Monthly Archives: October 2019

Saicho

Faculties Suitable for the Hokke One-Vehicle Teaching

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Saichō used the concept of the maturing of people’s faculties in a different way than Chih-i. Rather than applying the idea to individuals, Saichō argued that the Japanese people as a group possessed mature faculties. Saichō utilized Japan’s place in Buddhist history and the teachings concerning the decline of Buddhism to support his views. In the preface to the Ehyō Tendaishū dated 816, Saichō first presented this idea in several enigmatic, short sentences:

“In Japan the Perfect faculties (enki) of the people have already matured. The Perfect teaching has finally arisen.”

Several years later in his Shugo kokkaishō, Saichō further explained his view:

Now men’s faculties have all changed. There is no one with Hinayāna faculties. The Period of the True and of the Imitated Dharma have almost passed, and the age of mappō is extremely near. Now is the time for those with faculties suitable for the Hokke One-vehicle teaching. How do we know this? Because of what the Anrakugyōbon [Peaceful Practices chapter of Lotus Sutra] teaches about the latter days of the decline of the Dharma.

Saichō: The Establishment of the Japanese Tendai School, p181-182
WONS

Unless the Causative Relationship Is Ripe

The moon does not shy away from its own reflection, but it cannot be reflected without water. Even though the Buddha hopes to convert the populace, He cannot show the eight major events in His life unless the causative relationship is ripe. It is like Hinayāna sages of śrāvaka, who have listened to the Mahāyāna teaching and ascended the ladder of the bodhisattva way leading to Buddhahood, until they have reached the step of shoji in the distinct teaching or shojū in the perfect teaching. In the end, however, they have to wait for the future for their Buddhahood. It is because they have listened only to the pre-Lotus sūtras and striven for self-control and self-salvation.

Kaimoku-shō, Open Your Eyes to the Lotus Teaching, Writings of Nichiren Shōnin, Doctrine 2, Page 75

Uncategorized

Daily Dharma – Oct. 9, 2019

Just as the Moon God is brighter than the stars, this Sūtra of the Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Dharma gives us more light than any of the other sūtras numbering thousands of billions. Just as the Sun God dispels all darkness, this sūtra drives away all the darkness of evils.

The Buddha gives this explanation to Star-King-Flower Bodhisattva in Chapter Twenty-Three of the Lotus Sūtra. The Buddha uses comparisons from our common experience of the sun, moon and stars to illustrate how this teaching of the Wonderful Dharma is superior to all other teachings. This is not just hyperbole. This teaching illuminates not only the other teachings of the Buddha, but all teachings. It lets us see them for what they are, and use them to do the Buddha’s work of leading all beings to enlightenment.

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

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 how the Buddha is like the rich man training his son, we begin the Parable of the Rich Man and His Poor Son in gāthās:

Thereupon Mahā-Kāśyapa, wishing to repeat what they had said, sang in gāthās:

Hearing your teaching of today,
We are dancing with joy.
We have never had
Such joy before.

You say:
“The Śrāvakas will be able to become Buddhas.”
We have obtained unsurpassed treasures
Although we did not seek them.

Suppose there lived a boy.
He was young and ignorant.
He ran away from his father
And went to a remote country.
He wandered from country to country
For more than fifty years.

The father anxiously sought him
In all directions.
Finally tiring of looking for him,
He settled in a certain city.

He built a house,
And enjoyed satisfaction
Of the five desires.
He was very rich.
He had a great deal of gold, silver,
Shell, agate, pearl and lapis lazuli;
And many elephants, horses,
Cows, sheep,
Palanquins, carts,
Farmers and attendants.
He invested his money in all the other countries,
And earned interest.
Merchants and customers
Were seen everywhere [around him].

Thousands of billions of people
Surrounded him respectfully.
He was favored by the king,
And respected
By the ministers,
And by the powerful families.

Many people came to see him
For various purposes. Because he was rich,
He was very powerful.
As he became older,
He thought more of his son.
He thought from morning till night:
“I shall die before long.
It is more than fifty years
Since my ignorant son left me
What shall I do
With the things in the store-houses?”

See The Rich Man, the Poor Son and the Five Periods

LS32, d7b, d8b, 2buddhas

The Rich Man, the Poor Son and the Five Periods

[A]fter Zhiyi’s time, through the efforts especially of Zhanran and the Korean scholar-monk Chegwan, the Tiantai school gradually developed a model that divides the Buddha’s teaching career into five periods that span fifty years. According to this model, the Buddha began by preaching the Flower Garland Sūtra (Avatamsaka Sūtra), a highly advanced doctrine directed solely to bodhisattvas. None of the śrāvakas in the assembly could understand it and were struck dumb, just as the impoverished son was terrified when first forcibly approached by his father’s attendants. Seeing that the Flower Garland teaching was beyond his auditors’ capacity, the Buddha then backtracked and for twenty years preached the āgamas, … emphasizing the four noble truths, the twelve-linked chain of dependent origination, and the goal of nirvāṇa — that is, the teachings sometimes disparaged as the “Hinayāna.” This period corresponds to the wealthy man hiring his son to sweep manure for twenty years. In the third period, seeing that his followers were maturing, the Buddha preached the vaipulya or introductory Mahāyāna teachings such as the Vimalakirti Sūtra, which criticize the one-sided emphasis on emptiness and detachment found in the āgamas and instead extol the way of the bodhisattva. This corresponds to the son having “free access to his father’s house” yet still living in his own humble quarters. In the fourth period, the Buddha preached the prajn͂ā or wisdom teachings, which integrate all of his teachings up to that point in the two discernments of emptiness and wisdom by which bodhisattvas both uproot attachment and act compassionately in the world. This corresponds to the wealthy man entrusting the care of his fortune to his impoverished son. Then finally, in the fifth period, during the last eight years of his life, the Buddha set aside the coarse and incomplete provisional teachings of the preceding four periods and preached the perfect teaching that opens buddhahood to all. This teaching is represented by the Lotus Sūtra, and — in the Tiantai reading — restated in the Nirvāṇa Sūtra, said to have been preached just before the Buddha’s passing. This corresponds to the father, now approaching death, publicly acknowledging his son and bequeathing all of his wealth to him. In this way, the parable of the wealthy householder provided a basis for grasping the entirety of the Buddha’s teachings as integrated into a single, comprehensive chronological and soteriological agenda, by which he sought to gradually cultivate his followers’ capacity until they were mature enough to receive and accept the message of the one buddha vehicle.

