Buddhism for Today, p125-126The last portion of the verse section has a very important meaning:
“Kāśyapa! You now know
Of these five hundred self-reliant ones. The other band of śrāvakas
Will also be like them.
To these, who are not in this assembly,
Do you proclaim my words.”In other words: “These five hundred self-reliant arhats will become buddhas in the future, as will the many other śrāvakas. Kāśyapa! Do you proclaim what I have now said to those who are not in this assembly, and do you lead them to the way of attaining buddhahood.”
“Those who are not in this assembly” indicates the five thousand arrogant monks who left the assembly saying that since they had already attained enlightenment it was not necessary for them to listen to the Lotus Sutra. As already mentioned, because of his great wisdom and compassion, the World-honored One was silent and purposely did not stop them. Here he gives his prediction that even they will surely become buddhas according to their practice.
Category Archives: d13b
A Skillful Means of Entry to the Buddha Dharma
As was the case with Confucianism, East Asian Buddhists viewed Brahmanism as a precursor to Buddhism. They saw it as a teaching set up by the buddhas and the bodhisattvas to serve as a skillful means of entry to the Buddha Dharma. As Nichiren says in Kaimoku-shō:
After all, the most important thing for non-Buddhist teachings is, like Confucianism, to prepare the way to Buddhism. This is why some non-Buddhists maintain that the Buddha will be born 1,000 years later, while others insist on 100 years later. It is said, therefore, in the Nirvāṇa Sūtra that what is written in all the non-Buddhist scriptures is nothing but the teaching of the Buddha. Again, it is said in the Lotus Sūtra, chapter eight, “Assurance of Future Buddhahood,” that disciples of the Buddha sometimes pretend to be contaminated with the three poisons of greed, anger, and ignorance or show the heretic view denying the law of cause and effect as an expedient means to save the people.
Open Your Eyes, p114-115The Principle Of Half A Step
Buddhism for Today, p125-126“All the people around Pūrṇa spoke of him as ‘the true śrāvaka disciple’ because, though he realized the Law to such a degree, he did not show the slightest sign of it. They were on familiar terms with him and listened to him with good will. Thus Pūrṇa, by such tactfulness, has benefited innumerable living beings and converted innumerable people so that they would achieve Perfect Enlightenment. For the sake of purifying his buddha-land, he has constantly done a buddha’s work and instructed the living.”
In doing missionary work or leading others, we can learn something very important from attitude, which he maintained both inwardly and outwardly. If one were a person of great virtue and influence, such as Sakyamuni Buddha, even though he never assumed an air of self-importance everybody would throw himself on his knees and concentrate his mind upon hearing that person’s teaching. However, in the case of one who is not endowed with so much virtue and influence, people do not always listen earnestly to his preaching of the Law. If he gives himself the airs of a great man, some will come to have ill feeling toward him, while others will feel that he is unapproachable. Pūrṇa’s attitude is a good example for us.
It goes without saying that we must not look down on people or think, “They are unenlightened,” but it is dangerous for us even to fancy ourselves to have gone a step farther than others. We must preserve the attitude of keeping pace with other people. But we cannot lead others if we completely keep pace with them, that is, if we behave exactly the same as those who know nothing of the Buddha-way. We should go not a step but only half a step farther than others. If we do this, those around us will still feel that we are one of them and will keep pace with us. While accompanying us, they will be influenced by us and led in the right way without realizing it.
The Voice-Hearer
The voice-hearer (śrāvaka) refers to disciples of the Buddha such as Śāriputra and Kāśyapa. They observed the 250 precepts and practiced the supra-worldly meditation. Moreover, they contemplated the truths of suffering, emptiness, impermanence, and self-effacement; completely eliminated the delusions arising from false views and thoughts; and mastered the supernatural power of being in water and fire. Therefore, they were able to make even the King of the Mahābrahman Heaven and Indra their followers.
