Day 3

Day 3 covers the first half of Chapter 2, Expedients. Having last month learned one great purpose of the Buddha’s teaching, we learn that the Buddhas teach only Bodhisattvas. “The Buddhas, the Tathāgatas, teach only Bodhisattvas. All they do is for one purpose, that is, to show the insight of the Buddha to all living … Continue reading Day 3

The Buddha-way as Bodhisattva Practice

The way in which you and I can develop our buddha-nature is by following the Buddha-way, doing what buddhas have always done, namely, following the way of bodhisattva practice. It is absolutely central to the Lotus Sutra, I think, that Śākyamuni Buddha is, first of all, a bodhisattva. We are told that he has been doing bodhisattva practice, helping and leading others, for innumerable kalpas. Whenever the enormously long life of the Buddha is described, it is not meditation that he has been doing, at least not primarily, but teaching and leading and changing others, thus turning them into bodhisattvas.

Because all the living have various natures, various desires, various activities, various ideas and ways of making distinctions, and because I wanted to lead them to put down roots of goodness, I have used a variety of explanations, parables, and words and preach various teachings. Thus I have never for a moment neglected the Buddha’s work.

Thus it is, since I became Buddha a very long time has passed, a lifetime of unquantifiable asamkhyeya kalpas, of forever existing and never entering extinction. Good children, the lifetime which I have acquired pursuing the bodhisattva-way is not even finished yet, but will be twice the number of kalpas already passed.

But the Buddha and those with the title of bodhisattva are not the only bodhisattvas. Śrāvakas are also bodhisattvas. That is why there are plenty of them in every paradise, or paradiselike Buddha-land described in the Lotus Sutra. Most śrāvakas, of course, don’t know they are bodhisattvas, but they are nonetheless.

What you are practicing
[the Buddha says to the disciple Kāśyapa] Is the bodhisattva-way.
As you gradually practice and learn,
Every one of you should become a buddha.

And, of course, most importantly, you and I are bodhisattvas. No matter how tiny our understanding or merit, no matter how trivial our practice, we are, to some extent, perhaps tiny, already bodhisattvas. And we are called to grow in bodhisattvahood by leading others to realize that potential in themselves.
A Buddhist Kaleidoscope; Gene Reeves, Appropriate Means as the Ethics of the Lotus Sutra, Page 384-385

The Union of Suffering and Salvation

The maximum commitment to serving others, united to awareness of the limits of every action, represents the dynamic realization of the Middle Path. Each limited and concrete action can certainly redeem just a fragment of the world, but through the prayer/meditation also a fragment becomes totality (ichinen sanzen). In this way, liberation is not put off to a utopian future, and suffering is not related to an inevitable karma or to the logic of economics or power. To the eyes of the Buddha and in the hand and heart of the Sangha, we are bound together by warm links of solidarity and loving kindness.

In other words, Buddhist liberation consists of the union of suffering and salvation. Redemption is not obtained through a sacrifice offered to a divinity which, with its intervention, “mends” the world, destroying what we qualify as negative and as a source of suffering. Redemption is found in overcoming conflict and opposition, and in the creation of a more subtle harmony between order and disorder. This is a path that doesn’t involve nonsuffering, but the nonsuffering-of-suffering; a path which, we could say according to French writer Marguerite Yourcenar, if it doesn’t make us mad with joy, at least it makes us wise with pain.

That is why we can affirm that this world, full of misery and conflict, is, nonetheless, the tranquil realm of the Buddha.
A Buddhist Kaleidoscope; Riccardo Venturini, A Buddha Teaches Only Bodhisattvas, Page 336

Taking Others’ Suffering on Oneself

Taking others’ suffering on oneself and purifying it without allowing oneself to be contaminated is the mission of the bodhisattva, who clears a world polluted by ignorance and selfishness. As Saichō, the founder of Japan’s Tendai sect, said, “To take evil upon oneself and to give good to others, and to forget about oneself and to work for the benefit of all, is the ultimate in compassion.”

Not discriminating between friends and enemies, tending not to have “personal” needs, appreciating all beings and all situations, bodhisattvas never pause in their constant, merciful practice (nondualism in action), always treat others as they would like to be treated, and are always ready to help others to overcome their misery.
A Buddhist Kaleidoscope; Riccardo Venturini, A Buddha Teaches Only Bodhisattvas, Page 335

Śākyamuni’s Bodhisattva Practice

The Buddha in his wisdom can affirm that the world is already saved and pure. As the Lotus Sutra says, “Tranquil is this realm of mine.”
Nonetheless, in his compassion, since the world is full of beings who groan amid miseries of every kind, the logic of love draws him to reveal the Dharma to people devoid of wisdom and full of attachments:

The Triple World is not safe,
Just as the burning house,
Full of all kinds of sufferings,
Was greatly to be feared.
Ever there are the distresses of birth,
Old age, disease, and death;

Now this triple world
All is my domain;
The living beings in it
All are my sons.

