Monthly Archives: December 2019

LS32

Day 24

Day 24 concludes Chapter 19, The Merits of the Teacher of the Dharma, and closes the Sixth Volume of the Sutra of the Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Dharma.

Day 24 Text with annotationsPlay MP3

Having last month considered the eight hundred merits of the nose in prose, we consider the eight hundred merits of the nose in gāthās.

Thereupon the World-Honored One, wishing to repeat what he had said, sang in gāthās:

Their nose will be purified.
They will be able to know
The smells of all things,
Be they good or bad.

They will be able to recognize by smell
The sumanas-flowers and jātika-flowers;
Tamala[pattra] and candana;
Aloes and sappanwood;
Various flowers and fruits;
And all Jiving beings including men and women.

Anyone who expounds the Dharma will be able to locate
All living beings from afar by smell.
He will be able to locate by smell
The wheel-turning-kings of great [countries],
The wheel-turning-kings of small [countries],
And their sons, ministers and attendants.

He will be able to locate by smell
The wonderful treasures of personal ornaments,
The underground stores of treasures,
And the ladies of the wheel-turning-kings.

He will be able to recognize persons
By smelling their ornaments or garments
Or by smelling their necklaces
Or by smelling the incense applied to their skin.

Anyone who keeps
This Sūtra of the Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Dharma
Will be able to know by smell
Whether the gods are walking, sitting, playing or performing wonders.

Anyone who keeps this sūtra
Will be able to locate by smell, without moving about,
The flowers and fruits of trees,
And the oil taken from sumanas-flowers.

He will be able to recognize by smell
The flowers of the candana-trees
Blooming in steep mountains,
And the living beings in those mountains.

Anyone who keeps this sūtra
Will be able to locate by smell
The living beings in the Surrounding Iron Mountains,
In the oceans, and underground.

He will be able to know by smell
Whether asuras and their daughters
And their attendants are fighting
Or playing with each other.

He will be able to locate by smell
Lions, elephants, tigers,
Wolves, wild oxen and buffalos
In the wilderness and in steep places.

He will be able to know by smell
Whether an unborn child is a boy or a girl,
Or a child of ambiguous sex,
Or the embryo of a nonhuman being.

He will be able to know by smell
Whether a woman is an expectant mother,
Or whether she will give an easy birth
To a happy child or not.

He will be able to know by smell
What a man or a woman is thinking of,
Or whether he or she is greedy, ignorant or angry,
Or whether he or she is doing good.

He will be able to recognize by smell
The gold, silver, and other treasures
Deposited underground,
And the things enclosed in a copper box.

He will be able to know by smell
The values of various necklaces,
And the deposits of their materials,
And also to locate the necklaces [when they are lost].

He will be able to recognize by smell
The mandārava-flowers,
And the mañjūṣaka-flowers,
And the pārijātaka-trees in heaven.

He will be able to know by smell
Whether a heavenly palace
Adorned with jeweled flowers
Is superior, mean or inferior.

He will be able to recognize by smell
Gardens, forests, excellent palaces,
And the wonderful hall of the Dharma in heaven,
And other stately buildings where [the gods] enjoy themselves.

He will be able to know by smell
Whether the gods are hearing the Dharma
Or satisfying their five desires,
Or coming, going, walking, sitting or reclining.

He will be able to know by smell
Whether the goddesses, clad in the garments
Adorned with fragrant flowers,
Are playing as they are moving about.

He will be able to know by smell
Who has reached the Heaven of Brahman,
Who has entered into dhyāna,
And who has come out of it.

He will be able to know by smell
The person who has appeared for the first time in the Light-Sound Heaven
Or in the Universal-Pure Heaven or in the Highest Heaven,
And who has disappeared from there.

Anyone who keeps this sūtra
Will be able to locate by smell
The bhikṣus who are sitting or walking about
In seeking the Dharma strenuously,
And the bhikṣus who are reading or reciting [this] sūtra
Or devoting themselves
To sitting in dhyāna
Under the trees of forests.

He will be able to know by smell
The Bodhisattvas who are resolute in mind,
And who are sitting in dhyāna or reading [this] sūtra
Or reciting it or expounding it to others.

He will be able to locate by smell
The World-Honored One who is expounding the Dharma
Out of his compassion
Towards all living beings who respect him.

He will be able to know by smell
Those who rejoice at hearing [this] sūtra
From the Buddha,
And act according to the Dharma.

Anyone who keeps this sūtra
Will be able to have these merits of the nose
Although he has not yet obtained the nose
Of the Bodhisattva [who attained] the
Dharma without āsravas.