Hōren-shō, Letter to Hōren, Writings of Nichiren Shōnin, Volume 6, Followers I, Page 46
The Gift of a Bowl of Barnyard Millet Rice
A Hinayāna sage known as Pratyekabuddha is incomparably superior to a śrāvaka. He is so great that he can stand in for the Buddha to appear in the world to save its people. It is said that there was once a hunter who in a time of famine gave a bowl of rice mixed with barnyard millet to a pratyekabuddha called Rita, and as a result he was rewarded with rebirth as a man of wealth in the human or heavenly world for as long as 91 kalpa (aeons). Aniruddha, one of the ten great disciples of the Buddha who is reputed to have mastered the divine-eye of heavenly beings to see through everything, is said to have been [the incarnation of) the hunter. Grand Master Miao-lê interprets this, “Although the bowl of barnyard millet rice has little value, the hunter donated all that he owned to a person of great merit. Therefore, the hunter was rewarded with such good fortune.” It means that although a bowl of millet rice was not much in value, it was presented to a noble person of Pratyekabuddha status, and this is the reason why he was able to be reborn with such good luck.
Hōren-shō, Letter to Hōren, Writings of Nichiren Shōnin, Volume 6, Followers I, Page 46
Never for an Instant Separated from the Wish-Granting Jewel
Two Buddhas, p125-126In Chapter Eight [The Assurance of Future Buddhahood of the Five Hundred Disciples], to express their understanding of the one vehicle teaching, five hundred arhats who have just received a prediction from the Buddha relate the parable of the jewel hidden in the garment. Like the other parables of the Lotus Sūtra, this one was well known to educated Japanese and provided a frequent subject for traditional waka poems based on the sūtra, as in this twelfth-century example:
if the wind
from Vulture Peak
had not blown
my sleeves inside out—
would I have found
the jewel
inside the reverse
of my coat?Here the poet expresses his recognition that, without the Buddha’s preaching of the Lotus Sūtra, he would never have discovered the treasure he had possessed all along.
For Nichiren, the daimoku of the Lotus Sūtra is what enables that discovery. He writes that living beings “have never for an instant been separated from the wish-granting jewel.” Although they could quickly realize buddhahood simply by chanting Namu Myōhō-renge-kyō, being deluded by the wine of ignorance, they do not realize this and are instead satisfied with trivial gains, such as achieving rebirth in the heavens as the gods Brahmā or Indra or the status of rulers or great ministers of state in the human world. But the Buddha taught that these are mere illusory pleasures. Rather, “we should simply uphold the Lotus Sūtra and quickly become buddhas.” In the sūtra text, the man being “satisfied if he just obtains a very meagre amount” represents the Buddha’s disciples accepting the teachings of the two lower vehicles and being content with the arhat’s goal of nirvāṇa, not aspiring to the bodhisattva path. It thereby conveys an implicit criticism of the Indian Buddhist mainstream at the time of the sūtra’s compilation. Nichiren reorients the parable to suggest that any transient acquisition — including all the wealth, pleasures, and power to be had in the human or heavenly realms — is vastly inferior to realizing buddhahood by embracing the Lotus Sūtra.
Pūrṇa’s True Mental Courage
Buddhism for Today, p123-124Pūrṇa was so eloquent that he has been described as “the personification of eloquence.” “To speak as eloquently as Pūrṇa” became a common figure of speech in later times. However, he never showed off his superiority but led the same kind of life as ordinary men. He was such a great man that though he seemed mild, he had true mental courage. The following story about Pūrṇa has been handed down from old times.
When Sakyamuni Buddha permitted certain of his disciples to preach his teachings, Pūrṇa, desiring to preach in Śroṇāparanta, a region he knew well, asked the Buddha’s permission to do so. The Buddha said, “It will be very difficult for you to do missionary work in Śroṇāparanta, where the people are very stubborn. What would you do if they didn’t listen to your preaching however hard you tried?” Pūrṇa answered, “Even if they didn’t listen to my preaching, I would not be disappointed. I would consider myself fortunate not to be made fun of.” Then the Buddha asked, “What if you were derided?” Pūrṇa replied, “If I were, I would consider myself fortunate not to be slandered.” When asked, “What if you should be slandered?” he answered, “Even if I were, I would consider myself fortunate not to be beaten with sticks or stoned.” Asked, “What if you were beaten or stoned?” he replied, “I would consider myself fortunate not to be wounded by a sword.” Then asked, “What if you were wounded by a sword?” he answered, “Even if I were, I would consider myself fortunate not to be killed.” Next asked, “What if you were mortally wounded?” he replied, “I would consider myself fortunate to give up my life in spreading your teachings.” Thereupon the Buddha permitted Pūrṇa to go to Śroṇāparanta, saying, “You may go there if you have such a firm determination in doing your missionary work.” From this story, we can well understand that Pūrṇa was no common preacher.
