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Namu Myōhō Renge Kyō[a] (Kanji:南無妙法蓮華経) is aJapanese sacred phrase chanted within all forms ofNichiren Buddhism. InEnglish, it means "Devotion to the Mystic Dharma of theLotus Flower Sutra" or "Homage to the Sublime Dharma of theLotus Sutra".[1][2]
The wordsMyōhō Renge Kyō refer to theJapanese title of theLotus Sūtra (Sanskrit:Saddharmapuṇḍarīkasūtra). The phrase is referred to as theDaimoku (題目)[2] , meaningtitle, and was publicly taught by the Japanese Buddhist priestNichiren on 28 April 1253 atop Mount Kiyosumi, now memorialized bySeichō-ji temple inKamogawa, Chiba prefecture,Japan.[3][4]
In Nichiren Buddhism, the practice of prolonged Daimoku chanting is referred to asShōdai (唱題). Nichiren Buddhist believers claim that the purpose of chanting is to reduce suffering by eradicating negative karma and all karmic retribution,[5] while also advancing the practitioner on the path toperfect and complete awakening.[6]
Lotus Sutra devotion had a long history in China and Japan (especially in theTiantai school), but it was generally associated with chanting whole chapters of the sutra, or the whole sutra itself, not simply the title. A homage similar to the daimoku is found in Chinese ritual texts belonging to the Tiantai school, such as in the Lotus Repentance ofZhiyi, the founder of the tradition. However, these homage phrases are only recited once as part of the entire ritual, not as a repetitive chant.[7]
TheFahua ch'uan-chi, aTang dynasty ChineseLotus Sutra devotional text, contains at least two stories of individuals being saved from hell by reciting "Námó miàofǎ liánhuá jīng", but this is just a single recitation, and the text does not discuss its use as a chant used in continuous religious practice.[7]: 155 [8]
The actual practice of chanting the Daimoku, or the title of theLotus Sutra (in Japanese:Namu-myōhō-renge-kyō), was popularized by theKamakura-period Buddhist reformerNichiren (1222–1282). While often assumed to be his original innovation, historical evidence suggests that the practice existed in Japan way before his time. Early references to Daimoku chanting appear inHeian period (794–1185) texts, such asShui ōjōden andHokke hyakuza kikigakisho, where it was associated with devotion to theLotus Sutra. Nichiren, however, transformed this practice by giving it a comprehensive doctrinal foundation and advocating it as the sole means of salvation in the degenerate age of the Final Dharma (mappō).[7]
The idea that the title of the sutra held the power of the entire sutra could have been influenced by the fact thatZhiyi, the Chinese founder of theTiantai school, had explained in his commentary to theLotus Sutra (Fahua Xuan Yi) that the title of the sutra contained within it the entire meaning of the whole sutra, and that it signified the sublime (miao 妙) nature of ultimate reality itself.[9]
The earliest authenticated use of the Japanese daimoku dates back to 881, in a prayer composed bySugawara no Michizane for his deceased parents. In this prayer, the daimoku was actually paired with an homage toKannon bodhisattva (asNamu Kanzeon Bosatsu, Namu myōhō renge kyō).[10] Similarly, theKachio engi (possibly dated to the 9th century) states that the monk Shōnyo taught the chanting of Namu-myōhō-renge-kyō and NamuAmida Nyorai.[10]
By the late 10th and early 11th centuries, the daimoku was being chanted on theTendai school stronghold ofMt. Hiei as an expression of devotion to the Dharma. There is evidence of the Daimoku's use in sutra burials, inscriptions on statues, and other religious practices, indicating its growing significance in both monastic and aristocratic circles.[10] These examples are often associated with Amida Buddha or Kannon. For example, a Kannon statue installed in 1012 at Koryuji temple included inscriptions of the daimoku along with thenembutsu (Namu Amida Butsu).[10]
TheKūkan (Contemplation of Emptiness), a text (questionably) attributed to the Tendai monkGenshin (942–1017), states that those who "abhor the impure Saha world and aspires to thePure Land of Utmost Bliss should chantNamuAmida Butsu, Namu Myōhō Renge Kyō, NamuKanzeon Bosatsu", which can be interpreted as honoring correspondingly thethree jewels of Buddhism.[10] Similar passages which contain the daimoku as a devotional chant is found in the works of Genshin's disciples, like Kakuun (953–1007), and Kakuchō (952/960–1034).[10]
By the late 12th century, the daimoku began to be chanted repeatedly, similar to thenembutsu (chanting ofAmida Buddha's name), as seen in records of rituals and ceremonies from this time. Stories from setsuwa (Buddhist tales) further illustrate the daimoku's role as a simple yet powerful practice, accessible even to those with limited knowledge of Buddhism. These tales emphasize theLotus Sutra's salvific power, suggesting that even uttering its title could form a bond with the Dharma and lead to salvation. However, the practice was not yet as widespread among the common people, remaining more prominent among monks and the nobility.[10] In a story found in theHokke hyakuza kikigakisho, the daimoku (here:Namu ichijō myōhō renge kyō) is recited by an illiterate Chinese monk who could not learn to chant theLotus Sutra itself, and the practice later saves him from hell.[10]
