Category Archives: Dogen

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Dōgen and the Lotus Sutra

dogen-and-the-lotus-sutra-bookcover
From the flyleaf of the book:

As a religion concerned with universal liberation, Zen grew out of a Buddhist worldview very different from the currently prevalent scientific materialism. Indeed, says Taigen Dan Leighton, Zen cannot be fully understood outside of a worldview that sees reality itself as a vital, dynamic agent of awareness and healing. In this book, Leighton explicates that worldview through the writings of the Zen master Eihei Dōgen (1200-1253), considered the founder of the Japanese Sōtō Zen tradition, which currently enjoys increasing popularity in the West.

The Lotus Sutra, arguably the most important Buddhist scripture in East Asia, contains a famous story about bodhisattvas (enlightening beings) who emerge from under the earth to preserve and expound the Lotus teaching in the distant future. The story reveals that the Buddha only appears to pass away, but actually has been practicing, and will continue to do so, over an inconceivably long life span.

Leighton traces commentaries on the Lotus Sutra from a range of key East Asian Buddhist thinkers, including Daosheng, Zhiyi, Zhanran, Saigyo, Myōe, Nichiren, Hakuin, and Ryōkan. But his main focus is Eihei Dōgen, the 13th century Japanese Sōtō Zen founder who imported Zen from China, and whose profuse, provocative, and poetic writings are important to the modern expansion of Buddhism to the West.

Dōgen’s use of this sutra expresses the critical role of Mahayana vision and imagination as the context of Zen teaching, and his interpretations of this story furthermore reveal his dynamic worldview of the earth, space, and time themselves as vital agents of spiritual awakening.

Leighton argues that Dōgen uses the images and metaphors in this story to express his own religious worldview, in which earth, space, and time are lively agents in the bodhisattva project. Broader awareness of Dōgen’s worldview and its implications, says Leighton, can illuminate the possibilities for contemporary approaches to primary Mahayana concepts and practices.

As Taigen Dan Leighton explains:

Dōgen quotes the Lotus Sutra more by far than any other sutra, and with unsurpassed veneration. In the Shōbōgenzō (True Dharma Eye Treasury) essay “Taking Refuge in the Three Treasures” (“Kie Buppōsō-hō”), he quotes a passage from the closing verse of chapter 16 about how beings who are beset by their evil karma do not ever hear the name of the three treasures (buddha, Dharma, and sangha), whereas those who are virtuous, gentle, and upright see the Buddha’s enduring presence on Vulture Peak. Immediately after quoting from chapter 16 about the Buddha’s enduring life span, Dōgen says that this Lotus Sutra is itself the single great cause for the appearance of buddha tathāgatas, substituting the sutra itself for the intention to awaken all beings cited as the single great cause for buddhas in chapter 2 of the sutra. Then he declares that the Lotus Sutra “may be said to be the great king and the great master of all the various sutras that the Buddha Śākyamuni taught. Compared with this sutra, all the other sutras are merely its servants, its relatives, for it alone expounds the Truth.”

Dōgen and the Lotus Sutra, p67

As a Nichiren follower, I find Dōgen’s view of the Lotus Sutra very “Zen”:

In the essay in Shōbōgenzō that most directly and fully focuses on the Lotus Sutra, called “The Dharma Flower Turns the Dharma Flower” (“Hokke-Ten-Hokke”) from 1241, Dōgen celebrates the value of sutras while explicitly responding to the Zen axiom about sutra study that privileges direct mind-to-mind teaching above study of words and letters. The essay centers on a dialogue from the Platform Sutra of the Sixth Ancestor, Dajian Huineng (638-713; Daikan Enō in Japanese), who tells a monk who has memorized the Lotus Sutra that he does not understand the sutra. Huineng tells the monk, “When the mind is in delusion, the Flower of Dharma turns. When the mind is in realization [enlightenment], we turn the Flower of Dharma.” Dōgen clarifies how this story implies the necessity for an awakened hermeneutical approach to the active, practical applications of sutra study, rather than being caught by reified scriptural formulations.

