Living Buddhism: Thank you, Gabrielle, for speaking with us today. We understand you came to Buddhism by way of heartbreak—a not-uncommon route, but the way you took it may surprise our readers.
Gabrielle Tao: Ah, you mean about the books! Well… for me it was natural. I’ve always had a bent toward intellectualism, and also toward depression. Both came to the fore in late 2004, after the breakup. Given my upbringing in Catholic schools that placed a premium on academics, it was almost a given that I’d turn to books in my moment of crisis. For whatever reason, I made a beeline for the Buddhist section. I knew nothing of Buddhism and had just one vague memory from childhood of an excerpt from a Hong Kong daily that mentioned its concept of eternity. But perhaps this was what drew me in. Convinced that my life was over, that everything had come to an end, there was part of me—there must have been—that believed otherwise.
In any case, I spent whole days and weeks there in that corner of Barnes & Noble, poring through one book after another, reading, thinking.
Why this response to pain—this total immersion in books?
Gabrielle: That’s hard to say, I have always been suspicious of appearances. There is always more, as the saying goes, than meets the eye. There are almost always clues, if
we are looking for them. The ripples in my grandmother’s coffee, for instance, when recalling the China of her teens. She’d often pick me up from school and tell me “When-I-Was-Your-Age…” stories. Usually hers were happy ones, but not always. China was occupied by the Japanese Army when she was young. Recounting this time, her hands shook and her voice caught. Something had happened, too big and painful for words. I learned to look closely at surface-level details and facts, for hints of what may lie beneath. Books, for me, have always been my way of getting closer to the truth, to the heart of things.
It was the Barnes & Noble, then, that you came across a book on SGI Nichiren Buddhism?
Gabrielle: Ah, no, actually. I don’t believe they carried anything by the SGI. My introduction to the practice began in the least intellectual way you can imagine, with my neighbor and my dog. She spotted me stepping out to take my dog for a walk and her delighted yelp—my neighbor’s—drew my attention. She was breaking into a sprint, heading straight at me and practically fell on the floor to pet my dog. At some point, she got up, and, as though noticing me for the first time, said, “Hello!” And, by way of apology: “I just love dogs.” We became friends and, soon after, I stopped by her place, where I spotted a copy of a magazine on the floor titled Living Buddhism. “What is this?”
We started chanting together, but I kept the organization at arm’s length. To be honest, I didn’t trust it, this large lay religious movement, claiming to champion the foremost philosophy on Earth. A women’s leader visited me one day, however, and listened to what I had to say. She nodded, then suggested: “It’s important when judging a thing to judge from a holistic point of view.” Well, I couldn’t really argue with that. I took it to heart and kept reading.
I took some books by Sensei with me on a work trip to Johannesburg, South Africa. While there, I attended an exhibit—the Gandhi, King, Ikeda exhibit, and was impressed as much by the exhibit as by the people gathered to see it—Johannesburg’s various cultures represented, expressed fully, all come together with the common goal of world peace in mind.
I received the Gohonzon soon after returning to the San Francisco Bay Area.
Of course, this was just the beginning. In life, in Buddhism, we don’t usually conquer our fundamental tendencies—our karma—in one fell swoop. Depending on how “sticky” the karma may be, we might battle it many times throughout our lives. Mine was suspicion, or a lack of belief in others. My suspicion extended to Sensei, whom I was highly skeptical of.
That November, I attended a kosen-rufu gongyo meeting where I’d been told there’d be a showing of a headquarters leaders meeting, in which Sensei would be addressing the members. I remember feeling very strongly that I had to go, had to see and discern for myself what was beneath the surface, and whether it was truly in alignment with the movement that was such a visible force for good.
I just looked, squinting, at his face, and I listened. Actually, in uncharacteristic fashion, I didn’t read the words, the subtitles, on the screen. I listened with my entire being, straining to discern something, some red flag. Instead, there came a sudden vision in my head, of the ocean. And it was not any ocean I’d ever seen—but I want to say a primordial ocean, before there was human life on Earth. It was vast and deep green—I don’t know why but it was. And it was very powerful—it was moving the plates of the Earth, forming the Earth, but also very gentle. It wasn’t scary. And I thought: I’m looking at the life force of this person. It was a rare instance in my life where understanding came, not from books, from something more immediate—from feeling.
The more I began to read, the more I began to understand Daisaku Ikeda the person. I encountered in these books quite a few harsh reprimands of Japan’s imperialist past and the amnesia of its leaders, who often acted as though such imperialism had never been committed. I thought of my grandmother and realized that Sensei had spent his life, in a way, with her in mind—people like her—who bore the scars of war, doing everything in his power to put to an end the cycle of wars.
And after this, you began your practice in earnest?
Gabrielle: I’d say so, yes. The following May, I made my first offering during the May Commemorative Contribution activity. Honestly, it came from pure appreciation—I’d been borderline suicidal when I discovered the practice and had found a path to transforming karma and creating happiness.
That is beautiful. What’s another early benefit?
Gabrielle: This sounds strange, but I’d say it was getting fired. Or, I suppose it’s better said that getting fired was the necessary condition for this benefit to bear fruit.
Tell us about that.
Gabrielle: Well, it happened over the phone, early one morning. Rumors of pending layoffs had been spreading for weeks. When I got the call from my boss, at 7 that morning, the question flew from my mouth: “Am I fired?” An uncomfortable silence, and then the dreaded answer. My stomach dropped and waves of anxiety, anger and the beginnings of a familiar kind of depression. Getting off the phone, I sat down in front of the Gohonzon to chant. It took only a few minutes for me to sense something changing within. And this sounds odd, but an inexplicable joy was taking hold, growing bigger and bigger. The sense that I was expendable, that everything was coming to an end, was giving way to a faith in a bright future. This was not the end of my life—it was just the beginning. The world was a big place, my future wide open. There was so much to see, explore and do. This is how I felt that morning, walking into my last day at work, asking myself: How do I want to spend it?
