Two Buddhas, p198Nichiren’s assertion that, for Lotus practitioners of the mappō era, the daimoku replaces cultivation of the traditional three disciplines in effect opened the merits of the sūtra to persons without learning or insight. Here he used the analogies of a patient who is cured by medicine without understanding its properties, or of plants that, without awareness, bloom when they receive rainfall. In like manner, he said, beginning practitioners may not understand the meaning of the daimoku, but by chanting it, “they will naturally accord with the sūtra’s intent.” In making such claims, Nichiren was not taking an anti-intellectual stance that would deny the importance of Buddhist study. Nor was he negating the need for continuing effort in practice or the value of the qualities that the six perfections describe: generosity, self-discipline, forbearance, diligence, and so forth, even though he rejected the need to cultivate them formally as prerequisites for enlightenment. It is important to recall that Nichiren often framed his teaching in opposition to Pure Land teachers who insisted that the Lotus Sūtra should be set aside as too profound for ignorant persons of the Final Dharma age. As we have seen, this assertion appalled Nichiren, who saw it as blocking the sole path by which the people of this age could realize liberation. In response, he argued passionately that the Lotus Sūtra’s salvific scope embraces even the most ignorant persons; in chanting the daimoku, all have full access to the merits of buddhahood, without practicing over countless lifetimes or seeking liberation in a separate realm after death.
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The Merits of the First Stage of Practice
Two Buddhas, p197-198[The] logic of total inclusivity underlies Nichiren’s explanation of the merits of the first stage of practice: rejoicing on hearing the Lotus Sūtra. “Since life does not extend beyond the moment,” he wrote, “the Buddha expounded the merits of a single moment of rejoicing [on hearing the Lotus Sūtra]. If two or three moments were required, this could no longer be called the original vow expressing his impartial great wisdom, the single vehicle of the sudden teaching that enables all beings to realize buddhahood.” In Nichiren’s reading, both the “first stage of faith” and the “first stage of practice” enumerated by Zhiyi on the basis of the “Description of Merits” chapter comprise “the treasure chest of the three thousand realms in a single thought-moment” and the gate from which all buddhas throughout time and space emerge.
Virtuous Attributes Contained Within The Daimoku
Two Buddhas, p197The “six perfections” systematize the practices required of Mahāyāna bodhisattvas to achieve buddhahood: giving, good conduct, perseverance, effort, meditation, and wisdom, in the Kubo and Yuyama translation. Traditionally, each perfection was said to require a hundred eons to complete, one eon being explained, for example, as the time required for a heavenly goddess to wear away great Mount Sumeru, the axis mundi, if she brushes it lightly with her sleeve once every hundred years. Such was the vast effort that Śākyamuni was said to have expended over staggering lengths of time in order to become the Buddha; the perfections represent his “causes” or “causal practices” and form the model for bodhisattva practice more generally. The wisdom, virtue, and power that he attained in consequence are his “resulting merits” or “effects.” Nichiren’s claim here is that all the practices and meritorious acts performed by Śākyamuni over countless lifetimes to become the Buddha, as well as the enlightenment and virtuous attributes he attained in consequence, are wholly contained within the daimoku and are spontaneously transferred to the practitioner in the act of chanting it.
The All-Encompassing Lotus Sutra
Two Buddhas, p196-197Nichiren grounded his reasoning in his understanding that the Lotus Sūtra, and specifically its title, is all-encompassing. In a famous passage, he explained that simply by upholding the daimoku, one can gain the merit of the entire bodhisattva path: “The Sūtra of Immeasurable Meanings states: ‘Even if one is not able to practice the six perfections, they will spontaneously be fulfilled.’ The Lotus Sūtra states, ‘They wish to hear the all-encompassing way. …’ The heart of these passages is that Śākyamuni’s causal practices and their resulting merits are inherent in the five characters myō-hō-ren-ge-kyō. When we embrace these five characters, he will spontaneously transfer to us the merits of his causes and effects.”
Living A Life Of Self-Confidence
Buddhism for Today, p259-260Almost all people who enter a religious faith have some form of suffering. It is natural for them to want to free themselves from such sufferings, and they are not to be blamed for this. But when they are concerned only with the desire to recover from illness or to be blessed with money, they are merely attaching themselves to the idea of “disease” or “poverty.” Though they wish to rid themselves of these problems, instead they become their victims because their minds grasp the idea of illness or poverty so tightly that they cannot let go.
