As much as it is tempting to believe the adage "like father, like daughter," sometimes a person like Toshiro Ono comes along to turn the saying on its head.

Following his daughter Lisa's popular success as a home-grown bossa nova diva, the 75-year-old restaurateur has produced his first CD, which covers similar samba-beat territory.

But the resemblance ends there. "Gyo: Sutra Meets Samba" features six Nichiren-sect Buddhist monks chanting the Lotus Sutra (Hoke-kyo, or Myoho Renge-kyo) accompanied by four samba percussionists. Put it on and you might find yourself imagining that you had happened upon a hidden temple while walking in the middle of the rain forest.

The concept has turned a lot of heads. Ono and his CD, which went on sale July 1, will also be featured July 23 on Beat Takeshi's popular "Daredemo Picasso (Anyone Can Be Picasso)" show.

The idea for "Gyo" was inspired by a single, defining event: a high-society funeral. As the monks chanted the rites, Ono was struck by the image of men in their stiff, uncomfortable black suits glancing furtively at their watches.

"You have to spend a long time there. Everybody gets tired," Ono said. "Everybody's busy. They go because of duty, or because the deceased is famous or they have no choice."

Ono, who has battled stomach cancer, then found himself imagining his own funeral.

"When I die, if I were looking down on my funeral and saw everyone looking at their watches, thinking, 'I just want to go home,' it would really trouble me," Ono said.

This prompted Ono to ask himself, "How did things get to be like this?"

The answer?

"The chanting is boring. And the reason, I thought, is because it has no rhythm."

So Ono called the Honmonji Temple, and asked if he could "borrow" some monks for a recording. The officials agreed to cooperate. He persuaded four samba percussionists to join and, after three days of rehearsals, "Gyo" was recorded at his Yotsuya restaurant, Saci Perere.

What he originally intended as a memento he could leave to his family soon caught the ear of the record company that gave it life in its current form.

In fact, "Gyo" harmonizes two defining periods of Ono's life. In 1940, after he came home from high school with poor grades, his father sent the 15-year-old Ono to Tetsugen Temple, in what is now North Korea. There he underwent seven months of ascetic training, known as shugyo (from which the CD takes its title), including the chanting of sutras.

While he describes the summer months as tolerable, Ono said the daily ritual of waking up at 3 a.m and going outside to douse oneself with a bucket of water was continued no less diligently during winter, when temperatures in the mountains could drop to minus 30 C.

"I thought I was going to die," he said.

The samba backbeat, meanwhile, recalls the 15 years Ono spent as an emigre in Brazil, where he ran his own restaurant in the '60s and early '70s. It was where his love for Brazilian rhythm, which he describes as the "most advanced" and "the most highly appreciated around the world," took root.

"Japan has its own rhythm," Ono says, "but today's youth don't try to understand it. Everything today moves to African rhythm. Thinking of all this makes me realize how important rhythm is."

Ono's call to liven up the sutras with a little more rhythm may have initially seemed odd to the participants. The young Buddhists were unsure of what they were getting into. The Brazilians, says Ono, were similarly surprised to be asked, out of the blue, to play with monks.

In their practice sessions, however, they realized a slightly different truth. Far from diminishing it, the energetic samba beat, they found, drew out the sutra's own rhythm. Once they found a way to play off each other, they were able to hit their stride.

"When the monks and the Brazilians played together, and they got excited and began to set the place on fire, out came 'Gyo.' "

The next move for Universal Music, the record label that released "Gyo," is to market it in Brazil. Furthermore, Ono says he has already heard from other Buddhist sects eager to participate in future culture-crossing collaborations.

Watch out, Lisa Ono. Soon enough you may find yourself in competition with your own dad.