Yesterday I wrote about harvesting the promises found in the Lotus Sutra for my yearlong daily Myōhō Renge Kyō Promise project. In that blog post I slighted Kannon Bodhisattva (World-Voice-Perceiver) and suggested some promises contained in the Lotus Sutra were less valuable than others.
I considered just deleting those arrogant portions of the post but decided I needed to confess and to apologize.
The Lotus Sutra has been attacked as a work whose “purpose is wholly to attract stupid lay people.” In particular, the critics pointed to Chapters 19, The Merits of the Teacher of the Dharma, and Chapter 25, The Universal Gate of World-Voice-Perceiver Bodhisattva.
In excluding Kannon Bodhisattva and large portions of Chapter 19’s promised merits from my project, I sought to show that even without those parts, the Lotus Sutra is full of wonderful promises that illustrate why Myōhō Renge Kyō is considered the Buddha’s highest teaching.
Not only was I arrogant, but I was the very definition of hypocritical – suggesting one has higher standards or more noble beliefs than is the case.
Each month, when my daily reading of the Lotus Sutra gets to Chapter 25, I face my Kannon Bodhisattva statue, light additional incense as an offering to the Bodhisattva, and focus on the benefits of calling the name of World-Voice-Perceiver Bodhisattva as I read aloud.
My altar is crowded with protective amulets and statues of protective deities. My practice is the epitome of “inferior, shallow stuff, best laughed at, for alluring stupid men and women.”
“I’m with stupid,” I want to shout. I am proud to say I prefer “inferior, shallow stuff.”