Monthly Archives: February 2021

Daily Dharma

Daily Dharma – Feb. 22, 2021

I am saving all living beings from suffering.
Because they are perverted,
I say that I pass away even though I shall not.
If they always see me,
They will become arrogant and licentious,
And cling to the five desires
So much that they will fall into the evil regions.

The Buddha sings these verses in Chapter Sixteen of the Lotus Sūtra. Sometimes we wonder why the Buddha’s presence in this world is not more obvious. We think if only we could find a living example of an enlightened being living among us then we would be happy and the world would be a better place to live. We forget that even during the Buddha’s lifetime, not everyone sought him out for his teaching, and some actively opposed him. In this explanation, the Buddha points out that our not seeing him is due to our limitations rather than his, and by not taking our lives and this world for granted, we open ourselves to his presence.

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

LS32, Innumerable

Another Innumerable Day Before Day 1

Having last month considered the fourth of the 10 Beneficial Effects of the Sutra of Innumerable Meaning, we consider the fifth beneficial effect:

“O you of good intent! Fifth, this sutra’s unimaginable power for beneficial effect is this: Whether during or after the lifetime of a buddha, if there are men and women of good intent who accept, keep faith with, internalize, recite, and make records of this profound, peerless, all-ferrying Infinite Meanings Sutra, even though such people may be caught up in delusive worldly passions and are not yet able to rise above common daily affairs, they will nevertheless be able to manifest a great dynamic of enlightenment – lengthening one day into one hundred kalpas, and abbreviating one hundred kalpas into one day – thereby inspiring other living beings to become joyful and trusting. O you of good intent! These men and women of good intent will be just like a nāga’s child that, at the age of only seven days, is able to gather up the clouds and produce rain. O you of good intent! This is known as the inconceivable power of the fifth beneficial effect of this sutra. O you of good intent!

d7b, d8b, Blog

Our Unconditional Inheritance

This was written in advance of the Feb. 21, 2021, meeting of the Nichiren Buddhist Sangha of the San Francisco Bay Area, which is discussing Chapter 4 of the Lotus Sutra this month.

During the Feb. 7 presentation on Chapter 4, Understanding by Faith, it was suggested that the rich man’s initial failure to bring his son to him was in some way an illustration that the Buddha is fallible. That suggestion is as wrong as it would be to say that the rich man in Chapter 3 reveals the Buddha is neglectful since he fails to maintain his property and allows his small children to play unsupervised in knowingly dangerous surroundings.

The point in Chapter 4 of the rich man dispatching a messenger to bring his son to him is to illustrate that our inheritance is unconditioned. We are the Buddha’s children. Nothing is required of us to inherit. It is only because we can’t believe we could have such great fortune that the Buddha must bring us along in steps, helping us to gain confidence.

The dire condition of the Triple World (the rich man’s manor house) is the manifestation of our delusions, our misperception. As we will learn in Chapter 16, “I do not see the triple world in the same way as [the living beings of] the triple world do. I see all this clearly and infallibly.” And in gāthās: “[This] pure world of mine is indestructible. / But the [perverted] people think: / “It is full of sorrow, fear, and other sufferings. / It will soon burn away.”

The father pines for his missing son and wishes to welcome him home, but the poor son faints in fright

The poor son is incapable of believing he could be wealthy beyond measure. Instead, when he is released and told he is free to go, “The poor son had the greatest joy that he had ever had.”

The poor son, too base and mean, chooses to live in poverty and deprivation.

Foundations

The Ultimate Expression of the Subtlety of Reality

The final, ultimate level is that of the “Perfect threefold truth”, or the understanding of the threefold truth by those of the Perfect Teaching. At this level one realizes that “it is not only the Middle Path which completely includes the Buddha-Dharma, but also the real and the mundane [truths]. This threefold truth is perfectly integrated; one in three and three in one” (705a5-7). The mundane truth contains all of reality, is all of reality, and all of reality contains the mundane truth. The same is true for the real truth and the Middle, for emptiness and conventional existence. These are all synonymous, integrated; one yet three and three yet one. All of reality is empty, is conventionally existent, is the Middle. All of reality is simultaneously empty of substantial Being yet conventionally existent. The one subtle threefold truth is “incomparable” and “absolute subtlety.” This is the ultimate expression of the subtlety of reality.

