When I got up at 7 am and discovered my Internet had been out for more than four hours, I didn’t have high expectations for my day. Still I soldiered on. I got dressed and did my morning service, reciting the second day’s portion of the Lotus Sutra in shindoku and chanting Namu Myōhō Renge Kyō for 20 minutes.

Checked the Internet. Nothing. You never know what chanting might bring. (Winking smiley face goes here.)

I called my Internet service provider and waited on hold. And waited on hold. And waited on hold. Finally got to talk with a tech support guy only to be disconnected before he could complete troubleshooting my problem.

I called my Internet service provider and waited on hold. And waited on hold. And waited on hold. And waited on hold. And waited on hold. OK. It is Sunday. Can’t expect a full staff.

Finally reached a woman who quickly diagnosed my problem: the backup battery for my fiber-optic connection to my service provider appears to be dead. No battery; no connection. And, again, it is Sunday and the tech support woman said I’d receive a call to schedule a service call to replace the battery. Just not today.

I ended the call and shrugged my shoulders. (Really working hard on the paramita of patience.) And then I looked at the phone and thought: Can I get my weak local cellphone connection to replace my fiber-optic connection?

To be frank, I was surprised at how well it worked.

Dharma talk video

Having completed my Zoom day I was able to share my phone’s cellular WiFi connection and complete this blog post. All together, not a bad day.

Today I participated in another of the Enkyoji Buddhist Network’s online classes. This one dealt with the Four Noble Truths.

The assignment prior to today’s Zoom class was straightforward:

Please take a critical look at basic translations of the Four Noble Truths you find online and compare them. Informed by your own faith and practice, reinterpret or translate the Four Noble Truths through your own critical lens.

I pretty much ignored that and instead took advantage this website, where, since 2015, I’ve been collecting quotes from books on Buddhism that I read to backstop my memory. Searching “noble truths” returns 81 posts.

Here are the quotes that I offered to fulfill my class assignment.

From Awakening to the Lotus

The first thing the Buddha taught was the Four Noble Truths. Put simply, these are:

• Life is Suffering
• There is a cause for Suffering
• Suffering can be overcome
• The way to overcome suffering is the Eightfold Path

From Ryusho Kansho Shonin’s Lecture on the Lotus Sutra

Our practice includes the Four Noble Truths, the Eightfold Path, the Twelve-Link Chain of Causation, the Six Paramitas, and it is all contained in the Lotus Sutra and the Odaimoku of Namu Myoho Renge Kyo. When we strive to live according to the fundamental truths of Buddhism and follow the teachings in the Lotus Sutra by chanting the sutra and the Odaimoku, we create a life that manifests our inherent Buddha potential and allows us to live a life of indestructible happiness.

From The Beginnings of Buddhism:

“O brothers, this is the Noble Truth of Suffering. Birth is suffering; old age is suffering; illness is suffering; death is suffering; meeting people one hates is suffering; parting from people one loves is suffering; failing to get what one wants is suffering. In other words, all five aggregates of the body and mind, which have attachments to things and to people, and of the environment are suffering. This is the Noble Truth of Suffering.

“O brothers, this is the Noble Truth of the Cause of Suffering. Craving – for sensual pleasure, continued existence, and annihilation; for happiness in all places, accompanied by joy and covetousness – which leads to rebirth, is the basic cause and reason for suffering. And this is the Noble Truth of the Cause of Suffering.

“O brothers, this is the Noble Truth of the Extinction of Suffering. The Noble Truth of the Extinction of Suffering is the total elimination of craving, abandoning it entirely, being liberated from it, and no longer having any attachments.

“O brothers, this is the Noble Truth of the Path to the Extinction of Suffering. The Eightfold Noble Path – right view, right thinking, right speech, right action, right living, right effort, right memory, and right meditation – is the Noble Truth of the Path to the Extinction of Suffering.” (Page 33-34)

From Lotus Seeds:

Right View is fully understanding life as revealed by the Four Noble Truths.

Right Intention is thinking clearly without the distortion of greed, hatred, or delusion. We are sincere and do not harbor ulterior motives.

Right Speech is the avoidance of deceit, gossip, slander, and other forms of verbal abuse and dishonesty. Instead, we speak only to benefit others and to reveal the truth.

Right Action is conducting oneself in an ethical manner and acting to benefit others. We refrain from killing, stealing, sexual deception or exploitation, and other activities harmful to ourselves and to others.

Right Livelihood is making a living without harming or exploiting others. Right livelihood precludes such activities as dealing in armaments, drug dealing, fraud, insider trading and any other means of living that involves the exploitation or harming of others. In other words, our work should be in accord with the rest of the Eightfold Path.

Right Effort is making every effort to develop good habits while curbing our bad habits.

