Two Buddhas, p15Kumārajīva’s translation, Miaofa lianhua jing (J. Myōhō Renge Kyō, “Sūtra of the Lotus Blossom of the Wonderful Dharma”), proved by far the most popular. All English translations of the sūtra that have been made from Chinese (seven at the time of this writing, not counting revisions or multiple editions of the same translation) are based upon it. According to his biography, Kumārajīva (344-413), a learned scholar-monk from Kucha in Central Asia, vowed that after his death, his tongue, with which he had expounded the meaning of the Buddhist sūtras, would remain unburnt in the crematory fire, and indeed, although the flames consumed his body, his tongue remained untouched. This story expresses the confidence that Kumārajīva’s translations faithfully captured the Buddha’s intent. It was also in China that the Lotus Sūtra became “threefold,” being grouped together with an introductory sūtra, the Sūtra of Immeasurable Meanings (Wuliangyi jing, T no. 276), possibly a Chinese apocryphon, and the Sūtra of the Practice of Visualizing the Bodhisattva Samantabhadra (Foshuo guan Puxian pusa xingfa jing, T no. 277).
Category Archives: 2buddhas
India vs. China’s perspective
Two Buddhas, p14[W]hether or not one accepted the Mahāyāna sūtras as the Buddha’s word, it was widely acknowledged that they had appeared long after his passage into nirvāṇa (the period of four hundred years was often mentioned). For their opponents, the sūtras were newly composed; for their proponents, they were newly revealed to the world of humans, having – for example – been hidden and safeguarded for centuries by gods and nāgas.
Things were very different in East Asia. The Mahāyāna sūtras were already being produced when Buddhism first entered China. The Chinese, at least initially, had little sense of the historical progression of the tradition, of what had transpired over the previous four centuries. Under the circumstances, the Mahāyāna sūtras were particularly appealing. Their teachings of nonduality resonated with indigenous notions of an integrated, holistic cosmos, while the bodhisattva ideal paralleled Chinese philosophical notions of human perfectibility. And the Lotus Sūtra, said to have been the Buddha’s ultimate and final teaching, in which he explains his teaching method within the context of his traditional life story, came to hold a special prominence.
‘A Woman Who Embraces This Sūtra’
Two Buddhas, p157To be sure, Nichiren’s assertions about women’s realization of buddhahood tend to foreground the power of the Lotus Sūtra, rather than women’s capacity for buddhahood in and of itself. Unless women place faith in the Lotus, buddhahood lies beyond their reach. But because he believed that no one, male or female, could attain buddhahood through provisional teachings, his stance is hardly discriminatory. Nichiren’s core followers included several women whom, judging by his letters, he held in great respect. Unlike Śāriputra in the “Devadatta” chapter, and against notions of female pollution in his own time, Nichiren did not see the female body as filthy and on at least one occasion explicitly denied that menstrual blood is defiling. He also suggested that faith in the Lotus Sūtra might even in some sense subvert conventional gender hierarchy: “A woman who embraces this sūtra,” he wrote,” not only surpasses all other women but also surpasses all men.”
Nine Easy and Six Difficult Acts
Two Buddhas, p146-147In the concluding verse section of this chapter, now seated in midair within the jeweled stūpa beside Prabhūtaratna, Śākyamuni Buddha again stresses how difficult it will be to uphold the Lotus Sūtra after his passing, setting forth the analogy of what Nichiren summarized as the “nine easy and six difficult acts.” There is some irony in this term; the “nine easy acts” are virtually impossible. They involve either extraordinary physical feats, such as placing the earth on one’s toe and ascending with it to the heavens of Brahmā, or teaching incalculable numbers of sentient beings by means of provisional teachings, leading them to lesser attainments than buddhahood, such as arhatship or the six supernormal powers. In contrast, the “six difficult acts” all entail the practice of the true teaching, the Lotus Sūtra, in the troubled world after the Buddha’s passing. The six acts are: (1) to teach the Lotus Sūtra; (2) to copy it, or cause others to copy it; (3) to recite it, even for a short while; (4) to teach it to even one other person; (5) to hear and accept it, and inquire about its meaning; and (6) to preserve it. The compilers of the Lotus Sūtra may have sought to ensure the Lotus Sūtra’s survival into the future by showing that the Buddha himself praised the heroism of those who would brave any adversity to uphold it after he was gone from the world.
The Buddha Realm Within Oneself
Two Buddhas, p144-145We have already touched on how, in part under the influence of the esoteric Buddhist teachings, medieval Tendai notions of practice and attainment shifted from a linear model of practice, in which one gradually cultivates merit and wisdom, striving for buddhahood as a future goal, to what one might call a timeless or “mandalic” model, in which buddhahood is revealed in the very act of faith and practice. Medieval Tendai texts sometimes express this conceptual shift with the phrase, “The assembly on Sacred Vulture Peak is still awesomely present and has not yet dispersed.” Just as enlightenment was redefined as accessible in the present, so the assembly of the Lotus Sūtra where the two buddhas sat side by side in the jeweled stūpa came to be represented not as an event in the distant past, but as still ongoing. Some medieval Tendai writings identify this ever-present Lotus assembly with the liberating discernment of the three thousand realms in a single thought-moment, or more specifically, of the buddha realm within oneself.
