PRAYING FOR THE DEAD IN SOKA GAKKAI INTERNATIONAL – U.K.

Helen Waterhouse

Though one might point at the earth and miss it, though one might bind up the sky, though the tides might cease to ebb and flow and the sun rise in the west, it could never come about that the prayers of the practitioner of the Lotus would go unanswered. ( 1272)

In the middle of the sixteenth century the familiar and ubiquitous place occupied by the dead in the lives of the English came to an abrupt end. ‘Physical death was to become final and the funeral to serve only as solace for the living’ (Morgan 2000:141). From our own twenty-first century van- tage point it is not easy to imagine how prayers for the dead were fitted into daily life and the pattern of the year and perhaps too easy to dismiss chantry practices and the sale of indulgences as opportunities for priests to take advantage of grieving and frightened relatives. Prayers for the dead have not gone away from official British in the intervening centu- ries, but they have changed in character. In recent and contemporary Christianity, prayers for the dead are what Douglas Davies calls a ‘prime example of prayers against death’ (Davies 2002:126). For those who chose to involve the Christian Church in funerals, the death of individuals is closely associated, at least by the celebrant, with Christ’s triumph over death and the consequent redemption of those who believe in the Christian salvific myth. Sixty-seven per cent of funerals arranged by the Co-operative in Britain still involve a religious (though not necessarily Christian) element (British Religion in Numbers 2011). In secular Britain individuals who may or may not take comfort from the Christian message still talk to and pray for their dead in their own unofficial ways (Klass and Walter 2001). The argument in this chapter is based on the religious practice of around 12,000 people1 in the U.K. who, rejecting both Christianity and other religious or secular alternatives, chose to embrace a Japanese form of . Soka Gakkai International (SGI) is a movement that currently claims more than 12 million members world-wide and

1 This figure was supplied by Soka Gakkai International – U.K. in May 2012.

206 helen waterhouse representation in 192 countries or territories (Soka Gakkai International 2012). It promotes a straightforward chanting practice, the core of which has remained constant as the movement has travelled the globe. As Soka Gakkai has extended its reach it has adapted to multiple cultural settings. This process has been eased by elements within its doctrine that allow for skilful adaptation, thus making the practice highly portable (Waterhouse 2002:133). Though numerically successful compared to most new religious movements, Soka Gakkai International in the U.K. remains a relatively small organization. As the title of the chapter makes clear, we are concerned here with the prayer for the dead, which forms part of the daily liturgy of Soka Gakkai. Soka Gakkai is usually understood as a life affirming movement because it is concerned with enlightenment now rather than at some point in the future or after death. But it acknowledges that death is part of life and allows space for the dead within its liturgy. For members of the move- ment, praying for the dead constitutes an officially sanctioned and inte- gral part of religious practice. I use Soka Gakkai in the U.K. here because it is a movement I have studied over a long period but also because it is a practice of choice rather than of family tradition: the great majority of Soka Gakkai members in the U.K. are first generation converts. Evidence from fieldwork that informants value the prayer for the dead and value the ways in which they use their prayers to accommodate the dead in their ongoing lives tells us something about the wider society. The chapter opened with a quotation from Nichiren (1222–1282) the radical monk and teacher who first promoted the exclusive practice of the on which Soka Gakkai is based.2 The excerpt is included as a reminder that although prayer is discussed here through a sociological lens, the particular prayer that will be the focus of the paper is integral to a religious practice founded on faith in the efficacy of prayer and the power of a religious text. Nichiren promoted the idea that faith in the title of the Lotus Sutra is the only means by which salvation can be attained in a degenerate age. According to Nichiren, the age is degenerate because the Buddha’s teachings no longer have potency (Nichiren 1278a), a state of affairs predicted within early . The analysis in this chapter is based on publications produced by Soka Gakkai and on fieldwork among Soka Gakkai Buddhists. The interview

2 As Stone (1998: 119) has shown, prior to Nichiren, the chant he adopted for universal use was exclusively a deathbed practice.