Monthly Archives: October 2019

LS32

Day 5

Day 5 begins Chapter 3, A Parable

Day 5 Text with annotationsPlay MP3

Having last month heard Śāriputra ask the Buddha to ease the doubts of the others in the congregation, we hear the Buddha’s reply to Śāriputra and begin the Parable of the Burning House.

Thereupon the Buddha said to Śāriputra:
“Did I not tell you, ‘The Buddhas, the World-Honored Ones, expound the Dharma with expedients, that is, with various stories of previous lives, with various parables, with various similes, and with various discourses only for the purpose of causing all living beings to attain Anuttara-samyak-saṃbodhi’? All these teachings of the Buddhas are for the purpose of teaching Bodhisattvas. Śāriputra! Now I will explain this with a parable. Those who have wisdom will be able to understand the reason if they hear the following parable.

“Śāriputra! Suppose there lived a very rich man in a certain country, in a certain village, in a certain town. He was old. His wealth was immeasurable. He had many paddy fields, houses, and servants. His manor house was large, but had only one gate. In that house lived many people, numbering a hundred or two hundred or five hundred. The buildings were in decay, the fences and walls corrupt, the bases of the pillars rotten, and the beams and ridgepoles tilting and slanted.

“All of a sudden fires broke out at the same time from all sides of the house, and it began to burn. In this house lived children of the rich man, numbering ten or twenty or thirty. The rich man was very frightened at the great fires breaking out from the four sides of the house. He thought, ‘I am able to get out of the gate of the burning house safely, but my children are still inside. They are engrossed in playing. They do not know that the fires are coming towards them. They are not frightened or afraid. They are about to suffer, but do not mind. They do not wish to get out.’ Śāriputra! He also thought, ‘I am strong-muscled. I will put them in a flower-plate or on a table and bring them out.’

“But he thought again, ‘This house has only one gate. Worse still, the gate is narrow and small. My children are too young to know this. They are attached to the place where they are playing. They may fall [out of the plate or table] and get burned. I had better tell them of the danger. This house is already burning. They must come out quickly so as not to be burned to death.’

“Having thought this, he said to his children as he had thought, ‘Come out quickly!’ He warned them with these good words out of his compassion towards them, but they were too much engrossed in playing to hear the words of their father. They were not frightened or afraid. They did not wish to come out. They did not know what a fire was, what a house was, and what they would lose. They ran about happily. They only glanced at their father occasionally.

See Opening Buddhahood as a Real Possibility to Anyone

LS32, d5b, d6b, d7b, WONS, 2buddhas

Opening Buddhahood as a Real Possibility to Anyone

In the Lotus Sūtra’s narrative, Śāriputra is the first śrāvaka to receive the Buddha’s prediction of his future buddhahood. “When Śāriputra heard this,” Nichiren wrote, “he not only cut off the illusions arising from primal ignorance and reached the stage of the true cause [for liberation] but was acclaimed as the [future] tathāgata Padmaprabha [Lotus Light]. … This was the beginning of the attainment of buddhahood by all beings of the ten realms.”

For Nichiren, … the Lotus Sūtra’s message that persons of the two lesser vehicles could attain buddhahood was not about extending this possibility to a group of previously excluded individuals but, rather, established the mutual inclusion of the ten realms as the ground that, for the first time, opened buddhahood as a real possibility to anyone.

Two Buddhas, p82
Saicho

Expanding Participation of Common People in Buddhism

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Saichō’s proposals led to government recognition of trends already present in Buddhism and thus enabled monks to approach the people even more closely. His efforts to defend the doctrinal basis for the participation of the common people in Buddhism were a crucial part of this change. In his works directed against Tokuitsu and the Hossō School, Saichō argued that all people had the Buddha-nature and could attain Buddhahood. Receiving the Fan wang ordination and adhering to the precepts were religious practices open to anyone. Anyone could receive a Fan wang ordination and anyone who had been correctly ordained could in turn confer the Fan wang precepts on others. The universal scope of the Fan wang precepts was due to the universality of the Buddha-nature.

