Category Archives: Promises

Promises, Daily Dharma, Blog

The Next 10 Years

Ryusho Jeffus Shonin inspired my efforts here back in 2015. In his book, “The Magic City: Studying the Lotus Sutra,” Ryusho relates the Parable of the Magic City” in Chapter 7 to our personal practice.

To reach the place of treasure requires traveling a dangerous, bad road five hundred yojanas long. As Ryusho explains: “Yojana is both a measurement of distance as well as time. Simply stated, a yojana is the distance an ox-cart can travel in one day.”

He asks his readers: “I wonder what you could accomplish in your life if you made a commitment from today for 500 days to practice on a regular consistent basis towards the achievement of some change in your life? Would you be able to travel the entire 500 days without giving up or abandoning or forgetting your goal and effort?”

But, really, 500 days is not long. Soon after I started this website, Ryusho suggested a 10-year timeframe would be more useful for judging the merits of the practice of Nichiren Buddhism.

And here I am today, having completed ten years on this journey.

Now I start the next 10 years.

Back in 2022 during my 800 Years of Faith Project, I wrote:

Each time as I cycle through the 32 Days of the Lotus Sutra (which, of course, is actually 34 days with the addition the Sutra of Innumerable Meanings and the Contemplation of Universal Sage) I am struck by the promises offered to everyone. This is especially true in Chapter 2.

“Any Śrāvaka or Bodhisattva
Who hears even a gāthā
Of this sūtra which I am to expound
Will undoubtedly become a Buddha.”

I believe it is these promises that have made the Lotus Sutra so important in Asia and why it translates so well as it is introduced to new readers. How can we not have faith?

At the start of last year, I proposed creating a 365-day collection of those promises contained in the Lotus Sutra. Today I’ll start posting them. These will replace my reprinting of Shinkyo Warner Shonin’s Daily Dharma.

However, I have added a twist. I am replacing references to the Lotus Sutra, this Sutra, the Wonderful Dharma, etc. with Myōhō Renge Kyō.

For example the verse above from Chapter 2 becomes:

“Any Śrāvaka or Bodhisattva
Who hears even a gāthā
Of Myōhō Renge Kyō which I am to expound
Will undoubtedly become a Buddha.”

I am doing this throughout my daily practice.

Here’s the transformed Kaikyoge:

Verses for Opening Myōhō Renge Kyō

The most profound and wonderful teaching
is presented in Myōhō Renge Kyō.
Myōhō Renge Kyō is difficult to meet
Even once in thousands and millions of aeons.
Now we have been able to see,
hear, receive and keep Myōhō Renge Kyō.
May we understand the most excellent teaching of the Tathagata!
The most excellent teaching of Myōhō Renge Kyō is very difficult for us to understand.
We shall be able to approach enlightenment
when we see, hear, or touch Myōhō Renge Kyō.
Expounded is the Buddha’s truth.
Expounding is the Buddha’s essence.
The letters composing Myōhō Renge Kyō
are the Buddha’s manifestation.

Just as perfume is caught by something put nearby,
so shall we be richly benefited by Myōhō Renge Kyō,
even when we are not aware of being so benefited,
because infinite merits are accumulated in Myōhō Renge Kyō.

Anyone can expiate his past transgressions,
do good deeds,
and attain Buddhahood by the merits of Myōhō Renge Kyō.
It does not matter whether he is wise or not,
or whether he believes Myōhō Renge Kyō or rejects it.

Myōhō Renge Kyō is the most wonderful and
most excellent taught by the Buddhas
of the past, present, and future.
May we meet and receive it,
Birth after birth, world after world!

Why insert Myōhō Renge Kyō? For me, this emphasizes that the Odaimoku is the principal practice of Nichiren Buddhism. Studying of the Lotus Sutra and the other teachings of the Buddha are only spices flavoring the meal of the Daimoku.

In Shishin Gohon-shō, The Four Depths of Faith and Five Stages of Practice, Nichiren writes:

The five characters of Myō, Hō, Ren, Ge, and Kyō are not the text of the sūtra nor a mere explanation; rather, they are the sole intent of the whole sūtra. Beginners may practice this without knowing the heart (of the Lotus Sūtra), but their practice will naturally harmonize with its intention.

