Monthly Archives: February 2019

LS32

Day 8

Day 8 concludes Chapter 4, Understanding by Faith, and closes the second volume of the Sutra of the Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Dharma.

Day 8 Text with annotationsPlay MP3

Having last month considered in gāthās the rich man’s success in making his son feel at home, Mahā-Kāśyapa explains the meaning of the parable.

You are like the father.
Knowing that we wished
To hear the Lesser Vehicle,
You did not say to us, “You will become Buddhas.”
You said of us to others:
“Though they are my disciples, they are Śrāvakas.
They eliminated āsravas,
But attained only the Lesser Vehicle.”

You said to us:
“Expound the most excellent Way [to Bodhisattvas]!
Those who practice the Way
Will be able to become Buddhas.”

By this order of yours
We expounded the unsurpassed Way
To the great Bodhisattvas
With various stories of previous lives,
With various parables and similes
And with various discourses.•

Hearing the [Way, that is, the] Dharma from us,
Those sons of yours
Thought it over day and night,
And practiced it strenuously.

Thereupon the Buddha assured them
Of their future Buddhahood, saying to them:
“You will become Buddhas
In your future lives.”

You expounded the real thing,
That is, the store
Of the hidden core of the Buddhas
Only to the Bodhisattvas.
You did not expound
This truth to us.

The poor son came to his father,
And took custody
Of the things of his father,
But wished to take none of them.

The same can be said of us.
We did not wish to have the treasure-store
Of the teachings of the Buddhas
Although we expounded it [to the Bodhisattvas].

We were satisfied with the elimination
Of illusions within ourselves.
What we accomplished was that elimination.
We did nothing more.

The Daily Dharma from April 17, 2018, offers this:

We were satisfied with the elimination
Of illusions within ourselves.
What we accomplished was that elimination.
We did nothing more.

These verses are sung by Subhūti, Mahā-Kātyāyana, Mahā-Kāśyapa, and Mahā-Maudgalyāyana in Chapter Four of the Lotus Sūtra. They use the parable of the wayward son in this chapter to describe their own realization that the Buddha had not held any teaching back from them. Instead, the Buddha earlier allowed them to remain in the satisfaction of ending their own suffering. But before they can continue their progress towards the Buddha’s own enlightenment, they must give up their preoccupation with suffering, as the boy in the parable had to give up his idea of himself as a lowly hired worker, rather than the heir to his father’s treasure.

The Daily Dharma is produced by the Lexington Nichiren Buddhist Community. To subscribe to the daily emails, visit zenzaizenzai.com

Lotus Seeds

The Jewel Net

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The Mahayana teachings often use the Jewel Net of the god Indra as a metaphor to help people realize the interdependence of all things, including life and its environment. The Jewel Net of Indra is said to cover the entire universe. At each intersection of the net is a jewel, which reflects all other jewels in the net and is in turn reflected by them. Each jewel, then, reflects all the others and is reflected by all the others. In the same way, all things contain one another. Every living being is a reflection of the world from which it arises and the world in turn reflects the living beings. In Nichiren Buddhism, life and its environment are also viewed as mutually supportive and reflective.

Lotus Seeds

WONS

Replacing Provisional Teachings With The True Teaching

[I]t is stated in the Annotations on the Great Concentration and Insight that the book of the Great Concentration and Insight explains the way of practicing meditation based on the principle of the Lotus Sūtra and that the pre-Lotus, provisional sūtras are expedient means in preparation for preaching the True Dharma of the Lotus Sūtra. It means that the whole of the Great Concentration and Insight is based on the doctrine of “replacing provisional teachings with the true teaching” of the Lotus Sūtra. Therefore, although the Great Concentration and Insight quotes the pre-Lotus sūtras and non-Buddhist writings, it does not accept what is preached in them; it just borrows their sentences without meanings.

Jisshō-shō, A Treatise on the Ten Chapters of the Great Concentration and Insight, Writings of Nichiren Shōnin, Doctrine 2, Page 3

Daily Dharma

Daily Dharma – Feb. 20, 2019

I attained perfect enlightenment and now save all living beings because Devadatta was my teacher.

The Buddha makes this declaration in Chapter Twelve of the Lotus Sūtra. Devadatta was a cousin of the Buddha who became jealous of the Buddha’s enlightenment. Several times he tried to kill the Buddha. He also caused a split in the Buddha’s Sangha, and convinced a young prince to kill his father and usurp the throne. Devadatta was so evil that he fell into Hell alive. Despite all this, the Buddha credits Devadatta with helping him become enlightened, and assures Devadatta personally that he will become enlightened. This shows us that even those beings who create great harm have Buddha nature. They may not deserve our admiration, but they at least deserve our respect.

