Monthly Archives: January 2020

LS32

Day 21

Day 21 covers all of Chapter 16, The Duration of the Life of the Tathāgata.

Day 21 Text with annotationsPlay MP3

Having last month learned of the lifespan of the Buddha and why he implies he enters extinction, we consider the skillfull physician and what happened while he was away.

“I will tell you a parable. There was once an excellent and wise physician. He was good at dispensing medicines and curing diseases. He had many sons, numbering ten, twenty, or a hundred. [One day] he went to a remote country on business. After he left home, the sons took poison. The poison passed into their bodies, and the sons writhed in agony, rolling on the ground. At that time the father returned home. Some sons had already lost their right minds while the others still had not. All the sons saw their father in the distance and had great joy. They begged him on their knees, saying, ‘You came back safely. We were ignorant. We took poison by mistake. Cure us, and give us back our lives!’

“Seeing his sons suffering so much, the father consulted books of prescriptions, and collected good herbs. having a good color, smell and taste. He compounded a medicine by pounding and sieving the herbs, and gave it to them, saying, ‘This is a very good medicine. It has good color, smell and taste. Take it! It will remove the pain at once and you will not suffer any more.’

“The sons who had not lost their right minds saw that this good medicine had a good color and smell, took it at once, and were cured completely. But the sons who had already lost their right minds did not consent to take the medicine given to them, although they rejoiced at seeing their father come home and asked him to cure them, because they were so perverted that they did not believe that this medicine having a good color and smell had a good taste.

See Lessons of the Parable of the Physician’s Sons

LS32, d21b, b4today

Lessons of the Parable of the Physician’s Sons

In the Parable of the Physician’s Sons, the physician is the Buddha and the sons represent all living beings. The gist of the parable is that living beings cannot understand how much they owe to the Buddha as long as he abides in this world, but they conceive the desire to seek his teachings earnestly when he becomes extinct. For this reason, he temporarily enters nirvana through his tactful means.

The Buddha teaches us several important lessons in this parable. The first significant point is that the sons drink poisonous medicines while their father is away in a distant country. The poisonous medicines are illusions produced by the five desires. If people come in contact with the Buddha’s teachings daily, they will not suffer from these five desires disturbing their minds. However, when they avoid the Buddha’s teachings, they are apt to become obsessed by the five desires.

The next important point is that all the sons who drank the poison, even those who have lost their senses, to say nothing of the others who are still in their right minds, are delighted on seeing their father return home. The parable thus shows that even a madman can tell his father from other people. In the same way, even those with illusions who have lost their senses, for example, even a thoroughgoing materialist who boasts, “I don’t believe in God or the Buddha,” in the depths of his mind feels an unrest and loneliness that he cannot quite satisfy by material things. He seeks mental calm and satisfaction, though he is unaware of it. Therefore, if he encounters a teaching giving him spiritual peace and enlightenment, he is sure to be delighted with it. This is the same the sons who have lost their senses being glad to see their father approaching in the distance.

Buddhism for Today, p246-247
Blog

Getting Ready to Search Background and Commentary


This post is for those who subscribe to this website and receive emails whenever something is posted and also for my Facebook followers.

All of those “Search Background and Commentary for Day XX” posts are the initial steps I’m taking to organize my posts to make searching more efficient. I’ve already tagged all of the Daily Dharma for last year and when I’m done creating the 32 search pages, I’ll then add all of the quotes related to particular sections of the Lotus Sutra.

To be honest, this is mostly for my benefit. When I do my daily 32 Days of the Lotus Sutra post I need to access background for that day. Right now I’m using quotes from Buddhism for Today, but by the end of February I expect to return to quoting from the Daily Dharma and other appropriate quotes.

