully enunciated. :( Probably the doshi was worried as the rest of the parishers were not Japanese and were rather elderly.TY if you can get the standard shoshu version.Gammadion 07:35, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

Hmmmm. Your "the common format ... is 3 mins" is ambiguous. Did you interpret what I wrote above to mean "the usual [NS] format takes three minutes [to complete]"? If so, you need to re-read what I wrote; that's not what I said.
One more point: technically, the sutra recitation at a funeral is not gongyo. It is very similar, and the same sutra passages are recited; but—and this is putting doctrinal considerations aside— at a funeral, the pattern is: Hobenpon—prose section of the Juryohon—Jigage (verse section of the Juryohon). The Jigage is sometimes read only once, but more often it is recited three or more times back-to-back until all funeral participants have finished offering incense for the deceased. The prayers offered and other similar, faith-based elements are also quite different from gongyo.
If there were a lot of people at the funeral you attended and most were elderly, that might account for the slow pace. Why not ask the officiating priest?
Finally, I believe the sentence you added to the note is factually inaccurate. If you have evidence to substantiate what you've written, could you please cite it? Also, the situation could be different wherever you are, and where I am (Japan).
To my knowledge, SGI has not "standardized" its gongyo format yet. My understanding is that the leadership is saying "you don't have to do it the old way any more, and here's what we recommend as being more suitable to today's needs"; but they are not insisting that everyone follow the new formula. This follows the pattern they employed around 1994–95 when they began to have people exchange the Gohonzons received at temples for new ones issued by SGI (a copy of one inscribed by a high priest SGI still approved of). Best regards, Jim_Lockhart 09:37, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

Sodesneh, domo arigato. If I remember reading such an article in SGI quaterly magazine about standardizing the format back in 2003/2004. Maybe you are right on the funeral part.Best rgds to you too.Gammadion 06:19, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Article Fixes; Request for Factual Verification

This article purports to be about gongyo in general, but in fact it is about gongyo as performed by Sōka Gakkai International (SGI) and the Nichiren Shu headquartered at Minobu.

I have rewritten the lead hook to inform readers that gongyo is, in fact, common to most denominations of Chinese, Korean, and Japanese Buddhism and that each school has its own format and content.

I also created a new section for Nichiren Buddhism, and moved and confined to a specific section all information on Soka Gakkai/SGI practice; information on Nichiren-Shu gongyo already conformed to this convention.

I'm hoping that contributors familiar with other schools of Buddhism will either add sections for the sects they know, or create separate articles—e.g., "Gongyo (xxxx School)"—for them.

Further, the subsections on Soka/SGI's format and Nichiren-Shu's format are inconsistent in presentation, and there is not mention of things like the significance of their respective gongyos or their histories. I don't want to rewrite these sections myself so as to avoid conflicts of interest, and because I'm not familiar with these sects' practices anymore.

Meanwhile, sometime I will add a subsection to the "Gongyo in Nichiren Buddhism" section covering Nichiren Shoshu, and I suggest that people familiar with other Nichiren Schools write about the ones they know about.

I also rewrote the "Note" under Soka Gakkai/SGI format because I believe it was factually inaccurate. It may still be to a small degree, so I invite correction: if I am not mistaken, SGI did not officially announce its new gongyo format until quite recently (2003 or 2004), though they had "tweaked" it a bit quite a bit earlier and had long permitted some variation from the standard form. It is also my understanding that Soka/SGI's stance is rather flexible and that they have made the changes optional, since many older members are uncomfortable with them. It would be helpful if someone could verify this. There might also be differences between countries in which SGI has a presence so as to adapt to local preferences.

Jim_Lockhart 11:56, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

Thanks Jim for the update. It's greatly appreciated. I have added a section on Gongyo within Japanese Pure Land Buddhism to help round out this important article. Hopefully folks familiar with other sects (Zen? Shingon? Chinese/Korean Buddhism) can chime in as well. Ph0kin 19:49, 29 August 2007 (UTC)