Monthly Archives: August 2023

LS32

Day 18

Day 18 concludes Chapter 13, Encouragement for Keeping this Sutra, and begins Chapter 14, Peaceful Practices.

Day 18 Text with annotationsPlay MP3

Having last month considered the vow of the eighty billion nayuta Bodhisattva-mahāsattvas, we consider the perils of preaching the Dharma in this evil world.

Thereupon the Bodhisattvas sang in gāthās with one voice:

Do not worry!
We will expound this sūtra
In the dreadful, evil world
After your extinction.

Ignorant people will speak ill of us,
Abuse us, and threaten us
With swords or sticks.
But we will endure all this.

Some bhikṣus in the evil world will be cunning.
They will be ready to flatter others.
Thinking that they have obtained what they have not,
Their minds will be filled with arrogance.

Some bhikṣus will live in aranyas or retired places,
And wear patched pieces of cloth.
Thinking that they are practicing the true Way,
They will despise others.

Being attached to worldly profits,
They will expound the Dharma to men in white robes.
They will be respected by the people of the world
As the Arhats who have the six supernatural powers.

They will have evil thoughts.
They will always think of worldly things.
Even when they live in aranyas,
They will take pleasure in saying that we have faults.

They will say of us,
“Those bhikṣus are greedy for worldly profits.
Therefore, they are expounding
The teachings of heretics.
They made that sūtra by themselves
In order to deceive the people of the world.
They are expounding that sūtra
Because they wish to make a name for themselves.”

In order to speak ill of us, in order to slander us
In the midst of the great multitude,
In order to say that we are evil,
They will say to kings, ministers and brahmanas,
And also to householders and other bhikṣus,
“They have wrong views.
They are expounding
The teachings of heretics.”
But we will endure all this
Because we respect you.

They will despise us,
Saying to us [ironically],
“You are Buddhas.”
But we will endure all these despising words.

There will be many dreadful things
In the evil world of the kalpa of defilements.
Devils will enter the bodies [of those bhikṣus]
And cause them to abuse and insult us.

We will wear the armor of endurance
Because we respect and believe you.
We will endure all these difficulties
In order to expound this sūtra.

The Daily Dharma from May 30, 2023, offers this:

We will wear the armor of endurance
Because we respect and believe you.
We will endure all these difficulties
In order to expound this sūtra.

Medicine-King Bodhisattva and Great-Eloquence Bodhisattva, along with their attendants, declare these verses to the Buddha in Chapter Thirteen of the Lotus Sutra. The Buddha had asked previously who would teach the Lotus Sūtra after the Buddha’s death. These Bodhisattvas declare their aspirations to maintain their practice of the Buddha Dharma in the face of unimaginable difficulties. We may believe that this practice will lead to permanent comfort and pleasure. But knowing that we are in a world that is constantly changing, we realize that any difficulty is temporary, and that the way to a beneficial outcome may only go through difficulties. This knowledge and faith in the Buddha’s teachings increases our capacity to be a beneficial force in this world of conflict.

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

Stone: Tanaka Millennialism

‘Nichiren Is The General of the Army That Will Unite The World.’

In 1901 Tanaka published a tract called Shimon no ishin (Restoration of the [Nichiren] sect), a blueprint for radical sectarian reform. Here was the first Nichirenist millennial vision of modern times, combining shrewd plans for innovative evangelizing with a wildly improbable agenda. Shimon no ishin outlined a detailed fifty-year plan for converting Japan and the world to Nichirenshugi. Tanaka envisioned proselytizing throughout the country: by the roads, in halls and auditoriums, at hot-spring resorts. Lay women would be organized into nursing corps and charitable hospitals established, winning the sect both public respect and converts by its works of practical compassion. The sect would publish a daily newspaper and evangelical materials in colloquial Japanese. Passengers on ships operated by the sect would also be proselytized; eventually, thousands of such vessels would fill the international shipping lanes with the sound of voices preaching the Dharma. Colonies of Nichiren adherents would be established in Hokkaido, Taiwan, and overseas countries as bases for evangelizing abroad. The growing financial capital of the sect, conscientiously invested, would make Nichiren Buddhism a significant economic force and contribute to the nation’s wealth and power. Tanaka worked out detailed projections over ten five-year periods of the number of converts, income, and expenditures required by this colossal undertaking. In twenty to thirty years, he predicted, Nichirenshugi sympathizers would dominate both houses of the Diet. Realizing the fusion of Buddhism and secular law, Nichiren Buddhism would assist the imperial court in its enlightened rule. Other nations, coming to revere Japan’s example of justice and benevolence, would abandon their barbaric quarrels. The righteousness of Nichiren Buddhism being made clear, other religious bodies would announce their own dissolution (Tanaka 1931, 93-134; 1975, 26-27).