I apologize for the annoyance of the 32 search page posts.

d3b, 2buddhas

Ten Suchnesses Three Ways

In the opening passage of Chapter Two, Śākyamuni declares that only buddhas can “completely know the real aspects of all dharmas — that is to say, their character, nature, substance, potential, function, cause, condition, result, effect, and essential unity.”…

In the East Asian commentarial tradition, this passage is referred to as the “ten suchnesses” or “such-likes” (J. junyoze) because each of the “real aspects” is preceded in the Chinese text by the words “suchness” or more literally “like such” (nyoze). “Such” or “suchness” (tathatā in Sanskrit) is one of many terms for reality in Buddhism, denoting that a buddha perceives things just as they are, without imposing reifying concepts or descriptions. In their translation, Kubo and Yuyama call these ten the “real aspects” of the dharmas or phenomena, but one could also refer to them collectively in the singular as the “real aspect” shared by all phenomena. By punctuating this passage that enumerates the “ten suchnesses” in three different ways, Zhiyi derived the threefold truth … of emptiness, conventional existence, and the middle. To this day, the passage is often ritually recited three times, representing the threefold truth and its threefold discernment.

Two Buddhas, p66-67
WONS

Reason for Transmigrating the Six Realms

The reason why those who had received the seed of Buddhahood in the eternal past have been transmigrating the six realms (lower states of existence) ever since for as long as “500 dust-particle kalpa” without attaining Buddhahood, and those who had heard the Lotus Sūtra at the time of the Great Universal Wisdom Buddha have been undergoing transmigration in the six realms ever since for the “3,000 dust-particle kalpa” was because they abandoned the great teaching of the Lotus, seeking refuge instead in expedient and Hinayāna sūtras preached forty years or so before the Lotus Sūtra. Later they gave up faith in those expedient sūtras, too, and thus have continued to transmigrate through the six realms.

Shugo Kokka-ron, Treatise on Protecting the Nation, Writings of Nichiren Shōnin, Doctrine 1, Page 42

Daily Dharma

Daily Dharma – Jan. 31, 2020

Bhikṣus! It is a very long time since that Buddha passed away. Suppose someone smashed all the earth-particles of one thousand million Sumeru-worlds into ink-powder. Then he went to the east[, carrying the ink-powder with him]. He inked a dot as large as a particle of dust [with that ink-powder] on the world at a distance of one thousand worlds from his world. Then he went again and repeated the inking of a dot on the world at every distance of one thousand worlds until the ink-powder was exhausted. What do you think of this? Do you think that any mathematician or any disciple of a mathematician could count the number of the worlds [he went through]?

The Buddha gives this explanation in Chapter Seven of the Lotus Sūtra. Our concept of time can be limited to what happens in the brief existence we enjoy in this world. We often feel we have no time for what is necessary, much less what we enjoy. With this limited viewpoint, we can find it hard to believe that we have enough time to become enlightened. The Buddha reminds us that there is no shortage of time, and that in all of our existence, we will have opportunities to increase our capacity to benefit others.

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

LS32

Day 20

Day 20 completes Chapter 15, The Appearance of Bodhisattvas from Underground, and concludes the Fifth Volume of the Sutra of the Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Dharma.

Day 20 Text with annotationsPlay MP3

Having last month heard Śākyamuni tell Maitreya that he is the one who taught these Bodhisattvas, we hear
the World-Honored One repeat to Maitreya in gāthās:

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

Ajita, know this, these great Bodhisattvas
Have studied and practiced
The wisdom of the Buddha
For the past innumerable kalpas.

They are my sons because I taught them
And caused them to aspire for great enlightenment.
They have been living in this world
[For the past innumerable kalpas].

They always practiced the dhuta.
They wished to live in a quiet place.
They kept away from bustling crowds.
They did not wish to talk much.

These sons of mine studied my teachings
Strenuously day and night
In order to attain
The enlightenment of the Buddha.
They lived in the sky
Below this Sahā-World.

Resolute in mind,
They always sought wisdom,
And expounded
Various wonderful teachings without fear.

I once sat under the Bodhi-tree
In the City of Gaya,
Attained perfect enlightenment,
And turned the wheel of the unsurpassed Dharma.

Then I taught them,
And caused them to aspire £or enlightenment.
Now they do not falter [in seeking enlightenment].
They will be able to become Buddhas.

