Tag Archives: LS01

LS32

Day 1

Day 1 covers the first half of Chapter 1, Introductory

Day 1 Text with annotationsPlay MP3

Having last month considered the additional practices of the Bodhisattvas that Maitreya sees, we considered the final practices of those Bodhisattvas that Maitreya sees.

I also see some Bodhisattvas
Offering delicious food and drink
And hundreds of kinds of medicines
To the Buddha and the Sangha.

Some offer garments and beautiful robes
Worth tens of millions
Or beyond monetary value
To the Buddha and the Sangha.

Some offer thousands of billions
Of jeweled houses made of candana
And wonderful bedding
To the Buddha and the Sangha.

Some offer pure gardens and forests
Abounding in flowers and fruits,
And furnished with rivers, springs,
and pools for bathing,
To the Buddha and the Saṃgha.

I see those Bodhisattvas
Making offerings of those wonderful things
Joyfully and untiringly
In order to attain unsurpassed enlightenment.

Some Bodhisattvas expound
The truth of tranquil extinction,
And with various expedients,
Teach innumerable living beings.

I also see some Bodhisattvas
Who attained the following truth:
“The nature of things is not dual.
It is [formless] like the sky.”

I also see some sons of the Buddha
Having no attachment in their minds.
They seek unsurpassed enlightenment
With this wonderful wisdom.

Mañjuśrī!
Some Bodhisattvas make offerings
To the śarīras of a Buddha
After his extinction.

I also see some sons of the Buddha
Adorning the world of the Buddha
With as many stupa-mausoleums
As there are sands in the River Ganges.

Those stupas of treasures are
Lofty and wonderful.
They are five thousand yojanas high,
And two thousand yojanas wide and deep.

Each of the stupa-mausoleums has
One thousand pairs of banners and streamers.
It also has curtains adorned with gems.
It also has jeweled bells ringing.

Gods, dragons, men, and nonhuman beings
Constantly offer incense, flowers, and music
[To the stupa-mausoleums].

Mañjuśrī!
Those sons of the Buddha
Adorn the stupa-mausoleums
And offer the adornments
To the śarīras [of the Buddha].

The worlds [of the Buddha] naturally become
As wonderful and as beautiful
As the [flowers] of the kingly tree
In full bloom on the top of Mt. Sumeru.
The multitude of this congregation and I
Can see the various wonderful things
Of those worlds
By the ray of light of the Buddha [of this world].

The Introduction to the Lotus Sutra explains the omens that confounded Maitreya:

In Chapter 1, Introduction, the congregation waited anxiously for this definitive sermon, the way to which had already been prepared by the Sutra of Innumerable Teachings. But Sakyamuni did not begin immediately. First, he preached the opening sutra … . Then he entered into its deep meditation. His body and mind became motionless. The assembled gods rained mandarava flowers upon him. The world quaked in six ways. The assembled beings looked on in astonishment and joined their hands together in supplication. Finally the Buddha emitted a ray of light from the white curl between his eyebrows (the so-called “third eye”) and illuminated all the eighteen thousand worlds to the east, from their lowest hells up to their highest heavens.

These are called the “Six Omens Shown in This World.” In order, they are “Preaching,” “Entering into Samadhi,” “Raining Flowers,” “Quaking,” “Delighting,” and “Emitting a Ray of Light.”

Introduction to the Lotus Sutra

LS32

Day 1

Day 1 covers the first half of Chapter 1, Introductory

Day 1 Text with annotationsPlay MP3

Having last month considered some of the practices of the Bodhisattvas that Maitreya sees, we consider additional practices of the Bodhisattvas that Maitreya sees.

I also see some sons of the Buddha
Concentrating their minds, having wisdom,
Expounding the Dharma to the multitude
With innumerable parables and similes,
Expounding the Dharma with joy,
Teaching [other] Bodhisattvas,
Defeating the army of Mara,
And beating the drum of the Dharma.

I also see some Bodhisattvas
Being tranquil and peacefully calm,
Not delighting in being respected
By gods or dragons.

I also see some Bodhisattva
Living in forests, and emitting ray of light
In order to have the denizens in hell,
And cause them to enter the Way to Buddhahood.

I also see some sons of the Buddha
Walking about forests without sleeping
In order to attain
The enlightenment of the Buddha.