Foundations of T'ien T'ai Philosophy, p 152
WONS

Sure to Become Buddhas in the Next Life

We, ordinary people, are ignorant because we do not fear or take heed to what is written in the sūtras and commentaries. Nor do we concern ourselves about events likely to occur in the future. I am sure that Hei no Saemonnojō Yoritsuna, Akita Jōnosuke, and others will be enraged with us, Nichiren Buddhists, and persecute us with great intensity. You should summon your resolve and be prepared for it. Please consider things from the position of those who would be deployed in Kyushu to fight against the Mongols, those who are on the way to Kyushu as well as those who have already been fighting. Thus far our fellow Nichiren Buddhists have not experienced such suffering. The warriors in Kyushu, however, are encountering the horrible agony of death and will fall into the realm of hell if they are killed in battle. On the other hand, though we encounter great perils now, we are sure to become Buddhas in the next life. This is like moxa treatment, painful but bearable if we keep in mind the beneficial aftereffects.

Shōnin Gonan Ji, Persecution Befalling Nichiren Shōnin, Writings of Nichiren Shōnin, Volume 5, Page 119-120

Daily Dharma

Daily Dharma – Feb. 21, 2021

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 or seen that winter returns to fall. We have never heard that the believers in the Lotus Sutra go back to become ordinary men. The Lotus Sutra says, “All people who listen to this Sutra will attain Buddhahood.”

Nichiren wrote this in his Letter to the Nun Myoichi (Myoichi Ama Gozen Gohenji). Nichiren suffered through many hardships in his life, including exile, banishment from his family and home province, being placed on the execution mat, and having his home at Matsubagayatsu burned by members of the Pure Land sect. Through all these difficulties, Nichiren kept his faith in the Buddha’s wisdom and fulfilled his mission to benefit all beings in this world of conflict by leading them with the Wonderful Dharma of the Lotus Sūtra. Nichiren’s faith and practice inspire our faith and practice. Whatever obstacles we may face, we progress towards enlightenment under the guidance of the Ever-Present Buddha.

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

LS32, Universal Sage

Between Day 32 and Day 1: The Scent of Attachment

Going through each of the senses and their karmic consequences – the sense faculty of sight, the sense faculty of hearing, the sense faculty of smell, the sense faculty of speech and the sense faculty of the body and mind – we continue with sense faculty of smell.

After these words are spoken, Universal Sage Bodhisattva will once again expound a method of self-amendment for the practitioner’s sake:

“In your previous existences – throughout innumerable kalpas – because you so yearned for sweet scents, in every situation your evaluations of what you discerned were based upon attachment and you fell into the cycle of births and deaths (samsara). Accordingly, you must now contemplate the foundation of the Great Vehicle! The foundation of the Great Vehicle is the true reality of all things!”

After hearing these words, the practitioner must cast his or her body to the ground and undertake further self-amendment. Having done so, the practitioner must then speak thus:

“Namaḥ Śākyamuni Buddha! Namaḥ stupa of Many-Treasures Buddha! Namaḥ all buddhas emanated from Śākyamuni Buddha in all of the ten directions!”

Having said this, he or she must universally pay homage thusly to the buddhas in the ten directions:

“Namaḥ Splendid Virtue Buddha of the East and all buddhas emanated from him!”

As if seeing each one of them with his or her own eyes, the practitioner should, with reverent thoughts, make offerings of incense and flowers. When finished paying homage, the practitioner must then formally kneel, place his or her palms together, and give praise to the buddhas with a variety of verses. After praising them, the practitioner must speak to matters of the ten harmful karmic actions and do self-amendment for his or her impurities. Having completed self-amendment, the practitioner should speak these words:

“In previous existences, throughout innumerable kalpas, I longed for scents, flavors, and contacts, and I produced many impurities. Throughout uncountable existences ever since, having such causes has resulted in my taking on various unsavory forms, being in hells and among hungry spirits and beasts, and being in faraway realms where there are wrong views. Today I avow harmful karmic acts like these! Taking refuge in the buddhas, masters of the correct Dharma, I acknowledge my impurities and I amend myself of them!”

