The revelation of the real entity of Buddha’s personality

Having been quickened by Buddha’s urging, the Bodhisattvas in the congregation ask the Lord to entrust to them the task of propagating and perpetuating the Truth. Quite contrary to their expectation – and ours – they are counselled to keep themselves quiet. While they are astonished at the Lord’s dissuasion, he summons the innumerable hosts of saints, who appear out of the earth from all quarters. Among them four figures are conspicuous, who were never known before to any in the assembly, and whose names, they are told, are Viśiṣṭacāritra, Anantacāritra, etc. (Viśiṣṭacāritra, Jōgyō in Japanese, means “Superior Conduct.” Anantacāritra, Muhengyō in Japanese, Endless or Boundless Conduct. Jōgyō was the one with whom Nichiren was most eager to identify himself.)

The endless hosts, following the four leaders, pay adoration to Buddha, and pledge themselves to work for the perpetuation of the Truth and the salvation of all beings. The surprise of the other members of the assembly is voiced by Maitreya, the highest of the Bodhisattvas, who asks Buddha, “Who are these saints who have appeared out of earth?” The answer is that they have existed from all eternity and have always been Śākyamuni’s disciples – an answer that puzzles the inquirers still more, because their idea of Buddha as a man who no great while ago attained Buddhahood under the Bodhi-tree at Gayā is incompatible with the statement that these miraculous beings existing from eternity are his disciples (chapter 15, entitled the “Issuing-out-of-the-Earth”). How Nichiren believed himself to be a reincarnation of Viśiṣṭacāritra, or Jōgyō, will be seen later on; and his reference to an eternal and primeval discipleship to the eternal Buddha can be understood by turning to this scene.

The sixteenth chapter, entitled the “Duration of the Tathāgata’s Life,” is meant to solve the puzzle, and to reveal the eternal existence of Buddha’s personality. The Buddha who was born and is going to die, or to disappear from among mankind, is but a manifestation, and his (apparent) death is in order to dispel the disciples’ vain hope of having his earthly manifestation with them forever. Neither is birth the beginning, nor death the end of life; the true life extends far beyond both of these commonly assumed limits. Things come and pass away, but truth abides; men are born and disappear, but life itself is imperishable. Buddhahood is neither a new acquisition nor a quality destined to destruction. The One who embodies the cosmic Truth, Buddha, the Tathāgata, neither is born nor dies, but lives and works from eternity to eternity; his Buddhahood is primeval and his inspiration everlasting. How, then, can it be otherwise with any other beings, if only they realize this truth and live in full consciousness of it? Thus, the revelation of the everlasting life discloses the infinite measure of the Tathāgata’s life, which means at the same time the share of the true Buddhists in the eternal life of Buddha, and in the inextinguishable endurance of the Truth.

It was this teaching of the eternal life, both of Buddha and of ourselves, that inspired in Buddhist belief boundless strength, and led T’ien T’ai and Dengyō to systematize their theory about the primeval dignity of Buddhahood and the pre-established possibility of our supreme enlightenment. Nichiren inherited and emphasized these doctrines as the very basis of his religious thought, but we shall see later how he applied the conception of the primeval relationship between the Lord and his disciples to the moral life of mankind.

The climax of the revelation is followed by a series of encouraging assurances given by Buddha, and of enthusiastic vows made by the disciples and celestial beings. The revelation of the eternal past is thus followed by the assurance for the everlasting future. The past and the future are united in the oneness of the Truth, by the unity of purpose, methods, and power, in all the Buddhas of all ages – in short, in the Sole Road of Truth [One Vehicle]. This is the cardinal teaching of the Lotus, as in other Buddhist books or systems; but the special emphasis laid by the Lotus, particularly in the last twelve chapters, is upon the question, Who shall really be the one who will perpetuate and realize this truth of the Sole Road? The Truth abides eternally, but it is an abstraction, a dead law, without the person who perpetuates the life of the Truth. The Buddha Śākyamuni, in his human manifestation, was the one, the Tathāgata par excellence; but who shall be the one in the future, nay in the present, in these days of degeneration and vice? This was the question of Nichiren, who at last, as the result of his hard experience and perilous life, arrived at the conclusion that he himself was the man destined to achieve the task of the Tathāgata’s messenger.

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NICHIREN: THE BUDDHIST PROPHET

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