But now this place
Abounds with distresses;
And I alone
Am able to save and protect them.

For this reason the buddhas appear in the world:

Because the buddhas, the world-honored ones, desire to cause all living beings to open [their eyes] to the Buddha-knowledge so that they may gain the pure [mind], [therefore] they appear in the world; because they desire to show all living beings the Buddha-knowledge, they appear in the world; because they desire to cause all living beings to apprehend the Buddha-knowledge, they appear in the world; because they desire to cause all living beings to enter the way of the Buddha-knowledge, they appear in the world.

For this reason Śākyamuni, the Eternal Buddha, says he is committed, for a time without end, to bodhisattva practice.
A Buddhist Kaleidoscope; Riccardo Venturini, A Buddha Teaches Only Bodhisattvas, Page 334-335

Bodhisattva Compassion

In the Lotus Sutra the Buddha affirms that he employed nirvana (in its meaning of extinction, cessation, emptiness in a negative sense) as a didactic method to save people blinded by ignorance and dominated by the thirst for existence:

For this reason …
I set up a tactful way for them,
Proclaiming the Way to end sufferings,
Revealing it through nirvana.
Though I proclaim nirvana,
Yet it is not real extinction.
All existence, from the beginning,
Is ever of the nirvana nature.”

It is important for Westerners, who have had a distorted and negative view of the Buddhist concepts of void and nirvana, to reflect on these words. Void, in fact, being emptied itself, becomes fullness. This changing and impermanent world in which we live is itself the real world. Any difference between nirvana and samsara vanishes; and the same nirvana, which as a “designation” is also empty and unreal, becomes alive and concrete in the realization of life’s indivisibility, in the collapse of self-centeredness and in the awareness of the interrelatedness of all things.

Bodhisattvas, then, do not live as ascetics in the desert of their spiritual pride, insensitive to the sufferings of unenlightened beings. The plight of those who suffer misery and delusion stirs their hearts and spurs them to compassionate acts, to which they subordinate their quest for their own enlightenment, having already chosen lives of absolute nondualism. Far from enjoying a separate happiness, bodhisattvas feel a “vicarious suffering,” with others and in the place of others. They do not therefore “renounce” nirvana but emancipate themselves from the pursuit of a false aim, living the true nirvana in a “return” to the everyday world.
A Buddhist Kaleidoscope; Riccardo Venturini, A Buddha Teaches Only Bodhisattvas, Page 333-334

The Awakening of the Mind

When, through the mysterious concurrence of external and internal causes, the individual directs all his energies toward the Buddha, and the Buddha turns to that person, there occurs the awakening of the mind that aspires to enlightenment (bodhicitta) and to follow the Way of the Buddha and the path of spiritual discipline (bodhicitta-utpāda). It is the moment of “conversion” or great resolution, in which the bodhisattva, sustained by faith in enlightenment, takes great vows and is ready to set out on the path, to begin the journey of pāramitā practice.
A Buddhist Kaleidoscope; Riccardo Venturini, A Buddha Teaches Only Bodhisattvas, Page 333

Daily Dharma – Dec. 24, 2019

Therefore, anyone who has wisdom should copy this sūtra with all his heart, cause others to copy it, and also keep, read and recite it, memorize it correctly, and act according to it. The Buddha declares this to Universal-Sage Bodhisattva in Chapter Twenty-Eight of the Lotus Sūtra. It is important to remember that early in … Continue reading Daily Dharma – Dec. 24, 2019

Universal Buddhahood

Because the notion of universal buddhahood now seems so obvious to those familiar with the Mahāyāna, it is difficult to imagine how radical this declaration of a single vehicle would have been in its own time. Up until this point, in the mainstream tradition, the goal of the Buddhist path was to become an arhat. … Continue reading Universal Buddhahood

Daily Dharma – Aug. 25, 2019

Śāriputra! Some disciples of mine, who think that they are Arhats or Pratyekabuddhas, will not be my disciples or Arhats or Pratyekabuddhas if they do not hear or know that the Buddhas, the Tathāgatas, teach only Bodhisattvas. The Buddha makes this declaration to his disciple Śāriputra in Chapter Two of the Lotus Sutra. When the … Continue reading Daily Dharma – Aug. 25, 2019