Two Buddhas, p120-121A third message that Nichiren drew from the story of the buddha Mahābhijfiājfiānābhibhū [Great-Universal-Wisdom-Excellence Tathāgata] and his sixteen sons was the importance of perseverance in practice. In the “Parable” chapter, Śākyamuni tells Śāriputra that he had once followed the bodhisattva path in prior lifetimes but had since forgotten it. What had caused Śāriputra, this wisest of all śrāvakas, to “forget” and abandon the bodhisattva way? The Lotus Sūtra does not tell us, but a story in the Treatise on the Great Perfection of Wisdom (Dazhi du lun) and other sources fills in the gap. It explains that in the past, Śāriputra had already practiced bodhisattva austerities for sixty eons and was cultivating the virtue of giving or generosity, the first of the pāramitās or perfections that a bodhisattva must master on the path to buddhahood. At that point, a certain beggar (in alternate versions, a brahman) asked for one of his eyes. When Śāriputra replied that his eye could not possibly benefit anyone else, the beggar rebuked him, saying that so long as Śāriputra was committed to mastering the practice of generosity, he could not refuse to give what was requested of him. Śāriputra accordingly plucked out an eye and offered it. The beggar sniffed it, flung it to the ground, and stepped on it. Disgusted, Śāriputra concluded that such people were hopeless. At that point, he abandoned the bodhisattva’s commitment to saving others and retreated to the śrāvaka’s pursuit of personal nirvāṇa. In Nichiren’s reading, Śāriputra, deceived by evil influences, had abandoned the Lotus Sūtra for provisional teachings and, as a result, had fallen into the Avici hell, languishing there for vast numbers of eons. Not until he re-encountered Śākyamuni Buddha in the present world was he again able to hear the Lotus Sūtra, regain the bodhisattva path, and receive a prediction of future buddhahood.
In terms of practice, the account of Śākyamuni Buddha’s instruction as unfolding over many lifetimes in the “Apparitional City” chapter assumes a double significance in Nichiren’s thought. On the one hand, this account teaches the need to maintain one’s own practice of the Lotus Sūtra, no matter what hardships or discouragement one might encounter. At the same time, it suggests that teaching the daimoku to others, even if they initially mock or malign it, is always a fruitful effort, establishing for them a karmic connection with the Lotus Sūtra and thus ensuring that they will one day achieve buddhahood.
Monthly Archives: November 2019
The Salvation of the Entire World
There are, obviously, many ways to read a sutra, perhaps especially [the Lotus] sutra! I take it to be primarily a religious text, that is, a text whose primary aim is soteriological. Whatever polemical purposes it may have served in some now unknown part of India in some now unknown community of Buddhists, the text addresses itself to readers, and to the salvation of readers, in any time and place. Looking at the text in this way will not produce a uniformity of results, but can lead to a certain kind of vision of this text as primarily an ethical text, ethical not in the sense of offering a theory of morals, or in the sense of offering a set of commandments, but ethical in the sense of recommending a certain way of life, a way of life guided by a single overarching purpose.
That unifying purpose is nothing less than the salvation, the happiness, of the entire world, a purpose rooted symbolically in the Buddha’s and bodhisattvas’ vow to save all the living.
To that end, the sutra utilizes several closely related themes, especially upāya or appropriate means, the One Vehicle, buddha-nature, eternal Śākyamuni Buddha, and bodhisattva practice, all of which, in one way or another, affirm the importance of this world and the life in it of the reader.
A Buddhist Kaleidoscope; Gene Reeves, The Lotus Sutra as Radically World-affirming, Page 178
The Five Characters of Myo-Ho-Ren-Ge-Kyo
The five characters of Myo-Ho-Ren-Ge-Kyo possess the entirety of the Buddha’s great compassion, the power to save people, the wisdom of Buddhahood, and the Buddha’s virtues. Nichiren Shōnin said, “The virtue of the Odaimoku should be equal to the virtue of Śākyamuni Buddha” (Matsuno-dono Gohenji). Thus, Śākyamuni Buddha is the Eternal Buddha.
“For those who are incapable of understanding the truth of the ‘3,000 existences contained in one thought,’ Lord Śākyamuni Buddha, with his great compassion, wraps this jewel with the five characters of myo, ho, ren, ge, and kyo and hangs it around the neck of the ignorant in the Latter Age of Degeneration.”
(Kanjin Honzon-shō, WNS2, p. 164).