Two Buddhas, p91-93
Lotus Seeds

The Ten Worlds: Fighting Demons

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The world of the fighting demons is the realm of arrogant demons who are obsessed with their own power and whose sole wish is to overthrow the benevolent gods of heaven. Those in this state are full of pride and arrogance, and are extremely competitive and envious. They can never rest or feel secure because they must constantly strive to maintain and improve their position and prestige no matter how well off they may actually be.

Lotus Seeds

Saicho

Maturation of Faculties and Subsequent Enlightenment

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Chih-i categorized the maturation of man’s faculties and subsequent enlightenment in three stages. First, the karmic seeds connecting a person to Buddhism had to be planted (geshu). Although everyone possessed the Buddha-nature, a person first had to be exposed to the Buddha’s teachings in order to begin to realize this basic truth. He had to listen to elementary teachings which gradually drew him on to more profound teachings until his faculties matured (jōjuku). In the second stage, his faculties had matured and he was ready to hear the Buddha’s ultimate teaching, the Lotus Sūtra. Finally, in the last stage, the process was completed; freed (gedatsu) from his sufferings, he had achieved perfect enlightenment. For Chih-i this system was to be applied on an individual basis. One person might be at an advanced stage, while his neighbor might be at a lower stage.

Saichō: The Establishment of the Japanese Tendai School, p181
WONS

Delight in Such a Discouraging Life

We left Echi on the tenth of the tenth month and arrived at the province of Sado on the 28th of the same month. On the first of the eleventh month I entered the Sammaidō Hall in the wilderness called Tsukahara located behind the residence of Homma Rokurōzaemon. This place was a run-down hut, about six foot square in size and without a statue of the Buddha, built in a place where dead bodies were abandoned like Rendaino in Kyoto.

The roof was full of holes and the four walls had fallen off so that snow which piled up in the room never disappeared. I had to stay here day and night, sitting on a piece of fur and wearing a raincoat made of straws. At night it snowed, hailed and thundered continuously. In the daytime no rays of sunshine penetrated the heavy clouds. It was such a discouraging life there. In ancient China Li-ling (Su-wu) was sent to the land of Hsiung-nu as an emissary and was captured and confined in a cave for years. Tripitaka Master Fa-tao who remonstrated with Emperor Hui-tsung of Sung in vain was exiled to Southern China, having his face branded with a red-hot iron. They must have felt just like I felt then.

However, this is in fact delightful. In ancient times King Suzudan abandoned the throne to seek the True Dharma and devoted himself to austerities under a prophet called Asita for as long as one thousand years. As a result of such intense training, he finally obtained the great merit of the Lotus Sūtra. Struck by self-conceited monks with sticks, Never-Despising Bodhisattva could become a practicer of the Lotus Sūtra.

Now it is Nichiren who, born in the Latter Age of Degeneration, is encountering these great difficulties for having propagated the five Chinese characters of myō, hō, ren, ge, and kyō.

Shuju Onfurumai Gosho, Reminiscences: from Tatsunokuchi to Minobu, Writings of Nichiren Shōnin, Biography and Disciples, Volume 5, Pages 31-32

Daily Dharma

Daily Dharma – Oct. 8, 2019

The Buddhas seldom appear in the worlds.
It is difficult to meet them.
Even when they do appear in the worlds,
They seldom expound the Dharma.

The Buddha proclaims these verses in Chapter Two of the Lotus Sūtra. Later in the Sūtra he explains that in reality he became enlightened far in the past and will continue to lead all beings to enlightenment far into the future. The reason the Buddhas appear so rarely is not because they conceal themselves. It is because we do not recognize them for what they are. We cannot see the air we breathe, but it is crucial for our lives. Because of this we often take it for granted, unless we are so afflicted, or the air is so poisoned that we cannot breathe. Then we are aware of it. Likewise, the Buddha Dharma is available to us all the time.

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

LS32

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 concluded today’s portion of Chapter 4, Understanding by Faith, we return to the Buddha’s explanation that “This triple world is my property. All living beings therein are my children.

There are many sufferings
In this world.
Only I can save
[All living beings].

I told this to all living beings.
But they did not believe me
Because they were too much attached
To desires and defilements.

Therefore, I expediently expounded to them
The teaching of the Three Vehicles,
And caused them to know
The sufferings of the triple world.
I opened, showed, and expounded
The Way out of the world.

Those children who were resolute in mind
Were able to obtain
The six supernatural powers
Including the three major supernatural powers,
And to become cause-knowers
Or never-faltering Bodhisattvas.

See Reverse Connection