Buddhism for Today, p23-24Before discussing the Sutra of the Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Law itself, I wish to comment on the title of the sutra, which expresses in brief the form and content of the sutra. I believe that this title is unique in its succinct expression of the profound meaning of the entire sutra.
The Sutra of the Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Law, written in Sanskrit, is called Saddharma-puṇḍrika-sūtra. The title as translated into Chinese by Kumārajīva is Miao-fa-lien-hua-ching (Japanese, Myōhō Renge-kyō). In the Sutra of the Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Law the absolute truth realized by Sakyamuni Buddha is presented. This truth is called the “Wonderful Law” (saddharma, miao-fa, myōhō) because of its profound meaning, as shown in the discussion of the Sutra of Innumerable Meanings.
First, as shown by the words “real state of all things, “Law” means all things that exist in the universe and all events that occur in the world. Secondly, it means the one truth that penetrates all things. Thirdly, it means the Law as an established rule when the truth appears as a phenomenon that we can see with our eyes and hear with our ears. Fourthly, it means the teaching of the truth.
The truth that expresses the original idea of these four meanings of “Wonderful Law” is the Buddha. Accordingly, the Law that rules the relationships of all things, including man, is also the Buddha; and the teaching, explaining how one should live on the basis of the truth, is the Buddha too. In short, the Law and the Buddha are one and the same. In other words, the Buddha and all the functions of the Buddha can be expressed with the word “Law.” Because the Law has such a supreme, profound, and inexpressible meaning, it is modified by the adjective “Wonderful.”
“Lotus” (puṇḍarīka, lien-hua, renge) means the lotus flower. In India this flower was regarded as the most beautiful in the world, for a lotus is rooted in mud but opens as a pure and beautiful flower unsoiled by the mud. This is an allegorical expression of thee fundamental idea of the Lotus Sutra, that though man lives in this corrupt world, he is not tainted by it nor swayed by it, and he can live a beautiful life with perfect freedom of mind.
“Sutra” literally means a string or the warp threads in weaving. The people of ancient India had a custom of decorating their hair with beautiful flowers threaded on a string. In the same way, the holy teachings of the Buddha were gathered into compositions called sutras. Altogether, the title “Sutra of the Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Law” means “the supreme teaching that man can lead a correct life, without being swayed by illusions, while living in this corrupt world.”
Monthly Archives: January 2020
Emptiness Inside a Lotus Sutra Circle
In 1993 I had been practicing what I considered to be Nichiren Buddhism for four years. I had started with Nichiren Shoshu of America before the split with Soka Gakkai and continued with Soka Gakkai after the divorce was finalized. I don’t recall ever being encouraged to read the Lotus Sutra. I was certainly never encouraged to do more sutra recitation than the shindoku [the Japanese pronunciation of the Chinese translation using Romanized text] and nothing beyond the Hoben Pon portion of Chapter 2, and Ji Ga Ge of Chapter 16. It was in this setting that I learned that Columbia University Press had published Burton Watson’s translation of the Lotus Sutra. Soka Gakkai held the copyright for the book and the local SGI community center bookstore had the book for sale. I purchased a copy. I read it once. I recall realizing that a single reading would not be sufficient to gain any appreciation of the sutra, but I never picked up that copy again.
It would be another 22 years before I again read the Lotus Sutra.
Today I’m beginning my 49th cycle through my 32 Days of the Lotus Sutra practice. For 40 cycles I used Senchu Murano’s translation. Then I tried Leon Hurvitz’s Scripture of the Lotus Blossom of the Fine Dharma for a couple of cycles and followed that with the 1975 edition of The Threefold Lotus Sutra, which I dropped after just one cycle. I did one cycle with the BDK English Tripitaka translation and then shifted to Gene Reeves’ translation for two cycles. For the previous two cycles I’ve been using the 2019 edition of the Threefold Lotus Sutra.
I’ve now come full circle, back to Burton Watson’s translation. I’m curious what it will be like to read it again after 27 years.
In Watson’s Preface I still have the page corner turned down marking this quote:
Watson, pxx-xxiThe Lotus Sutra tells us at times that the Lotus Sutra is about to be preached, at other times it says that the Lotus Sutra has already been preached with such-and-such results, and at still other times it gives instructions on just how the Lotus Sutra is to be preached or enumerates in detail the merits that accrue to one who pays due honor to the text. But the reader may be forgiven if he comes away from the work wondering just which of the chapters that make it up was meant to be the Lotus Sutra itself. One writer has in fact been led to describe the sutra as a text “about a discourse that is never delivered, a lengthy preface without a book.*” This is no doubt because Mahayana Buddhism has always insisted that its highest truth can never in the end be expressed in words, since words immediately create the kind of distinctions that violate the unity of Emptiness. All the sutra can do, therefore, is to talk around it, leaving a hole in the middle where truth can reside.
