When my life opened wide. AKA The Gohonzon

Hello people, I'm back from the land of the dead, i.e. my holidays, survived my first two weeks in school and went to an A-M-A-Z-I-N-G Summer course.

The Summer course has been an important turning point in my practice, and really in my life. I will need a while to come to terms with all the things that happened there. I will, eventually, write everything up, but not now.

However, I need to get back into the good habit of writing this blog (even if noone answered my plea for help, me not happy >.<)

During the course, we had our first ever Gohonzon receiving (at a course). Two beautiful young women made the commitment to practise this Buddhism, and they inspired me to write this post.

Ages ago, I had decided to write about my Gohonzon receiving day and the Gohonzon in general, but never got round to it, until now.

Gohonzon map

Receiving your Gohonzon is one of the most important moments in the life of a Buddhist person. I will dedicate an entire post to it.

Meanwhile, here is a useful document that shows the meaning of the characters on the scroll.

As I was looking for it I found countless pictures of Gohonzon scrolls, and I wanted to use this post to point out something. A Gohonzon is an object of devotion. When we are not chanting, it should be protected by the Butsudan and it should not, for any reason, be reproduced on picture or film. It's just not respectful. 

This map refers to the Nichikan Shonin Gohonzon, the one that was generously donated to the Soka Gakkai.

Disclaimer. I did not create this wonderful handout. If you happen to know who is the Bodhisattva of the Earth who made it, please give them my thanks and let me know, so I can credit them.

Below is the embedded PDF file and a link to download it.

Gohonzon Map