It was not, however, in this extravagant, narrowly sectarian form as the worldwide propagation of Nichiren Buddhism per se that Tanaka’s millennialist vision was to exert wide appeal. Rather, its attraction would lie in his increasing identification of this goal with the spread of Japanese empire. The beginnings of this identification are already evident in Shimon no ishin:

Nichiren is the general of the army that will unite the world. Japan is his headquarters. The people of Japan are his troops; the teachers and scholars of Nichiren Buddhism are his officers. The Nichiren creed is a declaration of war, and shakubuku is the plan of attack. … The faith of the Lotus will prepare those going into battle. Japan truly has a heavenly mandate to unite the world. (Tanaka 1931, 16; trans. from Lee 1975, 26)

Japanese Lotus Millennialism, p267-268
Daily Dharma, d5b

Daily Dharma – Aug. 12, 2023

You skillfully expound the Dharma with various parables and similes,
And with various stories of previous lives.
Now my mind is as peaceful as the sea.
Hearing you, I have removed the mesh of doubts.

Śāriputra, the wisest of the Buddha’s disciples, sings these verses in Chapter Three of the Lotus Sūtra. After the Buddha announced in Chapter Two that he had not revealed his highest wisdom, that everything he had taught before then was preparation, Śāriputra was the first to understand what the Buddha meant. The parables, similes and other parts of the Lotus Sūtra help us to understand how to read them, and how to make them real in our lives. When we find the true purpose of what the Buddha is teaching us, our mind and the world become peaceful together.

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

LS32

Day 17

Day 17 covers all of Chapter 12, Devadatta, and opens Chapter 13, Encouragement for Keeping this Sutra.

Day 17 Text with annotationsPlay MP3

Having last month concluded Chapter 12, Devadatta, we open Chapter 13, Encouragement for Keeping this Sutra, and consider the vows of Medicine-King Bodhisattva-mahāsattva and Great-Eloquence Bodhisattva-mahāsattva.

Thereupon Medicine-King Bodhisattva-mahāsattva and Great-Eloquence Bodhisattva-mahāsattva, together with their twenty-thousand attendants who were also Bodhisattvas, vowed to the Buddha:

“World-Honored One, do not worry! We will keep, read, recite and expound this sūtra after your extinction. The living beings in the evil world after [your extinction] will have less roots of good, more arrogance, more greed for offerings of worldly things, and more roots of evil. It will be difficult to teach them because they will go away from emancipation. But we will patiently read, recite, keep, expound and copy this sūtra, and make various offerings to it. We will not spare even our lives [in doing all this].”

At that time there were five hundred Arhats in this congregation. They had already been assured of their future attainment [of Anuttara-samyak-saṃbodhi]. They said to the Buddha, “World-Honored One! We also vow to expound this sūtra [but we will expound it] in some other worlds [rather than in this Sahā-World].”

There were also eight thousand Śrāvakas some of whom had something more to learn while others had nothing more to learn. They had already been assured of their future attainment [of Anuttara-samyak-saṃbodhi]. They rose from their seats, joined their hands together towards the Buddha and vowed:

“World-Honored One! We also will expound this sūtra in some other worlds because the people of this Sahā-World have many evils. They are arrogant. They have few merits. They are angry, defiled, ready to flatter others, and insincere.”

The Daily Dharma from July 18, 2022, offers this:

World-Honored One, do not worry! We will keep, read, recite and expound this sūtra after your extinction. The living beings in the evil world after [your extinction] will have less roots of good, more arrogance, more greed for offerings of worldly things, and more roots of evil. It will be difficult to teach them because they will go away from emancipation. But we will patiently read, recite, keep, expound and copy this sūtra, and make various offerings to it. We will not spare even our lives [in doing all this].

Medicine-King Bodhisattva, his attendants and other Bodhisattvas make this vow to the Buddha in Chapter Thirteen of the Lotus Sūtra. Once we awaken to our Bodhisattva nature and resolve to benefit all beings, we may still hold on to the belief that those beings should gratefully receive the teaching and and keep progressing towards enlightenment. We may even become discouraged in our practice of the Wonderful Dharma when these beings do not live up to our expectations. The vow of these great Bodhisattvas reminds us of how difficult is is for us ordinary beings to keep the Lotus Sūtra, and of the determination it takes to create benefit in the world.

