Monthly Archives: April 2022

Daily Dharma, d25b

Daily Dharma – April 18, 2022

When he said this, people would strike him with a stick, a piece of wood, a piece of tile or a stone. He would run away to a distance, and say in a loud voice from afar, ‘I do not despise you. You will become Buddhas.’

The Buddha tells this story of Never-Despising Bodhisattva in Chapter Twenty of the Lotus Sūtra. This Bodhisattva did not read or recite sūtras. His sole practice was to tell everyone he met, “I respect you deeply. I do not despise you.” Despite this pure practice, many people became angry and abused him because of their own perverted minds. He did not stay where he could suffer their abuse, and he still maintained his respect for them, despite their behavior. This and the other examples in the Lotus Sūtra of Bodhisattvas are examples for us who aspire to practice this Wonderful Teaching.

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

LS32

Day 12

Day 12 concludes Chapter 7, The Parable of the Magic City, and completes the Third Volume of the Sutra of the Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Dharma.

Day 12 Text with annotationsPlay MP3

Having last month considered the teaching of the Lotus Sutra by Great-Universal-Wisdom-Excellence Buddha and the śramaṇeras’ efforts to spread the dharma, we consider the Parable of the Magic City.

Suppose there was a bad and dangerous road.
Many wild animals lived in the neighborhood.
No man was there; no water nor grass there.
The road was so fearful.

Many tens of millions of people
Wished to pass through this dangerous road.
The road was very long.
It was five hundred yojanas long.

The people had a leader.
He had a good memory.
He was wise and resolute in mind.
He could save people from dangers.

Getting tired,
The people said to him:
“We are tired.
We wish to go back.”

He thought:
‘How pitiful they are!
Why do they wish to return
Without getting great treasures?’

Thinking of an expedient, he said to himself:
‘I will use my supernatural powers.’
He made a great city by magic,
And adorned it with houses.

The city was surrounded by gardens, forests,
And by ponds and pools for bathing.
Many-storied gates and tall buildings [in that city]
Were filled with men and women.

Having made all this by magic,
He consoled the people, saying:
“Do not be afraid! Enter that city!
And do anything you like!”

They entered that city,
And had great joy.
They felt peaceful,
And thought that they had already passed [ through the road].

Seeing that they had already had a rest,
The leader collected them, and said:
“Go on ahead now! This is a magic city.
You were tired out halfway.
You wished to go back.
Therefore, I made this city by magic As an expedient.
Make efforts!
Let us go to the place of treasures!”

See Correspondences for the Parable of the Magic City

800years, d7b, d8b, Blog

800 Years: Faith and Discernment

In November of 2021, a group of people gathered in Dallas to witness the return of John F. Kennedy Jr., whom they believed would re-install Donald Trump as president. JFK Jr. died in a plane crash in 1999, and he didn’t return on Nov. 2 or Nov. 22 or any other day. But that didn’t discourage those who believed Michael Brian Protzman was a prophet.

According to a Nov. 8 story in the online news website Vice:

“When one of Protzman’s followers asked: ‘Are we putting too much faith in this man?’, she was immediately shut down for her ‘lack of faith.’ Those defending Protzman spoke with a religious zeal about their belief and faith in him.”

This is an excellent example of what Nikkyō Niwano warns against in Buddhism for Today:

“Faith (shin) is the working of one’s emotions, and discernment (ge) that of one’s reason. Though people often say that a religion or faith ought to be believed in instead of argued about, it is very dangerous to believe blindly in a religion without having any knowledge of it.”

Buddhism for Today, p63

What true faith requires, Nikkyō Niwano explains, is discernment. Unless a religion combines both, it does not have true power.

“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.”

Buddhism for Today, p64

This plays an important part in Chapter 4, Understanding by Faith. As Nikkyō Niwano says:

“In [Chapter 4], we were taught that we must not have the servile idea that we have the capacity to understand the Buddha’s teachings only to a certain limited extent. We should abandon such trifling discriminations and devote ourselves to hearing and receiving the Law. …

“Even if we have only a shallow understanding of the Buddha’s teachings or can practice only a part of them, this is never useless. Every effort will be surely rewarded with the merits of the Law. But we should not be satisfied with this reward. We must always desire and endeavor to deepen our understanding and to elevate ourselves further. Thus, we can use shallow faith and discernment as the first step in advancing ourselves to a higher level of faith and discernment.”

Buddhism for Today, p75

This topic will return in Chapter 16, but for now it is important to remember that each of us, as believers in the Lotus Sutra, are tasked with helping all of the world’s poor sons. Nikkyō Niwano puts it this way:

“We cannot be said to have actually practiced the spirit of the Lotus Sutra unless we save as many of these poor sons as possible. The only thing we can do to save them and lead them is to understand the spirit of the Buddha’s tactful means as illustrated in [Chapter 4].”