Furthermore, during this period, a class of people known as "title chanters" (daimyōsō) emerged, who intoned the daimoku at public lectures and other ceremonies. These figures may have helped spread the practice before the rise of Nichiren Buddhism.[10]
The 12th century practice of the daimoku was often paired with the nembutsu or associated withPure Land Buddhism. One example from the early 12th century is in theShui ōjōden (Gleanings of Biographies of People born in the Pure Land), which contains a description of the practice in the context of Pure Land devotion. The text describes how Tachibana no Morisuke (d. 1096) is said to have recited the name of Amida Buddha and the title of the Lotus Sutra every evening while facing West.[10] In another example, the artistUnkei(1150–1223) describes how during a ritual copying of theLotus Sutra, various devotees would perform three bows for each line of the sutra he copied. With each bow they would recite the daimoku and the nembutsu. Unkei also mentions how local lay supporters of the project also chanted the nembutsu and the daimoku several thousand times.[10]
The title of theLotus Sutra was also used by the Tendai school foresoteric yoga, especially in the Lotus Ritual (Hokke Hō), an esoteric Buddhist rite based on the Lotus Sutra andChinese Esoteric Buddhism. This rite made use of mandalas, mantras and dhāraṇīs, including thedhāraṇīs taught in theLotus Sutra, as well as the daimoku.[11]
One medieval Tendai oral teachings text (kuden homon), theShuzenji-ketsu (Doctrinal Decisions of Hsiu-ch'an-ssu), contains an example of daimoku chanting. TheShuzenji-ketsu recommends the chanting of daimoku as a deathbed practice, stating that this practice is a "Dharma container" which can include within it thethreefold contemplation of Tiantai. The text mentions that "through the workings of the three powers of the Wondrous Dharma [Dharma, Buddha, Faith], one shall at once attain enlightened wisdom and will not receive a body bound by birth and death."[10] The text also teaches daimoku recitation as a method of contemplating the three thousand realms in one thought (ichinen sanzen), again at the time of death, and pairs it with recitation of the name ofKannon bodhisattva.[10]
The text also teaches daimoku recitation as part of a contemplative rite described as follows:
You should make pictures of images representing the ten realms and enshrine them in ten places. Facing each image, you should, one hundred times, bow with your body, chant Namu Myoho-renge-kyo with your mouth, and contemplate with your mind. When you face the image of hell, contemplate that its fierce flames are themselves precisely emptiness, precisely provisional existence, and precisely the middle, and so on for all the images. When you face the image of the Buddha, contemplate its essence being precisely the threefold truth. You should carry out this practice for one time period in the morning and one time period in the evening. The Great Teacher Zhiyi secretly conferred this Dharma essential for the beings of dull faculties in the last age. If one wishes to escape from birth and death and attain bodhi, then first he should employ this practice. –Shuzenji-ketsu, trans. Jacqueline Stone[12]
The dating of theShuzenji-ketsu is uncertain and it has provoked much scholarly controversy in Japan. Scholars disagree on whether the work influenced or is influenced by Nichiren, as well as whether it predates him, post-dates Nichiren, or whether it emerged independently at around the same time.[10] Shimaji Daito (1875–1927) for example, places it in the cloistered rule period (1086–1185).[10] Tamura Yoshiro meanwhile dates the work to 1250–1300.[10] Takagi Yutaka meanwhile agrees with the view that the text is from the lateHeian period and that it demonstrate's the era's concern for a proper death. Many scholars have noted that devotion to Amitabha and the Lotus Sutra were key elements of the Buddhism of the Heian period, where they were seen as complementary. The Tendai school at mount Hiei was known for a schedule of practice which focused onLotus Sutra rites in the morning and Pure Land practices in the evening. This custom was later described through the motto "daimoku in the morning and nembutsu in the evening."[10]
The TendaiLotus Sutra revivalistNichiren (1222–1282) is known today as the greatest promoter of the daimoku in the history ofJapanese Buddhism. Nichiren saw the repetition of the daimoku as the supreme and highest practice, since the title of the sutra contained the entireBuddhadharma and the seed ofBuddhahood itself.[10] Nichiren frequently quotes passages from theLotus Sutra in which the Buddha declared the sutra to be his highest teaching, such as "among those sutras theLotus is the foremost!", and "this sutra is king of the sutras."[13][14] Nichiren writes in hisKanjinhonzonshō:[15]
The bodhisattva practices cause the virtues of the Buddha. The practices and virtues of Sakyamuni, the World-honored One, are contained in the Five Characters:Myōhō Renge Kyō. When we keep these Five Characters, we shall automatically receive the merits that the Buddha obtained by his practices.
