My life began at the dawn of the 70’s, between the race riots and the Vietnam War. I was born and raised in Southern California, educated at a Montessori school from the age of 2 and spent most of my formative years in other private schools. By 9, I had traveled to more than 20 countries with my two best friends, my parents. I had the best of everything and I didn’t even realize it.
In the early 1980s, the entertainment world of Los Angeles was my home. I performed in Evita, March of the Falsettos and Peter Pan as well as on television, in movies and modeling. My father became my personal manager, and my mother was a pioneer in her profession. We were all happier than at any time in my life.
That didn’t last for long, though. My mom worked in the cardiac pacemaker industry and had discovered a faulty product line. When she tried to halt its sale, she was fired. She immediately filed a wrongful termination lawsuit and was blacklisted.
The entertainment world lost its appeal to me by 1984, so I quit and focused on my studies instead. Since everyone in my family had lost their income, tension and arguments increased. To make matters worse, several prominent attorneys mishandled my mom’s lawsuit, all of my family’s business endeavors failed, and my father became seriously depressed. With pressure at home and school growing, I used my academic skills to escape.
At age 14, I moved to Australia on a one-year exchange program. My Australian host family was great, and my host father was the best. He ran a hotel by day and was the perfect family man on weekends – or so I thought. At night, I soon discovered, he was involved in organized prostitution, child pornography, embezzlement and who knows what else. He became emotionally abusive with me, which eventually led to physical abuse. After attempting to control the situation on my own, I went to the police and was immediately sent home to America, forbidden to re-enter Australia for three years “for my own safety.”
I was relieved to be back in California, but homecoming was bittersweet. I was home safe but not sound. Neither were my parents. Their relationship had deteriorated, but they decided to give it one more try. In hopes of finding a better life, we moved to the exclusive area of Del Mar. We were in denial of our desperate circumstances and moving to such a neighborhood only hastened the sinking of our ship.
We tried everything imaginable to improve our financial situation, including selling our house and trading in our Cadillacs for Mazdas, but nothing helped. Emotionally we were the shells of once confident and happy people, growing increasingly distant with one another. I lost interest in school and my grades fell dramatically. Physically, my mom nearly died of pneumonia, suffered from recurring bronchitis, and my father and I were often sick as well. We had exhausted our fortune in every sense.
At the beginning of 1985, my mom confided all of our problems to her hairstylist, who said she knew something that would help – Nichiren Daishonin’s Buddhism. She started teaching us to chant Nam-myoho-renge-kyo and recite gongyo. My mother and I became SGI-USA members on SGI Day in 1985.
Meanwhile, my parents had agreed to divorce, and my dad decided to move to Virginia Beach. On the day of his departure, I said good-bye to my dad and left for school, not knowing when I would see him again. When I returned home that afternoon, our house was surrounded by police cars and an ambulance. My heart nearly pounded through my chest as a policeman took me inside to my mom, who emotionally explained that my father was dead. He had killed himself.
That’s when I really started chanting. I began doing gongyo every day, I read every Buddhist book available, I chanted two hours a day for my dad’s happiness and introduced many people to Buddhism.
By 1987, after two years of Buddhist practice, I was healthier, happier and closer to my mother and friends than I had ever been. My mom and I had transformed our inner selves and experienced countless inconspicuous benefits. Now all we needed was for our environment to reflect the same kind of improvement.
We had used up all of our credit cards – nearly \$50,000 worth – to survive, with no way of paying back even the interest. My part-time job was not much help, so I graduated from high school early, at the top of my class, in order to prepare for the unknown. We could be homeless soon for all I knew.
One of my fondest memories is the night my mom and I sat at our kitchen table discussing our future. After we were denied welfare, we had hocked our jewelry and valuables, keeping only our clothing and cars. We had paid our rent for the month and now had \$15 cash left between us and three weeks’ supply of food in our cupboards. But thanks to our high life-conditions after many millions of daimoku, we actually laughed to the point of tears about our last 15 bucks, saying, “We’ll be the happiest and best-dressed homeless folks in the universe!”
Our only hope was winning the lawsuit against my mother’s former employer. After years of litigation, there was still no court date in sight. The opposing attorneys had succeeded on many occasions in postponing all possible court dates, and the courts were so overloaded that the outlook was grim. All I could think to do was chant. One day, I chanted 12 hours straight for an immediate hearing with a fair judge. Unexpectedly, a judge granted us an immediate hearing.
In less than 15 minutes of deliberation, the judge ruled for settlement of the case and ordered the company to pay double the amount of compensation we needed. We received enough money to pay back all our debts, make contributions to the SGI-USA to our hearts’ content, buy a big house overlooking the bay to use for SGI-USA meetings, visit my school friends in Australia again, and in late 1988 I moved to Japan to study at Soka University.