Buddhism for Today, p71
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Daily Dharma

Daily Dharma – April 17, 2022

Śāriputra! Seeing that all his children had come out of the burning house safely and reached a carefree place, the rich man remembered that he had immeasurable wealth. So without partiality, he gave them each a large cart.

The Buddha tells the parable of the Burning House in Chapter Three of the Lotus Sūtra. In the story, a man tries to warn his children who are playing in a dangerous house of the harm that will come to them if they do not set aside their preoccupations and come out. The children did not listen to him, so he told them about nonexistent toys outside the house. The Buddha then compares himself promising an end to suffering to the father promising nonexistent toys, and himself leading all beings to Enlightenment to the father giving his children toys more wonderful than they could imagine.

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

LS32

Day 11

Day 11 continues Chapter 7, The Parable of the Magic City

Day 11 Text with annotationsPlay MP3

Having last month considered the reaction of the Brahman-heavenly-kings of the five hundred billion worlds in the east when Great-Universal-Wisdom-Excellence Buddha attained Anuttara-samyak-saṃbodhi, we consider the reaction of the five hundred billion worlds in the southeast.

“Bhikṣus! The great Brahman-[heavenly-]kings of the five hundred billion worlds in the southeast, who saw their palaces illumined more brightly than ever, danced with joy. They also wondered why [their palaces were so illumined]. They visited each other and discussed the reason. There was a great Brahman-heavenly-king called Great-Compassion among them. He said to the other Brahmans in gāthās:

Why is it
That we see this light?
Our palaces are illumined
More brightly than ever.

Did a god of great virtue or a Buddha
Appear somewhere in the universe?
We have never seen this [light] before.
Let us do our best to find [the reason].

Let us go even to the end of one thousand billion worlds,
And find the place from where this light has come.
A Buddha may have appeared somewhere in the universe
In order to save the suffering beings.

“Thereupon the Brahman-heavenly-kings of the five hundred billion [ worlds] went to the northwest, carrying flower-plates filled with heavenly flowers, in order to find [the place from where the light had come]. Their palaces also moved as they went. They [reached the Well-Composed World and] saw that Great-Universal-Wisdom-Excellence Tathāgata was sitting on the lion-like seat under the Bodhi tree of the place of enlightenment, surrounded respectfully by gods, dragon-kings, gandharvas, kiṃnaras, mahoragas, men, and nonhuman beings. They also saw that the sixteen princes were begging the Buddha to turn the wheel of the Dharma. Thereupon the Brahman-heavenly-kings worshipped the Buddha with their heads, walked around him a hundred thousand times, and strewed heavenly flowers to him. The strewn flowers were heaped up to the height of Mt. Sumeru. The Brahman-heavenly-kings offered flowers also to the Bodhi-tree of the Buddha. Having offered flowers, they offered their palaces to the Buddha, saying, ‘We offer these palaces to you. Receive them and benefit us out of your compassion towards us!’ In the presence of the Buddha, they simultaneously praised him in gāthās with all their hearts:

Saintly Master, God of Gods!
Your voice is as sweet as a kalavinka’s.
You have compassion towards all living beings.
We now bow before you.
You, the World-Honored One, are exceptional.
You appear only once in a very long time.

No Buddha has appeared
For the past one hundred and eighty kalpas.
The three evil regions are crowded;
And the living beings in heaven, decreasing.

Now you have appeared in this world
And become the eye of all living beings.
As their refuge, you are saving them.
As their father, you are benefiting them
Out of your compassion towards them.
We are now able to see you
Because we accumulated merits
In our previous existence.

“Thereupon the Brahman-heavenly-kings, having praised the Buddha with these gāthās, said, ‘World-Honored One! Turn the wheel of the Dharma and save all living beings out of your compassion towards them!’ Then they simultaneously said in gāthās with all their hearts:

Great Saint, turn the wheel of the Dharma
And reveal the reality of all things!
Save the suffering beings
And cause them to have great joy!

If they hear the Dharma, some will attain enlightenment;
Others will be reborn in heaven.
The living beings in the evil regions will decrease;
And those who do good patiently will increase.

“Thereupon Great-Universal-Wisdom-Excellence Tathāgata gave his tacit consent to their appeal.

The Daily Dharma from May 26, 2021, offers this:

Let us go even to the end of one thousand billion worlds,
And find the place from where this light has come.
A Buddha may have appeared somewhere in the universe
In order to save the suffering beings.

