Monthly Archives: January 2020

Daily Dharma

Daily Dharma – Jan. 19, 2020

Enemies find it difficult to attack when two people are together. Therefore, do not keep your brothers at a distance even for a brief period, regardless of what faults they may have; always be close to them. Whenever you get angry, it is clearly written on your face. Please remember that at no time do gods or deities protect those who are short tempered. It is true that you are destined to become a Buddha, but isn’t it regrettable for you to get hurt, pleasing your enemy and causing us grief?

Nichiren wrote this passage in his “Emperor Shushun” Letter (Sushun Tennō Gosho) addressed to his disciple Shijō Kingo. Nichiren knew the temperament of this Samurai warrior, and gave him detailed instructions for how to navigate the political hazards he faced. No matter how vindictive his Lord Ema became, Nichiren reminded him to persist in leading Ema by the Buddha Dharma and to rely on those who kept the Lotus Sūtra with him. As a result, Kingo outlived both Ema and Nichiren himself and is well known as one of Nichiren’s first followers.

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

LS32

Day 8

Day 8 concludes Chapter 4, Understanding by Faith, and closes the second volume of the Sutra of the Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Dharma.

Day 8 Text with annotationsPlay MP3

Having last month considered the expedient devices used by the old man to encourage his son, we witness the father reveal the son’s true place.

By his wisdom the rich man succeeded
In leading his son into his household.
Twenty years after that
He had his son manage his house.

The son was entrusted
With the keeping of the accounts
Of gold and silver,
And of pearl, crystal, and so on.
But he still lodged
In the hut outside the gate, thinking:
“I am poor.
None of these treasures are mine.”

Seeing the mind of his son
Becoming less mean and more noble,
The father called in
His relatives, the king, ministers,
Kṣatriyas, and householders,
In order to give his treasures to his son.

He said to the great multitude:
“This is my son.
He was gone
For fifty years.
I found him Twenty years ago.
I missed him
When I was in a certain city.
I wandered, looking for him,
And came here.
Now I will give him
All my houses and men.
He can use them
As he likes.”

The son thought:
“I was poor, base and mean.
Now I have obtained
The treasures, houses,
And all the other things From my father.
Never before
Have I been so happy.”

See Combining Faith and Discernment

LS32, d8b, b4today

Combining Faith and Discernment

The mental state generated by the firsthand encounter with mystery is called faith. A religion whose teachings a person tries to explain entirely by reason has no power to move others because this person has only a theoretical understanding and cannot put his theory into practice. Such a religion does not produce the energy to cause others to follow it. True faith has power and energy. However uneducated a person may be and however humble his circumstances, he can save others and help them promote his religion if he only has faith. But if he has faith in what is fundamentally wrong, his energy exerts a harmful influence on society and those around him. Therefore faith and discernment must go together. A religion cannot be said to be true unless it combines faith and discernment. The Buddha’s teachings can be understood by reason. They do not demand blind, unreasoning faith. We must understand the Buddha’s teachings by listening to preaching and by reading the sutras. As we advance in our discernment of these teachings, faith is generated spontaneously.

When a person who has a flexible mind is not advanced in discernment, he develops faith as soon as he is told, “This is a true teaching.” So far as the teaching of the Lotus Sutra is concerned, that is all right, because he will gradually advance in discernment through hearing and reading its teaching.

In short, we can enter a religion from the aspect either of faith or of discernment, but unless a religion combines both aspects, it does not have true power.

Buddhism for Today, p64
WONS, 2buddhas

Relying on the Dharma, not on the Person

Quote

[Nichiren’s] earliest surviving essay, written when he was twenty-one, suggests that he already took the Lotus Sūtra to be the sole teaching of universal buddhahood; his subsequent studies enhanced and deepened this conviction. Throughout, he was guided by the words of the Nirvāṇa Sūtra — regarded in Tendai circles as a restatement of the Lotus — to “rely on the dharma and not on the person.” For Nichiren, this meant that one should rely on the sūtras rather than the works of later commentators or the opinions of contemporary teachers, however eminent. And among the sūtras, one should rely above all on the Lotus, which is complete and final, and not others, which are incomplete and provisional. It is essential to bear in mind that for Nichiren, as for many of his contemporaries, the sūtras were literally the Buddha’s words; the stages of his fifty-year teaching career as mapped out in the Tendai doctrinal classification system represented historical truth; and the ranking of particular scriptures in the Tendai hierarchy of teachings directly mirrored their degree of salvific power.

Two Buddhas, p24
WONS

If They Are Not Moved to Believe in the Lotus Sūtra

As I contemplate this, those who become the king and deities of Japan are bodhisattvas in the rank of sangen (three wisdoms) according to Hinayāna Buddhism and bodhisattvas in the rank of initial ten (jūshin) of the 52 ranks in Mahāyāna. In the six-stage practice of the Lotus Sutra, they are at the second stage of myōji-soku (notional understanding), the stage at which one hears the name of the Lotus Sūtra and thereby has faith in it, or at the third stage of kangyō-soku (perception and practice), perceiving and practicing the “five stages” after the death of the Buddha: rejoicing on hearing the Sūtra, reading and reciting the Sutra, expounding it to others, practicing the six pāramitā, and perfecting the six pāramitā. Therefore, no matter how much merit community deities accumulate, if they are not moved to believe in the Lotus Sūtra upon hearing its name and practice the spiritual contemplation of the “3,000 existences contained in one thought” doctrine, they will become former bodhisattvas who will sink to the Hell of Incessant suffering forever.