The Richest in Japan
It is I, Nichiren, who is the richest in Japan today, because I sacrifice my life for the sake of the Lotus Sūtra and leave my name for posterity. Gods of rivers take orders from the master of a great ocean, and gods of mountains follow the king of Mt. Sumeru. Likewise, when one knows the meaning of the “six difficulties and nine easier actions” and “scriptures preached in the past, are preached at present, and will be preached in the future” in the Lotus Sūtra, one will automatically know the comparative merits of all the Buddhist scriptures without reading them.
Kaimoku-shō, Open Your Eyes to the Lotus Teaching, Writings of Nichiren Shōnin, Doctrine 2, Page 90
Daily Dharma – Nov. 14, 2019
If you wish to obtain quickly the knowledge
Of the equality and differences of all things,
Keep this sūtra, and also make offerings
To the keeper of this sūtra!
The Buddha sings these verses to Medicine-King Bodhisattva at the beginning of Chapter Ten of the Lotus Sūtra. When we see things for what they are, how they are similar and how they are different, we see them with the eyes of the Buddha. This Wonderful Dharma in the Lotus Sūtra is the Buddha showing us how to open our eyes to the joys and wonders that exist in this world of conflict and suffering. When we find something valuable, we offer it our time, our thoughts and our devotion. By making offerings to this Wonderful Dharma, and to all those who keep it, our eyes open even more to the truth of our lives.
The Daily Dharma is produced by the Lexington Nichiren Buddhist Community. To subscribe to the daily emails, visit zenzaizenzai.com
Day 10
Day 10 concludes Chapter 6, Assurance of Future Buddhahood, and opens Chapter 7, The Parable of a Magic City.
Having last month heard the prediction of Buddhahood for Subhūti, we hear the prediction for Great Kātyāyana.
Thereupon the World-Honored One said to the bhikṣus:
“Now I will tell you. This Great Kātyāyana will make many offerings to eight hundred thousand millions of Buddhas, attend on them, respect them, and honor them in his future life. After the extinction of each of those Buddhas, he will erect a stūpa-mausoleum a thousand yojanas high, and five hundred yojanas wide and deep. He will make it of the seven treasures: gold, silver, lapis lazuli, shell, agate, pearl and ruby. He will offer flowers, necklaces, incense to apply to the skin, incense powder, incense to burn, canopies, banners and streamers to this stūpa-mausoleum. After that he will make the same offerings to two billions of Buddhas. Having made offerings to those Buddhas, he will complete the Way of Bodhisattvas, and become a Buddha called Jambunada-Gold-Light, the Tathāgata, the Deserver of Offerings, the Perfectly Enlightened One, the Man of Wisdom and Practice, the Well-Gone, the Knower of the World, the Unsurpassed Man, the Controller of Men, the Teacher of Gods and Men, the Buddha, the World-Honored One. The ground [of his world] will be even, made of crystal, and adorned with jeweled trees. The roads will be marked off by ropes of gold, and wonderful flowers will cover the ground to purify it. Anyone will rejoice at seeing it. The four evil regions: hell, the region of hungry spirits, that of animals, and that of asuras, will not exist in that world. Many gods and men will live there. Śrāvakas and Bodhisattvas, many billions in number, also will live there to adorn that world. The duration of the life of that Buddha will be twelve small kalpas. His right teachings will be preserved for twenty small kalpas, and the counterfeit of his right teachings also will be preserved for twenty small kalpas.”
Thereupon the World-Honored One, wishing to repeat what he had said, sang in gāthās:
Bhikṣus!
Listen with one mind!
What I say
Is true, not false.This Kātyāyana
Will make
Wonderful offerings
To the Buddhas.After the extinction of each of the Buddhas,
He will erect a stūpa of the seven treasures,
And offer flowers and incense to the śarīras
[Of the Buddha enshrined in the stūpa].On the final stage of his physical existence,
He will obtain the wisdom of the Buddha
And attain perfect enlightenment.
His world will be pure.
He will save many billions of living beings.
All living beings
In the worlds of the ten quarters
Will make offerings to him.No light will surpass
The light of that Buddha.
The name of that Buddha will be
Jambu [nada]-Gold-Light.Innumerable Bodhisattvas and Śrāvakas
Will live in his world, and adorn that world.
They will have already eliminated
The bonds of existence.
The Buddha’s Commentary
Two Buddhas, p5-6In Buddhism, one could perhaps say that, in a certain sense, all scripture is commentary. That is, all Buddhist traditions hold that the Buddha’s enlightenment was complete, that he attained complete knowledge of the state of liberation and the path to it during his meditation on that full-moon night. Thus, everything that he spoke thereafter was in a sense an articulation of that experience, adapted for the audience he was addressing. This is one reason why the events immediately following the Buddha’s enlightenment, the period of forty-nine days in which he savored the experience of his enlightenment without speaking, is the focus of so much interest in the tradition. Should he teach? If so, whom should he teach? And what should he teach them? These questions appear in the earliest renditions of the story of the Buddha’s awakening, and they reappear, with important refinements, in the second chapter of the Lotus Sūtra.