I also see some of them
Observing the precepts with due deportment,
And keeping purity like that of gems,
In order to attain the enlightenment of the Buddha.

I also see some sons of the Buddha
Enduring abuse
Or blows with sticks
Inflicted by arrogant people
In order to attain
The enlightenment of the Buddha.

I also see some Bodhisattvas
Giving up wanton pleasures,
Parting from foolish companions,
Approaching men of wisdom,

Controlling their minds from distraction,
And concentrating their minds in hills or forests
For thousands of billions of years
In order to attain the enlightenment of the Buddha.

See Our Stagnation or Retrogression Hinders Others

LS32, d1b, b4today

Our Stagnation or Retrogression Hinders Others

The Buddha’s teachings instruct us that sin and evil did not originally exist in this world. They are due to the cessation of the proper progress of human life or the return to a wrong course. Therefore, the moment we abandon such negative uses of energy, that is, as soon as we are free from illusion, evil disappears and the world of the light of the brilliant rays of the Buddha is revealed before us. Our “non-advance,” our “non-approach” to the Buddha, is sin and evil because such action is contrary to the proper course of human life.

From the selfish point of view of ego, we think that we can do as we like so long as we are prepared to accept the consequences of our actions, and we ask only to be left alone and not be interfered with by others. However, such an attitude is a fundamental error because our lives are related in some way to the lives of all others, so that the evil produced by one per son inevitably exerts an influence upon other people somewhere, and the negligence of one person is sure to prevent others from advancing. If we understand this, we can be spiritually awakened to the fact that our own stagnation or retrogression hinders others, so that we determine to advance upward bit by bit. This is the true spirit of the law that nothing has an ego, and this is the reason why the true spirit of Buddhism consists in constant endeavor.

Buddhism for Today, p31-32
LS32

Day 1

Day 1 covers the first half of Chapter 1, Introductory

Day 1 Text with annotationsPlay MP3

Having last month considered the Bodhisattvas and kings whom Maitreya sees, we consider some of the practices of the Bodhisattvas that Maitreya sees.

I also see some Bodhisattvas
Becoming bhikṣus,
Living alone in retired places,
And joyfully reciting sūtras.

I also see some Bodhisattvas
Zealously and courageously
Entering remote mountains, and pondering
The enlightenment of the Buddha.

I also see some of them having given up desires,
And living in retired places,
Entering deep into dhyāna-concentration,
And obtaining the five supernatural powers.

I also see some Bodhisattvas finding peace in dhyāna,
Joining their hands together [towards the Buddha],
And praising the King of the Dharma
With tens of millions of gāthās.

I also see some Bodhisattvas resolute in mind.
They have obtained profound wisdom
By questioning the Buddha.
And now they remember what they heard from him.

See The Meaning of the Title

LS32, d1b, b4today

The Meaning of the Title

Before discussing the Sutra of the Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Law itself, I wish to comment on the title of the sutra, which expresses in brief the form and content of the sutra. I believe that this title is unique in its succinct expression of the profound meaning of the entire sutra.

The Sutra of the Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Law, written in Sanskrit, is called Saddharma-puṇḍrika-sūtra. The title as translated into Chinese by Kumārajīva is Miao-fa-lien-hua-ching (Japanese, Myōhō Renge-kyō). In the Sutra of the Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Law the absolute truth realized by Sakyamuni Buddha is presented. This truth is called the “Wonderful Law” (saddharma, miao-fa, myōhō) because of its profound meaning, as shown in the discussion of the Sutra of Innumerable Meanings.

First, as shown by the words “real state of all things, “Law” means all things that exist in the universe and all events that occur in the world. Secondly, it means the one truth that penetrates all things. Thirdly, it means the Law as an established rule when the truth appears as a phenomenon that we can see with our eyes and hear with our ears. Fourthly, it means the teaching of the truth.

The truth that expresses the original idea of these four meanings of “Wonderful Law” is the Buddha. Accordingly, the Law that rules the relationships of all things, including man, is also the Buddha; and the teaching, explaining how one should live on the basis of the truth, is the Buddha too. In short, the Law and the Buddha are one and the same. In other words, the Buddha and all the functions of the Buddha can be expressed with the word “Law.” Because the Law has such a supreme, profound, and inexpressible meaning, it is modified by the adjective “Wonderful.”