Saichō envisaged a system in which Tendai monks would be trained for twelve years on Mount Hiei and then go to live in the provinces in order to perform good works, to preach, and to confer Fan wang ordinations. Saichō himself made two such trips: the first to Kyushu and the second to Kōzuke and Shimotsuke. On the second trip he is said to have performed ordinations. In addition, Mount Hiei was to be the center of a matrix of pagodas and temples which were to protect the emperor and the nation from harm. Observance of the Fan wang or Perfect precepts was to be a universal practice which could be used by the entire Japanese population. Thus the nation would be protected through the spread of the Perfect precepts (denkai gokoku).

Saichō: The Establishment of the Japanese Tendai School, p179-180
buddhaseed

Sokushin Jōbutsu

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In accordance with his compassionate vow, Śākyamuni prescribed a great medicine known as the Odaimoku or Buddha seed.

“In consequence, all living beings under the Buddha in this Sahā-world are one with him and are eternal. This is because those who believe in the Lotus Sutra, live in the land where they have united themselves with the Buddha and attained the truth of the Three Thousand Existences in One Thought.”
(Kanjin Honzon Shō, A Phrase A Day, p. 178)

No matter where we are, at the office, home, dentist or the park, the Buddha’s compassion is being given to us in the form of the five characters (Myo Ho Ren Ge Kyo). Our faith and respect for the Buddha should grow deeper and stronger. The Buddha has given us a great gift.

Through the practice of the seven characters of the Odaimoku, people can unite with the Eternal Buddha as a part of his life. This is known as Sokushin Jōbutsu, attaining buddhahood with one’s present form. This is also referred to as Juji Jōbutsu, attaining buddhahood by upholding the Lotus Sutra and the Odaimoku and practicing the Sutra in one’s daily life.

Buddha Seed: Understanding the Odaimoku

WONS

All Disciples of Lord Śākyamuni Buddha

Since Śākyamuni Buddha is eternal and all other Buddhas in the universe are His manifestations, then those great bodhisattvas who were taught by manifested Buddhas and who are from other worlds are all disciples of Lord Śākyamuni Buddha. If the “Life Span of the Buddha” chapter had not been expounded, it would be like the sky without the sun and moon, a country without a king, mountains and rivers without gems, or a man without a soul.

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

Daily Dharma

Daily Dharma – Oct. 5, 2019

He should always make it a pleasure to sit in dhyāna. He should live in a retired place and concentrate his mind. Mañjuśrī! [A retired place] is the first thing he should approach.

The Buddha gives this explanation to Mañjuśrī Bodhisattva in Chapter Fourteen of the Lotus Sūtra in which he describes the peaceful practices of a Bodhisattva. For those who are awakening their nature as Bodhisattvas to benefit all beings, and setting aside their attachment to their own suffering, this can be a difficult transition. Our habits of engaging with the drama and delusion in the world can be too strong to overcome. This is why the Buddha emphasizes the importance of quietly reflecting on what happens around us, and our reactions to them. Through dhyāna meditation, we learn not to believe everything we think, and that we can change our understanding of the world. We also learn that allowing our minds to change is the only way we can benefit other beings.

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

LS32

Day 4

Day 4 concludes Chapter 2, Expedients, and completes the first volume of the Sūtra of the Lotus flower of the Wonderful Dharma.

Day 4 Text with annotationsPlay MP3

Having last month heard Śākyamuni explain the immeasurable power of Buddha’s to employ expedients, we hear Śākyamuni explain the benefits of hearing the sūtra of the Great Vehicle.

Some sons of mine are pure in heart, gentle and wise.
They have practiced the profound and wonderful teachings
Under innumerable Buddhas
[In their previous existence].
I will expound this sūtra of the Great Vehicle to them,
And a sure them of their future Buddhahood, saying:
“You will attain the enlightenment of the Buddha
In your future lives.”

Deep in their minds they are thinking of me,
And observing the pure precepts.
Therefore, they will be filled with joy
When they hear they will become Buddhas.
I know their minds.
Therefore, I will expound the Great Vehicle to them.

Any Śrāvaka or Bodhisattva
Who hears even a gāthā
Of this sūtra which I am to expound
Will undoubtedly become a Buddha.

