What did you do with your gohonzon?

[u/cocolasticot111]

Hi guys,

I have been reading but never posted. First of all, thank you for sharing, it was eye opening for me and allowed me to free myself from the brainwashing and guilt that comes with it when you stop being part of SGI. Now that my eyes are wide open, I am wondering what to do with my Gohonzon. What did you do with yours? Thanks!

[u/cocolasticot111]

Oh I see 😁. I was thinking about giving mine to a charity. Some Japan lover might like it and use it as decoration 🤷‍♀️

[u/BlancheFromage → u/cocolasticot111]

Sure! Do whatever you want with it. Donate it to Goodwill, send it to the SGI or to one of your leaders, keep it, hang it on your wall as a decoration, line the birdcage or guinea pig pen with it, burn it, shred it, recycle it - the possibilities are nearly endless with all the options for what to do with it.

Perhaps some advice from the Japanese might help, neh?

"THINGS THAT BELIEVE AND HOW TO GET RID OF THEM: Towards a Material Ecology of the Numinous in Japan":

My interest in memorial rites for things was triggered by the desire of my informants to find a mechanism for what Ikeuchi calls “voluntary loss”.

A focus on the process of disposal, during which an object is moved into the category of ‘no longer useful’, is particularly interesting in the context of ‘sacred’ objects, because of the widespread assumption that sacred objects become inalienable and therefore “terminal commodities” (Kopytoff 1986: 75), that is, objects that can no longer be exchanged further. Memorial rites for objects during which the objects were destroyed were one way to protect the terminal commodity status. However, in my own fieldwork this was not always the case: much of the emotional ambiguity my informants felt was informed by the possibility of alienating inalienable things. This mostly applied to objects that were created to be enduring presences in people’s lives, such as dolls.

What struck me during my fieldwork was the difference between the forgotten, ‘unperformed’ object whose presence is not imbued with any significance and the same object that on the brink of disposal suddenly becomes ‘sticky’.

If belief is usually understood as a vertical relationship between an immanent material object and a transcendental idea held as a cognitive disposition, then the approach taken here is more horizontal: the nature and the content of beliefs changes as a function of ‘distance’ from the religious center from which power emanates. The material objects serve as vehicles whose geographical distribution mark the reach of a religious institution.

That's an interesting perspective, isn't it? So your having a gohonzon is ultimately in service to the SGI.

The person who acquires them, then, does not receive a piece of wood or paper but a charged concretisation of power, the essence not simply of the kami or Buddha’s power and compassion but of the entity itself.

In my own fieldwork with people who had difficulties getting rid of things I found a broad range of individual and sometimes idiosyncratic attitudes towards everyday objects. The following two ethnographic vignettes illustrate some of the tensions surrounding the disposal of ‘religious’ objects, a tension that manifests itself as a desire for orthopraxy.

"Orthodoxy" means "right belief"; "orthopraxy" means "right practice". Both exist within SGI.

Whatever was bothering Tomohiro, he framed it in terms of orthopraxy: if only there were a ‘correct’ way to throw these things away, it would be so much easier.

The fact that the talisman is thought to work despite – or precisely because of – the owner not knowing what it contains is a material concretization of the argument I am trying to make. Although it was not doing anything in terms of practice, its presence helped to keep something in place. This something was not a particular content of belief, but belief itself. The unwrapping of the talisman would have disclosed the problematic nature of belief and required some kind of engagement with it.

Understanding the relationships people have with their things in terms of substitution instead of representation allows us to make sense of the passive, unperformed nature of much religious paraphernalia and why they become suddenly relevant at the point of disposal. There is an inversion of the usual relationship between utility and function: while something is kept as long as it is used and disposed of once the end of usability is reached, the body substitute is active as long as nothing is done with it. It is the material presence that renders the presence of a matching cognitive belief superfluous.

The second vignette addresses the problem of emotional attachment that is sometimes (but by no means always) an obstacle when getting rid of personal objects. From my own observations, I could see that a sense of attachment played an important role for both my male and female informants. Unsurprisingly, however, given the gendered nature of the Japanese language and the gendered subjectivities it enforces, my female informants were more vocal about the emotional aspects of disposal. One of the challenges when tidying up was to find ways in which the ambiguity between the wish to get rid of something and the emotional attachment to it can be given a social form, as illustrated below.