Nichiren also writes that the daimoku has the following meanings:[16]
1) the name of the combination of the Dharma and its simile, 2) the name of the reality of all things, 3) the name of the teaching of the One Vehicle, 4) the name of faith in the Original Buddha, and 5) the name of the supremacy of the teaching.
According to Stone, who draws on Takagi Yutaka's work, Nichiren's daimoku practice was influenced by three key elements: earlier Heian-period daimoku practices, medieval Tendai doctrine (as seen in texts like theShuzenji-ketsu), and the nembutsu tradition popularized byHōnen. Nichiren synthesized these influences to create a unique and exclusive practice centered on the daimoku, which became the core of his new school of Buddhism.[7] Nichiren gives a detailed interpretation of the daimoku in hisOngi kuden and in other works. His interpretations are influenced by the writings ofTiantai Zhiyi.[17][10]For Nichiren, reciting the daimoku was equivalent to reciting the entireLotus Sutra. He believed that the merit and enlightenment of the Buddha would be "spontaneously transferred" to those who embraced and chanted the daimoku. This would erase their evilkarma and allow them to attain Buddhahood in this very body.[10]Jacqueline Stone writes that "Nichiren stressed salvation through faith rather than through meditative insight, and this position also represents orthodoxy for the major Nichiren denominations today."[10] However, Nichiren also held that the practice of daimoku recitation could purify the mind and lead to insight. For example, in Becoming a Buddha in One Lifetime (Issho jobutsu sho), Nichiren writes:
Even right now, the deluded mind in a single thought-moment of ignorance is an unpolished mirror. But if one polishes it, it will surely become the bright mirror that is the truesuchness of the Dharma nature. Profoundly arouse the mind of faith and day and night, morning and evening polish it without neglect. How should one polish it? Simply chanting Namu-myōhō-renge-kyō is what is called polishing.[10]
Nichiren'sKanjin honzon shō, one of his most significant works, established the doctrinal foundation for chanting the daimoku as a practice of "mind contemplation" (觀心) suitable for the final Dharma age. In this text, Nichiren taught that the awakened Śākyamuni Buddha's accumulated practices and resulting merits are fully contained within the five characters of the daimoku, and are immediately transferred to the practitioner upon chanting. Consequently, one can achieve the merits of the six perfections without pursuing each practice individually. TheKanjin honzon shō also introduced the concept of the “great maṇḍala” (daimandara), a calligraphic representation of the Lotus assembly inspired by esoteric iconography. Nichiren created over 120 examples of this maṇḍala, in which the daimoku is prominently inscribed down the center, flanked by the names of Śākyamuni andMany Jewels Buddha, reflecting the scene described in the Lotus Sūtra where these Buddhas sit together in the jeweled stūpa. Nichiren taught that through faith in the Lotus Sūtra and the chanting of the daimoku, the devotee "enters" this maṇḍala, thereby participating in the enlightened reality of the primordial Buddha.[18]
Nichiren's emphasis on daimoku as an exclusive practice paralleled (and may have been influenced by) the development ofHōnen's exclusivenembutsu. Although Tendai and other Buddhist traditions included recitation-based practices (usually based on nembutsu,mantras or whole sutras, like theHeart Sutra orAmitabha Sutra), Nichiren elevated the chanting of the daimoku to an exclusive and universal method of attaining enlightenment. Nichiren claimed that the daimoku was theonly method to happiness and salvation suited for theage of Dharma decline, while other practices were useless.[19] As such, mixing the daimoku with other practices (as the Buddhists of the Heian period had done) was seen by Nichiren as being “like mixing rice with excrement.”[19] This exclusive stance has been seen as intolerant and radical by some modern scholars, but it was actually a common feature ofKamakura Buddhism, and can be seen inHōnen for example.[19] What was unique to Nichiren however was the direct confrontational stance which he took against other sects (which was the basis for the sect'sshakubukuproselytism).[20]
Within the early Nichiren community, interpretations of the daimoku practice varied, with some followers viewing it as an expression of faith, while others understood it as a meditative discipline or a means of achieving worldly benefits. His doctrine integrated elements of Tendai philosophy, esoteric Buddhism, and contemporary concerns about the age of mappō, which contributed to its wide appeal.[7]
Namu is used in Buddhism as a prefix expressingtaking refuge in a Buddha or similar object of veneration. Among varying Nichiren sects, the phonetic use ofNam versusNamu is a linguistic but not a dogmatic issue,[21] due to common contractions andu is devoiced in many varieties of Japanese words.[22] In this mantra, the Japanese drop the "u" sound when chanting at a fast pace, but write "Namu", seeing as it is impossible to contract the word into 'Nam' in their native script.[21]
Namu Myōhō Renge Kyō (南無妙法蓮華經, Chinese: námó miàofǎ liánhuá jīng) consists of the following words:
According to TiantaiZhiyi andNichiren, each of the words of the Lotus Sutra's title has a specific meaning:[24][25][26]
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In someTendai liturgy, theLotus Sutra is praised with different phrases.