Universal Buddhahood
Two Buddhas, p58-60Because the notion of universal buddhahood now seems so obvious to those familiar with the Mahāyāna, it is difficult to imagine how radical this declaration of a single vehicle would have been in its own time. Up until this point, in the mainstream tradition, the goal of the Buddhist path was to become an arhat. The achievement of buddhahood was far more difficult, and the path to buddhahood was far longer; only the rarest of individuals in a given cosmic age was capable of undertaking that task. The arhat’s path to nirvāṇa was shorter and easier. Furthermore, there was no need for many buddhas as long as the teaching of a single buddha remained known in the world; hence the idea that there is only one buddha in the world at a time. Here, the Buddha is therefore saying something new. While his disciples had thought that they were following the path of the two vehicles culminating in nirvāṇa, in reality, that was the Buddha’s “skillful means,” taught in order to guide them to the bodhisattva path. This revelation could not be ignored; Śākyamuni declares that those who claim to be arhats and yet do not accept that the buddhas “lead and inspire only bodhisattvas” are not true arhats, nor are they true disciples of the Buddha.
He further declares that those who claim to be arhats and do not aspire to buddhahood are arrogant. It is impossible that a true arhat should not accept this dharma. He makes an exception for those who might become arhats after his death; such individuals might not believe in the single buddha vehicle because, after the Buddha has passed into nirvāṇa, it will be difficult to find people who preserve, recite, and understand the Lotus Sūtra. We have here again a barb directed at the opponents of the Lotus Sūtra. At the time of the text’s composition, centuries after the Buddha’s death, there would have been those who denied its authenticity. The sūtra, setting itself in the final years of the Buddha’s life, explains that such people are merely ignorant of his true intent.
Buddha Nature As Three Causes
Two Buddhas, p126-127Commentators have often interpreted the jewel in the garment as the “buddha nature.” The Lotus Sūtra does not contain the precise term “buddha nature” (Ch. foxing; J. busshō), perhaps because it had not yet come into use in Indian Buddhism. However, the Lotus clearly recognizes the buddha potential in all beings, and Chinese exegetes argued that the concept is there, if not the term itself. The expression “buddha nature” was well known in medieval Japan, and Nichiren uses it occasionally, but he appears to have preferred “buddha realm” (among the ten realms) or “seed of buddhahood” (J. busshu). His use of the latter term is quite different from the Hossō idea of untainted seeds in the storehouse consciousness. … “Buddha nature” and “seed of buddhahood” are similar in that both indicate the potential for buddhahood, supreme enlightenment, but where “nature” is constant and unchanging, “seeds” can lie dormant, even rot, or germinate and grow in response to conditions; as the Lotus Sūtra says, “The buddha-seeds germinate through dependent origination.” Thus, Nichiren may have used the term “seed of buddhahood” because he wished to portray buddhahood, not as an abstract potential, but as manifested through specific causes and conditions, that is, by embracing a specific form of practice. In that regard, he sometimes borrows Zhiyi’s concept of the “buddha nature as three causes”: (1) the innate potential for buddhahood; (2) the wisdom that illuminates it; and (3) the practice that manifests that wisdom. For Nichiren, that practice was chanting Namu Myōhō-renge-kyō, the act that manifests the jewel of the buddha realm hidden within the nine realms of ordinary people. Sometimes he refers to the daimoku itself as the “seed of buddhahood.”
An Ideal This-Worldly Buddha Land
Two Buddhas, p103-104[Given Nichiren’s travails, did he understand] the sūtra’s promise of “peace in the present world” only as expressing an inner mental composure? By no means. Its promise was also that of an actual peace to be realized in the outer world through the spread of the Lotus Sūtra. Another letter he wrote from Sado reads: “Question: Those who practice the Lotus Sūtra as it teaches should be ‘at peace in this world.’ Why then are you beset by the three powerful enemies [who oppose the Lotus Sūtra’s practitioners]?” In this instance, Nichiren responds that teachers of the Lotus Sūtra in the past, such as Daosheng, Zhiyi, Saichō — even Śākyamuni Buddha himself — surely practiced in accordance with the Lotus Sūtra and yet they endured great trials to communicate its message; meeting hardships does not in and of itself imply flaws in one’s practice. Rather, troubles are to be expected in an evil age when the dharma has been obscured and everyone from the ruler down to the common people has turned against the Lotus Sūtra. That is why it is all the more important to persevere. He concludes: “When all people of the realm, including the various Buddhist schools, convert to the one vehicle and chant Namu Myōhō-renge-kyō as one, the wind will not thrash the branches nor the rain fall hard enough to erode the soil. The world will be as it was in the ages [of the ancient sage kings] Fuxi and Shennong. In this life, inauspicious disasters will be banished, and people will obtain the art of longevity. You will behold a time when the principle becomes manifest that persons and dharmas neither age nor die.”