These verses are sung by the Brahma King Great Compassion in Chapter Seven of the Lotus Sūtra. He invites his fellow Brahma Kings, creators of entire worlds, to leave the luxury of their palaces to find a Buddha who is leading all beings to enlightenment. They value the Buddha’s words more than anything that they have created for themselves, and know how rare it is to encounter an enlightened being. These kings give us an example of how we can learn to treasure the Buddha Dharma.

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

800years, d8b, Blog

800 Years: Understanding by Faith

Nothing tells you more about the Lotus Sutra’s definition of faith than the fact that the chapter entitled Understanding by Faith does not contain the word faith.

In the first three chapters of the Lotus Sutra, the necessity of understanding by faith is underscored but not explained.

“Śāriputra, know this!
The Buddhas do not speak differently.
Have great power of faith
In the Dharma expounded by the Buddhas!
As a rule, the World-Honored Ones expound the true teaching
Only after a long period [of expounding expedient teachings].”

We are warned repeatedly that the true teaching is difficult to understand. After all, the goal is not simply personal nirvāṇa. This was too much for the old men living the life of wisdom:

“You expounded the wisdom of the Buddha[, that is, the Great Vehicle] with expedients, but we did not aspire for that vehicle because, when we had obtained the day’s pay of Nirvāṇa from the Buddha, we thought that we had already obtained enough.”

I have great affinity for these old men. I can imagine hearing that the goal posts have been moved. I’m happy where I am. Why trudge on further? Of course, the Buddha will reveal that Magic City later. For now, we are learning how faith and practice move together, and the Buddha’s role.

“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.”

And later:

“The rich man knew
That his son was base and mean.
Therefore, he made him nobler
With expedients,
And then gave him
All his treasures.”

And finally:

“The Buddhas are the Kings of the Dharma
They are free from āsravas, from cause and effect.
The Buddhas practice patience
In order to save inferior people.
They expound the Dharma according to the capacities
Of the ordinary people who are attached to forms.”

For T’ian T’ai, the Rich Man’s transformation of his Poor Son follows five sequential events – providing, inviting, encouraging, purifying and revealing. These events correspond to five flavors T’ian T’ai used to classify the Buddha’s teachings.

For the Poor Son, the first step of faith was accepting the offer of a job at a double-day’s pay. And through his daily work, his faith grew – “After a while the father noticed that his son had become more at ease and peaceful, that he wanted to improve himself, and that he felt ashamed of the thought that he was base and mean.” In the end, the Poor Son was not frightened at the prospect of taking over the family business. He was happy: “I never dreamed of having this store of treasures myself. It has come to me unexpectedly.”

As the Introduction of the Lotus Sutra explains:

“Faith appears in an honest heart. Neither logic nor reason can awaken faith in us. Faith grows beyond reason when we encounter someone beyond our capacities, or when we unexpectedly touch something absolute in our lives or in the cosmos.”

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Daily Dharma

Daily Dharma – April 16, 2022

He was patient, gentle,
And friendly with others.
Even when many evils troubled him,
His mind was not moved.

The Buddha sings these verses in Chapter Seventeen of the Lotus Sūtra. This stanza is his description of the Bodhisattva perfection of patience. As with all the perfections, these are qualities we cultivate, rather than something to use to judge how close we or anybody else is to enlightenment. As we progress in these perfections, our view of the world is less obscured by our own mental formations. We begin to see the world for what it is, and each other for what we are.

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

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The Essential Feature About Hearing the Dharma

I’m taking a break from my immersion in Risshō Kōsei Kai philosophy and exploring Neal Donner and Daniel B. Stevenson’s “The Great Calming and Contemplations: A Study and Annotated Translation of the First Chapter of Chih-i’s Mo-Ho Chih-Kuan.” I haven’t finished the book yet, but I just couldn’t resist passing on this lesson on “the essential feature about hearing the dharma.”

The quote is from the introduction to the Mo-Ho Chih-Kuan by “Chih-i’s disciple, Kuan-ting (561—632), the man originally responsible for recording and editing the work.” [pxiv]

In former times there was a king who decided not to establish a stable [for his elephants] in the vicinity of a hermitage but placed it instead near a slaughterhouse. How much more likely [than beasts in a stable] are humans, when in the proximity of saints, to benefit from their teachings. Again, a brahmin was selling skulls, of which a rod could be passed clean through some, half through others, and not at all through the remainder. Buddhist laymen built a stūpa for those which the rod passed completely through, performed veneration and made offerings to them, and were consequently reborn in the heavens. The essential feature about hearing the dharma is that it has such merit. It is in order to confer this benefit that the Buddha has transmitted the treasury of the dharma. [p104]

This, of course, is absolutely unintelligible until you read the footnote explanations.

