This is another in a series of daily articles concerning Kishio Satomi's book, "Japanese Civilization; Its Significance and Realization; Nichirenism and the Japanese National Principles," which details the foundations of Chigaku Tanaka's interpretation of Nichiren Buddhism and Japan's role in the early 20th century.
Kishio Satomi’s book “Japanese Civilization: Its Significance and Realization, Nichirenism and the Japanese National Principles” carefully cites the Lotus Sutra and Nichiren’s writings in explaining his interpretation of Nichiren’s teachings – what he calls Nichirenism. Nichiren’s writings are from the translation of his father, Chigaku Tanaka. The quotes from the Lotus Sutra use H. Kern’s translation and a translation by Chiō Yamakawa, a member of Tanaka’s Kokuchukai, the Pillar of the Nation Society. While most of Satomi’s book is a straightforward explanation of the Lotus Sutra and Nichiren’s teachings, there are a couple of odd interpretations.
Consider Satomi’s explanation of Chapter 13, Encouragement for Keeping this Sutra. In that chapter, as Senchu Murano translates it, we have Medicine-King and Great-Eloquence Bodhisattvas and their twenty-thousand attendants addressing the Buddha:
“World-Honored One, do not worry! We will keep, read, recite and expound this sūtra after your extinction. The living beings in the evil world after [your extinction] will have less roots of good, more arrogance, more greed for offerings of worldly things, and more roots of evil. It will be difficult to teach them because they will go away from emancipation. But we will patiently read, recite, keep, expound and copy this sūtra, and make various offerings to it. We will not spare even our lives [in doing all this].”
Later in the prose section of the chapter we have:
Thereupon the World-Honored One looked at the eighty billion nayuta Bodhisattva-mahāsattvas. These Bodhisattvas had already reached the stage of avaivartika, turned the irrevocable wheel of the Dharma, and obtained dhārāṇis. They rose from their seats, came to the Buddha, joined their hands together [towards him] with all their hearts, and thought, “If the World-Honored One commands us to keep and expound this sūtra, we will expound the Dharma just as the Buddha teaches.”
It is these Bodhisattvas who offer in gāthās the prediction of abuse and hardship to be expected by any expounder of the Dharma in the Sāha World after the death of the Buddha.
That’s not how Satomi sees it. Despite the fact that the Bodhisattvas from Underground and their leader Honge Jogyo don’t arrive until two more chapters later in the sutra, Satomi says that in Chapter 13 “the Buddha prophesied all things about Honge Jogyo, who was entrusted with all the rights and mission of the propagation of the Sutra in the future.”
Nichirenism and the Japanese National Principles, p41-43These stanzas prophesied Honge Jogyo’s activity in the days of the Latter Law. At the beginning of Chapter XV, “Issuing-out-of-the-Earth,” these Bodhisattvas begged that they might preach Buddha’s True Law in the future, but, contrary to expectation, Buddha endeavored to dissuade them therefrom. They were utterly surprised. At that very moment, the innumerable Bodhisattvas, following the four leaders whose senior was named Viśiṣṭacāritra, Honge Jogyo, appeared in quick succession out of the Earth, but nobody knew, even from one of themselves, what sort of Bodhisattvas they were. The general astonishment increased more and more; at last, Bodhisattva Miroku (Skt. Maitreya), as the representative, asked Buddha, “Who are these Bodhisattvas who have just appeared out of the Earth? None of us, not even I, know who they are.” Then the answer came they were none other than His disciples from eternity, but the answer was ignotum per ignotius (Latin for “the unknown by the more unknown”) for them.
There’s a similarly odd condensation of the sutra by Satomi in the telling of the story the Stupa of Treasures and the revelation of the Buddha’s emanated bodies who are preaching in the worlds of the 10 directions.
In Murano’s telling, the Stupa suddenly emerges from the earth and hangs in the air. A voice inside is heard praising Śākyamuni and saying his teaching of the Lotus Sutra is all true. When Śākyamuni is questioned about this voice he tells the story of Many Treasures Buddha and his vow to go anywhere to hear the sutra. When asked to open the Stupa and show Many Treasures to the gathering, Śākyamuni says that to do so would require him to call back all of the Buddhas of his replicas. He then emits a ray of light and calls back his replicas.
This is how Satomi treats this scene:
Nichirenism and the Japanese National Principles, p39-40Buddha Shakyamuni has already revealed his perfect idea of truth as the Myōhōrengekyō. Thereupon He wished to expand and continue His creative activities and benevolence even into the far future, so here we must not neglect Chapter XI, entitled “The Apparition of the Heavenly Shrine.”
This chapter describes the appearance in heaven of a great and magnificent shrine decorated with the seven kinds of precious jewels, just in the very front of Shakyamuni who was in the pulpit. And then a voice was heard from within the shrine in admiration of Shakyamuni’s revelation of Truth. The voice spoke as follows, by the Buddha Tahō (Skt. Prabhūtaratna, i.e. the Buddha of Accumulated Treasures):
“Excellent, excellent, Lord Shakyamuni! Thou hast well expounded this Dharmaparyāya of the Lotus of the True Law. So it is, Lord; so it is, Sugata.”
Lord Shakyamuni then darted a bright ray from his brow toward the ten directions of space, whence a great multitude of Bodhisattvas happened to be coming to see Lord Shakyamuni, and they all assembled in this world. But this world was too small to let them sit down together, notwithstanding that they formed a diminutive part of the magnificent bodies of Lord Shakyamuni. Kern’s translation runs thus:
“At that moment the whole sphere was replete with Tathagatas, but the beings produced from the proper body of the Lord Shakyamuni had not yet arrived, not even from a single point of the horizon.”
Therefore, Shakyamuni enlarged this world to a vast one in the eight directions and purified it, thus He enlarged and purified the world three times. But we cannot help wondering, how it was done by Buddha Shakyamuni who had become Buddha only forty years earlier. One of the most important problems lies here, namely His eternal personality, which was suggested in the above story and will be properly brought to light in Chapter 16. But Buddha’s great hint was lost upon them so far as this Chapter 11 is concerned.
Satomi certainly has a point about Śākyamuni’s great hint. If the congregation was surprised in Chapter 15 to learn that Śākyamuni had taught so many Bodhisattvas in the past, why didn’t they wonder about these countless replicas back in Chapter 11?
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