Buddha Nature As Three Causes
Two Buddhas, p126-127Commentators have often interpreted the jewel in the garment as the “buddha nature.” The Lotus Sūtra does not contain the precise term “buddha nature” (Ch. foxing; J. busshō), perhaps because it had not yet come into use in Indian Buddhism. However, the Lotus clearly recognizes the buddha potential in all beings, and Chinese exegetes argued that the concept is there, if not the term itself. The expression “buddha nature” was well known in medieval Japan, and Nichiren uses it occasionally, but he appears to have preferred “buddha realm” (among the ten realms) or “seed of buddhahood” (J. busshu). His use of the latter term is quite different from the Hossō idea of untainted seeds in the storehouse consciousness. … “Buddha nature” and “seed of buddhahood” are similar in that both indicate the potential for buddhahood, supreme enlightenment, but where “nature” is constant and unchanging, “seeds” can lie dormant, even rot, or germinate and grow in response to conditions; as the Lotus Sūtra says, “The buddha-seeds germinate through dependent origination.” Thus, Nichiren may have used the term “seed of buddhahood” because he wished to portray buddhahood, not as an abstract potential, but as manifested through specific causes and conditions, that is, by embracing a specific form of practice. In that regard, he sometimes borrows Zhiyi’s concept of the “buddha nature as three causes”: (1) the innate potential for buddhahood; (2) the wisdom that illuminates it; and (3) the practice that manifests that wisdom. For Nichiren, that practice was chanting Namu Myōhō-renge-kyō, the act that manifests the jewel of the buddha realm hidden within the nine realms of ordinary people. Sometimes he refers to the daimoku itself as the “seed of buddhahood.”
The Revelation of the Universal Ground
Two Buddhas, p127-128According to Zhiyi’s parsing, Chapters Two through Nine of the Lotus Sūtra comprise the main exposition of the “trace teaching,” or shakumon, the first fourteen chapters of the Lotus Sūtra. These chapters assert that followers of the two “Hinayāna” vehicles can achieve buddhahood. For the sūtra’s compilers, this message subsumed the entire Buddhist mainstream within its own teaching of the one buddha vehicle and extended the promise of buddhahood to a category of persons — śrāvakas and pratyekabuddhas — who had been excluded from that possibility in other Mahāyāna sūtras. In Nichiren’s day, however, the idea of the one vehicle, that buddhahood is in principle open to all, represented the mainstream interpretive position, and his own reading therefore has a somewhat different emphasis. For Nichiren, the sūtra’s assertion that even persons of the two vehicles can become buddhas pointed to the mutual possession of the ten realms and the three thousand realms in a single thought-moment, without which any talk of buddhahood for anyone, even those following the bodhisattva path, can be no more than an abstraction. The revelation of this universal ground, he said, especially in the “Skillful Means” chapter, constitutes the heart of the shakumon portion of the Lotus. Nonetheless, he regarded Chapter Two through Chapter Nine, the main exposition section, as having been preached primarily for the benefit of persons during the Buddha’s lifetime. The remaining chapters, Chapter Ten through Chapter Fourteen, which constituted the remainder of the trace teaching, he saw as explicitly directed toward those who embrace the Lotus after the Buddha’s passing, and therefore, as having great relevance for himself and his followers.
Daily Dharma – Oct. 31, 2019
The Nirvāṇa we attained was
Only part of the immeasurable treasures of yours.
We were like a foolish man with no wisdom.
We satisfied ourselves with what little we had attained.
Five hundred of the Buddha’s monks give this explanation in Chapter Eight of the Lotus Sūtra. They had spent all of their time with the Buddha working to rid themselves of suffering. While this is a remarkable achievement, it does not compare to the true purpose of the Buddha’s teaching. When these monks heard the Buddha teach the Lotus Sutra, and understood that their true purpose was to benefit others, they realized that their earlier practice was preparation. By remaining preoccupied with suffering, they had lost sight of the treasure of enlightenment.
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