I posted up in the stairwell, at the top of the steps, cheering for those who’d just been let go and were on their way out. “Yeah, I know,” I’d say, “Fired—me too! But you know, it’s going to be OK!” and I’d offer my hand to shake. Most people took a moment to recover from shock—probably they thought I’d lost my mind—but once they had, they burst out laughing. Then shook on it.
By the time my boss called me into his office, I was beaming—I couldn’t help it. An off-putting experience for him, I’m sure; reading me the terms of the layoff, he kept glancing over the top of the page until, halfway through, he stopped, set it down and said, “Look, I’m supposed to read you this and escort you out, but… just read it when you’d like and take your time today. OK?” I looked, noted the impressive severance and nodded.
What a wonderful way to go. You landed another job soon after?
Gabrielle: That’s right—I landed on my feet with a wonderful job. Of course, I felt deep appreciation—but the appreciation, it seems to me, was the cause, not the effect of the benefit. In fact, realizing this, I feel, was the true, deeper benefit.
It would not be the last time you’d be laid off.
Gabrielle: True. The next time was 2012, and if I’m being honest, there was no such immediate joy following the news. Actually, strong feelings of doubt took hold, and I even caught myself considering cancelling my paltry World Tribune subscription to scrimp by. I was on the SGI-USA portal, perhaps to do just that, when I decided to check on my Sustaining Contribution. I knew what it was, and yet I navigated there and then, struck by sudden inspiration, decided that I would do the opposite of what doubts were telling me to do. I upped by five bucks. Not much, but somehow, this tiny act immediately generated a strong determination to win. I was supporting both myself and my aging parents at the time. The key, I felt, was not to retreat, but to expand my life.
What then?
Gabrielle: My friend called. Actually, she called the very next day. She’d heard somehow through the grapevine that I’d been let go and asked if I wanted to come in and talk to her boss. I thought, An opportunity to network—why not? But in fact, when I came in, I found myself getting interviewed on the spot. They asked what I’d consider a fair salary and I told them I wasn’t sure. They shocked me with more than the figure I’d given. If I wanted, they said, I could start today. So I started that day.
Can we fast forward a bit, to the recent past? You were laid off again in 2019, correct?
Gabrielle: True, and that was particularly difficult. But actually, my life state had been in a steady decline for about a year. I couldn’t tell you why, exactly, only that I’d fallen into a slump and grown bitter. That my home, my work and even my faith had become what Nichiren Daishonin so aptly named, nearly 800 years ago, “an endless painful austerity” (“On Attaining Buddhahood,” The Writings of Nichiren Daishonin, vol. 1, p. 4).
There wasn’t any particular thing that I could point to. I was doing everything that I normally did, be it supporting my districts as a chapter leader or bringing my all to my work. I did it all, but grimly, soldiering, every step, as though in winter through a mountain pass. Appreciation was nowhere in sight. Only silent complaints.
Ooh, uncomfortable. What did you do?
Gabrielle: I did what I’ve always done—I studied. I asked myself one day: What haven’t I read? And there were quite a few books I hadn’t touched, The Wisdom of the Lotus Sutra series among them.
Perhaps it was in this series that I struck upon the idea of a personal planting seeds campaign—my first—to rid my life of complaint. I set a goal to plant 100 seeds by end of May and tied it to a challenging May Contribution goal. Wherever I went, I told people about Nam-myoho-renge-kyo and was often taken aback by the response. I remember one man who broke down in tears, and a young man working the register at a grocery store who overheard my conversation, asked to know more and went on to receive the Gohonzon.
I felt, each time, that I was purifying my life and my environment. And yet, as though the muck that had settled in my life was being stirred up to the surface, my circumstances seem to get worse before they got better.
My boss, who had been cordial when he’d joined the company, soured on me within a month, as soon as I’d shown him the ropes. Suddenly, at every opportunity, he humiliated my team with insults, intimidation and impossible demands.
I was chanting a lot at the time, and a good thing, too—otherwise I might have blown my top when he took the extraordinary step, in April, of hiring someone to shadow me—obviously my replacement. I was to train this person to operate the program I myself had thought up, designed and created.
How did you respond?
Gabrielle: Eventually, with joy. It had something to do with all the seeds I’d been planting. Each was a lesson to myself in how to look and see with my Buddha eye.
There is a crack that opens—sometimes for less than a second—in a person’s life when hearing about Buddhism. Perhaps it is simply due to the fact the words that describe it: compassion, courage, peace and victory—are so rarely heard in conversation. In any case, in such moments, my life, too, opens up.
I felt myself beginning to trust in my own Buddha nature again, and also in the Buddha nature of others—my boss included. I began to recognize in him the part of myself I was leaving behind—the part caught up in suffering, grimly soldiering through the days. And I noticed the return of joy to my life. I was actually enjoying teaching my soon-to-be replacement. In fact, I found in him such an eager student that I could not help but enjoy our lessons. I’d go over everything in detail on a whiteboard and, after an hours-long session, he’d slump back in his chair in apparent amazement. “Many people talk about this,” he’d say, “but you actually know it inside and out.” When I left, I left satisfied that he did, too.
As has been the case for me whenever I have acted on deep faith, everything has worked out. I found another job within the month, where I’ve been since; a job I’ve appreciated a great deal. Most importantly, I’m happy. Beneath the surface facts—be they anger or hurt—I look for the heart of things, for goodness in people.
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