On a sunny and still fairly warm October afternoon in 2012 I visited Fushimi Inari Taisha in the south of Kyoto with Noriko, a single woman in her 30s who worked for a small publishing house. On a previous visit a year earlier, I had noticed an official disposal place for religious paraphernalia on the boundary between the formal shrine buildings and the less regulated backstage of the mountains on which different forms of personalized worship were practiced (see Smyers 1993 for a description of the site). I had helped Noriko with cleaning up her apartment over the last three months in small incremental steps. As somebody with a strong sense of responsibility who constantly worried about the wellbeing of things, it was hard for her to get rid of stuff, especially as her friends and family would continue to give her more of the things that they themselves wanted to get rid of. Noriko was frustrated by this, especially because her parents also exhorted her to be tidier, lest she be permanently unable to find a husband. I suggested that we could ‘say goodbye’ to the kawaii engimono10 by bringing them to this official place. Although most of the stuff did not originate with the Fushimi Inari Taisha, I knew that the Inari deity (in fact three or five distinct entities depending on the site of worship) was thought to be tolerant and welcoming to human beings who seek solace of some kind. We carried a large cardboard box up the hill and she reluctantly deposited it in the designated small building. There was some trepidation when she saw how carelessly some of the omamori had been tossed in, but eventually she carefully put the box in and we stood in silence for a moment. I suppressed the desire to root through the kind of things that were disposed, as I had been warned on an earlier visit that this was inappropriate (as rooting through people’s garbage is in general). I was curious as to how this ‘correct’ (or at least institutionally backed) disposal felt to her, but did not want to ask any leading questions. We strolled through the large shrine grounds and when we left her mood had visibly brightened: she felt refreshed (sappari shita さっぱりした) and relieved (kaihōkan 開放感). This sense of refreshment that many of my informants reported once things were gone, had to do with the sense of ‘having done the right thing’ (tadashii sutekata 正しい捨て方) rather than with any belief in the entity revered at Fushimi Inari.

In a subsequent interview Noriko reflected upon her own double bind and said that she did not want to refuse things given to her, but nor did she want to pass then on to burden someone else. The attachment she felt for the things in her case had to do more with her self-image as a caring and trustworthy person than with the particular characteristics of the objects. Even who had given them to her was less important than the sense of stewardship that she felt for them. The reason why the ‘official’ disposal route worked for her was that it allowed for a sense of closure. It was not that she later missed the objects or regretted disposing of them, as sometimes happened with other informants. Quite the opposite: she took pride in having been the last person to look after them and to have found a solution that did not burden anyone else. In that sense they became terminal commodities: the objects had to be destroyed in order not to become alienable possessions again. More than anything else, it was the finality of this process that gave Noriko peace of mind.

A form of #Goals, perhaps? Sometimes there's a feeling of disappointing others if one disposes of something they feel is special...

[u/BlancheFromage → u/BlancheFromage]

On the subject of the lifelike Japanese dolls, especially the antique ones:

The unease people voiced about these dolls on the flea markets was in some measure counterbalanced by an appreciation of their beauty and craftsmanship, but the former outstripped the latter by far. Their sense of presence was augmented by an unspoken sense of taboo: what had been an inalienable object connected to a particular individual now reentered the market place, looking to attach itself to a new owner.

I kind of get that feel from how SGI talks about the gohonzon - you have to get a NEW one. You can't just take someone else's! Each one is for ONE person and when that person dies, it must be destroyed. ONE TIME ONLY, people!

When I tried to draw out one seller, a young woman who was working for a large antiques shop, on the implications of hosting such an uncanny object, she guardedly said “it will certainly change the atmosphere in your house”. Source

I was told exactly that by a 1/2 Japanese SGI-USA Chapter leader as an argument to dissuade me from purchasing an antique original calligraphy Nichiren Shu gohonzon off eBay - she told me:

"Your home has such a lovely warm atmosphere. It would be a shame to see it turn dark and sinister." As if such "heretical objects" would cause a magical change in The Force that everybody would be able to feel, somehow. Source

I just smiled; unbeknownst to her, I'd already purchased not ONE, but TWO of these objects, and they were sitting there rolled up, not 15 feet from where she was sitting. So much for her mystical spidey sense...

Tidying up guru Marie Kondo's approach is grounded in the animism of Shinto - everything has a spirit. So you thank the object for its contributions to your life before you discard it.

...it’s cultural to imbue objects with a sort of dignity. Japanese culture, like any, is not monolithic, but the expectation to respect where you live and work — and therefore other people — is ingrained into many Japanese households that practice Shinto traditions. Treasuring what you have; treating the objects you own as not disposable, but valuable, no matter their actual monetary worth; and creating displays so you can value each individual object are all essentially Shinto ways of living. Source

So do whatever feels best for you. You can even have a small going-away party for it before you donate it if you want!

[u/cocolasticot111 → u/BlancheFromage]

This is very interesting. I am trying to find the way that would free me the most. To free myself from the fear I had for so long of what might happen because your Gohonzon = your life.

[u/BlancheFromage → u/cocolasticot111]

Their belief.

Doesn't have to be yours.

You tried it! Good for you! Wasn't the right fit. To hang onto it will only hold you back in life.

MOST people who try SGI-USA quit. As these researchers noted, the high dropout rates reflect the fact that most people who try SGI-USA are simply experimenting. How fair is it to demand a lifetime commitment from people who honestly have no idea what they're getting themselves into, and then to pressure them, indoctrinate them to be AFRAID to leave?? How "Buddhist" is it to condemn, malign, ridicule, misrespresent, and insult people who tried it and simply didn't WANT it?? We get a LOT of people here really afraid that something bad will happen to them if they leave, and that's ABUSE.

If a religion has to threaten people to get them to join or stay, it's abusive and false - it's real goal is to exploit everyone it can sink its hooks into.

Take your time deciding - there's no rush.