Much of the essay involves intricate wordplay and discussion concerning the polarity of turning the Dharma flower, or else being turned by it, which Dōgen eventually resolves in characteristically nondualistic fashion. In the conclusion he says that now that we have heard about this turning or being turned and “experienced the meeting of the ancient buddha with ancient buddhas, how could this not be a land of ancient buddhas? We should rejoice that the Dharma flower is turning from age to age, and the Dharma flower is turning from day to night, as the Dharma flower turns the ages and turns the days and nights.” For Dōgen, the reality of the Dharma flower and of the Buddha’s enduring life span transforms the very earth and time itself. He ends the lengthy essay by proclaiming, “The reality that exists as it is … is profound, great, and everlasting [referencing the Buddha’s life span], is mind in delusion, the Flower of Dharma turning, and is mind in realization, turning the Flower of Dharma, which is really just the Flower of Dharma turning the Flower of Dharma. … If perfect realization can be like this, the Flower of Dharma turns the Flower of Dharma. When we serve offerings to it, venerate, honor, and praise it like this, the Flower of Dharma is the Flower of Dharma.”

In Dōgen’s reality, ultimately the Lotus turning the practitioner, as well as the practitioner turning the Lotus, are both simply instances of the Lotus Dharma turning the Lotus Dharma. The Dharma of the Lotus Sutra is simply nondual and wondrous.

Dōgen and the Lotus Sutra, p68-69

Consider the dreams of Dōgen:

In another of the numerous examples in Shōbōgenzo of Dōgen using wordplay to invert conventional thinking, in “Within a Dream Expressing the Dream” (“Muchū Setsumu”), written in 1242, he extensively elaborates on his statement “All buddhas express the dream within a dream.” He thereby denies the supposedly lesser reality of the “dreams” of the transient phenomenal world and negates a Platonic exaltation of the absolute, which LaFleur describes as the antithesis of Lotus Sutra teaching. Instead, Dōgen proclaims the dream world of phenomena as exactly the realm of buddhas’ activity: “Every dewdrop manifested in every realm is a dream. This dream is the glowing clarity of the hundred grasses. … Do not mistake them as merely dreamy.” The liberative awakening of buddhas is itself described as a dream: “Without expressing dreams, there are no buddhas. Without being within a dream, buddhas do not emerge and turn the wondrous dharma wheel. This dharma wheel is no other than a buddha together with a buddha, and a dream expressed within a dream. Simply expressing the dream within a dream is itself the buddhas and ancestors, the assembly of unsurpassable enlightenment.”

Dōgen is not frivolously indulging in mere paradox here, but follows the logic of the dream as necessarily the locus of awakening. As he says in his celebrated 1233 Shōbōgenzō essay, “Actualizing the Fundamental Point” (“Genjōkōan”), “Those who have great realization of delusion are buddhas.”

What is worthy of study is not delusions or fantasies about enlightenment, but the reality of the causes and conditions of the realms of delusion and suffering. A similar logic is expressed in the Lotus Sutra dictum that buddhas manifest only due to the presence of suffering beings.

Dōgen and the Lotus Sutra, p32-33

Or this example:

In his Enlightenment Day jōdō, number 88, in 1241, Dōgen says:

“Two thousand years later, we are the descendants [of Śākyamuni]. Two thousand years ago, he was our ancestral father. He is muddy and wet from following and chasing after the waves. It can be described like this, but also there is the principle of the Way [that we must] make one mistake after another. What is this like? Whether Buddha is present or not present, I trust he is right under our feet. Face after face is Buddha’s face; fulfillment after fulfillment is Buddha’s fulfillment.

“Last night, this mountain monk [Dōgen] unintentionally stepped on a dried turd and it jumped up and covered heaven and earth. This mountain monk unintentionally stepped on it again, and it introduced itself, saying, “My name is Śākyamuni.” Then, this mountain monk unintentionally stepped on his chest, and immediately he went and sat on the vajra seat, saw the morning star, bit through the traps and snares of conditioned birth, and cast away his old nest from the past. Without waiting for anyone to peck at his shell from outside, he received the thirty-two characteristics common to all buddhas, and together with this mountain monk, composed the following four-line verse:

Stumbling I stepped on his chest and his backbone snapped,
Mountains and rivers swirling around, the dawn wind blew.
Penetrating seven and accomplishing eight, bone piercing the heavens,
His face attained a sheet of golden skin.