* George J. Tanabe, Jr, and Wilma Jane Tanabe, eds., The Lotus Sutra in Japanese Culture (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1989), p. 2 in the introductory chapter by Professor George Tanabe.
When I first read this I could not have possibly fathomed the meaning of that hole in the middle, that central emptiness. As Watson points out in the Preface:
Watson, pxviThis is the first point to keep in mind in reading the Lotus Sutra. Its setting, its vast assembly of listeners, its dramatic occurrences in the end belong to a realm that totally transcends our ordinary concepts of time, space, and possibility. Again and again we are told of events that took place countless, indescribable numbers of kalpas or eons in the past, or of beings or worlds that are as numerous as the sands of millions and billions of Ganges rivers. Such “numbers” are in fact no more than pseudonumbers or non-numbers, intended to impress on us the impossibility of measuring the immeasurable. They are not meant to convey any statistical data but simply to boggle the mind and jar it loose from its conventional concepts of time and space. For in the realm of Emptiness, time and space as we conceive them are meaningless; anywhere is the same as everywhere, and now, then, never, forever are all one.
How to comprehend this?
Watson, pxx-xxiVery early in the sutra the Buddha warns us that the wisdom of the Buddhas is extremely profound and difficult to comprehend, and this warning is repeated frequently in later chapters. …
But of course in the view of religion there are other approaches to truth than merely through words and intellectual discourse. The sutra therefore exhorts the individual to approach the wisdom of the Buddhas through the avenue of faith and religious practice. The profound influence which the Lotus Sutra has exerted upon the cultural and religious life of the countries of eastern Asia is due as much to its function as a guide to devotional practice as to the actual ideas that it expounds. It calls upon us to act out the sutra with our bodies and minds rather than merely reading it, and in that way to enter into its meaning.
This is the Essential emptiness. Chih-i equated the Ultimate Truth with the empty space inside a house (The Ulimate Empty Space). The teachings of the Buddha provide the roof beams and pillars, and Lotus Sutra gathers the whole into a house with empty rooms in which to practice. The Emptiness is essential to the function of the house, to the teaching of the Lotus Sutra.
Developing One’s Buddha-Nature
[N]otice that there is not much use of the notion of emptiness (śūnyā or śūnyāta) in the Lotus Sutra. Of course, all things are empty. But it is because they are empty that there is space, so to speak, for the development of one’s buddha-nature. If things were substantial, they could not truly grow or change. But because they are without substantiality, they can be influenced by and have influence on others. Undue emphasis on emptiness is rejected because it can easily become a kind of nihilism in which nothing matters. In the Lotus Sutra everything matters. The Buddha works to save all beings. Even the poor Bodhisattva Never Disrespectful, who goes around telling everyone that they are to become buddhas, though initially not very successful, eventually “converted a multitude of a thousand, ten thousand, millions, enabling them to live in the state of supreme enlightenment.” And this is to say nothing of the fact that he later became the Buddha Śākyamuni!
A Buddhist Kaleidoscope; Gene Reeves, Appropriate Means as the Ethics of the Lotus Sutra, Page 389
Merits of Praising the Practicer of the Lotus Sūtra
It is preached in the “Teacher of the Dharma” chapter of the Lotus Sūtra, fascicle 4, that the merits of those who praise the practicer of the Lotus Sūtra are superior to the merits of those who endeavored to seek the Buddhist Way for as long as a kalpa (aeon). Grand Master Miao-lê interprets this scriptural statement saying, “He who torments the upholder of the Lotus Sūtra will have his head split into seven pieces. On the contrary he who sustains the upholder of the Lotus Sūtra will be rewarded with merit greater than the merit of the one giving offerings to the Buddha, who holds the ten epithets.”
Hōren-shō, Letter to Hōren, Writings of Nichiren Shōnin, Volume 6, Followers I, Page 44-45
Daily Dharma – Jan. 11, 2020
Do not doubt him even at a moment’s thought!
The Pure Saint World-Voice-Perceiver is reliable
When you suffer, and when you are confronted
With the calamity of death.
The Buddha sings these verses in Chapter Twenty-Five of the Lotus Sūtra. The calamity of death is something we all will face eventually, whether it our own or that of those we love. The other calamities in our lives are relatively minor losses which can prepare us for this great calamity. The Bodhisattva World-Voice-Perceiver is the embodiment of Compassion: the desire to benefit all beings. When we learn to use all of the suffering in our lives, especially the calamity of death, as a way to remove our delusions and benefit others, then we can see the world with the eyes of the Buddha and know the joy he declares is at the core of our being.