“Lotus” (puṇḍarīka, lien-hua, renge) means the lotus flower. In India this flower was regarded as the most beautiful in the world, for a lotus is rooted in mud but opens as a pure and beautiful flower unsoiled by the mud. This is an allegorical expression of thee fundamental idea of the Lotus Sutra, that though man lives in this corrupt world, he is not tainted by it nor swayed by it, and he can live a beautiful life with perfect freedom of mind.

“Sutra” literally means a string or the warp threads in weaving. The people of ancient India had a custom of decorating their hair with beautiful flowers threaded on a string. In the same way, the holy teachings of the Buddha were gathered into compositions called sutras. Altogether, the title “Sutra of the Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Law” means “the supreme teaching that man can lead a correct life, without being swayed by illusions, while living in this corrupt world.”

Buddhism for Today, p23-24
LS32

Day 1

Day 1 covers the first half of Chapter 1, Introductory

Day 1 Text with annotationsPlay MP3

Having last month considered some of what Maitreya sees, we consider the Bodhisattvas and kings whom Maitreya sees.

Mañjuśrī!
I see and hear
Hundreds of thousands of millions of things
Such as these
From this world.
I will tell you briefly some more of them.

I see as many Bodhisattvas of those worlds
As there are sands in the River Ganges,
Who are seeking the enlightenment of the Buddha
[In various ways] according to their environments

Some of them practice almsgiving.
They joyfully give treasures
Such as gold, silver,
Pearls, manis, shells, agates, and diamonds.
They also give menservants and maidservants,
Vehicles and palanquins adorned with treasures.

They proceed to the enlightenment of the Buddha
By the merits obtained thereby,
Wishing to obtain this vehicle,
The most excellent vehicle
In the triple world,
The vehicle praised by the Buddhas.

Some Bodhisattvas give
Jeweled chariots yoked with four horses,
Equipped with railings and flower-canopies,
And adorned on all sides.

I also see some Bodhisattvas
Offering their flesh or their limbs
Or their wives or their children
In order to attain unsurpassed enlightenment.

I also see some Bodhisattvas
Joyfully offering
Their heads or their eyes or their bodies
In order to attain the wisdom of the Buddha.

Mañjuśrī!
I see some kings coming to a Buddha,
And asking him about unsurpassed enlightenment.
They have renounced the world of pleasures,
Left their palaces,
Parted from their ministers and women,
And shaved their beard and hair.
They now wear monastic robes.

See Familiar and Unfamiliar Appearances

LS32, d1b, 2buddhas

Familiar and Unfamiliar Appearances

Maitreya was the only bodhisattva of the present time familiar to the non-Mahāyāna, mainstream tradition of Buddhism. But he does not understand the Buddha’s miracle and so he is made to ask a bodhisattva unknown to that mainstream. Here again, this would give the traditional reader pause. The question that would typically open a sūtra is a question addressed to the Buddha from an unenlightened person. Here, the question is asked by an advanced bodhisattva, a bodhisattva a mere one lifetime away from buddhahood, and it is addressed to another bodhisattva, one not part of the mainstream Buddhist tradition. As we shall see, such things occur throughout the Lotus Sūtra, where something or someone familiar appears in a way that also seems unfamiliar, evoking recognition but also hesitation. Something is not quite right; indeed, the ground has shifted, and conventional expectations no longer apply.

Two Buddhas, p41
LS32

Day 1

Day 1 covers the first half of Chapter 1, Introductory

Day 1 Text with annotationsPlay MP3

Having last month heard Maitreya question Mañjuśrī in gāthās why the Leading Teacher is emitting a great ray of light, we consider what Maitreya sees.

I see from this world
The living beings of the six regions
Extending down to the Avici Hell,
And up to the Highest Heaven

Of each of those worlds.
I see the region to which each living being is to go,
The good or evil karmas he is doing,
And the rewards or retributions he is going to have.

I also see the Buddhas,
The Saintly Masters, the Lion-like Ones,
Who are expounding
The most wonderful sūtra
With their pure and gentle voices,
And teaching
Many billions of Bodhisattvas.
The brahma voices of the Buddhas
Are deep and wonderful,
Causing people to wish to hear them.

I also see the Buddha of each of those worlds
Expounding his right teachings to all living beings
In order to cause them to attain enlightenment.