In this jōdō Dōgen describes a dreamlike fantasy in which he accidentally steps on a piece of shit, and in accord with Yunmen’s description of Buddha often cited by Dōgen, it jumps up and declares itself to be Śākyamuni. This vision increases the apparent disrespect for Buddha in Yunmen’s utterance, as Dōgen again steps on his chest (albeit again accidentally), even after the dried shit identifies himself as Śākyamuni Buddha. But Dōgen uses this scatological vision not to degrade, but to further celebrate Buddha, by declaring that upon being stepped on, “He went and sat on the vajra seat, saw the morning star, bit through the traps and snares of conditioned birth, and cast away his old nest from the past.”

Here Dōgen skillfully proclaims and celebrates, nonexplicitly, the major revelation of the Lotus Sutra of the Buddha’s life span enduring over inconceivable ages, and that his archetypal story of his home-leaving and awakening is demonstrated simply as a skillful mode. The effect of this dream parable of Dōgen is to reinforce the story in chapter 16 by describing Buddha and his awakening process as still omnipresent, “last night” right at Eiheiji, and even in excrement.

Dōgen’s dream story also echoes the Lotus Sutra, chapter 4, parable of the prodigal son, who can realize his fundamental endowment only after years of shoveling manure in his father’s field. As Dōgen says in the introduction to his parable, even Śākyamuni “is muddy and wet from following and chasing after the waves.” Dōgen’s further introductory statement, “Whether Buddha is present or not present, I trust he is right under our feet,” echoes the Lotus Sutra parable about the ragged beggar unknowingly having the Dharma jewel sewn within his robe. It further suggests the image in chapter 15 of myriad bodhisattvas suddenly springing forth from beneath the ground “under our feet,” which, as we will see, represents for Dōgen the omnipresence of the bodhisattva potential in the ground of concrete particulars.

Dōgen and the Lotus Sutra, p37-38

Other parts are less “Zen” and clearer for me. Here are some quotes I’ve set aside from the book:

Liberation and the Lotus Sutra

The purpose of Buddhism is liberation from the karmic cycle of suffering via awakening, and the goal of the Mahāyāna is the awakening of all beings. In chapter 2 the Lotus Sutra states, in the line probably most often cited by Dōgen, that the sole cause for a buddha’s appearing in the world is to help the diverse suffering beings enter into, open up, disclose, and fully realize this awakening. The one great cause for Buddha’s manifesting is also the one great cause for the expounding of Buddhist teachings. So it is a primary hermeneutical principle and criterion of all interpretations of Buddhist texts that they be evaluated based on their effectiveness as liberative instruments.

Dōgen and the Lotus Sutra, p15

The Need to Practice

For Dōgen, the ultimate emptiness or impermanence of all things and events does not diminish the need to fully engage in practice the present particulars of the conditioned world. And there is no place or time other than this current, impermanent Dharma position in which to enact this practice. Dōgen often emphasizes ordinary, everyday reality, such as the activities of daily monastic practice, as the locus of awakening and of the sacred and the importance of not seeking liberation outside of the grounding of immediate everyday circumstances.

Dōgen and the Lotus Sutra, p70-71

Seeing that the Buddha Is Alive

Dōgen further turns the meaning of the Buddha’s life span in the 1244 Shōbōgenzō essay “Awakening to the Bodhi-Mind” (“Hotsu Bōdaishin”), in which he discusses bodhicitta, the first arousal of the thought of universal awakening, which he considers of utmost importance, mysterious, and in some sense equivalent to the whole of a buddha’s enlightenment. After quoting the Buddha’s statement at the very end of chapter 16, “I have always given thought to how I could cause all creatures to enter the highest supreme Way and quickly become Buddhas,” Dōgen comments, “This [statement] is the Tathāgata’s lifetime itself. Buddhas’ establishment of the mind, training, and experience of the effect are all like this.” For Dōgen the inconceivable life span is exactly this intention to help all beings awaken, which mysteriously creates the ongoing life of the Buddha. As long as this vow and direction to universal awakening persists in the world and has the potential to spring forth in current practitioners, Dōgen sees that the Buddha is alive.

Dōgen and the Lotus Sutra, p90

In addition to discussing Dōgen’s view of the Lotus Sutra, Taigen Dan Leighton offers some interesting background on the sutra and the context of Japan’s Kamakura period. For the next eight days I’ll publish quotes concerning Nichiren, Zhiyi and Zhanran.

