Monthly Archives: December 2020

LS32

Day 3

Day 3 covers the first half of Chapter 2, Expedients.

Day 3 Text with annotationsPlay MP3
Having last month considered Śāriputra’s request and the Buddha’s response, we consider what happened when Śākyamuni finally agrees to teach the dharma.

Thereupon the World-Honored One said to him:

“You asked me three times with enthusiasm. How can I leave the Dharma unexpounded? Listen to me attentively, and think over my words! Now I will expound [the Dharma] to you.”

When he had said this, five thousand people among the bhikṣus, bhikṣunīs, upāsakās, and upāsikās of this congregation rose from their seats, bowed to the Buddha, and retired because they were so sinful and arrogant that they thought that they had already obtained what they had not yet, and that they had already understood what they had not yet. Because of these faults, they did not stay. The World-Honored One kept silence and did not check them.

Thereupon the World-Honored One said to Śāriputra:

“Now this congregation has been cleared of twigs and leaves, only sincere people being left. Śāriputra! Those arrogant people may go. Now listen to me attentively! I will expound [the Dharma] to you.”

Śāriputra said, “Certainly, World-Honored One! I wish to hear you.”

The Buddha said to him:

“The Buddhas, the Tathāgatas, expound this Wonderful Dharma as rarely as the udumbara-flower blooms. Śāriputra! Believe what I am going to say! My words are not false.

See At Root, All People Are The Same

Peaceful Action, d23b, d24b

The Merit of This Teaching

“Merit” here also has the meaning of “realization.” The merit of this teaching effects a great change in the field of our six sense organs (sadayatana) our eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body, and mind. When we are able to receive the truth of the Lotus Sutra our sense perceptions undergo a profound transformation. Automatically our eyes are able to see things that before we were not able to see. We attain the eyes of the Dharma that are able to look deeply and see the true nature and suchness of all dharmas, all phenomena in the world of our perceptions. With Dharma eyes we can look into a wilted and yellow autumn leaf and see its wonderful, fresh green nature. We can see that one leaf, whether old and yellow or green and fresh, contains all the merits, all the wonderful suchness of the universe. The eyes of someone who has received and who maintains the teaching of this Sutra, the truth of the ultimate, are able to see the limitless life span, the unborn and undying nature of everything. This is the first merit, the transformation of our sight perception into the eyes of the Dharma.

With the ears of the Dharma, we are now able to hear very deeply. We hear the music of the birds singing, the sound of the wind in the pine trees, and even the very subtle sound of a flower opening. And while we are listening to these sounds, we experience their wondrous ultimate nature. Bird song expresses the truth of the ultimate dimension of all phenomena. Listening deeply to the sound of the wind in the pine trees, we hear the teachings of the Lotus Sutra. In the same way, all of our senses are transformed. When each of our sense organs comes into contact with an object, we receive the truth of the Lotus Sutra, culminating in the transformation of the mind faculty (manaindrya), our mental perception.

When our mind faculty and our other sense faculties have been transformed and purified as a result of the merit we have received from hearing, understanding, and practicing this wonderful Dharma, then we need hear only one gatha or one line of the Sutra to understand all sutras and teachings. We do not need to study the entire Tripitaka in order to understand the Buddhadharma. One gatha contains all other gathas, one teaching reveals the deep meaning of all other teachings, just as the truth of impermanence contains the truth of no-self and the truth of interbeing.

Peaceful Action, Open Heart, p125-126
LS32, d2b, Blog

Mistaken Facts

Yesterday I brazenly said Gene Reeves had misstated the facts when he said the Buddha Sun and Moon Light was a prince before he became a buddha. I said, no, he was a king before he became that buddha. My “facts” were taken from the Murano translation of the Lotus Sutra.

I confess that I don’t put a lot of time into my daily 32 Days of the Lotus Sutra posts. Just coming up with something appropriate to say each day, month after month, year after year, is success enough.

So today while doing morning Gonyo it occurred to be that it really – really – was unlikely that Reeves had made such a mistake. So I checked all of my English translations of Kumārajīva’s Chinese translation of the Lotus Sutra.

The BDK translation has “The Last Buddha fathered eight princes before he renounced household life.”

The SGI translation by Burton Watson has “The last Buddha, when he had not yet left family life, had eight princely sons.”

