Monthly Archives: September 2021

LS32

Day 5

Day 5 begins Chapter 3, A Parable

Day 5 Text with annotationsPlay MP3
Having last month concluded today’s portion of Chapter 3, A Parable, we consider Śāriputra’s joy.

Thereupon Śāriputra, who felt like dancing with joy, stood up, joined his hands together, looked up at the honorable face, and said to the Buddha:
“Hearing this truthful voice of yours, I feel like dancing [with joy]. I have never felt like this before. Why is that? We [Śrāvakas and the Bodhisattvas] heard this Dharma before. [At that time] we saw that the Bodhisattvas were assured of their future Buddhahood, but not that we were. We deeply regretted that we were not given the immeasurable insight of the Tathāgata.

“World-Honored One! I sat alone under a tree or walked about mountains and forests, thinking, ‘We [and the Bodhisattvas] entered the same world of the Dharma. Why does the Tathāgata save us only by the teachings of the Lesser Vehicle?’

“Now I understand that the fault was on our side, not on yours, because if we had waited for your expounding of the Way to Anuttara-samyak-saṃbodhi, we would have been saved by the Great Vehicle. When we heard your first teaching, we did not know that that teaching was an expedient one expounded according to our capacities. Therefore, we believed and received that teaching at once, thought it over, and attained the enlightenment [to be attained by that teaching].

“World-Honored One! I reproached myself day and night [after I saw that the Bodhisattvas were assured of their future Buddhahood]. Now I have heard from you the Dharma that I had never heard before. I have removed all my doubts. I am now calm and peaceful in body and mind. Today I have realized that I am your son, that I was born from your mouth, that I was born in [the world of] the Dharma, and that I have obtained the Dharma of the Buddha.”

See Feeling Like Dancing

Lecture on Lotus Sutra

The Buddha Within

Quote

We see the actions of Bodhisattva Never Despise as being of respect for others, yet this respect is based upon the absolute conviction or faith that the other person is also a Buddha worthy of respect. The action is not based upon a theoretical doctrine, but on the realization that within self is Buddha and within the other is Buddha.

Lecture on the Lotus Sutra

Higan, perfections

Wisdom: Trusting Confidence

From points of departure in ordinary mentality where most of us reside, it was widely thought in Mahayana Buddhism that an initial faith is required to begin this practice of wisdom. As the Large Sutra on Perfect Wisdom defines it “Faith here means the believing in perfect wisdom, the trusting confidence, the resoluteness, the deliberation, the weighing up, the testing.” Without some faith that these practices are worthwhile, that exerting oneself in them would be a healthy engagement of time and effort, no one would or should take them up. But the sutras imagine, sensibly, that in the process of engaging in these practices, on the basis of that initial faith, what at first requires faith because it seems so foreign and unnatural later becomes a second nature, internalized on the basis of experience. At some point the practitioner “knows” something, feels something strongly, based on what has already taken place. The more deeply ingrained the practices of perfection become, the less discipline is required and the more one is able to perform a wise act spontaneously out of a profound sense of what is right under the circumstances.

Six Perfections: Buddhism & the Cultivation of Character, p 228-229
WONS

The Merit of Child and Parent

They say that it is the duty of retainers to widen the mind of the lord, and it is the duty of children to save the parents from suffering. Therefore, Venerable Maudgalyāyana saved his mother from torment in the realm of hungry spirits, and the two brothers of Princes Pure Store and Pure Eyes corrected the false view of their father, King Wonderful Adornment. Parents’ bodies as they stand become children’s bodies. Therefore, the merit of your upholding the Lotus Sūtra immediately becomes the merit of your father. Devadatta fell into the Avīci Hell but the Buddha granted him the certificate of future Buddhahood as Heavenly King Buddha. It was because Devadatta and the Buddha were members of the same clan. How much more so with you and your father. How can it be possible the merit of upholding the Lotus Sūtra by you not become the merit of the spirit of your late father?

Jōren-bō Gosho, A Letter to Jōren-bō, Writings of Nichiren Shōnin, Volume 5, Page 173

Daily Dharma

Daily Dharma – Sept. 18, 2021

Bhikṣus! It is a very long time since that Buddha passed away. Suppose someone smashed all the earth-particles of one thousand million Sumeru-worlds into ink-powder. Then he went to the east[, carrying the ink-powder with him]. He inked a dot as large as a particle of dust [with that ink-powder] on the world at a distance of one thousand worlds from his world. Then he went again and repeated the inking of a dot on the world at every distance of one thousand worlds until the ink-powder was exhausted. What do you think of this? Do you think that any mathematician or any disciple of a mathematician could count the number of the worlds [he went through]?

The Buddha gives this explanation in Chapter Seven of the Lotus Sūtra. Our concept of time can be limited to what happens in the brief existence we enjoy in this world. We often feel we have no time for what is necessary, much less what we enjoy. With this limited viewpoint, we can find it hard to believe that we have enough time to become enlightened. The Buddha reminds us that there is no shortage of time, and that in all of our existence, we will have opportunities to increase our capacity to benefit others.

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

LS32

Day 4

Day 4 concludes Chapter 2, Expedients, and completes the first volume of the Sūtra of the Lotus flower of the Wonderful Dharma.

Day 4 Text with annotationsPlay MP3
Having last month concluded Chapter 2, Expedients, we start again at the top and consider why the 5,000 people left the gathering.

