Live Stream of service

February 16, 2021¹, marks the 800th anniversary of Nichiren Shonin’s birth. Nichiren Shu is celebrating this special day with an online 800th Anniversary Grand Ceremony at Kominatosan Tanjoji Temple.

Schedule
10:30 am: First Bell (Preparation)
10:40 am Second Bell (Congregation Entrance)
10:50 am Drum (Priest Entrance)

That’s 5:30pm Pacific tonight, Feb. 15.
 
Most of the announcements for this ceremony are understandable in Japanese. The main webpage for the event is at nichiren.or.jp/800houyou/. Of course, Google offers on-the-fly translation into English but you need to understand that not everything Google says is necessarily accurate.

Take this translation of the outline of the memorial service:

Nichiren is said to have been born in the second month of the year on the day after the Parinirvāṇa of Śākyamuni. In the modern calendar that makes his birthday Feb. 16, 1222. The reason this year is the 800th birthday and not 2022, is because you count the day of his birth as the first celebration. return

This weekend marked the Parinirvāṇa of Śākyamuni and the 800th birthday of Nichiren. In the sangha meeting the focus was on the Śākyamuni’s Parinirvāṇa. In Las Vegas, Rev. Shoda Kanai held a combined service. A combined service is what Rev. Kenjo Igarashi has planned for the end of February at the Sacramento Nichiren Buddhist Church.

I was particularly taken by Rev. Shoda Kanai’s prayer and asked for a copy. Here it is:

PRAYER BUDDHA’S NIRVANA & BIRTHDAY OF NICHIREN DAIBOSATSU

With reverence on this day to our Original Lord Teacher Śākyamuni Buddha, our great benefactor, who entered into Parinirvana, we also humbly conduct this ceremony to extol the 800th anniversary of our Founder’s birthday. We extend our heartfelt joy and praise by adorning this place before them and make offerings of incense, flowers, lights, tea and foods.

The Buddha expounded various teachings since the time of showing his attainment of awakening. He saves those of us who live in the ten-thousand-year age of Degeneration and who have not yet been given any root of good in our previous existences, by leaving us the seed of Buddhahood as a good medicine. His grace is beyond our comprehension. Now we have performed this service to commemorate his Parinirvana, wishing to requite a part of his favors that are as high as mountains and as vast as oceans.

May we accomplish the Buddha’s intention that all sentient beings be led to awakening so that the Saha World can be transformed into the Pure Land of Tranquil Light. The Lotus Sutra says, “In order to save the perverted people, I expediently show my Nirvana to them. In reality I shall never pass away. I always live here and expound the Dharma.” “I am leaving this good medicine here…” “I am always thinking: ‘How shall I cause all living beings to enter into the unsurpassed way and quickly become Buddhas?’” May the Buddha accept our deep gratitude to him out of his great compassion towards us.

Then the Buddha transmitted the essence of the Lotus Sutra and ordered that I be propagated in the Latter Age of the Dharma. It was roughly two thousand years later, that on February 16, 1222, the child of the bodhisattvas was born in the province of Awa in the country of Japan. That was our founder Nichiren Daibosatsu. He was innately endowed with the fulfilled merit of an original disciple of the Original Śākyamuni Buddha; however, to all appearances he was an ordinary person who engaged in strenuous practice. He accepted the transmission from the Eternal Buddha with deep reverence and established the wondrous school to sow the seed of the Wonderful Dharma. Out of his superior compassion he patiently endured many hardships as he taught using the contrary method of presenting the final teaching first and the strict way of breaking and subduing delusions. It is like looking up to a ray of light amidst the darkness of the defiled world. How can we adequately praise the incalculable favor of his teaching? That is why we hold this ceremony of joyful praise here so that we may repay but a drop of the ocean of his favors as a token of our gratitude to him.

The disciples of the Original Śākyamuni Buddha are described in Ch. 15, “They are not defiled by worldliness just as lotus flowers are not defiled by water.” The Buddha says in Ch. 21, “Anyone who…expounds this sutra after my extinction…will be able to eliminate the darkness of the living beings of the world where he walks about, just as the light of the sun and moon eliminates all darkness.”

May the merits we have accumulated by this offering be distributed among all living beings and may we and all other living beings attain the enlightenment of the Buddhas. May all the Dharma realms equally benefit.

Namu Myoho Renge Kyo

Today I attended the Sunday Nichiren Buddhist Sangha of the Bay Area service, which included a discussion of The Four Great Vows and Four Vows contained in the blue Nichiren-Shu Service Book.