Leon Hurvitz’s Scripture of the Lotus Blossom of the Fine Dharma has “Before that last buddha left his household, he had eight princely sons.”

The 1975 Risshō Kōsei Kai translation has “Before the last of these Buddhas left home, he had eight royal sons: …”

The 2019 Risshō Kōsei Kai translation has “At the time that the last of these buddhas renounced home life, he had eight royal sons: …”

So unlike Murano – “The last Sun-Moon-Light Buddha was once a king. He had eight sons born to him before he renounced the world” – none of the translations specify that the last buddha was a king before leaving household life.

On the other hand, Reeves’ translation – “Before the last of these buddhas had left his home, he had eight royal sons – doesn’t specify that the last buddha was a prince before leaving household life.

I suppose it gets down to the question of whether the father of princes is always a king or whether Śākyamuni’s son, Rāhula, was a prince. Murano says kings father princes; Reeves calls Rāhula a prince.

Whatever answer wins out, my initial suggestion that Reeves had his facts wrong was clearly in error.

See Matters of Interpretation

WONS

Evidence of Meritorious Acts in Past Lives

QUESTION: Is there evidence of meritorious acts in past lives?

ANSWER: The Lotus Sūtra, fascicle 2, chapter 3 on “A Parable” states, “He who believes in this sūtra in this life must have seen the Buddha, shown respect to Him, given offerings and listened to Him preach this sutra.” The sūtra also suggests in the tenth chapter on “The Teacher of the Dharma,” “Suppose there are those who, upon listening to even a verse or a phrase of the Lotus Sūtra, will rejoice even for a moment of thought after the extinction of the Buddha. (…) You should know that such persons made offerings to ten trillion Buddhas in previous lives.”

Shugo Kokka-ron, Treatise on Protecting the Nation, Writings of Nichiren Shōnin, Doctrine 1, Page 65

Daily Dharma

Daily Dharma – Dec. 18, 2020

Anyone who respects the stūpa-mausoleum,
Who is modest before bhikṣus,
Who gives up self-conceit,
Who always thinks of wisdom,
Who does not get angry when asked questions,
And who expounds the Dharma
According to the capacities of the questioners,
Will be able to obtain innumerable merits.

The Buddha sings these verses to Maitreya Bodhisattva in Chapter Seventeen of the Lotus Sūtra. The merits of which he speaks are not an indication that we are better than other beings, that we deserve more respect than others, or that we are closer to enlightenment. Merits are a measure of clarity. When we lose attachment and delusion, we gain merit. When we see things for what they are, we gain the wisdom to truly benefit others.

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

LS32

Day 2

Chapter 1, Introductory (Conclusion).

Day 2 Text with annotationsPlay MP3
Having last month learned from Mañjuśrī of a long-ago Buddha called Sun-Moon-Light, we meet the eight sons of the last Sun-Moon-Light Buddha.

“Maitreya, know this! All those Buddhas were called Sun-Moon­-light with the ten epithets. Their expounding of the Dharma was good at the beginning, good in the middle, and good at the end. The last Sun-Moon-Light Buddha was once a king. He had eight sons born to him before he renounced the world. The first son was called Having-Intention; the second, Good-Intention; the third, Infinite-­Intention; the fourth, Treasure-Intention; the fifth, Increasing-­Intention; the sixth, Doubts-Removing-Intention; the seventh, Resounding-Intention; and the eighth, Dharma-Intention. These eight princes had unhindered powers and virtues. Each of them was the ruler of the four continents [of a Sumeru-world]. Having heard that their father had renounced the world and attained Anuttara-samyak-saṃbodhi, they abdicated from their thrones, and followed their father. They renounced the world, aspired for the Great Vehicle, performed brahma practices, and became teachers of the Dharma. They had already planted the roots of good under ten million Buddhas in their previous existence.

See Prince Sun and Moon Light

stories, LS32, d2b

Prince Sun and Moon Light

The fact that before becoming a fully awakened buddha Sun and Moon Light was a prince1 living in a palace with eight sons reveals a recurrent theme of the Sutra: the idea that what is happening now is both new and unprecedented, and has happened many times before. Here, that Sun and Moon Light Buddha was a prince living in a palace shows a biographical connection to Shakyamuni Buddha. Most buddhas, perhaps all buddhas in the Dharma Flower Sutra, anticipate or replicate the life of Shakyamuni at least to a large extent. Their life stories are similar. That Sun and Moon Light had eight sons while Shakyamuni had only one indicates, however, that their lives were not the same in all respects.