Right Mindfulness is developing an ongoing awareness of all aspects of our life, including our physical condition and actions, our feelings, moods, ideas, our general enviroument, and our relations with others. Through such careful attention we are able to see more deeply into the true nature of our lives.

Right Concentration is making every effort to develop our Buddhist practice in order to acquire tranquility, insight into the true nature of life, and liberation from false views.

From Open Your Eyes by Ryuei Shonin

In Treatise on protecting the Nation, Nichiren provides citations from various sūtras to justify this time scheme of the five periods. These five flavors or periods were then made to correspond to certain analogies used in the sūtras. One analogy comes from the Nirvāṇa Sūtra and relates the teachings to milk and its products – cream, curds, butter, and clarified butter. …

[The second period] The Deer Park – for the next twelve years beginning with the Deer Park discourse, the Buddha exclusively taught the tripiṭaka doctrine for the śrāvakas. At this stage the Buddha taught the four noble truths and the twelvefold chain of dependent origination in order to free people from worldly attachments and to overcome self-centeredness.

From Lotus Seeds:

Of the Four Higher Worlds – voice­ hearers, privately awakened ones, bodhisattvas, and buddhas – voice­ hearers is the world as viewed from the perspective of the Four Noble Truths: suffering, the cause of suffering, freedom from suffering, and the way to eliminate suffering. Those who live in this state of mind look to the Buddha for insight and guidance, and strive to free themselves from the Six Lower Worlds.

From Introduction to the Lotus Sutra:

The First Noble Truth is, “All is suffering.” Suffering here refers to the situation in which we cannot meet our desires or wishes. This truth implies that all life is suffering as long as we are dominated by greed, ignorance of the law, and hostility towards others. Our desires can never be fully satisfied.

The Second Noble Truth states, “The cause of sufferings is ignorance.” This means that suffering in life is caused by ignorance arising from our instincts, such as thirst, hunger, sex, and fear.

The Third Noble Truth states, “The extinction of ignorance is nirvana.” The sravakas took this to mean that ignorance could be extinguished only by quenching human desires.

The Fourth Noble Truth maintains, “The Way to Nirvana is by practicing the Eightfold Path.” The Eightfold Path consists of (1) right views (a correct understanding of the Four Noble Truths), (2) right thoughts (the ability to reflect on the Four Truths), (3) right speech (speaking only the truth and words of kindness), (4) right deeds (proper acts—that is, morality), (5) right livelihood (making a living without harming others), (6) right effort (or exertion), (7) right memory (memory of things beneficial to enlightenment), and (8) right concentration of mind (correct meditation).

From Basic Buddhist Concepts:

Buddhism begins with a direct examination of suffering, which figures prominently in most basic Buddhist teachings. For instance, one of the most fundamental of Buddhist doctrines is the four seals of the Law – suffering, impermanence, absence of a permanent self, and nirvana. The first of the Four Noble Truths is that birth is suffering, and in the Twelve-linked Chain of Dependent Origination, the final link, aging and death, is described as lamentable and pitiable suffering. Because of the numerous mentions of suffering in the most ancient scriptures, some people criticize Buddhism as pessimistic or argue that it is too otherworldly and aloof from the affairs of everyday life. But to overcome suffering is the purpose of all religions. The ultimate goal of Buddhism, too, is to conquer suffering, transcend the cycle of transmigrations, and attain the tranquility called nirvana.

Again from Basic Buddhist Concepts:

Put to use in everyday life, the Eightfold Path can enhance health, keep people on the proper moral and ethical road, increase efficiency at work, establish a correct view of the world and humankind, and cultivate wisdom. But Mahayana Buddhism rejected sole reliance on the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path as insufficient for its goal, which is to work diligently not only for personal enlightenment but also for the improvement of one’s fellow human beings and all society. Though Mahayana followers recognized the value of the Hinayana truths and principles of action for self-improvement, they decried the absence of altruistic ideals. In the stead of the solitary arhat, they adopted the ideal of the bodhisattva, whose first consideration is the benefit and happiness of other beings. The Eightfold Path, which cannot serve as a complete teaching for bodhisattvas, was replaced with the Six Perfections as the model for religious action.

Again from Basic Buddhist Concepts:

No more permanent than any other aspect of the world, suffering can be converted into happiness. But seeking the reason for suffering’s existence is the necessary first step toward achieving this transformation. Only by examining the causal relationship giving rise to sorrows is it possible to discover a logical way to eliminate them. Shakyamuni did precisely this. The second of the Four Noble Truths gives the cause of suffering as craving. (The Twelve-linked Chain of Dependent Origination … is a more detailed explanation of the cause of suffering.) The third and fourth Noble Truths enunciate the way to eliminate suffering, testifying to a state in which suffering is extinct and teaching the Eightfold Path as the way to reach that state. Thus we see the close interrelation of the seals of the Law, the Four Noble Truths, and the law of dependent origination.

