Monthly Archives: August 2020

WONS

When a Wise Man Appears in the World

The Lotus Sūtra, fascicle 7, the 21st chapter on “The Divine Powers of the Buddha,” preaches: “Suppose that after the Buddha passed away, someone who knows the causes and conditions and proper sequence of the sūtras expounded by the Buddha will preach them truthfully according to the true meaning. As the light of the sun and moon can eliminate all darkness, so this person will wipe out the darkness of living beings as he walks about in the world.”

This scriptural passage means that he who expounds even a word or a phrase of the Lotus Sūtra should know well the comparative profundity of the holy teachings preached during His lifetime and the sequence of preaching them. For instance, speaking of the calendar consisting of more than 360 days a year, a mistake by one day will cause mistakes for 10,000 days. In a 31-syllable Japanese poem, a mistake in a syllable or a phrase makes the whole 31 syllables unpoetic. Likewise, in reading or reciting a sūtra, if one is confused about the sequence and comparative profundity of the holy teachings of the Buddha beginning with the Flower Garland Sūtra preached first at the Hall of Enlightenment to the Nirvana Sūtra expounded last in the śāla forest, one will inevitably fall into the Hell of Incessant Suffering without committing the five rebellious sins. Those who believe in him will also fall into the Hell of Incessant Suffering.

Therefore, when a wise man appears in the world to correctly declare the comparative profundity of the holy teachings preached during His lifetime, those priests who have transmitted false doctrines from the founders of their respective sects and are revered as the teachers of the state or aristocratic families will make a false charge against the wise man to the rulers of the country or incite a popular protest against him. Otherwise, the weakness of their sects would be revealed, causing them to be despised by the people. Then, it is preached, the protective deities of Buddhism will be so enraged that they will destroy this country just as gale winds tear up the leaves of banana plants or high waves overturn small boats.

Shinkoku-ō Gosho, Sovereigns of Our Divine Land, Writings of Nichiren Shōnin, Doctrine 1, Page 177-178

Daily Dharma

Daily Dharma – Aug. 11, 2020

Know this, Śāriputra!
I once vowed that I would cause
All living beings to become
Exactly as I am.

That old vow of mine
Has now been fulfilled.
I lead all living beings
Into the Way to Buddhahood.

The Buddha sings these verses in Chapter Two of the Lotus Sūtra. Earlier in the chapter he explained that all the teachings he used before the Lotus Sūtra were mere expedients, intended to use our desire for happiness to bring us out of our suffering and onto the path of enlightenment. The expedient teachings were tailored to the ignorant and deluded minds of those who heard them, but had not yet revealed the true wisdom and compassion of the Buddha. Now that we have met this Wonderful Dharma, we are assured of our enlightenment and that of all beings. We learn to see innumerable Buddhas in limitless worlds through unimaginable time, and our own true selves at the heart of reality.

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

LS32

Day 9

Day 9 covers Chapter 5, The Simile of Herbs, and introduces Chapter 6, Assurance of Future Buddhahood.

Day 9 Text with annotationsPlay MP3
Having last month considered the Simile of the Herbs in gāthās, we consider how the Buddha is like the cloud.

I am like the cloud.
I appeared in this world
Just as the large cloud covered
Everything on the earth.

Since I appeared in this world,
I have been expounding
The reality of all things
To all living beings.

(The Great Saint,
The World-Honored One,
Said to the multitude
Of gods and men:)

I am the Tathāgata,
The Most Honorable Biped.
I have appeared in this world
Just as the large cloud rose.

All living beings are dying of thirst.
I will water them.
I will save them from suffering.
I will give them the pleasure of peace,
The pleasure of the world,
And the pleasure of Nirvana.

See Nourished by the Same Living Energy

stories, LS32, d9b

Nourished by the Same Living Energy

The central message of the simile of the cloud and rain is that the Buddha’s teachings, the Dharma, is equally available to everyone. The Dharma can be found anywhere, ready to nourish each and every one of us. All living beings participate in a process in which they are nourished by the same living energy as everyone else, a living energy that Buddhists call “Buddha Dharma.” But we are not all alike. We live in different cultures, have different histories, use different languages, are born in different generations, have different abilities to hear and understand, and so on. This why the one Dharma has to be embodied in many different teachings and practices.

