by Seward Hung
New York
Tom and I had our rush tickets in hand and were walking down midtown Manhattan to an off-Broadway show we wouldn’t see. Halfway to the playhouse a young woman leaped from her friends, asking whether we’d heard of Nam-myoho-renge-kyo. We ditched the play and tagged along—me, because I’d been studying Buddhism; Tom, because he wanted to ensure I wasn’t getting mixed up in a cult, that prolific fixture of the ’80s. Of course, our first SGI meeting was an overwhelmingly positive experience. I decided it was for me, while Tom, having confirmed I wasn’t in danger, left it there. And then—and I know this sounds odd—we didn’t see each other for 14 years.
But really, the odd part was that we’d ever met up in the first place. I’d bumped into him on my rounds for the post office. Years had passed since I’d seen him last, in high school, where we’d had few friends in common. In any case, after the play, I didn’t hear from him again until 2000, when he called and reminded me of one such friend, Bob. From here, somehow, we decided to get together, the three of us, once a year.
Bob was an ardent Catholic and in our early get-togethers engaged me in good-natured sparring over ontological questions. Occasionally, Tom joined in. As the years passed by, however, we spoke less of religion and more of life—what it meant to lead a noble one.
I had become interested in the lives of veterans in the mid-’90s and, in the interest of serving them, earned a master’s in social work in 2016. While searching high and low for work, Tom put me in touch with his father, a medical officer during the Cold War. Though we never met in person, my phone calls with this unassuming retired physician, who humbly detailed his wartime responsibility for the health of 5,000 dependents, deepened my respect for veterans—their sacrifices and the ways they are shaped by them.
In July of 2021, my own dad died, suddenly, from COVID-19. I’d cut ties with him a decade earlier, and we hadn’t spoken since. At first, I felt an unexpected relief; my lifelong tormentor was gone. But in the weeks that followed, I began to feel the weight of unfinished business. As the executor of his estate, I went from picking through the legal details of his will to picking through piles of hoarded hodgepodge at his house. Both tasks were tedious, but it was the days spent alone at the house that brought on a special kind of exhaustion.
My dad had become violent when I was 6 years old, when we moved to the States. It was here, where the Vietnam War was stoking antipathy toward Asians, that my father went from a respected teacher in Hong Kong to a bartender in New Jersey. Demoralized, he’d unleashed his frustrations on his family. Gone now, his memory remained in the home, where I struggled to create order from chaos. Day by day, the work began to weigh on me—a weight I began to resent. I began to chant for closure.
Fortunately, my veteran friends had taught me the importance of carrying out one’s mission. There, in the very last pile of hoarding, I found a job filing showing my father’s service in the Taiwanese Air Force. I hadn’t known he’d served. Everything I’d discovered in my work with veterans came to me in that moment, and for the first time, I felt I understood him. Until then, I’d grudgingly borne fiduciary responsibility for his estate and had not considered that I might accept something more, something deeper: responsibility for our relationship. Within days, I was ready to forgive him and move on.
The following year, as I tied up the last loose ends of the estate, my mother died. Now, with two estates to look after, time blurred. I know Tom, Bob and I got together that year as ever but can’t remember much. I do remember Tom pressing, uncharacteristically, to meet soon at his father’s summer home in Maine. I gathered that Tom’s mother was ailing and also that his marriage was reaching an impasse. By March 2024, it had, and in May, his mother died. Though I hadn’t pressed it in years, my wisdom told me it was time. “Why don’t you meet my Buddhist friends and try chanting?” He agreed and to my surprise readily received the Gohonzon.
In late June 2024, I got up at 4 a.m. on a Sunday—not like me at all—and took a train and bus to Tom’s father’s home in Maine. I realized, a few steps from his front door, that my own father had died that very day three years earlier. For whatever reason, I reported that fact almost upon entry, before we’d even sat down. It meant the world to me, I explained, to be able to honor a father on the anniversary of my own father’s passing. In the pause that followed, I experienced a great, unanticipated peace wash over me. I sensed that I’d transformed something profound, for both myself and my father.
By August 2024, Tom had chanted earnestly for half a year, supported by local friends in faith. Right around then, his father asked to go to an SGI meeting. He already found Buddhist concepts sensible, but I think Tom’s transformation really got his attention. Wouldn’t you know, I found an SGI meeting place 10 minutes’ drive from his house! I wasted no time getting him connected and this 90-some-year-old grandfather drove himself to his first-ever SGI meeting, where he was welcomed like family.
What’s more, Tom had been stuck in that contentious divorce for two years but finally decided to proceed in earnest. Though painful, he had the understanding of his children and the conviction that he was taking the right course of action for everyone’s happiness.
As for Bob, we got back last week from a road trip to see his brother in the hospital. Grateful for the company, he surprised me by asking on our way home, “How does that chant go again?” Who knows, maybe Bob will start coming out as well.
And as for me, I got what I chanted for and more. I could never have imagined the healing that came from my friendship with Tom, that led me to his father’s door in June. Tom and I must have been 14 or 15 when we met, but neither knew then how deep a bond we shared. Looking ahead, I’m determined to connect even one more person to Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, and to remain open to the mysterious and priceless treasures that come to friends who stick together.
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