From The Profound Meaning of the Lotus Sutra: Tien-tai Philosophy of Buddhism

Sui-hsin-hsing Wei (Position of the practice following faith) is the first of the Seven Saintly Positions. The name of this position Sui-hsin-hsing (Skt., śraddhānusārin) is derived from the person with dull faculties (Ch., Tun-ken; Skt., mṛdvindriya). He enters the Path of Vision (Ch., Ju Chien-tao; Skt., niyāmāvakramapa) by his belief in what he is told by others, but not by his own intellect.

Sui-fa-hsing Wei (Position of the practice following the Dharma) is the second of the Seven Saintly Positions. In opposite to the above one, the person with relatively sharp faculties (Ch., Li-ken; Skt., t̄kyṣṇēndriya) achieves this position Sui-fa-hsing (Skt., dharmānusārin), because he enters the Path through his own contemplation of the Four Noble Truths. The first and this second position are at the initial stage of religious path and are referred to as the “Path of Vision” (Ch., Chien-tao; Skt., darśanamārga) (which entails no practice). (Vol. 2, Page 202-203)

From Nizen Nijō Bosatsu Fu-sabutsu Ji, Never-Attaining Buddhahood by the Two Vehicles and Bodhisattvas in the Pre-Lotus Sūtras, Writings of Nichiren Shōnin, Doctrine 3, Page 221-222

It is stated in the Discourse on the Diamond Scalpel by Grand Master Dengyō:

“The truth that motivates the bodhisattvas to take the Four Great Vows is the Four Noble Truths (the truth regarding the suffering, the cause of suffering, the extinction of suffering, and the path to enlightenment). Delusion of life and death that everything in the universe (3,000 Existences in the 100 Realms) repeats is the truth that life is full of suffering. Realizing in mind and body that this delusion of life and death is itself enlightenment is called the ‘vow to save all the people.’

From Hokke Daimoku Shō, Treatise on the Daimoku of the Lotus Sūtra, Writings of Nichiren Shōnin, Faith and Practice, Volume 4, Page 36

How then can it be denied that something wonderful happens with the Lotus Sūtra? Even a parrot is said to have been reborn in the realm of heavenly beings just by repeating the name of the Four Noble Truths of the Hinayāna teaching. Moreover, a man who dedicated himself to the Three Treasures – the Buddha, Dharma, and Saṃgha – was able to escape the attack of a monster fish in the ocean. Imagine the wonders that would occur with the daimoku of the Lotus Sūtra, the essence of all the 80,000 teachings, and the eye of all the Buddhas. Do you still hold the belief that you cannot escape the four kinds of evil realms by just chanting the daimoku of the Lotus Sūtra?

The new normal.

Attended the monthly Kaji Kito service at the Sacramento Nichiren Buddhist Church. The masked crowd was given a socially distanced purification prayer by Rev. Kenjo Igarashi. Judging by California’s revised guidelines it will be at least five weeks before services will again be allowed inside. The grass in the courtyard between the Social Hall and the Temple is already showing signs of wear and Rev. Igarashi, who serves as the church gardener in his spare time, is worried that the grass will not survive.

I wish I were able to detail Rev. Igarashi’s Dharma talk but I didn’t record it. The subject, however, was about the need for religion to meet the needs of individual before focusing on wider goals. This was the subject of Rev. Igarashi’s Lecture published in the church’s November/December 2016 newsletter. After discussing Nichiren Shonin and his various forms of prayer for differing purposes, Rev. Igarashi writes:

However, I personally think that we must first attempt to practice what I like to call “rissho anshin” or “establishing one’s peace of mind”, before embarking on a path to help others. We cannot expect someone who is suffering or unhappy with his or her life to have the capacity to pray for world peace. However, we can use the teachings of the Lotus Sutra, or the “right teaching” as Nichiren Shonin called it, to work towards attaining happiness, after which we can pray for peace within one’s family, the country, and then the world. Thus, we can take small steps that would allow us to ultimately practice what Nichiren Shonin stated in his Rissho Ankoku Ron.

Focusing on Rissho Anshin Before Rissho Ankoku

Yesterday I posted about Ryusho Kansho Jeffus Shonin’s memorial services. I had wanted to include the program from the sangha memorial but had misplaced my copy. Davie Endo Byden-Oakes has sent me another copy and so I have an opportunity to include it now.

Davie opened with these prepared remarks:

Hello everyone and thank you for your presence on this special day.

To say goodbye to Ryusho Kansho Jeffus Shonin who accompanied many of us on the steep path of the Dharma so that a sweet rain of ambrosia soothes our respective karmas and helps us taste the flavour of the Sutra of the Lotus.

