My teaching is wonderful and inconceivable.
If arrogant people hear me,
They will not respect or believe me.

The Buddha sings these verses to Śāriputra in Chapter Two of the Lotus Sūtra. We sometimes think of arrogance as acting as if we know something that we really do not. These verses contrast arrogance with respect and faith. Faith does not mean blind belief. It is still important to ask questions when we don’t understand. Respect does not mean blind obedience, but it does mean that we have confidence in what the Buddha teaches, no matter how difficult it may seem. Arrogance blocks our ability to hear the Buddha. Respect and Faith open our hearts to his enlightenment.

The Daily Dharma is produced by the Lexington Nichiren Buddhist Community. To subscribe to the daily emails, visit zenzaizenzai.com

My words are true.
Believe me with all your hearts!
I have been teaching them
Since the remotest past.

The Buddha sings these verses to Maitreya Bodhisattva and others gathered to hear him teach in Chapter Fifteen of the Lotus Sūtra. Maitreya had never seen any of the other Bodhisattvas who sprang up from underground in this chapter, despite his memory of previous lives and other worlds. The Buddha explains that the beings who had just appeared are also his disciples and have come to spread this Wonderful Dharma in our world. Nichiren teaches that when he realized that he was an incarnation of Superior-Practice, the leader of the Bodhisattvas from underground, then all of us who follow Nichiren and continue to keep the Lotus Sūtra are the followers of Superior-Practice. We do not need to wait for someone to come to our world and lead us. The world does not need anyone other than those already here to teach the Dharma. We are the Bodhisattvas from underground.

The Daily Dharma is produced by the Lexington Nichiren Buddhist Community. To subscribe to the daily emails, visit zenzaizenzai.com

The arrogant bhikṣus, bhikṣuṇis, upāsakas and upāsikās, that is, the four kinds of devotees who had abused him and caused him to be called Never-Despising, saw that he had obtained great supernatural powers, the power of eloquence, and the great power of good tranquility. Having seen all this, and having heard the Dharma from him, they took faith in him, and followed him.

The Buddha tells this story of Never-Despising Bodhisattva in Chapter Twenty of the Lotus Sūtra. Earlier in the sūtra, when the Buddha came out of his meditation to teach the Wonderful Dharma, five thousand of those gathered to hear him stood up and walked away. The Buddha did not stop them, and described them as arrogant: believing they knew something they did not. The arrogance of those who abused Never-Despising Bodhisattva, whose practice was to declare his respect for all beings, was rooted in their not seeing the Buddha’s wisdom in him and believing that they were superior to him. We can only learn from those we respect, and create misery only for ourselves when we despise.

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If anyone keeps, reads, recites, expounds and copies even a gāthā of the Sūtra of the Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Dharma, and respects a copy of this sūtra just as he respects me…or just joins his hands together respectfully towards it, Medicine-King, know this, that person should be considered to have appeared in the world of men out of their compassion towards all living beings.

The Buddha declares these lines to Medicine-King Bodhisattva at the beginning of Chapter Ten of the Lotus Sūtra. We might believe that everything happens by chance, or that we were sent into this life by someone who is testing us. This Sūtra awakens us to our existence as Bodhisattvas who asked to be born in this world of suffering out of our vow to benefit all beings.

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Provisional teachings today are enemies of the True Dharma. If provisional teachings stand in your way as you try to spread the One Vehicle teaching of the Lotus Sutra, you should thoroughly refute them. Of the two ways of propagation, this is the aggressive way of the Lotus Sutra.

Nichiren wrote this passage in his Treatise on the True Way of Practicing the Teaching of the Buddha (Nyosetsu Shugyō-shō). We notice in this passage that his instruction is to refute the provisional teachings and not attack those who are attached to them. Even if those whose teachings we challenge become angry and violent, we can understand that we did not cause this reaction. This is one reason the Lotus Sūtra is so difficult. By keeping a mind of compassion we can maintain our respect for others even when we disagree with them. They too are going to become Buddhas, and we are benefiting them, even if they reject our help.

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Thereupon Universal-Sage Bodhisattva said to the Buddha:
“World-Honored One! If anyone keeps this sūtra in the defiled world in the later five hundred years after [your extinction], I will protect him so that he may be free from any trouble, that he may be peaceful, and that no one may take advantage [of his weak points].”

