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