On the topic of the elephant stable:

36. From the Fu fa-tsang yin-yüan chuan, T 50.322a. It seems that a certain king used a fierce elephant to trample criminals to death. A time came when the elephant refused to carry out his task, merely smelling and licking his supposed victims without harming them. On inquiring among his ministers, the king found that the elephant’s stable had recently been moved to the neighborhood of a Buddhist hermitage, and the animal was being influenced by the teachings he heard emanating from the monastery. The king therefore ordered the stable moved to the vicinity of a slaughterhouse, whereupon the elephant soon regained his blood lust.

On the topic of the human skulls:

37. Ibid., T 50.322b. The brāhmin had at first no success in selling the skulls and so became angry, cursing and vilifying those who refused to buy them. The Buddhist laymen of the city were frightened at this and agreed to buy. First, however, they tested the skulls by slipping a rod through the ear holes, saying that they attached the greatest value to those which could be penetrated completely so that the rod came out the other side. They explained that such skulls had belonged to persons who in life had heard the Buddha’s wondrous preaching and had thereby attained great wisdom (literal vacuity of mind). Their veneration of these sacred relics earned them rebirth as devas.

Reading a study of the first chapter of Chih-i’s Mo-Ho Chih-Kuan may sound deadly boring, but I’m having lots of fun.

LS32

Day 10

Day 10 concludes Chapter 6, Assurance of Future Buddhahood, and opens Chapter 7, The Parable of a Magic City.

Day 10 Text with annotationsPlay MP3

Having last month considered a Buddha called Great-Universal-Wisdom-Excellence, we consider Great-Universal-Wisdom-Excellence Buddha effort to gain enlightenment.

The Buddha said to the bhikṣus:

“The duration of the life of Great-Universal-Wisdom-Excellence Buddha was five hundred and forty billion nayuta kalpas. [Before he attained Buddhahood,] he sat at the place of enlightenment and defeated the army of Mara. He wished to attain Anuttara-samyak-saṃbodhi, but could not because the Dharma of the Buddhas had not yet come into his mind. He sat cross-legged without moving his mind and body for one to ten small kalpas. During all that time the Dharma of the Buddhas did not come into his mind.

“[Before he sat at the place of enlightenment,] the Trāyastriṃs̒a Gods prepared him a lion-like seat a yojana high under the Bodhi tree so that he might be able to attain Anuttara-samyak-saṃbodhi on that seat. When he sat on that seat, the Brahman-heavenly-kings rained heavenly flowers on the area extending a hundred yojanas in all directions from that seat. From time to time withered flowers were blown away by fragrant winds and new flowers were rained down. [The Brahman-heavenly-kings] continued this offering to him for fully ten small kalpas. [After he attained Buddhahood also,] they continued raining flowers until he passed away.

“[When he sat on that seat,] the four heavenly-kings beat heavenly drums, and the other gods made heavenly music and offered it to him. They continued these offerings also for fully ten small kalpas. [After he attained Buddhahood also,] they continued these offerings until he passed away.

“Bhikṣus! At the end of the period of ten small kalpas, the Dharma of the Buddhas came into the mind of Great-Universal­Wisdom-Excellence Buddha. Now he attained Anuttara-samyak-saṃbodhi.

The Daily Dharma from Sept. 24, 2021, offers this:

When he sat on that seat, the Brahman-heavenly-kings rained heavenly flowers on the area extending a hundred yojanas in all directions from that seat. From time to time withered flowers were blown away by fragrant winds and new flowers were rained down. [The Brahman-heavenly-kings] continued this offering to him for fully ten small kalpas. [After he attained Buddhahood also,] they continued raining flowers until he passed away.

The Buddha describes the life of an ancient Buddha named Great-Universal-Wisdom-Excellence in Chapter Seven of the Lotus Sūtra. In the story, when that Buddha took the seat from which he would become enlightened, the gods who created his world recognized the immense benefit all beings were about to receive and showed their joy by filling the skies with these beautiful flowers. After that Buddha became enlightened, gods from innumerable other worlds came to his world to make offerings, giving up the pleasures of their own worlds. The enlightenment of any being extends beyond the personal contact we have with any that being. It changes the entire universe.

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

800years, Spring Writings

800 Years: Faith and Otsutome

People know how difficult it is to do Otsutome every day, and that each day it is a battle between ego and faith. However, the Buddha teaches us how to control the ego and our own desires. After overcoming such a challenge, you will become comfortable with Odaimoku. Performing Otsutome is not a duty, but proof of your faith to the Buddha and Nichiren Shonin. Continuing to chant is such a wonderful experience, and you will want to perform Otsutome every day, and like me, you will say, “I wonder how wonderful tomorrow will be!”

Spring Writings