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

Stone: Tanaka Millennialism

Tanaka’s Efforts to Revive the Spirit of Shakubuku

Tanaka Chigaku (1861-1939) is known for initiating the ideological movement known as Nichirenshugi (“Nichirenism”)—not the traditional Nichiren Buddhism of temples and priests, but a popular Nichiren doctrine welded to lay Buddhist practice and modern national aspirations. As a youth in training for the Nichiren priesthood, Tanaka was disturbed by the accommodating attitude displayed by sectarian leaders toward other Buddhist denominations. In the time of mappō, Nichiren had taught, only the Lotus Sutra could protect the country; Tanaka became convinced that it was now time to revive the founder’s strict spirit of shakubuku and declare the exclusive truth of the Lotus. Abandoning his priestly training in 1879, Tanaka embarked on a lifetime career as a lay evangelist. In 1881 he founded the Rengekai (Lotus Blossom Society) to propagate Nichirenshugi ideals. It was reorganized in 1885 as the Risshō Ankokukai, and again in 1914 as the Kokuchūkai or “Pillar of the Nation Society” (after Nichiren’s words, “I will be the pillar of Japan.”) The Kokuchūkai would in time win the support of ranking government officials, army officers, leading intellectuals, and large numbers of the public.

Japanese Lotus Millennialism, p266
Daily Dharma, d7b

Daily Dharma – Aug. 11, 2023

Anyone who believes and receives this sūtra
Should be considered
To have already seen the past Buddhas,
Respected them, made offerings to them,
And heard the Dharma from them
In his previous existence.

The Buddha sings these verses in Chapter Three of the Lotus Sūtra. Whatever view we may have of our past lives, we can agree that it is difficult to remember what happened in them. In these verses the Buddha reminds us that our joy in hearing his teaching in this life indicates that we have already heard and practiced what he taught, no matter how difficult it may seem to us now. This also means that by believing and receiving the Lotus Sūtra we are respecting and making offerings to all Buddhas.

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

LS32

Day 16

Day 16 concludes Chapter 11, Beholding the Stūpa of Treasures, and completes the Fourth Volume of the Sūtra of the Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Dharma.

Day 16 Text with annotationsPlay MP3

Having last month considered the question of who will protect and keep the sutra after the Buddha’s extinction, we consider the difficult and easy acts.

Good men! Think this over clearly!
It is difficult
[To expound this sūtra].
Make a great vow to do this!

It is not difficult
To expound all the other sūtras
As many as there are sands
In the River Ganges.

It is not difficult
To grasp Mt. Sumeru
And hurl it to a distance
Of countless Buddha-worlds.

It is not difficult to move [a world]
[Composed of] one thousand million Sumeru-worlds
With the tip of a toe
And hurl it to another world.

It is not difficult
To stand in the Highest Heaven
And expound innumerable other sūtras
To all living beings.

It is difficult
To expound this sūtra
In the evil world
After my extinction.

It is not difficult
To grasp the sky,
And wander about with it
From place to place.

It is difficult
To copy and keep this sūtra
Or cause others to copy it
After my extinction.

It is not difficult
To put the great earth
On the nail of a toe
And go up to the Heaven of Brahman.

It is difficult
To read this sūtra
Even for a while in the evil world
After my extinction.

It is not difficult
To shoulder a load of hay
And stay unburned in the fire
At the end of the kalpa [of destruction].

It is difficult
To keep this sūtra
And expound it to even one person
After my extinction.

It is not difficult
To keep the store
Of eighty-four thousand teachings
Expounded in the sūtras
Composed of the twelve elements,
And expound it to people,
And cause the hearers to obtain
The six supernatural powers.

It is difficult
To hear and receive this sūtra,
And ask the meanings of it
After my extinction.

It is not difficult
To expound the Dharma
To many thousands of billions of living beings
As many as there are sands
In the River Ganges
So that they may be able
To obtain the benefits:
Arhatship and the six supernatural powers.

It is difficult
To keep
This sūtra
After my extinction.

The Daily Dharma for Oct. 27, 2022, offers this:

It is not difficult
To grasp the sky,
And wander about with it
From place to place.
It is difficult
To copy and keep this sūtra
Or cause others to copy it
After my extinction.

The Buddha sang these verses in Chapter Eleven of the Lotus Sūtra for all those who had come to hear him teach. When we start on the path of enlightenment by finding joy in the Buddha Dharma, we might believe that the world will change around us to meet our expectations, and that we will have no more difficulties. Then when we do find hard times, we may even abandon this wonderful practice and go back to our habits of gratifying ourselves. Our founder Nichiren lived through unimaginable hardships so that we who follow him would not lose this precious teaching. The Buddha in these verses reminds us that difficulties are part of our practice, and that we can find a way to use any situation in life to benefit others.