He explains his teachings
With stories of previous lives,
And with innumerable parables and similes.

To those who are confronted with sufferings,
And tired of old age, disease, and death,
The Buddha expounds the teaching of Nirvana,
And causes them to eliminate these sufferings.

To those who have merits,
Who have already made offerings to the past Buddhas,
And who are now seeking a more excellent teaching,
The Buddha expounds [the Way of] cause-knowers.

To the Buddha’s sons
Who are performing various practices,
And who are seeking unsurpassed wisdom,
The Buddha expounds the Pure Way.

See Nichiren’s Understanding of the Lotus Sūtra’s Title

LS32, d1b, d2b, WONS, 2buddhas

Nichiren’s Understanding of the Lotus Sūtra’s Title

This introductory chapter marks a convenient place in the present study to say more about Nichiren’s understanding of the Lotus Sūtra’s title.

First, we might consider the individual words that make up the title. Myō has the connotations of “wonderful,” “marvelous,” and “inconceivable.” The use of this character in the title was Kumārajīva’s innovation; an earlier translation by Dharmaraksa (230?-316) uses shō (Ch. Zheng), meaning “true” or “correct.” Fayun (467-529), an early Chinese commentator on the Lotus Sūtra, took myō (miao) to mean “subtle” as opposed to “crude” or “coarse.” Zhiyi argued that myō has both a relative and an absolute meaning. From a relative standpoint, myō, denoting the perfect teaching, is superior to all others, which by comparison are incomplete. But from an absolute standpoint, myō is perfectly encompassing; there is nothing outside it to which it could be compared. This reading laid the groundwork for later understandings of the Lotus Sūtra as both superior to, and at the same time inclusive of, all other teachings.

Nichiren said that myō has three meanings. The first is to open, meaning that it opens the meaning of all other sūtras. “When the Buddha preached the Lotus Sūtra, he opened the storehouse of the other sūtras preached during the preceding forty-some years, and all beings of the nine realms were for the first time able to discern the treasures that lay within those sūtras,” he wrote. Second, myō means “perfectly encompassing; each of the 69,384 characters of the sūtra contains all others within itself. “It is like one drop of the great ocean that contains water from all the rivers that pour into the ocean, or a single wish-granting jewel that, although no bigger than a mustard seed, can rain down all the treasures that one might gain from all wish-granting jewels.” And third, myō means “to restore to life,” meaning that it revives the seeds, or causes, of buddhahood in those who have neglected or destroyed them.

Renge means “lotus blossom,” and the Sanskrit puṇḍarīka indicates a white lotus. Lotuses grow in muddy water to bloom untainted above its surface and thus represent the flowering of the aspiration for awakening in the mind of the ordinary, deluded person. The lotus plant also produces flowers and seedpods at the same time. To Chinese Tiantai patriarchs, as well as medieval Japanese Tendai interpreters, this suggested the simultaneity of “cause” (the nine realms, or states of those still at the stage of practice) and “effect” (the buddha realm or state of buddhahood), meaning that all ten realms are mutually inclusive. Nichiren draws on the analogy of the lotus to stress his claim that the Lotus Sūtra enables the realization of buddhahood in the very act of practice. As he expressed it: “The merit of all other sūtras is uncertain, because they teach that first one must plant good roots and [only] afterward become a buddha. But in the case of the Lotus Sūtra, when one takes it in one’s hand, that hand at once becomes a buddha, and when one chants it with one’s mouth, that mouth is precisely a buddha. This is just like the moon being reflected on the water the moment it rises above the eastern mountains, or like a sound and its echo occurring simultaneously.”

The last character, kyō, means “sūtra.” Kyō in the title of the Lotus Sūtra, Nichiren said, encompasses all the teachings of all buddhas throughout space and time. Namu, which prefaces the title in chanting, comes from Sanskrit namas, meaning “reverence,” “devotion,” or “the taking of refuge.” Ultimately, Nichiren took it as expressing the willingness to offer one’s life for the dharma. Nichiren made clear, however, that the significance of the daimoku does not lie in its semantic meaning. The daimoku, he said, is neither the text nor its meaning but the intent, or heart, of the entire sūtra. He defined it alternately as the seed of Buddhahood, the father and mother of all buddhas, and the “three thousand realms in a single thought moment in actuality… .”