The discussion was sort of my idea and my principal reason for discussing the Four Great Vows was what I find the odd translation of the second vow:

Our defilements are inexhaustible; I vow to quench them all.

I just don’t see the need to add “Our” here. I prefer the Tiantai version and the discussion of the vows contained in “A Guide to the Tiantai Fourfold Teachings” written in the 10th century by the Korean Buddhist Monk Chegwan.

The Four Great Bodhisattva Vows

1. There are those who have not yet transcended [the stream of birth and death]. I must carry them over.

   Beings are numberless;
   I vow to save them all.

   This vow is based on the fact of the noble truth of suffering.

2. There are those who are not yet free [from delusion]. I must liberate them.

   Defilements are inexhaustible;
   I vow to end them all.

   This vow is based on the fact of the noble truth of the accumulation [of the causes of suffering].

3. There are those who are not yet settled [in practicing the thirty-seven conditions leading to enlightenment]. I must assure them.

   The teachings are innumerable;
   I vow to master them all.

   This vow is based on the fact of the noble truth of the path [to enlightenment, the fourth noble truth].

4. There are those who have not yet attained nirvana. I must bring them to nirvana.

   The path to buddhahood is unsurpassed;
   I vow to attain it.

   This vow is based on the fact of the noble truth of cessation [of suffering, the third noble truth].

The second part of the discussion covered the Four Vows, which appear following the Four Great Vows in the blue Nichiren-Shu Service Book. The Four Great Vows are on page 78, the Four Vows on 79.

While the Nichiren Buddhist Sangha of the Bay Area services include the Four Great Vows, the Nichiren Buddhist Kannon Temple services held by Rev. Shoda Kanai in Las Vegas always use the Four Vows.

Four Vows
I vow to uphold the teaching of Namu Myoho Renge Kyo
I vow to practice the teaching of Namu Myoho Renge Kyo
I vow to protect the teaching of Namu Myoho Renge Kyo
I vow to spread the teaching of Namu Myoho Renge Kyo

It was very interesting to hear several interpretations of just what we mean by “the teaching of Namu Myoho Renge Kyo,” and especially what it means to uphold and to practice “the teaching of Namu Myoho Renge Kyo.” This is a place where it would have been nice to have a recording to fall back on.

Had a full Sunday today. After my personal morning service, I attended the Nichiren Buddhist Kannon Temple of Nevada Shodaigyo service offered via Zoom by Rev. Shoda Kanai.

After a brief break it was back on Zoom for the Nichiren Buddhist Sangha of the San Francisco Bay Area weekly service.

Bay Area Nichiren Buddhist Sangha services currently feature discussion of the Lotus Sutra on the first and third Sundays and general discussions on the second, fourth and, when called for, the fifth Sundays.

Ryugan Mark Herrick, the shami who coordinates the services, and Rev. Ryuei Michael McCormick accepted my suggested topic for today’s discussion.

For the meeting I needed to set the stage for the question. Here’s how I did that:

Imagine you have received a phone call from a woman you know. She has been chanting Namu Myoho Renge Kyo for nearly 50 years. She is calling you because the man who guided her practice for most of those years died last year. She is feeling lost with his passing.

She is calling because her younger sister’s grandson, an 18-year-old straight-A high school senior, was shot and killed by gang-bangers who mistook him for someone else.

This woman is the matriarch of her large family. The day before she called she presided over a memorial vigil at the sight of the shooting. Now she was seeking spiritual help for herself.

My question for discussion today:

What can you say that will ease her distress and empower her to move forward?

This is not the sort of call I get regularly. I was unsure what I could say to help. In passing I mentioned to her that this was certainly a challenge to her faith and she accepted that as something she could focus on. But I didn’t want that to be the only thing she took from the call. I wanted something more positive and constructive.

The merit of chanting came to mind. Here was a woman with nearly a half-century of merit from which to draw.

In Chapter 21, the Supernatural Powers of the Tathāgatas, the Buddha says:

[A]ll the teachings of the Tathāgata, all the unhindered, supernatural powers of the Tathāgata, all the treasury of the hidden core of the Tathāgata, and all the profound achievements of the Tathāgata are revealed and expounded explicitly in this sūtra.