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The Karma of Words

In “Visions of Awakening Space and Time,” Taigen Dan Leighton quotes from William R. LaFleur’s “The Karma of Words: Buddhism and the Literary Arts in Medieval Japan.” For example:

In The Karma of Words, William LaFleur discusses the sophisticated nature of the Lotus Sutra as literature and its impact on medieval Japanese poetics: “The surprising feature of [the parables] in the Lotus is that they are simultaneously the vehicle and the tenor of that vehicle. In a very important sense, the parables of the Lotus are about the role and status of parabolic speech itself. They are what I would call self-reflexive allegory; that is, their trajectory of discourse behaves like a boomerang. Much like the Dharma described in a crucial section of the hōben chapter, they are characterized by ‘the absolute identity [or equality] of their beginning and end.’ ”

Dōgen and the Lotus Sutra, p27

And, as is my want, after reading this I sent away for a copy of LaFleur’s book, which was published by University of California Press in 1986.

This book is not about the Lotus Sutra but, instead, about Medieval Japan, the period in which Nichiren lived.

LaFleur explains in his Preface to the book:

karma-of-words-bookcover

The origin of this study lies in the simultaneous frustration and fascination I felt nearly two decades ago when for the first time I saw a performance of nō drama in Japan. I was greatly moved by what I saw, but I was also greatly perplexed by the presence in this form of drama of energies, assumptions, and aesthetic values that seemed very different from those present in the classical theaters of ancient Greece and Renaissance Europe. Here was a form of drama that had evidently been shaped by a set of religious and philosophical assumptions—but these were neither those of Aristotle nor those of European Christianity. My curiosity about this led me to search for relevant books and to question people who I thought might provide information.

I soon discovered a certain consensus; it was that, although the components in nō are many and complex, it is probably Japanese Buddhism which did most to shape the world of nō. Beyond this, however, my frustration continued, since the available materials in Western languages provided information about Buddhist elements in this form of drama but stopped short of a real reconstruction of the way the Japanese in the medieval period of their history saw their world and envisioned their destinies in and through Buddhist terms and concepts. Footnotes gave definitions of things like arhats, asuras, and Amida, but these things collectively never added up to a satisfying account of the intellectual and religious assumptions of the Buddhist poets, dramatists, and writers of prose in medieval Japan.

This book is first an attempt to provide what I could not find then and was subsequently forced to pursue in the original texts and in modern scholarly studies in Japanese.

Of course, I’m less interested in nō, which I’ve never seen performed, than I am in understanding how Buddhism shaped Japan’s world view.

As a self-styled “modern Buddhist,” I was particularly taken by this observation by LaFleur:

Buddhism gained ascendency in medieval Japan largely because it successfully put forward a coherent explanation of the world and of human experience; it was the single most satisfying and comprehensive explanation available to the Japanese people at the time. This is to deny neither that Buddhism was espoused by persons who had great social and political power nor that it provided justifications for their power and prestige. Moreover, this is not to disembody it or overlook the impressive technological and artistic side of the Buddhism that came to Japan from China and Korea—its magnificent architecture, paintings, icons, vestments, illuminated scrolls, and choreographed ritual. It is merely to call attention to the cognitive dimension and to observe that Buddhism provided not only salvation but also explanation. That is, as a religion in a medieval context, it was considerably more comprehensive, than religion in modern settings. In many ways, Buddhism performed in medieval Japan much of the role now customarily assigned to science. It did so by giving to the epoch a basic map of reality, one that provided cognitive satisfaction not only to learned monks in monasteries but also to unlettered peasants in the countryside.

The Karma of Words, p26-27

Perhaps it is time for Buddhists to take back the role taken by modern science and reassert Buddhism’s “basic map of reality” – the law of cause and effect and all of its ramifications.

Over the next four days I’ll publish quotes from “The Karma of Words.”

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About Time

Back in January 2024 I discussed Dōgen, referencing Jacqueline Stone’s article, “Seeking Enlightenment in the Last Age.” In fact, her explanation of Dōgen’s interpretation of time was one reason I sought out Leighton’s book on Dōgen.

Stone writes:

Because this “now” is absolute, and because “there is no time that has not arrived,” Buddhahood is not a potential that will unfold in the future, but can be realized only in the present moment. In other words, attaining Buddhahood is not, in Dōgen’s view, a gradual evolving from potential to realization associated with a linear view of time.

Leighton’s book offers this explanation of the source of Dōgen’s view of time:

Returning to consideration of other Mahāyāna approaches to temporality, the Avataṃsaka Sūtra, or Flower Ornament Sutra, in the chapter on “Detachment from the World” speaks of ten times through which great bodhisattvas explain past, present, and future. These ten times are the past, present, and future of the past; the past, present, and future of the future; the past, present, and future of this present; and finally, the interfusion of those previous nine times as the tenth, “being the one instant of the present.”