After 10 years of personally studying and exploring the teachings of the Buddha, I want to emphasize that Myōhō Renge Kyō remains my focus.

Next: Harvesting the promises of Myōhō Renge Kyō

Promises

Myōhō Renge Kyō Promise for March 5, 2025

Thereupon Medicine-King Bodhisattva-mahāsattva and Great-Eloquence Bodhisattva-mahāsattva, together with their twenty-thousand attendants who were also Bodhisattvas, vowed to the Buddha:

“World-Honored One, do not worry! We will keep, read, recite and expound Myōhō Renge Kyō 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 Myōhō Renge Kyō, and make various offerings to Myōhō Renge Kyō. We will not spare even our lives [in doing all this].”

Myōhō Renge Kyō

Lotus Sutra, Chapter 13

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Promises

Myōhō Renge Kyō Promise for March 4, 2025

Just as Mt. Sumeru is the largest of all the mountains including Earth Mountains, Black Mountains, the Small Surrounding Iron Mountains, the Great Surrounding Iron Mountains, and the Ten Treasure Mountains, Myōhō Renge Kyō is above all the other sūtras.

Lotus Sutra, Chapter 23

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BuddhismInPractice, Promises

The Buddhist Monk Jingjian

Note: This is another in the monthly excerpts from “Tales of the Lotus Sutra.”

The Buddhist monk Jingjian. Details of his background are unknown, but he left home as a young boy and for the most part lived on mounts Chonggao and Longmen. He recited the Lotus Sūtra in its entirety as many as thirteen thousand times. Internally he applied himself zealously to the contemplation of the wondrous [truth], thereby becoming quite skilled in the essentials of dhyāna. However, due to having recited [the sūtra] for such an extended period of time, his physical strength was exhausted [to the point on distress].

After [he had suffered from this illness] for more than twenty years, one day children began to gather and chatter raucously on the north side of his hut. This caused him to feel even more stressed and dispirited. Jian could not figure out where they came from. At that time a white-haired codger appeared, dressed in a short coat and skirt of crude white silk. Every day he would come and inquire [of Jian’s health], asking: “How are the dhyāna master’s four elements doing today?” To which Jian would usually reply, “I am feeling progressively more run down. Moreover, I have no idea where all these children are coming from; but daily their disturbance grows worse. I don’t think I can bear it much longer.”

The old man instructed, “Master, you should go and sit near the spot where they play. Wait for them to take off their clothes and enter the river to bathe. Then take one of the boy’s garments and come back [to your hermitage]. When he comes to reclaim it, don’t give it back to him. If he curses you, be sure not to respond. I, your disciple, will come to speak with him.”

Jian set out to do as the old man instructed. He went and waited for the children to take off their clothes and enter the pool to bathe. Then he snatched up one of the boy’s garments and returned promptly to his hut. When the child came after him looking for his robe, Jian recalled the old man’s cautions and refused to hand it over. The child bad-mouthed and slandered the dhyāna master in the most vile way, even extending his remarks to his ancestors. But the master showed no response. Soon the old man arrived and said to the lad, “[I command you to] enter the master’s chest.” At first the boy was unwilling to do as he was told. But the old man pressed him repeatedly, until he proceeded to enter Jian’s chest and vanish within his belly. The old man asked the master, “How do your four elements feel now?” To which Jian replied, “My vital energy (qi) is far better than ever before.” The old man thereupon took his leave [and disappeared].

From that day forward Jian felt physically robust and at ease, and his practice of dhyāna and recitation doubled in intensity. Those who understand this sort of thing say that surely this was the work of the bodhisattva Samantabhadra (“Universal Worthy”). The bodhisattva had the [local] mountain spirit compel the seminal essences of different medicinal herbs to transform into the child and become absorbed into [Jian’s] body, thereby curing Jian of his illness. Jingjian was the master who instructed dhyāna master Mo in the arts of dhyāna.

We do not know where and how he ended his days.

Buddhism in Practice, p438-439
Promises

Myōhō Renge Kyō Promise for March 3, 2025

The good men or women who expound even a phrase of Myōhō Renge Kyō even to one person even in secret after my extinction, know this, are my messengers. They are dispatched by me. They do my work. It is needless to say this of those who expound Myōhō Renge Kyō to many people in a great multitude.