The Daily Dharma is produced by the Lexington Nichiren Buddhist Community. To subscribe to the daily emails, visit zenzaizenzai.com

original

Daimoku as Perfectly Inclusive and as the Seed of Buddhahood

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While it is impossible in a short space to do full justice to Nichiren’s concept of the daimoku, two aspects of it will be outlined here: the daimoku as perfectly inclusive, and the daimoku as the seed of Buddhahood.

The daimoku, which Nichiren equates with the one vehicle, is all-encompassing, a claim he develops from several interrelated perspectives, beginning with his early writings. For example, in the Hokke daimoku shō, the daimoku is said to contain all teachings:

“The teachings of the seven Buddhas and the thousand Buddhas of the past, and of all the Buddhas since long kalpas ago, as well as the sūtras preached by the Buddhas of the present throughout the ten directions, are all followers of the single character kyō [sūtra] of the Lotus Sūtra. … Within this single character kyō [of myōhō-renge-kyō] are contained all the sūtras in the dharma realms of the ten directions.”

In a yet more encompassing sense, the daimoku contains, or rather is, the entirety of the dharma realm. Another passage of the same text reads:

“The five characters myōhō-renge-kyō … contain all sentient beings of the nine realms and also the Buddha realm. And because they contain [all beings of] the ten realms, they also contain the lands of the ten realms, which are those beings’ dependent recompense.”

Or in greater detail, from an earlier, 1260 writing:

“The doctrines of three thousand realms in one thought-moment and the Buddha’s enlightenment in the distant past, the core of the ‘Skillful Means’ and ‘Fathoming the Lifespan’ chapters, are contained within the two characters myōhō [Wonderful Dharma]. … All Buddhas and bodhisattvas, the causes and effects of the ten [dharma] realms, the grasses and trees, rocks and tiles throughout the ten directions— there is nothing that is not included in these two characters. … Therefore, the merit of chanting the five characters myōhō-renge-kyō is vast.”

Here the daimoku is equated with three thousand realms in one thought moment, the entirety of all that is. This identification can be found in some of Nichiren’s earliest writings. (Page 267-268)

Original Enlightenment and the Transformation of Medieval Japanese Buddhism


Profound

Three Types of Object as Ching

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[In defining the meaning of sūtra,] Chih-i presents his own definition for the word Ching, in which Ching can bear different meanings for different people. In other words, people with different abilities take different dharmas as Ching. Chih-i’s idea is that Ching as the teaching of the Buddha is contained in all entities or dharmas. Considering that one can attain truth by any entities, any entities or dharmas can be taken as Ching.

Here, Chih-i enumerates three types of dharma that can be taken as Ching. The first type takes sound as Ching. This indicates that when the Buddha is present in the world, he orally expounds the dharma. Listeners, by hearing his voice, can attain the Path. Therefore, the Buddha’s voice is taken as Ching. The second type takes form as Ching. This means that after the Buddha entered into nirvāṇa, written records as form become the means to transmit the Buddha’s teaching. Therefore, form is taken as Ching. The third type takes the dharma as Ching. This refers to the person whose mind is united with the dharma by his own thinking. This is neither achieved by the teaching, nor by the written texts, but by the dharma.

Chih-i stresses that in human world, these three types of object as Ching can suit sentient beings with different faculties.

  1. To the one, whose ear faculty is sharp, capable of attaining realization by sound, sound is the only object that can serve as Ching.
  2. To the one, whose faculty of cognition is sharp, and who is capable of studying and thinking by oneself, dharma is the only object that can serve as Ching.
  3. To the one, whose eye faculty is sharp, and who is capable of realizing truth through written records, form is the only object that can serve as Ching.
LS32, WONS

Day 7

Day 7 concludes Chapter 3, A Parable, and begins Chapter 4, Understanding by Faith.

Day 7 Text with annotationsPlay MP3

Having last month considered why the Buddha expounds only to people of profound wisdom this Sūtra of the Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Dharma, we consider the fate of those who scowl at this sūtra.

Some will scowl at this sūtra
And doubt it.
Listen! I will tell you
How they will be punished.

In my lifetime or after my extinction
Some will slander this sūtra,
And despise the person
Who reads or recites
Or copies or keeps this sūtra.
They will hate him,
Look at him with jealousy,
And harbor enmity against him.
Listen! I will tell you
How they will be punished.

