The purification of the six faculties is thus available to any practitioner of the Lotus Sutra. One was Kenji Miyazawa, who exemplified the bodhisattva spirit of the Lotus Sutra, identifying with the plight of the poor and destitute peasants in northern Japan. He was brought up in a devout Jōdo Shinshū family, but he seems to have had disagreements with his father, who was a pious follower, and possibly with the Shinshū teaching itself. Regardless of his profession as a scientist, agronomist, storyteller, poet, and science fiction writer (to use a contemporary description), his devotion to the Lotus Sutra was total:
Obeisance to the Lotus Sutra of Profound Dharma!
My life — none other than the life of Profound Dharma.
My death — none other than the death of Profound Dharma.
From this human body to eventual Buddha body,
I receive and keep the Lotus Sutra.
Miyazawa attempted to put into practical action the life of Bodhisattva Never Disparaging of the Lotus Sutra, always concerned with the well-being of the impoverished peasants of northern Japan with whom he worked. His identification with the peasants is eloquently expressed in one of his most famous poems:
Yielding neither to rain nor yielding to wind,
Yielding neither to snow nor to summer heat,
With a stout body like that,
Without greed, never getting angry,
Always smiling quietly… in everything,
Not taking oneself into account.
Looking, listening, understanding well and not forgetting
If in the East there’s a sick child, going and nursing him.
If in the West there’s a tired mother, going and carrying her bundle of rice,
If in the South there’s someone dying, going and saying you don’t have to be afraid,
If in the North there’s a quarrel or a lawsuit, saying it’s not worth it, stop it
In drought, shedding tears,
In a cold summer, pacing back and forth, lost.
Called a good-for-nothing by everyone,
Neither praised nor thought a pain,
Someone like that
Is what I want to be.
Here Miyazawa is the “good-for-nothing” (dekunobō) who identifies with the “know-nothing bodhisattva,” the Bodhisattva Never Disparaging of the Lotus Sutra. In both cases what was essential was living the Lotus teachings. This living can be the mastery of a single verse or a single sentence of the Lotus Sutra which would manifest the totality of the spiritual life. A single kind word, a simple gesture of compassion, is infinitely more meaningful than any conceptual understanding or discursive elaboration. This stress on what is truly valuable, as opposed to what we think is so, is found in other instances in the Lotus Sutra. Little value, for example, is placed on the śarīra, the remains of the Buddha, which is regarded as essential to the stupa. But the Lotus Sutra contends, “There is no need even to lodge śarīra in it. What is the reason? Within it there is already the whole body of the Thus Come One.”
A Buddhist Kaleidoscope; Taitetsu Unno, Somatic Realization of the Lotus Sutra, Page 74-75