As a sort of follow-on for this peril of infatuation with scents, consider the Daily Dharma from Jan. 20, 2021, and its discussion of the Lotus Sutra’s attitude toward the sense of smell:

They also will be able to locate the Śrāvakas, Pratyekabuddhas, Bodhisattvas, and Buddhas by smelling their bodies from afar. Even when they recognize all this by smell, their organ of smell will not be destroyed or put out of order. If they wish, they will be able to tell others of the differences [of those scents] because they remember them without fallacy.

The Buddha gives this explanation to Constant-Endeavor Bodhisattva in Chapter Nineteen of the Lotus Sūtra, describing those who keep the Lotus Sūtra. Our sense of smell is often unconscious. We associate smells with places, experiences or even people that we like or dislike. These smells can even cause an emotional reaction by causing us to relive a situation associated with that smell. In the Lotus Sūtra, the Buddha teaches that our everyday experiences are no different from enlightenment, that his great wisdom is not about how to escape from this world. It is about how to use the senses and abilities with which we are blessed in ways we cannot imagine.

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

Foundations

Relative Subtlety and Absolute Subtlety

Chih-i’s interpretation of “Subtle” … discusses in detail the meaning and implications of the term “subtle” in thirty categories, but first he makes a distinction between relative subtlety and absolute subtlety. Relative subtlety refers to that which is subtle only in contrast to that which is crude. For example, the teachings of Mahāyāna in general are complete, great, and subtle in relative contrast to the incomplete, small, and crude Hinayāna teachings. Chih-i criticizes Fa-yün for using the term subtle only in the sense of a relative subtlety. Absolute subtlety, on the other hand, refers to that which is subtle in itself, and not merely in contrast to that which is crude. This is explained with reference to the Fourfold Teachings. In the Tripiṭaka Teaching, the Dharma is taught expediently in accordance with the capacity of the listener, and opposites (such as crude and subtle) are integrated by denying the worldly truth and comprehending the real truth. In the Shared Teaching, the emptiness doctrine is utilized to illuminate the fundamental identity of phenomena and reality. In the Distinct Teaching one “returns” to the conventional world, seeks the absolute as conventional reality which is identical with the real, and realizes that nirvāṇa is this world of saṃsāra. In the Perfect Teaching all of the extremes are integrated, and one realizes that there is nothing which is not the Buddha-dharma. As Chih-i says, “There is nothing which is relative, and nothing which is absolute” (T. 33, 697a7).

Once again we are dealing with something which cannot be adequately verbalized. Nevertheless, as Chih-i points out, since we must use words to describe it, the term “absolute” is the best we can do. The person who can attain insight into this “absoluteness” without recourse to words is like a horse which enters the stable just by catching a glimpse of a whip and does not need to be actually whipped to know where to go. Those of us who must have recourse to words are left with the task of dealing with Chih-i’s detailed verbal explanations and his discussion of the implications of “subtlety.”

Foundations of T'ien T'ai Philosophy, p 135-136
Lecture on Lotus Sutra

Side By Side With Many Treasures

Quote

Consider your life. You may be speaking the words correctly but if your life actions do not also manifest Many Treasures Buddha’s affirmation of “so it is, so it is” then you are in fact out of harmony in your life. The two Buddhas are not in fact sitting side-by-side in your life. Many Treasures Buddha appears nowhere else until the Buddha preaches the Lotus Sutra. It is wise to reflect on what teachings our actions are revealing.

Lecture on the Lotus Sutra

WONS

Śākyamuni Buddha’s Three Virtues

The Buddha is the master of the human and heavenly realms, the parents of all living beings, and the teacher who opens the way and leads us all to enlightenment. Lowly parents lack the virtue of a master, and the master without the virtue of parents is frightening. People with the virtue of parents or master do not necessarily possess the virtue of the teacher. Various Buddhas are also World Honored Ones with the virtue of a master, but they are not our teachers because they do not appear in this Sahā World to guide us. As they do not declare, “All living beings in it are my children,” they also lack the parental virtue. Śākyamuni Buddha alone is equipped with all three virtues of the master, teacher, and parent.

Kitō Shō, Treatise on Prayers, Writings of Nichiren Shōnin, Faith and Practice, Volume 4, Page 66