Because of his discretion many of us did not know that he was among the first non-Japanese practitioners of Nichiren Shu to be ordained Shami and then Priest. This is how Ryusho was, modest and following in the footsteps of our founder the great Bodhisattva Nichiren Shonin and the eternal Buddha Shakyamuni.

Thank you and goodbye Sesnei Ryusho Kansho Jeffus Shonin.

As with all of Ryusho’s recent services, it was held in both English and French, with Alice and sometimes Béatrice tasked with helping translate English to French for those attendees who cannot speak both.

Hocine offered a French translation of Davie’s introduction and then the service began using the Ryusho’s sangha Dharma book.

Invocation – English Alice
Invocation – French Hocine

Verses for Opening the Sutra – English John
Verses for Opening the Sutra – French Béatrice

Lotus Sutra Chapter 2 – Shindoku Neil
Lotus Sutra Chapter 16 – Shindoku John

Nichiren’s Words – English Neil
Letter to Niike
“How swiftly the days pass! It makes us realize how few are the
years we have left. Friends enjoy the cherry blossoms together
on spring mornings, and then they are gone, carried away like
the blossoms by the winds of impermanence, leaving nothing
but their names. Although the blossoms have scattered, the
cherry trees will bloom again with the coming of the spring, but
when will those people be reborn?”

Nichiren’s Words – French Alice
Lettre à Nikko
Avec quelle rapidité les jours s’enfuient-ils ! En les voyant ainsi
passer, nous comprenons la brièveté des années qu’il nous reste
à vivre. Les amis avec qui, par les matinées de printemps, nous
goûtions la joie d’admirer les cerisiers en fleur, ne sont plus. Les
vents de l’impermanence les ont emportés, comme des pétales,
ne laissant derrière eux que leurs noms. Même si les pétales des
fleurs se sont éparpillées, les cerisiers refleuriront au printemps
prochain, mais quand renaîtront ces êtres qui ne sont plus?

Odaimoku Chanting Davie
(Please offer incense while chanting)
Namu Myo Ho Ren Ge Kyo
南無妙法蓮華経

Difficulty of Retaining the Sutra – English Vittoria
Difficulty of Retaining the Sutra – French Juan

Prayer Davie
Four Great Vows – Shindoku Hocine
Final Words
Anyone present would like to say a few words?

Yesterday afternoon I attended the formal service for Ryusho Kansho Jeffus Shonin. I say “the formal service” because his sangha, the people who practiced with him via Zoom, held their own service today. I think Ryushho would have been impressed by the showing at the “formal service” but he would have been very happy with his sangha’s tribute.

My wife and I both attended the formal service, which was held at 4 pm our time. Whoever decided the time certainly didn’t take Ryusho’s sangha into consideration. The majority are in England and Europe, putting the service at midnight or 1 am.

It was nice to see the American Nichiren Shu priests take part – Ryuoh Faulkconer, Kanjin Cederman, Shinkyo Warner, Myokei Caine-Barrett, Ryuei McCormick and Shoda Kanai. Several shami attended along with at least one foreign priest, Ervinna Myoufu from Jakarta.

The number of attendees fluctuated between 46 and 50, including Ryusho’s brother, Tim, and his niece, Beth. We even had an unwanted Zoom-bomber interrupt the service.

But the real people who missed Ryusho showed up Sunday morning to pay tribute to their sensei. Led by Davie Endo Byden-Oakes, the sangha members from the United States, England, Portugal, France and Czech Republic held a fitting memorial service. Each component of the service was divided among the attendess, just as Ryusho had divided the services he held.

See Service d’aurevoir à Ryusho Kansho Jeffus Shonin

At 8:27 am today I received word that Rev. Ryusho Shonin had died this morning at the Syracuse VA Medical Center, where he had been hospitalized since July 24, 2020. Anyone who has followed this blog will understand just how important Ryusho Shonin has been in the development of my practice.

Here’s a chronological snapshot of his influence.

March 21, 2016, Monday night study is an example of Ryusho’s efforts to merge practice and study.

Introduction
I attended Ryusho’s 2015 and 2016 Urban Retreats.

As a former member of Soka Gakkai, Ryusho Jeffus was able to help others understand how Nichiren Shu differed from SGI.

I want to finish this with a quote from Ryusho’s Lecture on the Lotus Sutra:

Perhaps it is the reality of our modern advertisement saturated media that has led many to believe that only after buying and using every product known to man, after every single penny is spent that has ever been earned in the entire history of man- and womankind then and only then will somehow perfection and happiness be possible. Somehow by doing something so unlikely to produce indestructible happiness as buying a product is more realistic than the realization that each one of us is already all we need to be. We are as complete as we need to be in order to become indestructibly happy. All we need to do is simply wake up to this reality in our lives, and the Buddha is telling us that the Lotus Sutra is the most efficacious way of doing this.