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

Stone: Tanaka Millennialism

The Lotus Sutra and Militant Nationalism

The first fully developed modern millennial visions claiming inspiration in the Lotus Sutra and Nichiren’s teachings emerged around the turn of the [20th] century and persisted until the end of World War II. With various permutations, these visions identified faith in the Lotus Sutra with Japanese nationalistic aspirations and looked forward to a world harmoniously unified under Japanese rule. This imperialist Lotus millennialism had its roots in the historical pressures of the Meiji period (1868-1912). First was the acute need for Japan to gain economic and political parity with Western powers if it was not to be exploited by them. Educators, opinionmakers, and spokesmen of the new Meiji government sought to rally citizens to the cause of transforming Japan into a modern industrial country by promoting a strong sense of national identity. Growing nationalistic sentiment in turn placed strain on the Buddhist community. For some time, Shinto and Confucian ideologues had criticized Buddhism as institutionally corrupt, a superstitious relic of the past, a drain on public resources, and a noxious foreign import that had oppressed the indigenous Japanese spirit. The Meiji Restoration also brought an end to the state patronage that Buddhism had enjoyed under the previous Tokugawa regime (1600-1868); the authority of the Buddhist establishment was further undermined by a brief but violent anti-Buddhist movement (1868-71) and by the institution of state Shinto as a national creed. Buddhism faced the need both to reform internally and prove its relevance to an emerging modern nation (Ketelaar 1990). Throughout the modern imperial period, virtually all Buddhist institutions, of all denominations, supported nationalistic and militaristic aims, sending chaplains abroad to minister to Japanese troops, missionizing in subjugated territories, and promoting patriotism and loyalty to government among their followers. Within Nichiren Buddhist circles, however, Nichiren’s mandate to spread the Lotus Sutra and thus realize the Buddha land in this present world was assimilated to imperialist aspirations in a way that inflated the latter to millennialist proportions.

Japanese Lotus Millennialism, p265
Daily Dharma, d15b

Daily Dharma – Aug. 10, 2023

Anyone who expounds this sūtra to the four kinds of devotees,
Or reads or recites this sūtra in a retired place,
After doing these [three] virtuous things,
Will be able to see me.

The Buddha sings these verses to Medicine-King Bodhisattva in Chapter Ten of the Lotus Sūtra. While the Buddha was alive 2500 years ago, people traveled great distances and endure great hardships just to see him. Today, even though the man named Siddhartha Gautama is no longer in our world, we are assured that the ever-present Śākyamuni is always with us and leading us to his enlightenment. When we make the effort to keep, read, recite, copy and expound this Sūtra, it is as if we are traveling great distances and enduring great hardships.

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

LS32

Day 15

Day 15 concludes Chapter 10, The Teacher of the Dharma, and opens Chapter 11, Beholding the Stūpa of Treasures.

Day 15 Text with annotationsPlay MP3

Having last month concluded Chapter 11, Beholding the Stūpa of Treasures, we return to start of today’s portion of Chapter 10, The Teacher of the Dharma, and consider the Buddha’s warning not to give this sutra to others carelessly.

Thereupon the Buddha said again to Medicine-King Bodhisattva mahāsattvas:
“I have expounded many sūtras. I am now expounding this sūtra. I also will expound many sūtras in the future. The total number of the sūtras will amount to many thousands of billions. This Sūtra of the Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Dharma is the most difficult to believe and the most difficult to understand.

“Medicine-King! This sūtra is the store of the hidden core of all the Buddhas. Do not give it to others carelessly! It is protected by the Buddhas, by the World-Honored Ones. It has not been expounded explicitly. Many people hate it with jealousy even in my lifetime. Needless to say, more people will do so after my extinction.

The Daily Dharma from Aug. 20, 2022, offers this:

Medicine-King! This sūtra is the store of the hidden core of all the Buddhas. Do not give it to others carelessly! It is protected by the Buddhas, by the World-Honored Ones. It has not been expounded explicitly. Many people hate it with jealousy even in my lifetime. Needless to say, more people will do so after my extinction.

The Buddha makes this declaration to Medicine-King Bodhisattva in Chapter Ten of the Lotus Sūtra. For us who recognize how the Buddha’s teaching transforms our lives and the world, it can be hard to imagine that anyone would reject it. However, there are beings who are so filled with fear and delusion that they mistake the Buddha’s good medicine for poison. While we are committed to leading all beings to enlightenment, we realize that we are not alone in our efforts. The protective deities and the Buddha himself are always working to benefit all beings. In our current capacities, we may not be able to reach everybody immediately. We should not let this discourage us. The least we can do is hope in our hearts for the happiness of all beings, even if they are not accessible to us.

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