Defilements Are Awakening: Ritual, Affliction, and the Planetary Roar

Lately I've been listening for a certain musical sonic rhythm inside practice. A rise and fall of experience that feels like storm-tide more than straight line. Joshua Schrei’s Emerald Podcast calls this an "apocalyptic cycle," the swell of gestation and birth, rupture and release, an unveiling that keeps happening within and around us. In the language of my personal practice’s Lotus Sutra I've practiced for over fifty years this is called: defilements are awakening [Bonno soku Bodai]. These insights share the message that we don’t seek to flatten the waves, but to realize that the very waves are how awakening moves.

This refusal to cut parts of ourselves from our whole self finds precise expression in the Buddhist tradition's most practical teachers. Tiantai's master Zhiyi gives clear instructions for the moment the sea starts to churn. In Mohe Zhiguan (Maka Shikan), when our contemplation turns stormy, when greed or anger are roused, he tells us to stop forcing a technique that isn't fitting and turn toward the afflictions themselves. In his words, "when afflictions like greed and anger flare, one should set aside the former contemplation and contemplate the afflictions themselves.” This is not indulgence and not suppression. It's honest seeing. It's the refusal to exile parts of ourselves from the sacred architecture of the mandala [Gohonzon].

Nichiren reads the Lotus in the same way. In his The Heritage of the Ultimate Law of Life, he writes, "Myo represents death, and Ho, life." That is, the living pulse of Namu Myoho Renge Kyo spans both phases; the rhythm of life-and-death is not outside the Dharma but it’s very articulation. In The Record of the Orally Transmitted Teachings (Ongi Kuden), he makes the link explicit again and again: "'Honestly' refers to the principle that defilements are awakening, and the sufferings of birth and death are nirvana." Elsewhere, he presses it into the body: "We use the aspects of birth, aging, sickness, and death to adorn the towers that are our bodies." And he adds the inner assurance that comes from this vision: "The body gains assurance through the realization that the sufferings of birth and death are nirvana."

Here is where the Emerald's imagery from "I Think I Hear the Coming of a Planetary Roar" slots in with luminous force:

"So, our rituals have to enact the full cycle. They have to give voice to the full cycle. It's not enough just to connect to the peace and silence at the center. That's an essential part of it. But the center of the mandala is not the only part of the mandala. Let us dance these shimmers, these spirals, these stories, these surges, these roars. We must enact the cycle of accumulation, rupture and release. Over and over again, because it's what we're made of. Rituals enact a great death and renewal. They take us to an apocalyptic world-ending moment within us. They take us to the point of obliteration, unification."

Taken together, these lines are a map for the "planetary roar" moment. When the cycle crests, personally or collectively, the mandate is not to flee to a counterfeit stillness. Zhiyi's counsel is fiercely compassionate: when the practice you're using agitates the mind, change the lens. Look right at the anger as anger, the fear as fear. Watch its texture, its arising, its passing. See how it has no fixed core. That clarity is not separate from calm; it is calm widening to hold movement.

Nichiren's encouragement on the Lotus then lifts this inner work into ritual life. If life and death both belong to "Myo-Ho" then our ceremonies must speak the whole cycle. Not only the silence at the center, but the spirals at the edge. To chant Namu Myoho Renge Kyo in this light is to let sound carry the wave-form honestly; to let grief, desire, rage, and tenderness move through rhythm and breath until their "self-power declines" and their true face shows. It is to discover, as Nichiren says, that even the four sufferings of birth, aging, sickness, death can "adorn the towers that are our bodies," which is another way of saying that form itself becomes revelation.

The Emerald's language about apocalypse as unveiling helps me name what I believe is one of the most crucial insights for our time: when we refuse the inner crisis, we inevitably enact it outwardly. The climate emergency, social upheaval, political polarization, these planetary-scale disruptions mirror our collective inability to ritualize the cycle of accumulation, rupture, and release within ourselves. Conversely, when we learn to re-contextualize crisis as wisdom and care through genuine spiritual practice, we begin to break the patterns that create external chaos. This is very close to how Tiantai and Nichiren read the Lotus: not "get past your defilements," but see them fully, chant through them, ritualize them, and know them as facets of awakening.

My practice now is to seek integration through observation. I begin at the center, breath, posture, hands, Namu Myoho Renge Kyo, and I let the circle widen. If affliction rises, I meet it directly, the way Zhiyi teaches, without grasping or pushing away. Last week, when anxiety about climate collapse arose during chanting, instead of forcing my attention back to the mantra, I turned toward the fear itself; feeling its grip in my chest, watching how it wanted to spiral into catastrophic thinking, noticing how beneath the fear was grief for what we're losing. The chanting became a container for all of it, not an escape from it. I remember Nichiren's assurance that "the sufferings of birth and death are nirvana," not as a slogan but as a way of inhabiting the body. I allow ritual to give voice to the surge and the stillness, trusting that both are the Wondrous Dharma at work.

In this sense, "defilements are awakening" is not a clever paradox. It's a liturgy for weathering our time. It asks us to stand where the wave breaks and chant from there; to make our practice spacious enough for rupture and renewal; to let the roar move through the mandala without tearing it apart. And when I do, the edge and the center stop arguing. The very force that once scattered me becomes the current that carries me, back into responsibility, back into compassion, back into the vow to keep singing Namu Myoho Renge Kyo for the sake of this world that won't stop changing.

Notes

1. Zhiyi, Mohe Zhiguan (摩訶止觀; Great Calming and Contemplation), T46.1911.192c. For English, see Paul L. Swanson, Clear Serenity, Quiet Insight: T’ien-t’ai Chih-i’s Mo-ho chih-kuan (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1997), vol. 2, 364–368.

2. Nichiren, The Heritage of the Ultimate Law of Life, in The Writings of Nichiren Daishonin, vol. 1 (Tokyo: Soka Gakkai, 1999), 217–218.

3. Nichiren, Ongi Kuden (御義口伝; Record of the Orally Transmitted Teachings), trans. Burton Watson (Tokyo: Soka Gakkai, 2004), 22. Nichiren comments on the phrase “honestly discarding expedient means” (Lotus Sutra ch. 2), interpreting “honestly” as the realization that “defilements are awakening, and the sufferings of birth and death are nirvana.”

4. Nichiren, Ongi Kuden, 144. “We use the aspects of birth, aging, sickness, and death to adorn the towers that are our bodies.”

5. Nichiren, Ongi Kuden, 146. “The body gains assurance through the realization that the sufferings of birth and death are nirvana.”

6. Joshua Schrei, The Emerald podcast, “I Think I Hear the Coming of a Planetary Roar,” released August 30, 2025, Apple Podcasts, https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/i-think-i-hear-the-coming-of-a-planetary-roar/id1465445746?i=1000724194002.

Bibliography

• Nichiren. The Heritage of the Ultimate Law of Life. In The Writings of Nichiren Daishonin. Vol. 1. Tokyo: Soka Gakkai, 1999.

• Nichiren. The Record of the Orally Transmitted Teachings (Ongi Kuden). Translated by Burton Watson. Tokyo: Soka Gakkai, 2004.

• Schrei, Joshua. The Emerald. “I Think I Hear the Coming of a Planetary Roar.” Podcast audio. Released August 30, 2025. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/i-think-i-hear-the-coming-of-a-planetary-roar/id1465445746?i=1000724194002.

• Swanson, Paul L. Clear Serenity, Quiet Insight: T’ien-t’ai Chih-i’s Mo-ho chih-kuan. Vol. 2. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1997.

• Zhiyi. Mohe Zhiguan (摩訶止觀; Great Calming and Contemplation). Taishō 46.1911.