Day 3 covers the first half of Chapter 2, Expedients.
Having
last month learned of the inexplicable nature of the dharma in gāthās, we learn of the difficulty of understanding the Dharma.
Even the Buddhas’ disciples who made offerings
To the [past] Buddhas in their previous existence,
[Even the disciples] who eliminated all asravas,
[Even the disciples] who are now at the final stage
Of their physical existence,
Cannot understand [the Dharma].
As many people as can fill the world,
Who are as wise as you, Śāriputra, will not be able
To measure the wisdom of the Buddhas,
Even though they try to do so with their combined efforts.
As many people as can fill the worlds of the ten quarters,
Who are as wise as you, Śāriputra,
Or as many other disciples of mine
As can fill the ksetras of the ten quarters,
Will not be able to know [the wisdom of the Buddhas]
Even though they try to do so with their combined efforts.
As many Pratyekabuddhas as can fill
The worlds of the ten quarters, or as many as bamboo groves,
Who are wise enough to reach
The final stage of their physical existence without āsravas,
Will not be able to know
Even a bit of the true wisdom of the Buddhas
Even though they continue trying to do so with all their hearts
For many hundreds of millions of kalpas.
As many Bodhisattvas as rice-plants, hemps, bamboos or reeds,
Or as can fill the ksetras of the ten quarters,
Who have just begun to aspire for enlightenment,
Who made offerings to innumerable Buddhas in their previous existence,
Who understand the meanings of the Dharma [in their own ways],
And who are expounding the Dharma [as they understand it],
Will not be able to know the wisdom of the Buddhas
Even though they continue trying to do so with all their hearts
And with all their wonderful wisdom
For as many kalpas as there are sands in the River Ganges.
As many never-faltering Bodhisattvas
As there are sands in the River Ganges
Will not be able to know the wisdom of the Buddhas
Even though they try to do so with all their hearts.
We may not be able to know the wisdom of the Buddhas, but we certainly try.
“Two Buddhas” discusses different ideas of liberation. The Kegon and Zen traditions hold that “the differentiated phenomena of the world are in their essence no different from the one mind and thus originally pure. From this perspective, the purpose of Buddhist practice is to dispel delusion and return the mind to its original clarity. …
“This model explains principle and phenomena as nondual, but it does not value them equally. The one mind is original, pure, and true, while concrete phenomena are ultimately unreal, arising only as the one mind is filtered through human ignorance. From that perspective, the ordinary elements of daily experience remain at a second-tier level as the epiphenomena of a defiled consciousness. Zhiyi termed this perspective the “realm of the conceivable” – understandable, but not yet adequately expressing the true state of affairs. He himself expressed a different, more subtle view. … [H]e states: ‘Were the mind to give rise to all phenomena, that would be a vertical [relationship]. Were all phenomena to be simultaneously contained within the mind, that would be a horizontal [relationship]. Neither horizontal nor vertical will do. It is simply that the mind is all phenomena and all phenomena are the mind. … [This relationship] is subtle and profound in the extreme; it can neither be grasped conceptually nor expressed in words. Therefore, it is called the realm of the inconceivable.’
“In Zhiyi’s understanding, phenomena do not arise from a pure mind or abstract prior principle. “Principle” means that the material and the mental, subject and object, good and evil, delusion and enlightenment are always nondual and mutually inclusive; this is the ‘real aspect of all dharmas’ that only buddhas can completely know, referred to in the ‘Skillful Means’ chapter. This perspective revalorizes the world, not as a realm of delusion, but as the very locus of enlightenment. The aim of practice, then, is not to recover a primal purity, but to manifest the buddha wisdom even amid ignorance and delusion.”
Two Buddhas, p203-205
As Nichiren writes:
For those who are incapable of understanding the truth of the “3,000 existences contained in one thought,” Lord Śākyamuni Buddha, with His great compassion, wraps this jewel with the five characters of myō, hō, ren, ge, and kyō and hangs it around the neck of the ignorant in the Latter Age of Degeneration.
Kanjin Honzon-shō, A Treatise Revealing the Spiritual Contemplation and the Most Verable One, Writings of Nichiren Shōnin, Doctrine 2, Page 164
