“Who will expound Myōhō Renge Kyō in this Saha-World? Now is the time to do this. I shall enter into Nirvana before long. I wish to transmit Myōhō Renge Kyō to someone so that this sūtra may be preserved.”
Category Archives: Promises
Myōhō Renge Kyō Promise for March 9, 2025
Śāriputra!
Expound Myōhō Renge Kyō to those
Who keep away
From evil friends,
And who approach
Good friends!
Myōhō Renge Kyō Promise for March 8, 2025
“Medicine-King, know this! Anyone who copies, keeps, reads and recites Myōhō Renge Kyō, makes offerings to Myōhō Renge Kyō, and expounds Myōhō Renge Kyō to others after my extinction, will be covered by my robe. He also will be protected by the present Buddhas of the other worlds. He will have the great power of truth, the power of vows, and the power of roots of good. Know this! He will live with me. I will pat him on the head.”
Myōhō Renge Kyō Promise for March 7, 2025
Some sons of mine are pure in heart, gentle and wise.
They have practiced the profound and wonderful teachings
Under innumerable Buddhas
[In their previous existence].
I will expound Myōhō Renge Kyō to them,
And assure them of their future Buddhahood, saying:
“You will attain the enlightenment of the Buddha
In your future lives.”Deep in their minds they are thinking of me,
And observing the pure precepts.
Therefore, they will be filled with joy
When they hear they will become Buddhas.
I know their minds.
Therefore, I will expound Myōhō Renge Kyō to them.
Myōhō Renge Kyō Promise for March 6, 2025
Brave-In-Giving Bodhisattva said to the Buddha:
“World-Honored One! I also will utter dhārānis in order to protect the person who reads, recites and keeps Myōhō Renge Kyō. If he keeps these dhārānis, this teacher of the Dharma will not have his weak points taken advantage of by any yakṣa, rākṣasa, pūtana, kṛtya, kumbhāṇḍa or hungry spirit.”
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
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.
The Buddhist Monk Jingjian
Note: This is another in the monthly excerpts from “Tales of the Lotus Sutra.”
Buddhism in Practice, p438-439The 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.
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.
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.”