Dōgen and the Lotus Sutra, p107

This all fits very nicely within the concept of 3,000 Worlds in a Single Thought Moment

While I’m on the topic of time, I want to set aside these definitions of a kalpa:

Basic Indian cosmology offers a very wide view of time that was adopted by Buddhism. There is a recurring cycle in every universe of four kalpas: the formation or becoming, continuity or the abiding, the decaying, and the “nonmanifest” or empty. A kalpa is an incalculably long period of time, with one colorful traditional description of its duration as “the image of a bird that flies once every hundred years over the peak of Mount Everest with a piece of silk in her talons; the length of time it would take the silk to wear down the mountain completely is said to be one kalpa.” Another calculation is that a short kalpa “is the time required to empty a hundred square mile city enclosure filled with poppy seeds if one seed were to be removed every three years.”

Dōgen and the Lotus Sutra, p110-111
Dogen, Stone Last Age, Blog

Bodhisattvic Workings

Back in January 2024 I discussed Dōgen, referencing Jacqueline Stone’s article, “Seeking Enlightenment in the Last Age.” The topic was Dogen’s Practice.

Taigen Dan Leighton in “Dōgen and the Lotus Sutra” offers this:

Both the Vajrayāna and the Zen emphasis is on fully expressed performance of reality, not its cognitive knowledge or interpretation, which reflects the valuing of actual bodhisattvic workings over theoretical dictums. …

In his writing “Talk on Wholehearted Engagement of the Way” (“Bendöwa”), Dōgen directly emphasizes the hermeneutical priority of the actualization of practice over doctrinal theory: “Buddhist practitioners should know not to argue about the superiority or inferiority of teachings and not to discriminate between superficial or profound dharma, but should only know whether the practice is genuine or false.”

Dōgen and the Lotus Sutra, p19
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Perspectives on the Self-Referential Lotus

The fact that the Lotus Sutra references the Lotus Sutra taught in the past on several occasions is a matter of some controversy for those who are not devotees of the Lotus Sutra. I’ve written before about this here.) In “Visions of Awakening Space and Time: Dōgen and the Lotus Sutra,” Taigen Dan Leighton has an interesting discussion on the topic:

The Lotus Sutra itself frequently emphasizes the importance of and rewards for the proclamation of the Lotus Sutra, through reading, copying, and reciting it. To be sure, other Mahāyāna sutras talk about the merit to be derived by recalling or copying the sutra being read. However, the Lotus Sutra at times seems to hold this self-referential quality at its center, such that it promotes an extreme mode of self-referential discourse that is unique to it. The sutra often speaks of the wondrous nature of the Lotus Sutra, right in the text commonly referred to as the Lotus Sutra. This rhetorical device can be startling and mind-twisting, like Escher’s painting of two hands drawing each other. Various important figures in the sutra appear within the text of the Lotus Sutra because they have heard that the Lotus Sutra is currently being preached by Śākyamuni Buddha on Vulture Peak. For example, in chapter 11, the stūpa of the ancient Buddha Prabhūtaratna emerges from the earth and floats in midair because he has vowed always to appear whenever the Lotus Sutra is preached. In the same chapter, myriad bodhisattvas [Śākyamuni’s replicas] arrive from world systems in all directions to praise the Buddha for preaching this sutra in which they themselves are appearing.

This quality of the sutra talking about the sutra, and especially its many references to the Lotus Sutra as something expounded many ages ago, as about to be expounded, or even as hopefully to be expounded in the distant future, has led some commentators to observe that the whole text of this sutra, more than any others, is a preface to a missing scripture. As George and Willa Tanabe say, “The preaching of the Lotus sermon promised in the first chapter never takes place. The text, so full of merit, is about a discourse which is never delivered; it is a lengthy preface without a book. The Lotus Sutra is thus unique among texts. It is not merely subject to various interpretations, as all texts are, but is open or empty at its very center.” This is a plausible perspective or interpretation. The text does refer, in third person, to a designated text that one might keep vainly waiting for, as if for Godot.