See Realizing Buddhahood ‘Quickly’

LS32, d17b, 2buddhas

Realizing Buddhahood ‘Quickly’

As we have seen, Zhiyi and other Chinese Tiantai thinkers drew on the Lotus Sūtra to integrate the disparate Buddhist teachings into a coherent whole and to explain how all phenomena, being empty of independent substance, interpenetrate and “contain” one another in an interrelated holistic cosmos. Saichō and later Japanese Tendai thinkers took these ideas in new directions. One was the claim that practicing the Lotus Sūtra enables one to realize buddhahood “quickly.” We find some basis for this in the Lotus itself, and the idea had already been proposed in the Chinese Tiantai tradition. Zhiyi’s teacher Huisi (515-577), for example, had written that Lotus practitioners awaken spontaneously and without proceeding through sequential stages of practice, and Zhiyi, as we have seen, saw the possibility of sudden and full awakening to the threefold truth in its entirety as what distinguished the “perfect teaching” from the “distinct teaching”: where bodhisattvas of the provisional Mahāyāna must practice for three incalculable eons to achieve full awakening, practitioners of the sudden and perfect teaching, exemplified by Lotus Sūtra, can do so directly. Saichō also understood the Lotus as the “great direct path” that enabled the realization of buddhahood in only two or three lifetimes, or in some cases, in this very lifetime.

Two Buddhas, p20
Kaleidoscope

The Union of Suffering and Salvation

Quote

The maximum commitment to serving others, united to awareness of the limits of every action, represents the dynamic realization of the Middle Path. Each limited and concrete action can certainly redeem just a fragment of the world, but through the prayer/meditation also a fragment becomes totality (ichinen sanzen). In this way, liberation is not put off to a utopian future, and suffering is not related to an inevitable karma or to the logic of economics or power. To the eyes of the Buddha and in the hand and heart of the Sangha, we are bound together by warm links of solidarity and loving kindness.

In other words, Buddhist liberation consists of the union of suffering and salvation. Redemption is not obtained through a sacrifice offered to a divinity which, with its intervention, “mends” the world, destroying what we qualify as negative and as a source of suffering. Redemption is found in overcoming conflict and opposition, and in the creation of a more subtle harmony between order and disorder. This is a path that doesn’t involve nonsuffering, but the nonsuffering-of-suffering; a path which, we could say according to French writer Marguerite Yourcenar, if it doesn’t make us mad with joy, at least it makes us wise with pain.

That is why we can affirm that this world, full of misery and conflict, is, nonetheless, the tranquil realm of the Buddha.
A Buddhist Kaleidoscope; Riccardo Venturini, A Buddha Teaches Only Bodhisattvas, Page 336

WONS

Praying the Repose of Parents After Death

Your having deep faith is not for the sake of [pleasing] others, but for the sake of your late father. Other people will not pray for your deceased parents. You are their child, so you must pray for their repose after death.

Ueno-dono Gohenji, A Reply to Lord Ueno, Writings of Nichiren Shōnin, Faith and Practice, Volume 4, Page 113

Daily Dharma

Daily Dharma – Dec. 31, 2019

Ajita, look! The merits of the person who causes even a single man to go and hear the Dharma are so many. It is needless to speak of the merits of the person who hears [this sūtra] with all his heart, reads it, recites it, expounds it to the great multitude, and acts according to its teachings.

The Buddha gives this explanation to Maitreya, whom he calls Ajita (Invincible) in Chapter Eighteen of the Lotus Sutra. While earlier parts of the Sūtra describe the possible reactions those who teach the Buddha Dharma may find, the Buddha here reminds us that we do not need to wait until we are strong enough, wise enough, or even practiced enough to use it to benefit others. This sūtra contains the Buddha’s enlightenment itself. When we hear it, we hear the Buddha. When we expound it, it is the Buddha speaking through us.

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

LS32

Day 23

Day 23 covers all of Chapter 18, The Merits of a Person Who Rejoices at Hearing This Sutra, and opens Chapter 19, The Merits of the Teacher of the Dharma.

Day 23 Text with annotationsPlay MP3

Having last month considered the eight hundred merits of the eye, we consider the twelve hundred merits of the ear.

“Furthermore, Constant-Endeavor! The good men or women who keep, read, recite, expound or copy this sūtra, will be able to obtain twelve hundred merits of the ear. With their pure ears, they will be able to recognize all the various sounds and voices inside and outside the one thousand million Sumeru-worlds, [each of which is composed of the six regions] down to the Avici Hell and up to the Highest Heaven. They will be able to recognize the voices of elephants, horses and cows; the sounds of carts; cryings and sighings; the sounds of conch-shell horns, drums, gongs and bells; laughter and speech; the voices of men, women, boy and girls; meaningful voices, meaningless voices; painful voices, delightful voices; the voices of the unenlightened ones, the voices of the enlightened ones; joyful voices, joyless voices; the voices of gods, dragons, yakṣas, gandharvas, asuras, garuḍas, kiṃnaras and mahoragas; the sounds of fire, water and wind; the voices of hellish denizens, animals and hungry spirits; and the voices of bhikṣus, bhikṣunīs, Śrāvakas, Pratyekabuddhas, Bodhisattvas and Buddhas. In a word, with their pure and natural ears given by their parents, they will be able to recognize all the sounds and voices inside and outside the one thousand million Sumeru-worlds, although they have not yet obtained heavenly ears. Even when they recognize all these various sounds and voices, their organ of hearing will not be destroyed.”