The Daily Dharma is produced by the Lexington Nichiren Buddhist Community. To subscribe to the daily emails, visit zenzaizenzai.com
Another Innumerable Day Before Day 1
I feel it somehow fitting to begin this extended cycle through the Lotus Sutra with Nikkyō Niwano’s conclusion of his commentary on the Lotus Sutra in his book, Buddhism For Today: A Modern Interpretation of the threefold Lotus Sutra.
Buddhism for Today, p460When you have read through the entire Threefold Lotus Sutra and have examined yourself in the light of its teachings, you may find that the actual state of your mind is so imperfect as to seem hopeless, and you may feel at a loss as to what to do. I was told that someone confessed that he found it hard to approach the Lotus Sutra again after having read it because of its extreme profundity. I can understand why he felt cowed by the profundity of the sutra. I suspect, however, that he had not read the sutra deeply enough, and that if he had read it repeatedly, he would have come to regard it as the teaching capable of leading all of us directly to salvation. We should start our practice from even one teaching in the Lotus Sutra and from even the smallest act in our daily lives. The sutra itself exhorts us not to think that its teachings are beyond our capacities.
There is an appropriate story in the Sutra of a Hundred Parables (Hyakuyu-kyō) … . Once there was a very stupid man. As he was parched with thirst, he roamed here and there looking for water. While walking about, he luckily arrived at the shore of the Sindh River. For some reason, however, he just stood on the riverbank instead of drinking. A friend nearby wondered at his behavior and asked him, “Why don’t you drink the water in the river?” The man answered, “I am dying for a drink! But the river has so much water that I cannot possibly drink it all. So I am hesitating as to whether I should drink or not.”
I sincerely hope that no one will harbor such a foolish idea toward the teaching of the Threefold Lotus Sutra.
The Sutra of Innumerable Meanings list 10 benefits of progressively more impressive stature for those who read or hear the sutra, but the first benefit, when one is just introduced to the sutra, is its most profound:
(Reeves, p42)The Buddha said: “Good sons, first, this sutra leads a not-yet-awakened bodhisattva to aspire to awakening, leads one without human kindness to aspire to kindness, leads one with a murderous heart to aspire to great compassion, leads one who is jealous to aspire to respond with joy, leads one with attachments to aspire to impartiality, leads one who is greedy to aspire to generosity, leads one who is full of arrogance to aspire to be moral, leads one who is angry to aspire to patience, leads one who is lazy to aspire to perseverance, leads one who is distracted to aspire to meditation, leads one who is ignorant to aspire to wisdom, leads one who lacks concern for saving others to aspire to saving others, leads one who commits the ten evils to aspire to do ten good things, leads one who is willful to aspire to let things be, leads one who is prone to backsliding to aspire to never retreat, leads one who commits faulty acts to aspire to being faultless, and leads one who suffers from afflictions to aspire to detachment. Good sons, this is called the first amazing power of blessing of this sutra.”
Sutra Recitation
I’ve completed my 48th cycle through the 32 Days of the Lotus Sutra and before I set aside The Threefold Lotus Sutra: A Modern Translations for Contemporary Readers, I want to publish some quotes from the Preface discussing the importance of sutra recitation.
The Threefold Lotus Sutra (2019), pxvii-xixIn chapter 17, “Specification of Merits,” the Buddha teaches another formula for how, after he has passed into nirvana, his followers can be true practitioners of the Lotus Sutra. This method consists of five elements: (1) rejoicing in the sutra, (2) reading and reciting it, (3) expounding it, (4) concurrently practicing the Six Paramitas, and (5) intensely practicing the Six Paramitas. Here the meaning of “reading and reciting” is deeper than in the aforementioned five practices of Dharma teachers: as our faith deepens, we do not simply read the sutra aloud but also come to appreciate it in our hearts and minds and study it in great depth.
In short, we are diligent in the practice of reading and reciting the sutra so that we can firmly receive and embrace it, that is, so that we can deepen our faith and devotion to it and make progress toward the attainment of buddhahood (the perfection of oneself). This is the first function of the practice of sutra recitation.
The second function of reading and reciting the sutra is to serve as an “offering,” or kuyo in Japanese, to the Three Treasures – the Buddha, his teachings, and the community of those who practice them – and it is also a bodhisattva practice undertaken for the sake of others. …
The third function of sutra recitation is to go beyond a merely intellectual understanding of the sutra’s contents. There are two ways of comprehending the Lotus Sutra: understanding it intellectually and understanding it bodily, that is, by reciting it orally. The act of reading the sutra aloud helps readers totally concentrate their consciousness on recitation without engaging their intellect to grasp the meaning of the words and phrases of the sutra. While the strength of modern intellectual comprehension is coherent logic founded on rational understanding, rhythmic recitation is capable of adding something more to our rational understanding of the literal meanings of the sutra.