My words are true.
Believe me with all your hearts!
I have been teaching them
Since the remotest past.

See The Divine Power to Save the People in the Sahā World

LS32, d20b, b4today

The Divine Power to Save the People in the Sahā World

That these bodhisattvas [from Underground] did not originally dwell in the earth but that they, who were in the infinite space below the sahā-world, came out of the earth and rose into the sky has a deep meaning. These bodhisattvas were people who had been freed from illusion in their previous lives by means of the Buddha’s teachings. For this reason, they had been dwelling in infinite space. But hearing the Buddha declare that he would entrust the instruction of the sahā-world to them, they entered into the earth, namely, this sahā-world, experiencing suffering there, and practiced religious disciplines so zealously as to attain the mental state of bodhisattvas. Therefore, they rose into the sky again after coming out of the earth. Though the bodhisattvas had been free from illusion in their previous lives, they voluntarily passed through various sufferings and worries in sahā-world for the purpose of saving the people here, endeavored earnestly to become enlightened, and preached the teaching to others. As mentioned before, this is a very important process; without completing such an endeavor, they could not truly acquire the divine power to save the people in the sahā-world.

Buddhism for Today, p179
d1b, 2buddhas, Innumerable

The Great Instruction

With the audience having been enumerated [in Chapter 1, Introductory], the Buddha then teaches a Mahāyāna sūtra identified in Sanskrit as Mahānirdeśa. However, nothing of the content of that teaching is provided, and mahānirdeśa is a generic term that simply means “great instruction.” Kumārajīva’s Chinese translation, however, renders this as “a Mahāyāna sūtra named Immeasurable Meanings,” and by the fifth century, a text purporting to be this very sutra was circulating in China, also with the name Sūtra of Immeasurable Meanings (Ch. Wuliang yi jing), said to have been translated by a monk named Dharmāgatayaśas. No Sanskrit original, or reference to the Sanskrit original, has been located, nor are any other translations attributed to Dharmāgatayaśas, leading scholars to consider the text to be a Chinese apocryphon, a work composed in China that purports to be not only of Indian origin but spoken by the Buddha himself. It achieved canonical status in China, where it is regarded as the first of three sūtras comprising the so-called threefold Lotus Sūtra. The text itself is short, not quite thirty pages in English translation, and has only three chapters. The first describes the bodhisattvas present in the assembly and reports their lengthy praise of the Buddha. In the second, the Buddha praises the importance of the Sūtra of Immeasurable Meanings and then gives the actual teaching, which is that, although buddhas teach immeasurable meanings, they all originate from a single dharma, which is without form. Also in the chapter the Buddha says, “For more than forty years I have expounded the dharma in all manner of ways through adeptness in skillful means, but the core truth has still not been revealed.” East Asian commentators would find great meaning in this statement, for it serves to position the Lotus Sūtra as the Buddha’s final teaching. The third and longest chapter is devoted to ten benefits accruing to those who hear one verse of this sūtra or keep, read, recite, and copy the sūtra.

Two Buddhas, p39-40
WONS

Holding on to Unwavering Faith

Not only I, Nichiren, but also my disciples will reach the land of Buddha unfailingly so long as we all hold on to unwavering faith no matter what difficulty confronts us. I have always told my disciples not to have a doubt about the lack of heavenly protection and not to lament the lack of tranquility in this world. I am afraid, however, that they might all have doubts about these and no longer listen to me. It seems only natural that ordinary people, in face of reality, will forget what they promised. Having pity on their families, my lay followers must lament being separated from wives and children in this world. However, had they ever been truly separated from their beloved families throughout many lives in the past? Had they ever been separated for the sake of Buddhism? Theirs must have been the same sad separation. I, Nichiren, should continue upholding the Lotus Sūtra and go to the Pure Land of Mt. Sacred Eagle, so that I will be able to return to this world to guide the people.

Kaimoku-shō, Open Your Eyes to the Lotus Teaching, Writings of Nichiren Shōnin, Doctrine 2, Page 109