Living in Tokyo, I had the opportunity to visit the Dai-Gohonzon many times before the Nikken sect took it hostage. On one occasion, I was one of 20 people invited to attend a private breakfast with the high priest. My elation at meeting Nikken was soon deflated as I witnessed his crude and arrogant behavior. I would later recall this and other disturbing experiences to describe the priesthood’s true nature to others.
In 1992, I moved to Spain, one of the countries that suffered the most from Nikken’s attack on the SGI. I helped interpret at meetings with reformist priests in Madrid and Paris, and I shared my opinions about the priesthood and President Ikeda with the members. I had met President Ikeda personally by then, and had spent many times with him. He struck me as a living example of wisdom, strength and graciousness.
I learned more about myself, culture and world peace during my time in Europe than in years before. In the summer of 1992, I returned to America a healthier and happier person than ever. My mom had remarried by then and returned to Del Mar. I stayed at her new home, which again became the stage for the most difficult human revolution of my life.
I once heard President Ikeda say that those who are untrue will never know absolute happiness in life; it had always stuck in the back of my mind. I couldn’t imagine why, though, since I thought I was a truthful person. After chanting many hours in self-reflection, I realized that I had indeed been untrue to myself and others by denying the fact that I was gay. I deeply disrespected that part of my identity, unable to share it with important people in my life. Through my daimoku, I realized that the time had come to eliminate this self-slander. I was determined to “come out of the closet.”
That was easier said than done, though. Breaking through the walls that had formed around my true self was the most painful experience of my life. As a gay child growing up in a non-gay world, where even my parents were heterosexual, I felt confusion, isolation and deep doubts about the value of my sexual orientation. I had internalized heterosexual, or “straight,” society’s degrading stereotypes of gay people and devalued my identity as a gay man. One effect of such homophobia is a suicide rate among gay teenagers three times higher than straight teenagers. For the first time in my life, I, too, truly wanted to die.
Finally, I broke down in front of my Gohonzon. After an evening-long cycle of chanting, crying and reading President Ikeda’s guidance, I understood that I had a mission to help change my society’s karmic homophobia for everyone’s benefit. From that moment on, I connected with President Ikeda’s guidance and Nichiren Daishonin’s spirit like never before, and my anxiety over living true to myself was replaced with pride and confidence.
In early 1993, I returned to Tokyo to complete my studies. With flying colors, I passed the highest level Japanese language proficiency test administered by the Japanese government and in 1994, I graduated summa cum laude from Soka University’s economics department. I am proud to be the first non-Asian man to earn a bachelor’s degree from Soka University, Tokyo.
Later in 1994, I returned to California to find work and settle down. In the autumn, my car was rear-ended at a stop sign in Los Angeles, where I spent the next 36 hours in emergency/intensive care with a broken neck. All the doctors and nurses were amazed that I was not paralyzed, as X-rays and CT scans showed that a displaced vertebra had moved into my spinal canal. I could feel my fortune being tapped when I needed it most, and although I was experiencing the worst physical condition of my life, I mystically maintained one of the highest life-conditions of my life.
One week later, I transferred to a hospital in La Jolla where I underwent spinal surgery. The operation was a complete success and I recovered rapidly. Not only did I escape paralysis from the accident, but I gained a new sense of faith in the cumulative power of chanting daimoku as well as a new appreciation for life itself – each and every moment of it.
There is so much more I would like to share about my life and Buddhist practice over the past decade, but suffice it to say:
Thanks to the unfathomable power of Nichiren Daishonin’s teachings, all of the pressure and adversity in my life has fostered happiness and security. I have learned how to create value from both the positive and negative times in my life, past and present. Most of all, President Ikeda and my fellow SGI members have helped me understand the meaning of self-respect, responsibility and happiness.
Thanks to Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, I now envision life as a diamond in the making. With the Gohonzon at the center of my life, I have accomplished countless wishes, and my diamond keeps growing brighter. I am working on a new set of wishes now, making new facets in my diamond. This is just the beginning.
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In 1995, I became an SGI-USA staff member, working in the publications department. My suggestion to change the name of our magazine to “Living Buddhism” was soon adopted by a vote of the general readership. In 1997, I went back to school, earning a full scholarship toward my higher degree at UCLA. In 1999, I co-founded an Internet-based telecommunications company. We launched our service on May 3, 2000, becoming the fastest growing Internet website for several consecutive months, gaining over 1,000,000 unique subscribers. We are now the # 1 voicemail provider in the world.