However, this perspective misses the manner in which the Lotus sermon certainly does exist. Fundamental messages of the Lotus, such as the One Vehicle and the primacy of the Buddha vehicle, are difficult to miss, even if they might be interpreted in various ways, Furthermore, between the lines the Lotus Sutra functions within itself both as a sacred text or scripture and as a commentary and guidebook to its own use, beyond the literal confines of its own written text. The Lotus Sutra is itself a sacred manifestation of spiritual awakening that proclaims its own sacrality. Right within the text’s proclamation of the wonders of a text with the same name as itself, the text celebrates its own ephemeral quality with the visionary splendors of its assembly of buddhas, bodhisattvas, and spirits, and with the engaging qualities of its parables.

The synthesis of the immanent spirit spoken about in the text and the text’s own intended functioning as an instrument or skillful catalyst to spark awakening has been carried on among its followers. This is exemplified in the varieties of Nichiren Buddhism in that they are rooted and focused in devotion to the Lotus Sutra itself as a sacred manifestation, and devotional object, which they are committed to proclaiming and promulgating. But for Dōgen, the self-proclamation of the Dharma in the Lotus Sutra becomes an aspect of his rhetorical style rather than an externalized objectification.

Dōgen and the Lotus Sutra, p23-24

Later he offers:

The extraordinary self-referential quality of the Lotus Sutra also had an important effect on both Dōgen and Nichiren in their responses to the enduring Śākyamuni and the sutra itself. Whereas the impact of the self-referential is most clearly expressed by Dōgen in his style of Dharma proclamation, for Nichiren the manner in which the sutra proclaims its own value and soteriological role becomes the basis for his religious praxis. Nichiren takes the sutra literally in this respect. Perhaps more than any other major Buddhist thinker, he elevates one scripture as sacred essence and object. The sutra itself extensively extols the virtues of copying, reading, and reciting the sutra. Nichiren simplified and consolidated these practices into chanting its name and venerating the written name of the sutra as an icon.

Dōgen and the Lotus Sutra, p59
Dogen

Zhanran’s Diamond Scalpel

In his 782 treatise “The Diamond Scalpel” (“Jinbei Lun”), Zhanran expounds on the universality of buddha nature. He cites the story in chapters 15 and 16 of the Lotus Sutra to support the inclusiveness and truth of the One Vehicle, “that Śākyamuni treats all equally and without bias,” stating that the Buddha’s previous lives express this and “the eternity of his life-span simply proves this.” Echoing the sutra, Zhanran sees the duration of the inconceivable life span as providing the diversity of skillful means to lead all into the one great vehicle. He then also celebrates the bodhisattvas emerging from underground as giving “their lives to increase the path to enlightenment. First they develop the mind [of enlightenment] and, in the end, they will occupy a [vacant] place. How can there be another way by which we all inherit this?” Zhanran sees the underground bodhisattvas and the omnipresent Śākyamuni of the Lotus Sutra as supporting the single great cause in the One Vehicle, elaborated in chapter 2 of the sutra, to help lead all beings onto the path.

Zhanran especially champions the buddha nature of the land itself, serving as a precursor to Dōgen’s worldview. He maintains that the universal buddha nature “is complete within the bodies of all Buddhas, and one body [completely contains] all bodies. In like fashion, [it is complete within] the response-lands of all Buddhas; one land [completely contains] all lands. Bodies and lands being identical, what can be said about bodies can be said about lands. … [This] is another way of saying that you possess [buddha] nature.”

Dōgen and the Lotus Sutra, p47
Dogen

Zhiyi and the Three Bodies of the Buddha

Just as the sutra clearly indicates that the long-lived Buddha has a finite, if inconceivably long life, Zhiyi did not see the Lotus Sutra Buddha as virtually eternal. He initiated analysis of this Buddha in terms of the teaching of the three bodies of buddha, even though the three bodies (trikāya) teaching is not mentioned in the sutra itself. These three bodies are the historically manifested transformation body (nirmāvakāya), the blissful recompense body (sambhogakāya), and the ultimate truth or reality body (dharmakāya). Zhiyi saw the three as integrated in the Lotus Sutra, as he “interpreted Śākyamuni Buddha of the ‘Fathoming the Lifespan’ chapter as embodying all three bodies in one.”