When their present lives end,
They will fall into the Avici Hell.
They will live there for a kalpa,
And have their rebirth in the same hell.
This rebirth of theirs will be repeated
For innumerable kalpas.

Nichiren discusses the depths of hell in his Letter to Hōren:

QUESTION: What kind of hell do slanderers of the practicer of the Lotus Sūtra fall into?

ANSWER: The Lotus Sūtra, fascicle 2 (“A Parable” chapter), preaches, “Those who despise, hate, envy, and bear a grudge against a person who reads, recites, copies and upholds the Lotus Sūtra will fall into Avici Hell upon death. After suffering in this hell for as long as a kalpa, they will again die at the end of the kalpa and fall into the same hell to suffer. They will repeat this countless times and continue to suffer for innumerable kalpa (aeons).”

The palace of King Yama is located 500 yojana below the surface of the earth. Below the palace, between the depths of 500 and 1,500 yojana underground are located 136 hells such as the Eight Great Hells. 128 of the 136 hells are the abodes of minor criminals while the Eight Great Hells are the abodes of felons. Seven of the Eight Great Hells are for the offenders of the Ten Evil Acts while the last of the Eight Great Hells, the Hell of Incessant Suffering, is the abode of those who committed the Five Rebellious Sins, undutiful children, and slanderers of the Lotus Sūtra. To sum up, this passage cited from the “Parable” chapter of the Lotus Sūtra preaches that those who speak ill of or slander the practicer of the Lotus Sūtra in the Latter Age of Degeneration in this world even in jest must fall into the Hell of Incessant Suffering.

Hōren-shō, Letter to Hōren, Writings of Nichiren Shōnin, Volume 6, Followers I, Page 45

WONS

10 Reasons To Discard Provisional Sūtras

[L]et me explain why we should discard provisional sūtras, putting faith in the true sūtras instead.

QUESTION: What scriptural statements support your contention?

ANSWER: Ten scriptural statements support my contention. First, it is stated in the Lotus Sūtra, chapter 3 on the “Parable,” “You should try to uphold only Mahāyāna sūtras … without putting faith in even a verse of other sūtras.”

Secondly, the Nirvana Sūtra states, “We should depend on sūtras which thoroughly reveal the truth and not on those which do not.” Sūtras which do not thoroughly reveal the truth refer to those sūtras expounded in forty years or so before the Lotus Sūtra.

Thirdly, it is stated in the Lotus Sūtra, chapter 11 on the “Appearance of the Stupa of Treasures”, “It is difficult to uphold this sūtra. If anyone upholds it even for a moment, I, as well as the other Buddhas, will rejoice and praise him. He is a man of valor and endeavor; he is observing the precepts and practicing the rules of frugal living.” In the Latter Age of Degeneration, we may not observe various precepts defined in the sūtras expounded during forty years or so before the Lotus Sūtra. Upholding the Lotus Sūtra single-mindedly may be called observing the precepts and rules of frugal living.

Fourthly, the Nirvana Sūtra states, “Those who do not exhort themselves to uphold the dharma may be called indolent, but those who do not exhort themselves to observe the precepts may not be. Bodhisattvas, if you are not lax in putting faith in this Mahāyāna dharma, you deserve to be called the upholders of the precepts. In order to uphold that True Dharma, you bathe in the water of Mahāyāna. Therefore, even when bodhisattvas break the precepts, they may not be called indolent.” This scriptural passage elaborates the spirit of observing the precepts in the Lotus Sūtra.

For the fifth, it is stated in the Lotus Sūtra, fascicle 4, chapter 11 on the “Appearance of the Stupa of Treasures”, “The Lotus Sūtra is entirely true.” This is the attestation by the Buddha of Many Treasures.

For the sixth, in the Lotus Sūtra, fascicle 8, chapter 28 on the “Encouragement of Universal Sage Bodhisattva, Universal Sage Bodhisattva, swearing to Śākyamuni Buddha, declares, “I will make sure that this sūtra will be spread all over the world (Jambudvīpa) and not be destroyed after the extinction of the Buddha.”

For the seventh, it is stated in the Lotus Sūtra, fascicle 7, chapter 23 on the “Previous Life of Medicine King Bodhisattva”, “I will not let this sūtra perish in the world (Jambudvīpa) during the fifth 500-year period after My extinction.” This is an oath by Śākyamuni Buddha Himself.

For the eighth, explaining why the Buddha of Many Treasures and various Buddhas manifested in many worlds all over the universe gathered together around Śākyamuni Buddha, the Lotus Sūtra, fascicle 4, chapter 11, on the “Appearance of the Stupa of Treasures” declares, “They have come together in order to perpetuate the dharma in this world.”