Kangyō Hachiman-shō, Remonstration with Bodhisattva Hachiman, Writings of Nichiren Shōnin, Doctrine 1, Page 262

Daily Dharma

Daily Dharma – Jan. 18, 2020

Those who believe in the Lotus Sutra are like the winter season, for many hardships come incessantly. Winter is surely followed by spring. We have never heard nor seen that winter returned to fall. We have never heard that the believers in the Lotus Sutra go back to ordinary people. The Lotus Sutra says, “All people who listen to this sutra will attain Buddhahood.”

Nichren wrote this in a letter to one of the lay women who followed his teachings, Myoichi Ama. Knowing the hardships Nichiren faced in his life helps us understand his great fearlessness and determination to spread the Wonderful Dharma. One of the most difficult things about hardship is that it can seem like it will never end. Nichiren reminds us that hardships do end, and that we who practice the Lotus Sutra are assured of our future enlightenment. The example of Nichiren’s life also shows us that as Bodhisattvas, we can use our hardships to lead other beings to enlightenment.

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

LS32

Day 7

Day 7 concludes Chapter 3, A Parable, and begins Chapter 4, Understanding by Faith.

Day 7 Text with annotationsPlay MP3

Having last month considered the Buddha’s expedient teachings, we consider the benefits of rejoicing at hearing the sutra.

I am the King of the Dharma.
I expound the Dharma without hindrance.
l appeared in this world
In order to give peace to all living beings.

Śāriputra!
I expound this seal of the Dharma
In order to benefit
[All living beings] of the world.
Do not propagate it carelessly
At the place where you are!

Anyone who rejoices at hearing this sūtra,
And who receives it respectfully,
Know this, has already reached
The stage of avaivartika.

Anyone who believes and receives this sūtra
Should be considered
To have already seen the past Buddhas,
Respected them, made offerings to them,
And heard the Dharma from them
In his previous existence.

Anyone who believes what you expound
Should be considered
To have already seen all of us,
That is, you and me,
And the Saṃgha of bhikṣus,
And the Bodhisattvas.

I expound only to people of profound wisdom
This Sūtra of the Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Dharma
Because men of little wisdom would doubt this sūtra,
And not understand it even if they heard it.
No Śrāvaka
Or Pratyekabuddha
Can understand
This sūtra.

Even you, Śāriputra,
Have understood this sūtra
Only by faith.
Needless to say,
The other Śrāvakas cannot do otherwise.
They will be able to follow this sūtra
Only because they believe my words,
Not because they have wisdom.

See The Fourteen Sins of Slandering the Law

LS32, d7b, b4today

The Fourteen Sins of Slandering the Law

The fourteen sins of slandering the Law are the following:

  1. haughtiness, or kyōman (to be conceited and to think one has understood what one has not understood);
  2. neglect, or kedai (to be lazy and to be absorbed in trivial things);
  3. self-centeredness, or kriga (to act only for selfish ends);
  4. shallowness, or senshiki (to look only at the surface of things, not trying to grasp their essence);
  5. sensuality, or jakuyoku (to be deeply attached to the desires of the senses and to material things);
  6. irrationality, or fuge (to interpret everything according to one’s own limited viewpoint and to not understand important points);
  7. unbelief, or fushin (not to believe in the sutra and to vilify it because of one’s shallow understanding);
  8. sullenness, or hinshuku (to frown upon the sutra and to show ill feeling toward it);
  9. doubting, or giwaku (to harbor doubts of the truth of the sutra and to hesitate to believe in it);
  10. slander, or hibō (to speak ill of the sutra) ;
  11. scorning goodness, or kyōzen (to despise those who read and recite, write and keep the sutra);
  12. hating goodness, or zōzen (to hate those who practice the above mentioned goodness);
  13. jealousy of goodness, or shitsuzen (to envy those who practice this goodness);
  14. grudging goodness, or konzen (to grudge those who practice this goodness).
Buddhism for Today, p61-62
WONS, 2buddhas

Nichiren as Interpreter

Quote

The Japanese Buddhist teacher Nichiren (1222-1282), arguably the Lotus Sūtra’s most famous interpreter, lived and taught in a historical and cultural milieu quite different from that of the sūtra’s original compilers. As Buddhism spread through the Sinitic world, the Lotus had come to be widely revered as Śākyamuni Buddha’s highest and final teaching, and Nichiren asserted that only this sūtra represented his complete message. Like his contemporaries, Nichiren believed he was living in the age of the Final Dharma (J. mappō), a degenerate era when people are burdened by heavy karmic hindrances and liberation is difficult to achieve. Now in this evil era, he claimed, only the Lotus Sūtra leads to buddhahood; other teachings had lost their efficacy and must be set aside. Nichiren taught a form of Lotus practice accessible to all, regardless of social class or education: chanting the sūtra’s daimoku, or title, in the formula Namu Myōhō-renge-kyō. By chanting the daimoku with faith in the Lotus Sūtra, he said, one could realize buddhahood in this very lifetime. And, as faith in the Lotus Sūtra spread, the ideal buddha land would be realized in the present world.

Two Buddhas, p21-22
Lecture on Lotus Sutra

Changing Theory into Tool for Daily Living

Quote

We learn in the Lotus Sutra that we each are already Buddhas; we each already possess that condition within our lives. We merely need to manifest it. We can change the theory of the Ten Worlds into a tool for us to navigate our way from suffering to Enlightenment. The Lotus Sutra and the Odaimoku are the means by which to make it possible. If we think of the Ten Worlds as a map or even a GPS, then the Lotus Sutra and the Odaimoku are the fuel that powers our life as it travels through life guided by the map of the Ten Worlds.

Lecture on the Lotus Sutra