Lotus Sutra, Chapter 10

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Promises

Myōhō Renge Kyō Promise for March 2, 2025

“Those who keep Myōhō Renge Kyō will be able to recognize, without moving about, the scents of the sumanas-flowers, jātika-flowers, mallikā-flowers, campaka-flowers, pāṭala-flowers, red lotus flowers, blue lotus flowers, white lotus flowers, flower-trees and fruit-trees. They also will be able to recognize the scents of candana, aloes, tamālapattra and tagara, and the scents of tens of millions of kinds of mixed incense which are either powdered or made in lumps or made applicable to the skin. They also will be able to recognize the living beings including elephants, horses, cows, sheep, men, women, boys and girls by smell. They also will be able to recognize without fallacy grasses, trees, thickets and forests by smell, be the nearby or at a distance.”

Lotus Sutra, Chapter 19

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Promises

Myōhō Renge Kyō Promise for March 1, 2025

“For many hundreds of thousands of billions of asaṃkhyas of kalpas, I studied and practiced the Dharma difficult to obtain, and [finally attained] Anuttara-samyak-saṃbodhi. Now I will transmit [the Dharma] to you. Keep, read, recite and expound Myōhō Renge Kyō in which the Dharma is given, and cause all living beings to hear it and know it! Why is that? It is because I have great compassion. I do not begrudge anything. I am fearless. I wish to give the wisdom of the Buddha, the wisdom of the Tathāgata, the wisdom of the Self-Existing One, to all living beings.

Lotus Sutra, Chapter 22

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Promises

Myōhō Renge Kyō Promise for Feb. 28, 2025

“Medicine-King! The Bodhisattvas who, having been surprised at hearing Myōhō Renge Kyō, doubt and fear Myōhō Renge Kyō, know this, are beginners in Bodhisattvahood. The Śrāvakas who, having been surprised at hearing Myōhō Renge Kyō, doubt and fear Myōhō Renge Kyō, know this, are men of arrogance.”

Lotus Sutra, Chapter 10

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Promises

Myōhō Renge Kyō Promise for Feb. 27, 2025

“Flower-Virtue! Now you see Wonderful-Voice Bodhisattva here and nowhere else. But formerly he transformed himself into various living beings and expounded Myōhō Renge Kyō to others in various places. He became King Brahman, King Sakra, Freedom God, Great-Freedom God, a great general in heaven, Vaisravana Heavenly-King, a wheel-turning-holy-king, the king of a small country, a rich man, a householder, a prime minister, a brahmana, a bhikṣu, a bhikṣunī, an upāsakā, an upāsikā, the wife of a rich man, that of a householder, that of a prime minister, that of a brahmana, a boy, a girl, a god, a dragon, a yakṣa, a gandharva, an asura, a garuda, a kiṃnara, a mahoraga, a human being or a nonhuman being. [After he transformed himself into one or another of these living beings,] he expounded Myōhō Renge Kyō, and saved the hellish denizens, hungry spirits, animals, and all the other living beings in the places of difficulties. When he entered an imperial harem, he became a woman and expounded Myōhō Renge Kyō.”

Lotus Sutra, Chapter 24

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Promises

Myōhō Renge Kyō Promise for Feb. 26, 2025

Because I see that my soldiers led by generals, that is, by sages and saints, have already obtained extraordinary merits in their fight with the Mara of the five aggregates, with the Mara of illusions, and with the Mara of death, and that they have already eliminated the three poisons, left the triple world, and destroyed the nets of the Maras, I now expound Myōhō Renge Kyō with great joy. Myōhō Renge Kyō leads all living beings to the knowledge of all things. I did not expound Myōhō Renge Kyō before because, if I had done so, many people in the world would have hated it and few would have believed it.

Lotus Sutra, Chapter 14

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Promises

Myōhō Renge Kyō Promise for Feb. 25, 2025

The Buddhas sat at the place of enlightenment,
And obtained the hidden core.
Anyone who keeps Myōhō Renge Kyō will be able
To obtain the same before long.

Lotus Sutra, Chapter 21

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