This is one of the few passages in Nichiren’s extant writings that sets forth his vision of an ideal, this-worldly buddha land to be established in the future. It seems to entail a state of harmony with nature, just government, long life, and freedom from catastrophe. Included in the ichinen sanzen principle is the idea that sentient beings and their insentient environments are nondual; human actions, whether wise and compassionate or selfish and deluded, shape the world that they inhabit. Thus, for Nichiren, the awakening of the Lotus Sūtra was not simply to be experienced subjectively by individual practitioners, but would also find expression as concord, creativity, and fulfillment in the outer world. This conviction gives his teaching a distinctively social dimension. On this basis, he took “peace in this world” to mean not only the unwavering inner wisdom and security established by faith, but also an ideal to be concretely and visibly realized in everyday life.
The Richest Man In All Japan
Two Buddhas, p101-102During the bleak Sado Island years, Nichiren grappled with the question of why, when the Lotus Sūtra promises “peace in this world,” he should have to undergo such ordeals. He also pondered other doubts, sometimes voiced by his followers: If he was indeed correctly practicing the Lotus Sūtra, why didn’t the benevolent deities who protect the buddha-dharma intervene to assist him? Why didn’t those who persecuted him meet with obvious karmic retribution?
Nichiren addressed these questions in a deeply introspective mode, for example, in his famous treatise Kaimoku shō (“Opening the Eyes,” 1272), one of his most important writings, written as a testament to his followers in the event of his death. Here he reflects that in prior lifetimes, he himself must have committed offenses against the Lotus Sūtra and its devotees and was now enduring his present trials to expiate such offenses, just as iron is cleansed of impurities when forged in a fire. In this context, Nichiren drew upon the six-fascicle Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra, which states: “By the power of the merit gained by protecting the dharma, one receives lightened [karmic retribution for past offenses] in the present life.” In adopting this perspective, Nichiren claimed agency for his sufferings by representing them, not as a trial inflicted upon him by his enemies, but as an ordeal that he had deliberately chosen as an act of expiation. He also encouraged his followers by saying that the hardships they faced had in fact been predicted in the Lotus Sūtra itself, and thus confirmed the legitimacy of their practice and the certainty of their eventual buddhahood.
As for why their tormentors failed to experience obvious karmic retribution, Nichiren simply noted that when a person’s sins are so weighty as to condemn them after death to the Avici hell, there may be no sign of retribution in that individual’s present life. Alternatively, Nichiren maintained that because people had abandoned the Lotus Sūtra, the protective deities, no longer able to hear the true dharma, had abandoned their shrines and returned to the heavens; thus, they could not be counted on to safeguard Lotus devotees or to punish their persecutors. Yet his conclusion was a resolve that seeks no explanation for adversity and no guarantee of protection; it is a resolve to simply persevere, whatever may happen: “Let heaven forsake me. Let ordeals confront me. I will not begrudge bodily life. … Whatever trials I and my disciples may encounter, so long as we do not cherish doubts, we will naturally achieve buddhahood. Do not doubt because heaven does not extend its protection. Do not lament that you do not enjoy peace in this world.”
Nichiren’s conviction infused his life with immense meaning and enabled him to assert — in the midst of privation and danger — that he was “the richest man in all Japan today.” Nichiren taught his followers that while faith might result in this-worldly good fortune, more importantly, it revealed inner resources of joy and assurance, independent of outward circumstances, that would sustain them through trying times.
One’s Own Practice Affects Others
Two Buddhas, p108-109In the original story, Maudgalyāyana cannot assist his mother with his own magical powers; he can only do so by the power of the dharma. The fact that she is saved when he offers a meal to the monastic assembly reflects the widely held idea that the transfer of merit to the deceased is most efficacious when ritually mediated by monastics, especially those earnest in practice and pure in their vows. … Nichiren presents an alternative explanation, showing how he adapted traditional Buddhist stories to his Lotus exclusivism:
The Urabon service began with the Venerable Maudgalyāyana’s attempts to save his mother, Shōdai-nyo, who on account of her miserliness and greed had fallen for five hundred lifetimes into the realm of hungry ghosts. But he could not make her become a buddha. The reason was because he himself did not yet practice the Lotus Sūtra, and so he could not lead even his own mother to buddhahood. But at the eight-year assembly on Vulture Peak, he embraced the Lotus Sūtra, chanted Namu Myōhō-renge-kyō, and became the Buddha Tamālapattracandanagandha [Tamālapattra Sandalwood Fragrance]. At that time, his mother became a Buddha too.
You also asked about offerings for hungry ghosts. The third fascile of the Lotus Sūtra says, ‘It is as though someone coming from a country suffering from famine were suddenly to find a great king’s feast spread before him.’ … When you make offerings for hungry ghosts, you should recite this passage from the sūtra and also chant Namu Myōhō-renge-kyō.
Claims that one person’s religious attainment would simultaneously benefit that individual’s family members, sometimes for seven generations in each direction, was common in Nichiren’s time. They express a confidence, grounded in Mahāyāna notions of interconnection, that one’s own practice affects others across time, space, and the boundaries of life and death. Nichiren here assimilates such ideas to the practice of chanting the daimoku, the title of the Lotus Sūtra.