Personal History Before Becoming High Priest
Born Shinobu (信夫), Abe was the first son of Hōun Abe, then the chief priest of Jōsen-ji in Sumida, Tokyo, and later 60th Nichiren Shoshu High Priest Nichikai. He tonsured (entered the priesthood) in 1928, taking the Buddhist name Shinno (信雄). He graduated from Risshō University in 1943 and, after his return from navy duty, served as chief priest of three major local temples, Hongyō-ji (Tokyo, 1947), Heian-ji (Kyōto, 1963), and later Jōsen-ji (Tokyo). He was appointed head of the school's Kyōgakubu (a section responsible for doctrinal study and maintenance of orthodoxy, often rendered Study Department) in 1961. In this position, he was one of the two Nichiren Shoshu priests who traveled overseas to conduct the first initiation rites (gokjukai) for new believers outside Japan in 1961, for which the contemporary high priest gave him the name Etsuyo (越洋: "he who crosses the seas"). Abe was named Nichiren Shoshu Sōkan (the school's second-highest ranking priest) in early 1979. He took over as high priest shortly after the passing of the previous high priest, Nittatsu Hosoi, on July 22, 1979. At the time, he changed his nichi-gō (the name beginning with nichi that all priests have but use publicly only after attaining a certain seniority) from Nichiji (日慈) to Nikken (日顕) in deference to a more-senior priest who is the next high priest, Nichinyo's father of the same name.
On Sunday, December 4, 2005, Abe announced his intention to step down as high priest before the end of the year. He performed the ceremony of transferral of the Heritage of the Law on December 12, 2005, in which he appointed Nichinyo Hayase (1935-) as his successor. He officially retired on December 15—four days before his 83rd birthday after a total of 26 years as high priest. Sixty-eighth High Priest Nichinyo Shōnin ascended the high priest's seat at a ceremony on December 16.
Read more about this topic: Nikken Abe
Famous quotes containing the words personal, history, high and/or priest:
“What had really caused the women’s movement was the additional years of human life. At the turn of the century women’s life expectancy was forty-six; now it was nearly eighty. Our groping sense that we couldn’t live all those years in terms of motherhood alone was “the problem that had no name.” Realizing that it was not some freakish personal fault but our common problem as women had enabled us to take the first steps to change our lives.”
—Betty Friedan (20th century)
“There is one great fact, characteristic of this our nineteenth century, a fact which no party dares deny. On the one hand, there have started into life industrial and scientific forces which no epoch of former human history had ever suspected. On the other hand, there exist symptoms of decay, far surpassing the horrors recorded of the latter times of the Roman empire. In our days everything seems pregnant with its contrary.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)
“Parents do not give up their children to strangers lightly. They wait in uncertain anticipation for an expression of awareness and interest in their children that is as genuine as their own. They are subject to ambivalent feelings of trust and competitiveness toward a teacher their child loves and to feelings of resentment and anger when their child suffers at her hands. They place high hopes in their children and struggle with themselves to cope with their children’s failures.”
—Dorothy H. Cohen (20th century)
“The priest is an immense being because he makes the crowd believe astonishing things.”
—Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867)