Two Buddhas, pPage 48-50
LS32, d1b, 2buddhas

Extraordinary Events

The size of the Lotus Sūtra’s audience is the first sign of something extraordinary. A second sign is a second constituency within the audience: eighty thousand bodhisattvas.

In the early Buddhist tradition, and in what scholars have come to call “mainstream Buddhism” (that is, non-Mahāyāna), there are three paths to enlightenment. The first is the path of the śrāvaka or disciple (literally, “listener”), one who listens to the teachings of the Buddha, puts them into practice, and eventually achieves the state of the arhat, entering final nirvāṇa at death. The second is the path of the pratyekabuddha, or “solitary enlightened one.” Pratyekkabuddhas are rather enigmatic figures in Buddhist literature, said to prefer a solitary existence, achieving their liberation at a time when there is no buddha in the world. Having achieved their enlightenment, they do not teach others. The third path is that of the bodhisattva, a person capable of achieving the state of an arhat but who instead seeks the far more difficult and distant goal of buddhahood, perfecting himself over many billions of lifetimes so that he may teach the path to liberation to others at a time when it has been forgotten. Thus, a bodhisattva only achieves buddhahood at a time when the teachings of the previous buddha have faded entirely into oblivion, a process that takes many millions of millennia. Different versions of the tradition say that Śākyamuni Buddha, the buddha who appeared in India some two thousand five hundred years ago, was the fourth, the seventh, or the twenty-fifth buddha to appear in our world during the present cosmic age. There is a bodhisattva, Maitreya, said to be waiting in the Tuṣita (“Satisfaction”) heaven to be the next buddha, who will appear in our world when the teachings of our buddha have been completely forgotten, something that will not occur for millions of years. Śākyamuni and other, prior buddhas were bodhisattvas before their enlightenment. In the present age, mainstream Buddhism essentially recognizes only a single bodhisattva: Maitreya. The audience of the Lotus Sūtra, however, has eighty thousand bodhisattvas. The sūtra tells us that these eighty thousand bodhisattvas have “paid homage to countless hundreds of thousands of buddhas” (3), far more than four, seven, or twenty-five. The text lists eighteen of these bodhisattvas by name. They include two who would become the most famous in the Mahāyāna pantheon: Avalokiteśvara and Mañjuśrī. And they include the only bodhisattva whose name would have been recognized and whose existence would have been accepted by all: again, Maitreya. Thus, on the first page of the sūtra, a reader familiar with the canon would have been comforted by the familiar opening phrase and the familiar setting, only to be dumbfounded, and perhaps confounded, by the size and composition of the audience, an audience that grows even further as one reads on, with all manner of gods and demi gods arriving from their various heavens, each with hundreds of thousands of attendants. Also present is one human king, Ajātaśatru, apparently after he had repented the murder of his father, the Buddha’s patron and friend, Bimbisāra, king of Magadha.

Two Buddhas, p37-39

Another nugget. While an academic exercise, I see this information as helpful for appreciating the intent of the authors of the sūtra. And, no, I do not have any problem with Mahāyāna sūtras being composed centuries after the historical Buddha’s death. Since nothing was written down during the Buddha’s lifetime, all sūtras reflect the efforts of later authors. The role of a sūtra is to be a guide, and I believe the Lotus Sūtra is the best guide.

As Two Buddhas authors explain in their Authors Introduction:

In the vast literature of Buddhism, the Lotus Sūtra stands as one of the most inspiring, and the most controversial, of Buddhist texts. As a Mahāyāna sūtra, a sūtra of the “Great Vehicle” tradition, the Lotus Sūtra was not accepted by the Buddhist mainstream of its own time as “the word of the Buddha” (buddha-vacana). It is not accepted as the word of the Buddha by the Theravāda traditions of Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia today. But in East Asia, especially in China and Japan, perhaps more than any other text, the Lotus Sūtra has come to define what distinguishes the Mahāyāna from the teachings that preceded it. Indeed, one might say that the Lotus Sūtra both explains that difference and then seeks to explain it away, asserting that the Mahāyāna and the earlier tradition both sprang from the Buddha’s single intent.

Two Buddhas, p1

Namu Myōhō Renge Kyō

This should be Day 1 material, rather than today, and yesterday should have been Day 2. I’ve added tags to reflect that organization.