For the ninth, regarding the place where practicers of the Lotus Sūtra reside, the sūtra, fascicle 7, chapter 21 on the “Divine Powers of the Buddha” preaches:

“After the extinction of the Buddha, you should single-mindedly uphold, read, recite, expound, copy this sūtra and act according to its teachings. … Wherever a copy of this sūtra is, regardless where it may be, in a garden, in a forest, under a tree, in a monastery, in the house of a layman, in a hall, in a mountain, in a valley or in a wilderness, a Stupa should be erected and offerings be made to it. Why should it be? It is because this is the place of enlightenment. It was here that Buddhas attained Buddhahood.”

And for the tenth, it is stated in fascicle 9 of the Nirvana Sūtra, a sūtra preached for amplification of the Lotus Sūtra:

“During the last 80 years when the True Dharma will be about to expire after My death, this sūtra will spread widely in this world (Jambudvīpa). Then, however, evil monks will steal this sūtra, cutting it up into pieces to kill its original color, fragrance and flavor. In reading this sūtra, unable to understand the essence of the Buddha’s profound enlightenment, they will insert flowery phrases and meaningless sentences just to save appearances. They might put a beginning sentence at the end, an ending sentence at the beginning, a beginning or ending sentence in the middle, or a middle sentence at the beginning or at the end. You should know that these evil monks are not the Buddha’s disciples but the Devil’s companions. … Those evil monks are like a dairymaid who dilutes cow’s milk with much water to make a quick profit. Likewise, they will mix the Buddha’s words in this sūtra with worldly words, making it misleading. Many people will not be able to talk about, copy and comprehend this sūtra correctly, or be able to praise, make offerings to and revere it. Guided solely by self-interest, those wicked monks will be unable to spread this sūtra widely; it will spread so slightly that it will not be worth mentioning. It is just like a poor dairymaid selling cow’s milk, which was resold and repurchased many times. …When, finally, milk gruel is made of it, it will have no taste of milk. Likewise, this great Nirvana Sūtra, a Mahāyāna sūtra, while being transmitted from person to person, will lose its flavor until in the end it will be tasteless. Nevertheless, it is still 1,000 times superior to other sūtras just as the taste of milk, no matter how much diluted, is 1,000 times better than the taste of bitterness. It is because this great Nirvana Sūtra, a Mahāyāna sūtra, is supreme of all the sūtras transmitted by the direct disciples of Śākyamuni Buddha.”

Shugo Kokka-ron, Treatise on Protecting the Nation, Writings of Nichiren Shōnin, Doctrine 1, Page 14-16

Daily Dharma

Daily Dharma – Feb. 19, 2019

The Buddhas, the Tathāgatas, teach only Bodhisattvas. All they do is for one purpose, that is, to show the insight of the Buddha to all living beings, to cause them to obtain the insight of the Buddha.

The Buddha speaks these words in Chapter Two of the Lotus Sutra. Here he emphasizes the importance of practice for reaching enlightenment. We may think that just hearing what the Buddha teaches is enough to reach his insight of seeing things for what they are. We also need to be actively engaged with the world, doing our best, making mistakes, and confident that we can continue to learn how to make things better. This is no different from the mistaken belief that one can learn how to cook by merely reading recipes. Only by going in the kitchen and making something can one gain the insight of whoever came up with the recipe.

The Daily Dharma is produced by the Lexington Nichiren Buddhist Community. To subscribe to the daily emails, visit zenzaizenzai.com

original

The Daimoku in Five or Seven Characters

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From his earliest writings, Nichiren discusses “the daimoku in five or seven characters” as something far more potent than the mere title of a text. The Hokke daimoku shō (On the title of the Lotus), written in 1266, one of his earliest extended discussions of the subject, defines it as “the heart of the eighty-thousand holy teachings and the eye of all the Buddhas.” This theme continues throughout his later writings as well. “People today think that myōhō-renge-kyō is just a name, but that is not so. … [I]t is neither the text nor the meaning but the heart of the entire sūtra.” Here Nichiren drew on the Chinese tradition of title exegesis, in which the entire meaning of a particular sūtra was held to be encompassed by its title. Chih-i, for example, had organized the major portion of the Fahua hsüan-i, his commentary on the Lotus Sūtra, as a discussion of the five characters that comprise the sūtra’s title. (Page 267)

Original Enlightenment and the Transformation of Medieval Japanese Buddhism