Whereas the historically manifested body is affected by causality and the conditions of the world, for Zhiyi the Dharma body is unchangeable, revealing of perfect suchness beyond distinctions. “Since the dharma body is in accord with the principle of suchness, both its nature and appearance are eternally as they are, whether it is manifested or not as a Buddha; therefore it is not relevant whether it is measurable or not, that is, whether it has duration or not.” From the perspective of the Dharma body at least, the Lotus Sutra Buddha both incorporates and transcends each of the three bodies. For Zhiyi, “the three bodies are both permanent and impermanent, and are all three inherent in the Buddha of the Lotus Sutra: ‘One body is three bodies; it is not one, it is not different.” [Lucia Dolce, Between Duration and Eternity] Zhiyi “interpreted these three bodies as the attributes of a single, original Buddha, the Śākyamuni of the sixteenth chapter of the Lotus Sutra, enlightened since countless dust-particle kalpas ago. For Chih-i [WadeGiles transliteration of Zhiyi], the unity of the three was mediated by the recompense body, which he saw as central.” [Jacqueline Stone, Original Englightenment]

Zhiyi did not dissolve these three bodies or aspects of Buddha into one, but uses the three to celebrate nuances of the Buddha revealed in chapter 16. His emphasis on the recompense body expresses the important role of actual practice, with “buddhahood as a process, which has by definition a location in time and place.” We can see this body as most accurately conveying the inconceivable long-lived Buddha described in the sutra itself. The recompense body “represents a Buddha who has a beginning, and thus is finite before attaining enlightenment, but who becomes immeasurable, infinite, after his awakening. It exemplifies a Buddha who encompasses in himself both historical existence and universal principle: not an absolute Tathāgata who assumes for some time a phenomenal form and then goes back to his true nature, but a Tathāgata who is, at the same time, his true nature and his temporal manifestation.”[Lucia Dolce, Between Duration and Eternity] But while Zhiyi stresses this recompense body, he does so to show how the Lotus Sutra Buddha incorporates all aspects of buddhas.

Dōgen and the Lotus Sutra, p45-46

For comparison of Nichiren’s view of the Three Bodies, see Nichiren Venerating the Eternal Śākyamuni

Dogen

Nichiren’s One Practice

The one practice that was the “excellent medicine” for expressing the Lotus Sutra truth for Nichiren was recitation and veneration of the syllables “Namu Myōhōrengekyō,” the homage to the name of the Lotus Sutra that Nichiren saw as a symbolic embodiment of this enduring Śākyamuni and called “the essence of the chapter, ‘Duration of the Life of the Buddha.’ ” He declared that these five characters were transmitted only to the underground bodhisattvas, who would proclaim them in the future “evil age,” which had now arrived in Kamakura-period Japan. Nichiren says, “At this time, the bodhisattvas who sprang up from the earth will appear for the first time in the world to bestow upon the children the medicine of the five characters Myōhōrengekyō.”

For Nichiren, the leap of faith expressed in the Lotus Sutra is grounded in the mappō theory, a pressing reality for him that was completely rejected by Dōgen. Nichiren believed that the importance of Śākyamuni’s remaining presence, and even more, of the proclamation of it by the underground bodhisattvas, was that the teaching was still available, even in the present evil age of mappō. Thanks only to the underground bodhisattvas and the enduring Śākyamuni, the faithful still had the opportunity to hear the teaching and to express their faith through veneration and chanting of the name of the Lotus Sutra. But Nichiren went even further: “By defining the beginning of the Final Dharma age as the precise historical moment when the Buddha’s ultimate teaching, the Lotus Sutra, shall spread, Nichiren was able to reverse the conventional gloomy connotations of the last age and celebrate it as the best possible time to be alive.

Dōgen and the Lotus Sutra, p58-59
Dogen

Nichiren’s Pure Land

Through the all-encompassing nature of the Lotus Sutra’s Śākyamuni Buddha, as well as the persistent practice of the underground bodhisattvas, “the dharma world itself comes to be conceived as the phenomenal reality which actualizes the ultimate truth. … According to Nichiren, in the second section of the Lotus Sutra Śākyamuni speaks of this sahā world as the original land, a pure Buddha realm.” [Lucia Dolce, Between Duration and Eternity] Nichiren’s view of the beginningless and endless (practically speaking) Śākyamuni implies for him that the phenomenal world itself becomes an active locus for awakening: “Nichiren considered the assembly on Vulture Peak a symbol of those who, having received the teachings of the Lotus Sutra, are able to transform our sahā world into a ‘resplendent land.’ Since the world where humans live is also the original world in which the Buddha attained buddhahood, phenomenal reality becomes the ground of the most complete enlightenment, which opens to ultimate reality.” [Lucia Dolce, Between Duration and Eternity] Thus, for Nichiren the inconceivable visionary reaches inspired by the vastness of time of the revelation of the Buddha’s life span have liberative implications for this world, and for the conditions of this time and place.