In theTiantaiManual for the Dharma Flower Samadhi RepentanceRite (Fahua Sanmei Chanyi 法華三昧懺儀, Taisho no. 1941) composed byZhiyi, one finds the following homage to the sutra:[28]
一心奉請:南無大乘妙法蓮華經 (心想甚深。祕密法藏。悉現在前。受我供養)。
This homage passage (found in a group of similar passages paying homage to various Buddhas and bodhisattvas) reads: "With single-minded devotion, I respectfully entreatHomage to the Great VehicleWonderful Dharma Lotus Sūtra." The homage (Chinese:南無大乘妙法蓮華經; pinyin:Nán mó dà chéng miào fǎ lián huá jīng, Jp. romanization:Namu Daijō Myōhō Renge Kyō) is followed by the following instructions "Visualize the profound and secret Dharma treasury fully appearing before one to receive the offerings."[28]
This classic Tiantai Buddhist ritual emphasizes reverence, repentance, and dedication to enlightenment. Practitioners begin by recognizing the nature of all phenomena as inherently empty yet manifesting through karmic conditions. They engage in reverentworship, bowing toShakyamuni Buddha, past and future Buddhas, and prominent bodhisattvas such asMañjusri andSamantabhadra. The ritual incorporates a detailed repentance process for transgressions committed through the six sensory faculties (eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body, and mind), acknowledging the karmic consequences of sensory attachments. Practitioners express deep remorse, resolve to abstain from harmful actions, and dedicate their practice to the welfare of all beings. The ritual concludes with invoking the Buddhas and bodhisattvas to teach the Dharma and guide sentient beings toward liberation.[28]
Meanwhile, a Tendai 9th centuryHokke Senbo (法華懺法) contains an identicaldaimoku homage:
南無妙法蓮華經 (pronounced: Namo Beuhō Renga Kei)
Tendai sources also contain the alternative daimoku chant:
Namu ichijō myōhō renge kyō (Homage to the One Vehicle Sutra, the Wondrous Dharma Lotus Blossom)[10]
Another alternative homage reads:
Namu byōdō dai e ichijō myōhō renge kyō (南無平等大會一乘妙法蓮華經)
Homage to the Great Assembly of Equality, the One Vehicle, the Wondrous Dharma Lotus Sutra.
Tendai Buddhism generally does not use this phrase as a repetitive chant, as the Daimoku is used in Nichiren Buddhism. However, there is a related practice called theMethod for Prostrating to the Dharma Flower Sūtra (禮法華經儀式, Taisho no. 1944) observed today by both monastics and lay practitioners. This rite was famously practiced by the Tendai masterEnnin before his trip to China.[29] It can be performed in three forms: long, medium, and short. The long form involvesprostrating to each character of the entire sutra, while the medium form applies this to a selected chapter. The short form, which is more commonly practiced, involves prostrating to the characters of the sūtra's title, sometimes accompanied by chantingNamu. During this practice, a dedication such as "With single-minded devotion, I pay homage to theWonderful Dharma Lotus Sūtra, paying homage to the Dharma Jewel of the characterMyō (妙)" is recited.[30]
The title of the Lotus Sutra inSanskrit isSaddharmapuṇḍarīkasūtra, thus aSanskrit reconstruction of the homage would be:[31]
namaḥ saddharmapuṇḍarīkasūtrāya
In theKaimokushō(Liberation from Blindness),Nichiren cites aLotus Sutramantra. According to Nichiren, this is the "mantra at the core of theSaddharmapuṇḍarīkasūtra" which was discovered by thevajracharyaŚubhakarasiṃha "in an iron tower of South India".[32] The Sanskrit mantra is as follows:[32]
namaḥ samyaksambuddhānām
oṃ a aṁ aḥ
sarvabuddhājña-cakṣurbhyām gagana saṁsvā rakṣanī
saddharmapuṇḍarīkasūtram
jā hūṃ ho vajrarakṣaman hūṁ svāhā
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The words appear in songs including:
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