See Chih-i’s Three-Fold Doctrine

LS32, d3b, d4b, 2buddhas

Chih-i’s Three-Fold Doctrine

Zhiyi [Chih-i] drew on the Lotus Sūtra’s claim that the Buddha’s various teachings were all his “skillful means,” or teaching devices, preached in accordance with the capacity of different individuals but all ultimately united in the fundamental principle of the one vehicle.

What was that fundamental principle? Zhiyi described it as the “threefold truth,” or “threefold discernment,” of emptiness, conventional existence, and the middle. Discerning all phenomena as “empty,” lacking self-essence or independent existence, frees the practitioner from attachment to desires and intellectual constructs. It collapses all categories, hierarchies, and boundaries to reveal an absolute equality and nondifferentiation. This insight corresponds to the wisdom of persons of the two vehicles of the “Hinayāna,” those who seek the goal of nirvāṇa, stopping the wheel of birth and death, as well as the wisdom of novice bodhisattvas. However, from a Mahāyāna perspective, it is one-sided. Though empty of fixed substance, all things nonetheless exist conventionally in dependence upon causes and conditions. The discernment of “conventional existence” reestablishes discrete entities and conceptual distinctions as features of commonsense experience but without false essentializing or clinging; it frees the practitioner to act in the world without bondage to it. This corresponds to the wisdom of more advanced bodhisattvas. Finally, phenomena are neither one-sidedly empty nor conventionally existing but exhibit both aspects simultaneously: at each moment, every existent, without losing its individual character, permeates and contains all others. This insight, termed “the middle,” encompasses both poles of understanding – emptiness and conventional existence – without dissolving the tension between them. The bodhisattva path culminates in the simultaneous discernment of all three truths as integrated in one. Page 16-17

Kaleidoscope

Taking Others’ Suffering on Oneself

Quote

Taking others’ suffering on oneself and purifying it without allowing oneself to be contaminated is the mission of the bodhisattva, who clears a world polluted by ignorance and selfishness. As Saichō, the founder of Japan’s Tendai sect, said, “To take evil upon oneself and to give good to others, and to forget about oneself and to work for the benefit of all, is the ultimate in compassion.”

Not discriminating between friends and enemies, tending not to have “personal” needs, appreciating all beings and all situations, bodhisattvas never pause in their constant, merciful practice (nondualism in action), always treat others as they would like to be treated, and are always ready to help others to overcome their misery.
A Buddhist Kaleidoscope; Riccardo Venturini, A Buddha Teaches Only Bodhisattvas, Page 335

WONS

A True Friend

[T]he reason why I, Nichiren, insist on the supremacy of the Lotus Sūtra is as follows: while preaching the Lotus Sūtra the Buddha twice exhorted the listeners to actively spread the teaching. In addition, the Buddha expounded the Nirvana Sūtra for the purpose of amplifying the Lotus teaching. It is preached in the Nirvana Sūtra, “Suppose a good priest who upholds the True Dharma sees a man destroying the Buddha’s Dharma and ignores him without rebuking him, chasing him away, or chastising him. You should know that such a priest is a loathsome enemy of Buddhism.” …

Therefore if I, Nichiren, am afraid of the people in the world and do not rectify the false teachings of these tripitaka masters and grand masters, I will end up in being a loathsome enemy of the Buddha. Moreover, Grand Master Chang-an warns the scholars in the Latter Age of Degeneration in his Annotations on the Nirvana Sūtra: “He who destroys and confuses Buddhism is an enemy of Buddhism. He who pretends to be friendly while having no compassion to someone is someone’s enemy. He who rectifies someone’s mistakes is someone’s true friend.”

Ōta-dono-gari Gosho, A Letter to Lord Ōta, Writings of Nichiren Shōnin, Doctrine 3, Pages 199.

Daily Dharma

Daily Dharma – Dec. 30, 2019

The Buddhas, the World-Honored Ones,
Say only expediently [that some are not Bodhisattvas]
To tell the truth,
All living beings taught by them are Bodhisattvas.

This verse comes from Chapter Three of the Lotus Sūtra. In Chapter Two, the Buddha declared that he only teaches Bodhisattvas. If we believe that we are not Bodhisattvas, we could conclude that the Buddha does not teach us. Part of what the Buddha is explaining here is that we are all Bodhisattvas. The way to reach the Buddha’s enlightenment is by living as Bodhisattvas: beings whose every breath is intended to improve our world.

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