The Stories of the Lotus Sutra, p80
Blog

Why I Chant

Yesterday, I summarized Rev. Kenjo Igarashi’s sermon in which he told the tale of an SGI member who sought to switch to Nichiren Shu in the hope of having better success chanting for a new girlfriend.

I could relate to the guy. I spent roughly 26 years believing that the purpose of chanting daimoku was to get stuff – a new job, a raise, even a child. But that all started to fall apart in the summer of 2008 when I was laid off the day after I learned my wife had breast cancer. I didn’t abandon my faith. Instead, I chanted more. I did more SGI activities. I attended more meetings. But, as I’ve explained before, the more I dug looking for water to slake my thirst, the more I realized I wasn’t digging in the right place. It did not take long after I began attending services at the Sacramento Nichiren Buddhist Church in January 2015 that I discovered the wellspring of Buddhism.

So, why bring this up now?

In writing yesterday’s post I was unable to quickly produce a reasoned explanation of why I chant.  Instead I offered this milquetoast explanation:

The purpose of the Lotus Sutra is to save all livings beings. Chanting the Odaimoku puts oneself in alignment with the sutra. We practice for ourselves but we also practice for others. We don’t practice to get stuff.

My failure was underscored for me when I read the Day 10 quote from Nichiren found in the Raihai Seiten, which I use in my daily practice:

All the good deeds and virtues of the Buddha Sakyamuni are manifested in the title of the Lotus Sutra, that is, in the five characters: Myō Hō Ren Ge Kyō. However sinful we may be, we shall be naturally endowed with all the deeds and virtues of the Buddha if we adhere to these five characters.

Kanjin Honzon Sho

I really felt that I should have done better in describing why I chant. The purpose of this website is to make quotes I’ve read available to me in just such a situation, but I couldn’t be bothered to search this site.

Sheepishly, I now belatedly offer quotes from a post I wrote on Nov. 1, 2015:

Rev. Shoryo Tarabini in his book, Odaimoku: The Significance of Chanting Namu Myoho Renge Kyo, writes:

I am often confronted with the question, “if I chant Namu Myoho Renge Kyo will I receive benefits?” There are some people who chant the Odaimoku solely for material benefit and personal gain. The protective and beneficial powers of Namu Myoho Renge Kyo are not only vast and profound, they are limitless. One can chant, when in need for material or even financial benefit and those prayers will be indeed answered.

However, to practice the chanting of the Buddha’s eternal enlightenment for mere material or economic gain is, to say the least, the smallest of the merit and the most insignificant benefit one will receive. And while not negating the necessity at times to chant and pray for certain things when confronted with problems in life, people who – only – chant for everyday material gain, are still at an infant level of their understanding of Buddhism and development. One who instead strives to practice and live in accordance with the teachings of the Buddha, will certainly obtain tranquility and immense satisfaction in all facets of life over time.

Rev. Ryusho Jeffus, in his book, Lecture on the Lotus Sutra, writes:

Buddhism … is not about prosperity practice. Our goal should be to eliminate suffering, and attachment to material gain is an attachment, and bound to eventually lead to more suffering. No thing is immune to decay, even wealth and if not the wealth then certainly the body. The goal of our practice is to become enlightened, to manifest our inherent Buddha potential, and thereby convert our lands into the Buddha’s pure land.

Rev. Ryuei Michael McCormick, in “Lotus World: An Illustrated Guide to the Gohonzon,” writes:

It should be clear that the Odaimoku is more than simply the title of the Lotus Sutra. Neither is chanting the Odaimoku viewed by Nichiren Buddhism as merely a concentration device or a mantra practiced for accruing benefits. It is an expression of the practitioner’s faith and joy in the Buddha’s teaching contained in the Lotus Sutra, the teaching that buddhahood is not only a potential within all our lives but an active presence leading us to awakening in this very moment. The Odaimoku is like a seed that we plant within our lives. Continuing to chant Namu Myoho Renge Kyo as our essential daily practice, we nurture that seed so that ultimately the wisdom and compassion of buddhahood can bloom within us and within all beings.

dhammapada

The Dharma Moment

Quote

In physics, the realization that light is not continuous led to a new view of the world. Much in the Buddha’s worldview stems from a similar discovery about thought. Like light, we can say, thought consists of quanta, discrete bursts of energy.

The Buddha referred to these thought-quanta as dharmas – not dharma in the sense of the underlying law of life, but in another sense meaning something like “a state of being.” When the thinking process slows considerably, it is seen to be a series of such dharmas, each unconnected with those before or after. One dharma arises and subsides in a moment; then another arises to replace it, and it too dies away. Each moment is now, and it is the succession of such moments that creates the sense of time.