See Apocryphal Text

LS32, 2buddhas, Blog

Apocryphal Text

The Lotus Sūtra, like all Mahāyāna sūtras, is an apocryphal text, composed long after the Buddha’s death and yet retrospectively attributed to him. To establish its authenticity, the Lotus Sūtra must produce its own community of faith, but it must also respond to its enemies, those who declare, with some historical justification, that the Lotus Sūtra is a fraud, a work that only pretends to be the word of the Buddha. This seems, in fact, to have been a frequent charge leveled by mainstream monastics against the Mahāyāna sūtras. When prominent monks and nuns of the Buddhist community in India, where the Lotus Sūtra first appeared, declared it to be spurious, noting, correctly, that it was not to be found anywhere in the various collections that had been compiled in the centuries since the Buddha’s death, the proponents of the Lotus Sūtra had to respond. They could not claim that the sūtra appeared in the existing collections, because it did not. How could the Lotus Sūtra have been spoken by the Buddha without others knowing about it? One implicit explanation is that before the Buddha could teach the sūtra, five thousand members of the audience stood up and walked out. They did not know about the Lotus Sūtra because they were not there to hear it. If these arrogant monks and nuns had only stayed, they would have heard the Buddha preach the Lotus Sūtra. (Although we are now partway through the second chapter, the Lotus Sūtra has apparently not yet begun.) One could also see this mass exit as a criticism of those mainstream monastics who rejected the Lotus Sūtra. “The roots of error among this group had been deeply planted, and they were arrogant,” we are told, and the Buddha himself is made to dismiss them as “useless twigs and leaves.”

Two Buddhas, p56-57

Although we are now [ONLY] partway through the second chapter, to use Donald S. Lopez Jr.’s words, I have run out of patience. When I wrote Two Authors Seated Side By Side earlier this week, I said I was “wary of Lopez’s influence on Two Buddhas Seated Side by Side, but I’m excited about the opportunity to use this book in my daily practice.” Now I’m just annoyed. Jacqueline I. Stone’s descriptions of Nichiren, his times and his thinking, are excellent. She maintains academic detachment without resorting to the sort of disparagement that Lopez inserts at each opportunity – “the Lotus Sūtra has apparently not yet begun.”

Picking someone who demonstrably has such little respect for the Lotus Sutra to be its auditor is a waste. Imagine if Stone had had the opportunity to partner with the late Gene Reeves to write this book. That would be worth buying. Were it not for Stone’s part in this book, I would put it down now and never pick it up again.

I’m going to keep using quotes from the book where they offer insight into the sutra, especially Stone’s insight.

Saicho

Broadening Buddhism’s Popular Base in Japan

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Saichō tried to broaden Buddhism’s popular base in Japan. During the Nara period the court had promoted Buddhism as a religion of the elite. To a large extent, the Nara schools had not objected. In fact, the Hossō teaching that only some sentient beings possessed the seeds necessary for enlightenment contributed to these elitist attitudes. Monks were directed to stay in their temples and practice. The court believed that unrestricted contact with the populace could be subversive and thus discouraged it. The fifth article in the Sōniryō [rules regulating monks and nuns] stated:

Monks or nuns who are not residents of a monastery or temple and who set up (unauthorized) religious establishments and preach to congregations of the people shall be expelled from holy orders. Officials of provinces and districts, who are aware of such conduct but do not prohibit it shall be punished in accordance with the law. Persons desiring to beg for food must submit an application supported by the joint seals of their superiors through the provincial or district offices. The authorities may grant permission after they are satisfied that true ascetic practice is intended.

The twenty-third article read:

Monks, nuns, and others who send lay persons from house to house to exhort people with prayers and images shall be punished with one hundred days hard labor; the lay persons shall be dealt with according to the law.

The Sōniryō date from the early eighth century. In subsequent years they were supplemented by edicts under a number of emperors including Kanmu. In Saichō’s time, although the above two articles were still laws, they were largely ignored. Such sources as the Nihon ryōiki, compiled in the early ninth century, provide ample evidence that Buddhism was already spreading among the common people. The Nara monks did not choose to challenge Saichō’s plan to send Tendai monks out to the provinces to preach and assist with public works such as bridge building. They too were interested in this type of activity.

Saichō: The Establishment of the Japanese Tendai School, p178-179
Lotus Path

Appreciation

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Appreciation, genuine and sincere, for other people is an important practice. Remember it isn’t that someone does something for us and we thank them, although that we should definitely practice. The kind of appreciation we can try to practice is an expression of the value of their very existence, their presence in our life, good or bad. Regardless of the energy they bring us, they allow us to change to grow and to practice the Bodhisattva way.

Lotus Path: Practicing the Lotus Sutra Volume 1