Universal-Sage Bodhisattva (Fugen, Samantabhadra) makes this vow to the Buddha in Chapter Twenty-Eight of the Lotus Sutra. In this world of conflict, it can seem like very few people are practicing the Buddha Dharma with us. Nichiren compared those beings alive in this world of conflict to the amount of soil in the whole earth, while those who keep and practice the Lotus Sūtra are like the dirt under a fingernail. The vow of Universal-Sage reminds us that innumerable beings support our practice and that in turn, we support them with our practice.

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Medicine-King! I will tell you.
The Sūtra of the Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Dharma
Is the most excellent sūtra
That I have ever expounded.

The Buddha sings these verses to Medicine-King Bodhisattva in Chapter Ten of the Lotus Sūtra. Our founder Nichiren explained that the superiority of the Lotus Sūtra lay not in its being more powerful than other Sūtras, but that it leads all beings, without exception, to the Buddha’s own enlightenment. Other teachings distinguish between those who can follow the Buddha Dharma and those who cannot. But this teaching assures everyone who hears it that they will become enlightened.

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Know this, Śāriputra!
I once vowed that I would cause
All living beings to become
Exactly as I am.

That old vow of mine
Has now been fulfilled.
I lead all living beings
Into the Way to Buddhahood.

The Buddha sings these verses in Chapter Two of the Lotus Sūtra. Earlier in the chapter he explained that all the teachings he used before the Lotus Sūtra were mere expedients, intended to use our desire for happiness to bring us out of our suffering and onto the path of enlightenment. The expedient teachings were tailored to the ignorant and deluded minds of those who heard them, but had not yet revealed the true wisdom and compassion of the Buddha. Now that we have met this Wonderful Dharma, we are assured of our enlightenment and that of all beings. We learn to see innumerable Buddhas in limitless worlds through unimaginable time, and our own true selves at the heart of reality.

The Daily Dharma is produced by the Lexington Nichiren Buddhist Community. To subscribe to the daily emails, visit zenzaizenzai.com

The great multitude, having seen the two Tathāgatas sitting cross-legged on the lion-like seat in the stūpa of the seven treasures, thought, “The seat of the Buddhas is too high. Tathāgata! Raise us up by your supernatural powers so that we may be able to be with you in the sky!”

This description comes from Chapter Eleven of the Lotus Sūtra. Many-Treasures Buddha has arrived where the Buddha was teaching so that he could endorse this Wonderful Dharma. He invited the Buddha to join him in an enormous stūpa tower hanging in the sky. When the Buddha raises up those gathered to hear him teach, he puts them all on the same level as himself and all the other Buddhas. He shows them that they too have the capacity to hear his teachings and put them into practice. Nichiren depicted this “ceremony in the air” in the Omandala Gohonzon and advised us to use this as the focus of our practice. When we put ourselves into this great multitude we listen for the Buddha teaching and realize the benefit we create in this world.

The Daily Dharma is produced by the Lexington Nichiren Buddhist Community. To subscribe to the daily emails, visit zenzaizenzai.com

Even if one should read 80,000 holy scriptures, set up stupas as numerous as the number of dust-particles of the great earth, observe the Mahayana and Hinayana precepts, and love all the people in all the worlds throughout the universe just as one’s sole child, one cannot dissipate the sin of slandering the Lotus Sutra. It is solely due to the sin of slandering the Lotus Sutra that we are unable to attain Buddhahood throughout the past, present and future lives and continue to suffer in the lower six realms.

Nichiren wrote this passage in his Treatise on Śubhākarasiṃha (Zemmui-shō). It is difficult to understand what Nichiren means by “slandering the Lotus Sutra.” Many wise people have debated this term over many years. We know that it prevents us from seeing things as they are and becoming enlightened, but it is as hard to tell whether we are slandering the Sutra as it is to see our own delusions. When we deny the possibility of enlightenment, either for ourselves or others, when we ignore the teaching provided by the Lotus Sutra and rely on our power over others, or when we remain preoccupied with our own suffering, these are surely ways that we slander the Sutra and stray from the path to Enlightenment.

The Daily Dharma is produced by the Lexington Nichiren Buddhist Community. To subscribe to the daily emails, visit zenzaizenzai.com