The Buddha would say these dharmas come from nowhere and they return to nowhere. Mind is a series of thought-moments as unconnected as the successive images of a movie. A movie screen does not really connect one moment’s image to the next, and similarly there is no substrate beneath the mind to connect thoughts. The mind is the thoughts, and only the speed of thinking creates the illusion that there is something continuous and substantial.

Dhammapada, p81-82
d19b, d20b, WONS

The Joy of the World for a Child to Propagate His Father’s Dharma

In lands at the beginning of the Latter Age, the True Dharma is slandered and those who live there have poor capacity for comprehension and faith in Buddhism. Therefore, instead of relying on bodhisattvas from other worlds, the Buddha called out great bodhisattvas from underground to entrust them with the task of transmitting the five characters of myō, hō, ren, ge, and kyō, the essence of the “The Life Span of the Buddha” chapter, to the people in this world. It was also because those guided by the teaching of the theoretical section were not the original disciples of Śākyamuni Buddha.

As for entrusting the task to bodhisattvas from underground, Grand Master T’ien-t’ai states in his Words and Phrases of the Lotus Sūtra: “These have been My (Śākyamuni’s) disciples since time in the eternal past who should propagate My dharma.” Grand Master Miao-lê says of this in his Annotations on the Words and Phrases of the Lotus Sūtra (Wén-chü-chi): “It will be the joy of the world for a child to propagate his father’s dharma.” And Tao-hsien’s Supplement to the Annotations on the Words and Phrases of the Lotus Sūtra (Fu-chêngchi) says: “Because it was the dharma preached by the Eternal Buddha in the infinite past, the task of spreading it was entrusted to those who received His guidance in the eternal past.”

Kanjin Honzon-shō, A Treatise Revealing the Spiritual Contemplation and the Most Verable One, Writings of Nichiren Shōnin, Doctrine 2, Page 155

Daily Dharma

Daily Dharma – Aug. 10, 2020

The good men or women who expound even a phrase of the Sūtra of the Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Dharma even to one person even in secret after my extinction, know this, are my messengers. They are dispatched by me.

The Buddha declares these lines to Medicine-King Bodhisattva at the beginning of Chapter Ten of the Lotus Sūtra. When we are caught up in the suffering and unhappiness of this world of conflict, we can yearn for an escape from its troubles. We can believe that living in this world was not our choice, that we are here by chance or due to an obligation we no longer want to meet. When the Buddha reminds us that we are Bodhisattvas, beings whose existence is for the benefit of all beings, we realize that both the joys and the suffering we experience are for the benefit of others.

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 the rich man used to entice his son to work for him, we consider the son taking control of the storehouses but still living in a hovel.

“The rich man gave him a name and called him son. The poor son was glad to be treated kindly, but still thought that he was a humble employee. Therefore, the rich man had him clear dirt for twenty years. After that the father and son trusted each other. Now the son felt no hesitation in entering the house of his father, but still lodged in his old place.

“World-Honored One! Now the rich man became ill. He knew that he would die soon. He said to the poor son, ‘I have a great deal of gold, silver, and other treasures. My storehouses are filled with them. You know the amounts of them. You know what to take, and what to give. This is what I have in mind. Know this! You are not different from me in all this. Be careful lest the treasures be lost!’

“Thereupon the poor son obeyed his order. He took custody of the storehouses of gold, silver, and other treasures, but did not wish to take anything worth even a meal from them. He still stayed in his old lodging. He could not yet give up the thought that he was base and mean.

See Being Led to the Buddha

stories, LS32, d7b, d8b

Being Led to the Buddha

[S]ometimes we are being led to the Buddha even when we do not know it. Even when we are not looking for the Buddha Way, probably we are being led to it. At the beginning of this story, the son is not looking for his father, at least not consciously. He is satisfied with a very low level of existence, almost bare subsistence. He has no ambition and feels no need to improve himself. It is the father who seeks him out and guides him. But what he guides him to is a gradual recovery of his self-confidence, and hence of his strength and his ability to contribute. The son is given guidance by the father not only because he is weak, but also because he is strong, at least potentially. We can be led by the Buddha precisely because the potential to become awakened, to enter the Way, is already in us.

The Stories of the Lotus Sutra, p71-72