According to the Japanese traditional belief called kotodama, spiritual power dwells within words, and therefore, when the mouth gives voice to words, it releases their inherent power, which is capable of stirring heaven and earth and all the living beings therein. Words work phonetically to produce rhythm and resonance, which are in turn the agents that guide the body and mind of the reciter to the realm of the sutra, that is, to the Buddha’s world of great harmony. Sutra recitation, in particular its rhythm and resonance, can liberate us from the disadvantage of the modern age — the habit of limiting our horizon of understanding to the intellectual comprehension of the sutra.
The experience of reciting the sutra aloud is quite different from reading it silently because sutra recitation provides more than just an intellectual understanding of the sutra. When we recite the sutra, we enjoy the pleasure of the rhythm of its sentences as well as the repetition of its set phrases and idioms, just as if we were reciting a poem or singing a song. We may even feel surrounded by the Buddha’s light and embraced by his compassion. This is a form of meditation.
This March will mark the completion of five years of daily Lotus Sutra recitation. It is a practice unlike anything I attempted during more than 25 years with Soka Gakkai. It is a practice that has brought profound benefit in my life and encouraged my Bodhisattva vow to help others attain the path. It is a practice I heartily recommend.
The Radically World-Affirming Lotus Sutra
One of the ways, I think, in which the Lotus Sutra and its teaching of hōben is ethical is by being radically world-affirming. By this I mean simply that it is this sahā world which is Śākyamuni Buddha’s world. It is in this world that he is a bodhisattva and encourages us to be bodhisattvas. This world is our home, and it is the home of Śākyamuni Buddha, precisely because he is embodied, not only as the historical Buddha, but as the buddha-nature in all things. Thus, things, ordinary things, including ourselves and our neighbors, are not primarily to be seen as empty, though they are; not primarily to be seen as phenomenal, though they are; not primarily to be seen as illusions, though in one sense they are; not primarily to be seen as evil even though they may be in part. It is in dharmas (things/ “conventional” existence) that the Dharma is. It is in transient, changing things that the Buddha is. They are, therefore, to be treated with as much insight and compassion and respect as we can muster.
A Buddhist Kaleidoscope; Gene Reeves, Appropriate Means as the Ethics of the Lotus Sutra, Page 388
Perils of Disparaging the Lotus Sūtra and its Practicer
It is preached in the Lotus Sūtra, in the second fascicle (“A Parable” chapter): “Suppose there is a person who does not believe in this sūtra and instead disparages it or despises, hates, or bears a grudge against those who uphold this sūtra by reading, reciting, or copying it. Such a person will fall into the Hell of Incessant Suffering upon death and will continue to wander about the hell for innumerable kalpa (aeons).” The seventh fascicle (“Never-Despising Bodhisattva” chapter) of the same sūtra states: “(Such a person) will suffer in the Hell of Incessant Suffering for as long as 1,000 kalpa (aeons).” The third fascicle (“The Parable of a Magic City”) states “for 3,000 dust-particle kalpa. ” And the sixth fascicle (“The Life Span of the Buddha”) says “for 500 (million) dust-particle kalpa. ” The Nirvana Sūtra declares: “In case one is crushed to death by a wild elephant, one will not fall into the three evil realms. However, when one is killed by an evil friend, one will inevitably fall into them. ”
Toki-dono Gosho, A Letter to Lord Toki, Writings of Nichiren Shōnin, Faith and Practice, Volume 4, Page 115-116
Daily Dharma – Jan. 10, 2020
There is a daughter of Dragon-King Sāgara [among those whom I taught]. She is eight years old. She is clever. She knows the karmas of all living beings. She obtained dhāraṇīs. She keeps all the treasury of the profound and hidden core expounded by the Buddhas. She entered deep into dhyāna-concentration, and understood all teachings. She aspired for Bodhi in a kṣana, and reached the stage of irrevocability. She is eloquent without hindrance. She is compassionate towards all living beings just as a mother is towards her babe. She obtained all merits. Her thoughts and words are wonderful and great. She is compassionate, humble, gentle and graceful. She [has already been qualified to] attain Bodhi[, and to become a Buddha quickly].
The Bodhisattva Mañjuśrī gives this description in Chapter Twelve of the Lotus Sūtra. This is his response to the question of whether any of the beings in the sea whom he taught will become a Buddha quickly. Those hearing his answer did not expect that a woman, much less a girl, much less a nonhuman being such as a dragon could reach the same enlightenment as the Buddha. Mañjuśrī’s response shows that all beings have within us the capability of developing the qualities that allow us to see things as they are and benefit all beings.
The Daily Dharma is produced by the Lexington Nichiren Buddhist Community. To subscribe to the daily emails, visit zenzaizenzai.com