So when Manjushri, talking about the light with which the Buddha has illuminated other worlds, indicates that he has seen many buddhas in the past do the same thing as Shakyamuni, he does not indicate that what they do is exactly the same. In the Dharma Flower Sutra, the present is always emerging from the past, never completely discontinuous from it. Patterns are repeated, sometimes over and over. The first of the buddhas named Sun and Moon Light taught the four truths and nirvana for those who wanted to be shravakas, the teaching of twelve causes and conditions for those who wanted to become pratyekabuddhas, and to lead them to supreme awakening and all-inclusive wisdom he taught the six transcendental practices to bodhisattvas. This threefold structure and division of three teachings is precisely what will be ascribed to Shakyamuni Buddha in the Sutra. Yet in this story there are twenty thousand buddhas, one after the other, all with the name Sun and Moon Light. That is very different from Shakyamuni. In this sutra we are not given the name of his predecessor, but we are told that his successor is to be Maitreya. There is only one Shakyamuni Buddha.

Perhaps the most important point here is that in this, as in many other things, the Dharma Flower Sutra does not subscribe to a rigid structure. As in our own experience, here the present both repeats the past and is different from it. History is always bound to the past, enormously influenced by it, but never completely so.

The Stories of the Lotus Sutra, p42-43
1
This is one of the rare places where Gene Reeves misstates the facts. As the Murano translation clearly states: The last Sun-Moon-Light Buddha was once a king, not a prince. While Reeves stretches the truth in an attempt to link this to Shakyamuni, it better matches the tale in Chapter 7, where we learn about Great-Universal-Wisdom-Excellence Buddha, a former king who had sixteen sons, one of whom becomes Shakyamuni Buddha. return

See Mistaken Facts

Peaceful Action, d22b

Sitting alongside the Buddha

Then the Buddha says to Bodhisattva Maitreya, “If a good man or woman should hear me teach about the infinite life span of the Tathagata and give rise to a feeling of faith and understanding, that person is already sitting in the great assembly on Mount The Gṛdhrakūṭa Mountain at this very moment.” This is the merit of receiving and practicing the Lotus Sutra. If you are able to hear this wonderful Dharma from a friend or teacher, from a bird singing or the sound of a flowing stream, if you read or hear the Sutra, understand and have faith in it, get in touch with the ultimate dimension of the Tathagata and of everything in the universe, then right in that moment you are sitting alongside the Buddha. You do not have to go back 2,600 years to be able to see and touch the Buddha. You are able to realize that profound happiness right away, in this very moment.

Peaceful Action, Open Heart, p123-124
WONS

The Essence of Buddhism

According to this explanation by T’ien-t’ai, since the essential section of the Lotus Sūtra is the essence of Buddhism, all other sūtras, be they Mahāyāna or Hinayāna, provisional or true, and exoteric and esoteric, such as the Nirvana Sūtra and Great Sun Buddha Sūtra, are Lesser Vehicle teachings. … Only the doctrines of the Tendai Sect comprise the Great Vehicle. It is because all sūtras except the Lotus Sūtra do not reveal the great dharmas of attaining enlightenment by persons of the Two Vehicles (śrāvaka and pratyekabuddha) and the concept of the Eternal Buddha.

Shōjō Daijō Fumbetsu-shō, The Differences between Hinayāna and Mahāyāna Teachings, Writings of Nichiren Shōnin, Doctrine 2, Page 192

Daily Dharma

Daily Dharma – Dec. 17, 2020

Every Buddha vows at the outset:
“I will cause all living beings
To attain the same enlightenment
That I attained.”

The Buddha sings these verses in Chapter Two of the Lotus Sūtra. The Buddha holds nothing back from us. There is nothing hidden or secret in his teachings. He is not threatened by anyone who reaches his wisdom, since he knows this is the potential we all have in us. By his example we can discern between the knowledge that separates from others, and that which unites us with our fellow beings.

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