Understanding the Term “Immeasurability”
In another extremely interesting passage [in the Perfection of Insight in Eight Thousand Lines], Subhūti asks about the meaning of the “great vehicle.”
“What is that great vehicle [upon which a bodhisattva rides]? … Who has set out in it? … Where will it stand?”
The Buddha answers:
“Great vehicle,” that is a synonym of immeasurableness. “Immeasurable” means infinitude. By means of the perfections has a bodhisattva set out in it. From the triple world it will go forth. It has set out to where there is no objective support. It will be a bodhisattva, a great being, who will go forth, but he will not go forth to anywhere. Nor has anyone set out in it. It will not stand anywhere.
The Buddha continues in this vein, but we may skip the text to Subhūti’s answer:
The Lord speaks of the “great vehicle.” Surpassing the world with its gods, men, and asuras, that vehicle will go forth. For it is the same as space, and exceedingly great. As in space, so in this vehicle there is room for immeasurable and incalculable beings. So is this the great vehicle of the bodhisattvas, the great beings. One cannot see its coming or going, and its abiding does not exist. Thus, one cannot get at the beginning of this great vehicle, nor at its end, nor at its middle. But it is self-identical everywhere. Therefore, one speaks of a “great vehicle.”
These ideas are extremely typical of the Prajn͂āpāramitā literature and may be taken as part of the formative matrix in which the chapters on the immeasurability of the Buddha’s life were conceived during the early phase of the development of Mahayana Buddhism. The key point to be learned from these passages is that “immeasurability” is part of a general discourse which seeks to indicate the ineffability of the true nature of things by disrupting conventional terminology. Whatever one can conceive of is part of the world as viewed by discriminating reason.
But the aim, in Mahayana Buddhism, is not to be entrapped by such discriminations. To avoid entrapment, the available terminology has to be used. But it is turned against itself. Thus a very large amount of merit is construed as being so large that it cannot be measured at all. And this in turn points to its “empty” nature, so that we arrive at the realization that a very large amount of merit is so immeasurably large that it is “no merit.”
It is submitted here that such an understanding of the term “immeasurability” underlies the usage in other Mahayana works.
A Buddhist Kaleidoscope; Michael Pye, The Length of Life of the Tathāgata, Page 168-169
Strong Enemies Help
Devadatta, archenemy of Śākyamuni Buddha, was the primal “good friend,” who helped Him in His pursuit of truth. Observing the world today, we find that strong enemies, rather than friends, help people improve themselves. I see many such examples right here in my world. The prosperity of the Hōjō clan is due to ex-Emperor Gotoba as well as Wada Yoshimori, who both tried to destroy the Hōjōs. If not for them, how could the Hōjōs hold onto their hegemony and rule over Japan? Therefore, we should say that they, who planned to subjugate the Hōjōs, were the prime allies of the Hōjō clan.
By the same token, my best allies who are helping me to become a Buddha now are: Tōjō Kagenobu, who tried to assassinate me; Priests Ryōkan, Tao-lung, and Dōamidabutsu, who brought false charges against me; and Hei no Saemonnojō Yoritsuna and Lord Hōjō Tokimune, who dominated the country. If not for these people, how could I have been a practicer of the Lotus Sūtra? I sincerely feel indebted to them.
Shuju Onfurumai Gosho, Reminiscences: from Tatsunokuchi to Minobu, Writings of Nichiren Shōnin, Biography and Disciples, Volume 5, Pages 33
Daily Dharma – Nov. 13, 2019
When the sun shines brightly in the sky, everything is made clearly visible on the earth. In the same manner, when one knows the teachings of the Lotus Sutra, one will understand the meaning of occurrences in the world.
Nichiren wrote this passage in his great work, Spiritual Contemplation and the Object of Devotion (Kanjin Honzon Shō). When we awaken to our nature as Bodhisattvas who have chosen our lives to benefit others and improve the world, we are freed from the confusion and anxiety around us. By keeping the Dharma of the Lotus Sutra, and following the guidance of Nichiren’s writings, we see what to do to make the world we live in now better for everyone.
The Daily Dharma is produced by the Lexington Nichiren Buddhist Community. To subscribe to the daily emails, visit zenzaizenzai.com