Dogen

Nichiren’s Underground Role Models

[T]he underground bodhisattvas of chapter 15 have
special significance for Nichiren: “The countless bodhisattvas who had sprung up from underground were disciples of Lord Śākyamuni Buddha ever since the time He had first resolved to seek Buddhahood.” Although they had not visited Śākyamuni throughout his awakening under the bodhi tree and his expounding of the lesser sutras, since making their vow in the Lotus Sutra they are especially promised to appear in the mappō times, which Nichiren believed had already arrived.

Thus the underground bodhisattvas are greater for Nichiren than the familiar disciples, and even greater than the celebrated archetypal bodhisattvas such as Samantabhadra, Mañjuśrī, and Maitreya. “The numerous great bodhisattvas, who had been guided by the Original Buddha in the past, sprang out of the earth of the whole world, according to [chapter 15]. They looked incomparably superior to Bodhisattva Fugen (Samantabhadra) and Mañjuśrī, who had been regarded as ranking disciples. Even Bodhisattva Maitreya, successor to Śākyamuni Buddha, did not know who they were, not to speak of other bodhisattvas.”

Nichiren sees the underground bodhisattvas as the model for those who carry out the teaching of the enduring Śākyamuni in current conditions. And Nichiren himself personally identified with these underground bodhisattvas: “When these four great bodhisattvas, leaders of those who sprung up from underground, spread this sutra through aggressive means of propagation, they would appear as wise kings reproaching ignorant kings.” Practicing a persuasive means of propagation, they would be monks upholding and spreading the true dharma. In the final age of degenerate Dharma that Nichiren regarded as having arrived in Kamakura-period Japan, the imperative of proclaiming and propagating the Lotus Sutra teaching gained a new urgency. It was embodied for Nichiren by the enduring Śākyamuni and especially conveyed to the myriad beings by the underground bodhisattvas.

Dōgen and the Lotus Sutra, p57
Dogen

Nichiren Venerating the Eternal Śākyamuni

Nichiren states that the “Eternal” Śākyamuni Buddha “exists forever throughout the past, present, and future. All those who receive His guidance are one with the Eternal Buddha.” He goes on to state that the Śākyamuni Buddha of the sixteenth chapter differs from the earlier Śākyamuni Buddha of provisional sutras, and advocates that the enduring Śākyamuni, and his image, be the new object of veneration in the current Age of Decline (mappō), replacing images of the Śākyamuni who expounded the pre-Lotus sutras.

Nichiren strongly emphasizes the end of chapter 15 and chapter 16. This is the part of the sutra that “Nichiren judges to be almost exclusively representative of the meaning of the entire scripture.” Lucia Dolce describes the difference in Nichiren’s interpretation of the sutra from Zhiyi’s as Nichiren seeing the long-lived Śākyamuni Buddha as the single ultimate buddha encompassing all others. Whereas Zhiyi emphasized the sambhogakāya, or recompense body, and valued many other particular buddhas, Nichiren declares “that all Buddhas enlightened in the past are emanations of Śākyamuni” of chapter 16, based on the events of chapter 11, in which emanations arrive to witness the other Buddha in his stūpa. For Nichiren, this long-lived Buddha includes all three bodies, including the manifested transformation body, nirmāṇakāya, and even Vairocana, the reality body or dharmakāya: “Only the [chapter 16] Śākyamuni who reveals his enlightenment in the past embodies the true Mahāyāna Buddha.”

Nichiren’s view of temporality is determined by this story, as his emphasis on it “corresponds to the dilation of the temporal dimension expressed in those chapters, that is, the distant past in which Śākyamuni obtained his original enlightenment. Nichiren absolutizes this original moment and makes it the only significant time and relates it to the existence of humanity in a certain time and place.” He does not describe this Buddha as literally eternal, but “uses the expression ‘without beginning and without end,’ ” signifying “an existence not subject to temporal limitations.” Because this limitlessness includes the transformation body, “the Buddha has always abided in this world and … his soteriological activity has been constant since the original time.” [Dolce]

Dōgen and the Lotus Sutra, p55