Thereupon the World-Honored One, wishing to repeat what he had said, sang in gāthās:
Some bhikṣus and bhikṣunīs
Were arrogant.
Some upāsakās were self-conceited.
Some upāsikās were unfaithful.
Those four kinds of devotees
Were five thousand in number.

They could not see their own faults.
They could not observe all the precepts.
They were reluctant to heal their own wounds.
Those people of little wisdom are gone.
They were the dregs of this congregation.
They were driven away by my powers and virtues.

They had too few merits and virtues
To receive the Dharma.
Now there are only sincere people here.
All twigs and leaves are gone.

See At Root, All People Are The Same

Higan, perfections

Meditation: A Capacity to Imagine

Although our tendency has been to regard imaginative mental capacities as secondary or less important in the overall operation of our minds, on close examination this turns out not to be true. When we are uncertain how to understand or explain something before us, we imagine how it might be, form plausible hypotheses, and then seek to confirm or falsify them. When faced with a problem, we imagine possible solutions and test them for their potential efficacy. When we need to know what to believe, we imagine plausible accounts of the issue and what might count as evidence in their favor or against them. Imagination functions in an astonishing range of human activities, from basic problem solving through the creative acts of art, music, and literature, to our own efforts to imagine ideals that are worthy of guiding our personal lives – the “thought of enlightenment.” By cultivating this central, meditative capacity, we open up dimensions of our lives we were previously unable to access. Those who do this skillfully position themselves in a more experimental relation to life, a posture less susceptible to dogmatic closure and open to a wider set of possibilities.

Six Perfections: Buddhism & the Cultivation of Character, p 210
WONS

Expectation of Persecution

Each of my disciples and followers, therefore, should expect, upon listening to the preaching of the Lotus Sūtra, to meet persecutions by these three kinds of enemies in the Latter Age of Degeneration after the lifetime of the Buddha. Nevertheless, some disciples of mine, who had listened to the preaching of this sūtra, were taken aback and gave up their faith in alarm upon encountering persecutions, whether major or minor. Is this not what I have told you? Is this not what I taught you day and night by citing a passage from the Lotus Sūtra: “Those who propagated the Lotus Sūtra were persecuted even during the lifetime of the Buddha. How much more they would be after the death of the Buddha!”? You should not be alarmed at seeing me or hearing about my being chased out of my house, wounded, and twice sentenced to banishment to remote provinces.

Nyosetsu Shugyō-shō, True Way of Practicing the Teaching of the Buddha, Writings of Nichiren Shōnin, Faith and Practice, Volume 4, Page 82

Daily Dharma

Daily Dharma – Sept. 17, 2021

Excellent, excellent, Ajita! You asked me a very important question. All of you should concentrate your minds, wear the armor of endeavors, and be resolute. Now I will reveal, I will show, the wisdom of the Buddhas, their supernatural powers without hindrance, their dauntless powers like a lion’s, and their great power of bravery.

The Buddha makes this declaration to Maitreya Bodhisattva, whom he calls Ajita (Invincible) in Chapter Fifteen of the Lotus Sūtra. In the story, innumerable Bodhisattvas spring up from underground and vow to the Buddha to keep the sūtra after his extinction. Maitreya, knowing the minds of many others who have come to hear the Buddha teach, asks about these Bodhisattvas, whom he has never seen before. This question from Maitreya then leads to the Buddha later giving his most difficult teaching in Chapter Sixteen. The Buddha’s declaration in this passage shows how important questioning is to our faith.

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

LS32

Day 3

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

Day 3 Text with annotationsPlay MP3
Having last month considered in gāthās why the profound and wonderful Dharma is difficult to see and difficult to understand, we consider the difficulty in knowing the wisdom of the Buddhas.

Even the Buddhas’ disciples who made offerings
To the [past] Buddhas in their previous existence,
[Even the disciples] who eliminated all asravas,
[Even the disciples] who are now at the final stage
Of their physical existence,
Cannot understand [the Dharma].

As many people as can fill the world,
Who are as wise as you, Śāriputra, will not be able
To measure the wisdom of the Buddhas,
Even though they try to do so with their combined efforts.

As many people as can fill the worlds of the ten quarters,
Who are as wise as you, Śāriputra,
Or as many other disciples of mine
As can fill the ksetras of the ten quarters,
Will not be able to know [the wisdom of the Buddhas]
Even though they try to do so with their combined efforts.

As many Pratyekabuddhas as can fill
The worlds of the ten quarters, or as many as bamboo groves,
Who are wise enough to reach
The final stage of their physical existence without āsravas,
Will not be able to know
Even a bit of the true wisdom of the Buddhas
Even though they continue trying to do so with all their hearts
For many hundreds of millions of kalpas.

As many Bodhisattvas as rice-plants, hemps, bamboos or reeds,
Or as can fill the ksetras of the ten quarters,
Who have just begun to aspire for enlightenment,
Who made offerings to innumerable Buddhas in their previous existence,
Who understand the meanings of the Dharma [in their own ways],
And who are expounding the Dharma [as they understand it],
Will not be able to know the wisdom of the Buddhas
Even though they continue trying to do so with all their hearts
And with all their wonderful wisdom
For as many kalpas as there are sands in the River Ganges.

As many never-faltering Bodhisattvas
As there are sands in the River Ganges
Will not be able to know the wisdom of the Buddhas
Even though they try to do so with all their hearts.

See The Universal Truth