People who believe in religion only in order to receive divine favors in this world easily retrogress from their stage of development in that faith. This is because they cannot truly understand the eternity of the Buddha’s life, and at the same time the eternity of man’s life. They think only of the present and begin to doubt the teaching or grow tired of it unless clear material merits are manifested. But there are some people who cannot receive such merits in this world because of deep and inextinguishable unfavorable karma from their former lives, even if they have faith in a true religion, purify their minds, and devote themselves to the bodhisattva practice for the benefit of others in society.
Nevertheless, people who can believe in the immortality of the Buddha’s life can also feel confident of their own eternal life. Therefore they can live with self-confidence, realizing, “If we only continue this way, we are sure to extinguish our former karma eventually and will approach the mental state of the Buddha step by step.” Even if they do not immediately recover from illness or become suddenly blessed with tangible wealth, their minds will be composed. Even if they seem to outsiders to be suffering, their minds are free of suffering. This is the attitude adopted by a real believer.
Faith and Merits
Buddhism for Today, p257-258The mental happiness, hope, and self-confidence of those who have attained true faith are not frothy and superficial but deep and firm-rooted in their minds. These people have calm, steadfast minds not agitated by anything – fire, water, or sword – because they maintain a mental attitude of great assurance, realizing, “I am always protected by the Buddha as an absolute existence; I am caused to live by the Buddha.”
It is natural that life should change dramatically as soon as we attain such a mental state. It is impossible for our life not to change when our attitude changes. Our mental state changes because of faith, and through the change in our mind, our life changes at the same time. These are the merits of religious practice. Therefore faith is naturally associated with merits.
The merits of religious practice appear not only in man’s mind but also in his body and his material life. Because his mind, his body, and the material things around him are composed of the same void (energy), it stands to reason that his body should change according to changes in his mind, and at the same time that the material things around him should change. It is irrational and unscientific to admit mental merits but deny physical and material ones.
Faith Is the Cause for Wisdom
Two Buddhas, p196In its claims for the salvific powers of the Lotus Sūtra, the “Description of Merits” chapter says that the merit accruing to those who generate even a single thought of willing acceptance — that is, faith — in the Lotus Sūtra immeasurably surpasses that gained by men and women who cultivate the first five perfections of a bodhisattva for eighty myriads of kotis of nayutas of eons. The sixth perfection, wisdom, is not included. But Nichiren held that wisdom, too, is inherent in, and emerges from, faith in the Lotus Sūtra. Scholars of his day, he notes, all agree that those who would practice the Lotus Sūtra must devote themselves to the three disciplines of moral conduct, meditative concentration, and wisdom; lacking any of these, one cannot attain the way. Nichiren adds, “I too once thought the same.” But over time, he became convinced that this was not the case. Citing the “Description of Merits” chapter to support his argument, Nichiren asserts that the Buddha had restrained persons at the first, second, and third of the five stages of practice from focusing on the cultivation of moral conduct and meditative concentration and directed them solely to cultivate some degree of wisdom.” And because our wisdom is inadequate, he teaches us to substitute faith, making this single word ‘faith’ the basis. … Faith is the cause for wisdom and corresponds to the stage of verbal identity.”
Revealing the Original Cause and Original Effect
Two Buddhas, p185-186Nichiren understood the revelation of Buddha’s inconceivable “lifespan” as the very heart of the sūtra. The sūtra text makes clear that, even after realizing buddhahood, Śākyamuni has remained in the world, and will continue to do so, for countless eons, “teaching the dharma and inspiring sentient beings.” For Nichiren, this signaled a seismic shift in the entire concept of buddhahood as a realm apart from the nine realms of ordinary experience. Conventional understanding holds that the cause of buddhahood and its effect, that is, practice and attainment, are separated in time. To become a buddha, one must carry out the practices of the bodhisattva for three immeasurable eons, a staggering length of time spanning countless lifetimes. The “trace teaching” or shakumon portion of the Lotus Sūtra, even while extending the promise of buddhahood to all beings, still preserves this perspective on realizing buddhahood as a linear process in which one moves from practice (nine realms) toward attainment (buddhahood). We see this in Śākyamuni Buddha’s predictions in the sūtra’s early chapters that his individual śrāvaka disciples such as Sāriputra, Mahākāśyapa, and others will become buddhas in the remote future, after many eons of bodhisattva practice. From this perspective, buddhahood remains a distant goal, abstracted from one’s present experience.
