Buddhist church members seek perfection and peace

Mary Sigman was sitting in her car at Euclid Avenue and Route 83, waiting for the light to turn green, when she noticed a sign.

Rissho Kosei-kai Center for Engaged Buddhism, it read, with Japanese letters below.

It piqued her interest. Sigman, 59, grew up Catholic and even attended St. James for a few years when she moved to Arlington Heights, but "the church just wasn't giving me comfort anymore spiritually," she said.

She'd already been considering Buddhism, and decided to give Rissho Kosei-kai Church of Chicago, in Mount Prospect, a try. After attending the next service, she enjoyed it so much she joined the congregation. Two years later, she remains an active member -- putting her 34 years' experience as a kindergarten teacher to use as the co-teacher of the monthly service for the congregation's children, for instance -- and one of "a pretty good smattering of fallen-away Catholics that come and go," including a former nun, she said.

In a nutshell, Rissho Kosei-kai means "the perfection of our personalities to better society," said church English mission leader John Schuh, 45, of Chicago.

Though Rissho Kosei-kai of Chicago officially opened in 1972, it moved to Mount Prospect only in 1999. Before that, a rented Wrigleyville storefront housed the church.

Though the congregation is small -- between 10 and 12 on a given Sunday, with others who come less regularly -- its members seek to serve as a missionary congregation with an ultimate goal of world peace.

It constitutes a branch of the New York church, Schuh said, which also acts as an umbrella organization for the Boston branch, as well as study groups in Florida and Minnesota, and any other members east of the Mississippi.

Nikkyo Niwano and Myoko Naganuma founded Rissho Kosei-kai, an offshoot of the Nichiren Buddhist sect, in 1938, Schuh said. Nichiren was a 13th-century priest who spread the Lotus Sutra, an important scripture in Mahayana Buddhism, to the common people. Rissho Kosei-kai draws its teachings from the Lotus Sutra.

Though the Lotus Sutra has many devotees, many also love to hate it, according to Gene Reeves, 74, a former dean of Meadville Lombard Theological School who has studied, written about and lectured about Buddhism since 1989.

The Lotus Sutra turns some people off because Soka Gakkai International, which has faced criticism for very aggressive recruiting and lack of religious tolerance, bases its teachings on the sutra. Others dislike the sutra's "self-aggrandizing" -- it claims to be the best of the texts. And many Buddhist scholars prefer the philosophical explanations found in other Buddhist texts to the parables and other stories in the Lotus Sutra.

"It's not uncommon for people who do like the Lotus Sutra to meet people who challenge them," Reeves said. Reeves, who has a permanent apartment in Chicago but spends most of the year in China and Japan, has delivered a talk for the Rissho Kosei-kai of Chicago every August for more than 15 years.

Rissho Kosei-kai started out as a Japanese phenomenon, Schuh said, but after Niwano went to the Second Vatican Council -- the only non-Christian invited -- it shifted from ethnic church to missionary organization. In his 20 years as a congregant, he has seen the tiny church attract more non-Japanese members, he said, though it's hoping for more.

"Our founder had always felt that world peace would not come because the world would convert to Buddhism, but that the Buddhist religion should be an active partner to bring world peace via all the world's religions," Schuh said.

Some of the Rissho Kosei-kai of Chicago's congregants still attend other religious services, Sigman said. But that's no sin in the eyes of this church.

"There isn't a dwelling on guilt in Buddhism," Sigman said. "We just don't have a guilt trip put on us if we're doing something wrong." She also likes that "it's a religion you have to think about and wrestle with intellectually. They don't want you to just accept it."

Rissho Kosei-kai's intellectual appeal may be one draw, but it's hardly the only one.

The hoza, or dharma circle, a kind of group therapy after a prayer service where members try to resolve their spiritual and other issues by discussing Buddhist teachings, is what makes the church unique in Sigman's eyes.

The church has become "like another family, really," Sigman said. "We share each other's joys and sorrows."

Schuh still remembers how immediately he felt at home in the church when he first joined "as a selfish young man."

"It spoke to my heart," Schuh said. "I felt a spiritual home there … there was no question in my mind I'd found my home."