Chapter 26, Dhārānis, is one of Lotus Sutra’s shorter lessons, but it does have some interesting aspects. Consider the crime of making sesame oil without first taking out the worms from the sesame.
In the 1975 Rissho Kosei-Kai translation of the Lotus Sutra that Nikkyō Niwano uses in Buddhism for Today, the Rākshasas demons offer this verse:
“Whoever resists our spell
And troubles a preacher,
May his head be split in seven
Like an arjaka sprout;
May his doom be that of a parricide,
His retribution that of an oil-expresser
Or a deceiver with [false] measures and weights,
Or of Devadatta who brought schism into the Saṃgha;
In commenting on this Nikkyō Niwano says:
Buddhism for Today, p393The words “His retribution that of an oil-expresser” refer to an Indian custom. When one grinds sesame, he puts a weight on the grinder to press down the sesame. If this weight presses only moderately on the sesame, the worms in it are not squeezed. If he puts too heavy a weight on the grinder in order to press the sesame faster, they are squeezed and the sesame will lose its flavor. Therefore, in ancient India, this was regarded as symbolizing the crime by which one takes another’s life for the sake of his own self.
This is certainly unclear. Is the problem the flavor of the sesame oil or the killing of worms? The footnote in the Lotus Sutra doesn’t exactly clarify: “The crime of producing worms by grinding sesame and at the same time squeezing the worms. This is the crime of taking life.” Producing worms and then squeezing them?
Leon Hurvitz takes this note and, using it in a footnote in his translation of the Lotus Blossom of the Fine Dharma, states clearly:
According to Kato [Bunno Kato, principal author of the Rissho Kosei-Kai translation], this is the crime of taking life: there is a danger, in pressing sesame seeds to produce oil, that one will kill the tiny insects that make their home among the sesame seeds.”
In reading this list of crimes, I’ve wondered about this. I feel Senchu Murano’s translation makes the issue much clear:
Anyone who attacks this teacher of the Dharma
Will receive the same retribution
As to be received by the person who kills his parents,
Or who makes [sesame] oil without taking out worms [from the sesame],
Or who deceives others by using wrong measures and scales,
Or by Devadatta who split the Saṃgha.
In reading Nikkyō Niwano’s “The Lotus Sutra Life and Soul of Buddhism” I found one way this “crime” may have became so famous that it was included with people who kill their parents.
Nikkyō Niwano tells the story of Mahākāśyapa and his wife Bhadrā, both of whom were so devoutly religious that after their marriage they lived as brother and sister for 12 years. The meaning of the prohibition of being an oil-expresser comes from something Bhadrā did. As Nikkyō Niwano explains:
One day, Bhadrā ordered her many servants to press oil from sesames. While drying the sesames on a mat spread in the garden, they found them infested with numberless small insects. The servants said to each other:
“What a cruel thing to crush these many insects together with the sesames!”
“Don’t worry about it. We have only to do as we are bidden by our mistress. We wonder if the greatest fault lies with her.”
Hearing the conversation of the servants, she ordered them to stop pressing oil from the sesames and confining herself to her room thought deeply about the words of the servants.
The following words are found in Chapter 26, “Dhārāṇis,” of the Lotus Sutra:
“May his doom be that of a parricide, / His retribution that of an oil-expresser/ Or a deceiver with (false) measures and weights;/ Or of Devadatta who brought schism into the Saṃgha.”
We can guess from this quotation the reason why pressing oil is mentioned together with some grave crimes.