But with the origin teaching, Nichiren wrote, the cause and effect of the pre-Lotus Sūtra teachings and of the trace teaching are “demolished” and “original cause and original effect” are revealed: “The nine realms are inherent in the beginningless buddha realm, and the buddha realm inheres in the beginningless nine realms. This represents the true mutual inclusion of the ten realms … and three thousand realms in a single thoughtmoment.” That is, he saw the origin teaching as overturning linear views of practice and attainment, in which one first makes efforts and then realizes buddhahood as a later result, and revealing that cause (the nine realms) and effect (the buddha realm) are present simultaneously; buddhahood is manifested in the very act of practice.
Four Stages of Faith and Five Stages of Practice
Two Buddhas, p194-195Buddhist thinkers over the centuries have elaborated various models of the path as guidelines for practice. Early Buddhism set forth the “three disciplines” of moral conduct, meditative concentration, and wisdom as comprising the entirety of the path. Mahāyāna scriptures set forth a list of six perfections (pāramitās) … that bodhisattvas must master, which add to the original three disciplines the virtues of giving, perseverance, and effort. Specific texts enumerate ten stages, forty-one stages, or fifty-two stages of bodhisattva practice. Some models entail sequential stages; in others, elements of the path are cultivated simultaneously.
Based on the “Description of Merits” chapter (245-250), Zhiyi enumerated “four stages of faith” and “five stages of practice” of the Lotus Sūtra. The four stages of faith are (1) to arouse even a single thought of willing acceptance (also translated as “a single moment’s faith and understanding”); (2) to understand the intent of the sūtra’s words; (3) to place deep faith in the sūtra and expound it widely for others; and (4) to perfect one’s own faith and insight. The “five stages of practice” are (1) to rejoice on hearing the Lotus Sūtra; (2) to read and recite it; (3) to explain it to others; (4) to practice it while cultivating the six perfections; and (5) to master the six perfections. The “four stages of faith” apply to those living in Śākyamuni Buddha’s lifetime, while the “five stages of practice” are intended for persons living after his nirvāṇa, however, the spirit behind them is the same.
Within these two models of the path, Nichiren focused on the first stage of faith, arousing a single moment’s faith and understanding, and the first stage of practice, rejoicing on hearing the Lotus Sūtra. But to what level of practice did these stages correspond? Nichiren noted that the works of Zhiyi and Zhanran give three interpretations. Two of these equate these stages with advanced levels, either the third or fourth of the “six stages of identity” (J. rokusoku) into which Zhiyi had divided the practice of the perfect teaching. The third interpretation, however, identifies them with only the second of the six levels, “verbal identity” (J. myōji-soku), the stage of a beginning practitioner, at which one first encounters the words of the dharma and has faith in them. Nichiren thought that this third interpretation accorded most closely with the sūtra passage; for him, the stage of “verbal identity” meant embracing faith in the Lotus Sūtra and chanting its daimoku. In the Final Dharma age, he taught, advancing to later stages becomes irrelevant, because the merits of all stages are fully encompassed in the beginning stage.
‘One Chapter and Two Halves’
Two Buddhas, p173In Zhiyi’s parsing of the Lotus Sūtra, Chapter Fifteen begins the “origin teaching” (J. honmon) or second fourteen chapters of the sūtra, so called because in this latter section of the Lotus the Buddha casts off his transient guise as someone who first gained enlightenment in the present lifetime, and he reveals his true identity as the primordial buddha awakened immeasurable eons ago. As he had with the preceding “trace teaching” (shakumon), or first fourteen chapters, Zhiyi divided this section of the sūtra into three parts. The “introduction” corresponds to the first part of Chapter Fifteen, up to the Buddha’s response to Maitreya’s question about the identity of the bodhisattvas who have emerged from the earth (223). The “main exposition” consists of the remainder of Chapter Fifteen, the whole of Chapter Sixteen, and the first part of Chapter Seventeen (up to the end of Maitreya’s verses on 245). The remaining chapters then correspond to the “dissemination” portion. Though quite short – “one chapter and two halves,” as Nichiren termed it – the main exposition section of the origin teaching was revered by many Japanese Tendai teachers as the very heart of the sūtra and inspired great doctrinal innovation, especially in Nichiren’s own teaching.