In Kanjin Honzon-shō, A Treatise Revealing the Spiritual Contemplation and the Most Venerable One (Writings of Nichiren Shōnin, Doctrine 2, Page 146), Nichiren writes:

Śākyamuni Buddha’s merit of practicing the bodhisattva way leading to Buddhahood, as well as that of preaching and saving all living beings since His attainment of Buddhahood are altogether contained in the five words of myō, hō, ren, ge, and kyō and that consequently, when we uphold the five words, the merits which He accumulated before and after His attainment of Buddhahood are naturally transferred to us.

I suggested to the woman that this vast pool of merit she had obtained from years of chanting Namu Myōhō Renge Kyō could be put to use to help her sister’s grandson in his journey after death.

Rev. Kenjo Igarashi of the Sacramento Nichiren Buddhist Church wrote an essay back in May 2016 on the 49-day journey after death in which we said:

While it may seem as if we take little part in the deceased individual’s 49-day journey, this is not the case. One way we can assist them, is by chanting ”Namu myo ho renge kyo,” which as you know, is the name of the Buddha nature that we all possess. We chant this odaimoku throughout the 49 days to call upon the deceased individual’s Buddha nature. If you recall, the Buddha nature can be imagined as the inside of a seed, while the outer shell represents bad karma resulting primarily from previous actions. Whenever we chant the odaimoku, the Buddha nature slowly grows. While this is a slow process, the more we chant, the more the Buddha nature shows, until it finally appears by sprouting through the outer shell.

I suggested that she hold a memorial service every seven days for seven weeks. The Memorial Prayer is available in the daily service book. This was something she could do, a concrete expression of her faith and her hope for her sister’s grandson.

I’m aware that some people fear that focusing on funerary services will somehow weaken Buddhism in America. And I will admit that those funerary services – Ohigan in the spring and fall, Obon in the summer, individual memorial services throughout the year – play a prominent role at the Sacramento Nichiren Buddhist Church, which was founded by five Japanese immigrant families in 1931. But  funerary services do not require a diminishment of Buddhist studies or practice. We can have both, and I would argue that Buddhism is stronger for it.

Back in mid-December I accused Gene Reeves of a rare error and quickly apologized for my rash judgement the next day.

The subject of my debate was the status of the Buddha Sun and Moon Light before he became a Buddha in Chapter 1, Introduction. Reeves, in his book, The Stories of the Lotus Sutra said:

The fact that before becoming a fully awakened buddha Sun and Moon Light was a prince living in a palace with eight sons reveals a recurrent theme of the Sutra: the idea that what is happening now is both new and unprecedented, and has happened many times before.

Since Senchu Murano’s translation said the last Sun and Moon Light Buddha was a king, I jumped to the conclusion that Reeves was in error, only to discover that the other English-language translation don’t specify what his royal status was before becoming a Buddha, leaving the status undetermined.

Even Reeves’ translation of the Lotus Sutra doesn’t specify the status of the last Sun and Moon Light Buddha:

“Before the last of these buddhas had left his home, he had eight royal sons.

This royal status issue plays out again in Chapter 7, The Parable of a Magic City. Was Great-Universal-Wisdom-Excellence Buddha a prince or a king when he had 16 princes? This time Murano is silent on the issue:

Bhikṣus! At the end of the period of ten small kalpas, the Dharma of the Buddhas came into the mind of Great-Universal­-Wisdom-Excellence Buddha. Now he attained Anuttara-samyak-saṃbodhi. Before he left home, he had sixteen sons.

Reeves translation:

Monks, only after ten small eons had gone by did the Dharma of the buddhas appear before Excellent in Great Penetrating Wisdom Buddha and he could attain supreme awakening. That Buddha, before he had left home, had sixteen sons, the first of whom was named Accumulated Wisdom.

The conclusion that this time the Buddha had been a prince is suggested by the next paragraph of Chapter 7, which specifies that the grandfather of the 16 princes – the father of the Buddha – was the wheel-turning-holy-king. (Of course this presupposes that the grandfather here is the paternal grandfather and not the father of the children’s mother, who is also mentioned in the same paragraph.)

This all comes up today after I published a portion of Ichidai Goji Keizu, Genealogical Chart of the Buddha’s Lifetime Teachings in Five Periods, Writings of Nichiren Shōnin, Doctrine 3, Page 248, in which Nichiren specifies that “The seventh chapter on ‘The Parable of a Magic City’ of the Lotus Sūtra states that the Great Universal Wisdom Buddha had been the king of a country with 16 princes before entering the priesthood.”

One thing I think everyone can agree on: This whole debate doesn’t really matter.