Tag Archives: LS23

LS32

Day 23

Day 23 covers all of Chapter 18, The Merits of a Person Who Rejoices at Hearing This Sutra, and opens Chapter 19, The Merits of the Teacher of the Dharma.

Day 23 Text with annotationsPlay MP3

Having last month completed Chapter 18, The Merits of a Person Who Rejoices at Hearing This Sutra, we open Chapter 19, The Merits of the Teacher of the Dharma with the eight hundred merits of the eye.

Thereupon the Buddha said to Constant-Endeavor Bodhisattva-Mahāsattva:

“The good men or women who keep, read, recite, expound or copy this Sūtra of the Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Dharma, will be able to obtain eight hundred merits of the eye, twelve hundred merits of the ear, eight hundred merits of the nose, twelve hundred merits of the tongue, eight hundred merits of the body, and twelve hundred merits of the mind. They will be able to adorn and purify their six sense-organs with these merits. With their pure eyes given by their parents, these good men or women will be able to see all the mountains, forests, rivers and oceans inside and outside the one thousand million Sumeru-worlds, [each of which is composed of six regions] down to the Avici Hell and up to the Highest Heaven. They also will be able to see the living beings of those worlds, to know the karmas which those living beings are now doing and the region to which each of those living beings is destined to go by his karmas.”

Thereupon the World-Honored One, wishing to repeat what he had said, sang in gāthās:

Listen! I will tell you of the merits
Of those who fearlessly expound
To the great multitude
This Sūtra of the Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Dharma.

They will be able to obtain the excellent eyes
Adorned with eight hundred merits.
Their eyes will be pure
Because of this adornment.

With their eyes given by their parents,
They will be able to see Mt. Meru, Mt. Sumeru,
The Surrounding Iron Mountains,
And the other mountains,
And the forests, oceans and rivers
Inside and outside the one thousand million Sumeru-worlds.

They will be able to see the living beings
Of those worlds [each being composed of the six regions]
Down to the Avici Hell and up to the Highest Heaven.
Although they have not yet obtained heavenly eyes,
They will be able to see all this
With their natural eyes.

See The Realm of the Inconceivable

LS32, d3b, 2buddhas

The Realm of the Inconceivable

When Buddhism was transmitted to China, the Mahāyāna concept of all things as empty of fixed, independent existence and therefore mutually interpenetrating and nondual seemed to echo indigenous Chinese notions of a holistic cosmos in which all things are interrelated. This stance proved congenial to early Chinese Buddhist thinkers. But how exactly was the ultimate principle (Ch. li, J. ri) — whether conceptualized as emptiness, mind, or suchness — related to the concrete phenomena or actualities (shi, ji) of our experience? Some teachers conceived of principle in terms of an originally pure and undifferentiated “one mind” that, refracted through deluded perception, gives rise to the phenomenal world, with its distinctions of self and other, true and false, subject and object, good and evil, and so forth. To use a famous metaphor, the mind is originally like still water that accurately mirrors all things. When stirred by the wind of ignorance, waves appear, and the water begins to reflect things in a distorted way, producing the notion of self and other as substantially real entities and thus giving rise to attachment, suffering, and continued rebirth in saṃsāra. Liberation lies in discerning 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 idea developed especially within the Huayan (J. Kegon) and Chan (Zen) traditions.

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 (24). 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
LS32

Day 23

Day 23 covers all of Chapter 18, The Merits of a Person Who Rejoices at Hearing This Sutra, and opens Chapter 19, The Merits of the Teacher of the Dharma.

Day 23 Text with annotationsPlay MP3

Having last month considered the merits of the 50th person in gāthās, we complete Chapter 18, The Merits of a Person Who Rejoices at Hearing This Sutra.

Anyone who persuades even a single person
To hear the Sūtra of the Lotus Flower
Of the Wonderful Dharma, saying:
“This sūtra is profound and wonderful.
It is difficult to meet it
Even during ten million kalpas,”
And causes him to go and hear it even for a moment,
Will be able to obtain the following merits:

In his future lives, he will have no disease of the mouth.
His teeth will not be few, yellow or black.
His lips will not be thick, shrunk or broken.
There will be nothing loathsome [on his lips].
His tongue will not be dry, black or short.
His nose will be high, long and straight.
His forehead will be broad and even.
His face will be handsome.
All people will wish to see him.
His breath will not be foul.
The fragrance of the utpala-flowers
Will always be emitted from his mouth.

Anyone who visits a monastery to hear
The Sūtra of the Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Dharma
And rejoices at hearing it even for a moment,
Will be able to obtain the following merits:

He will be reborn among gods and men.
He will be able to go up to the palace of heaven,
Riding in a wonderful elephant-cart or horse-cart,
Or in a palanquin of wonderful treasures.

Anyone who persuades others to sit and hear this sūtra
In the place where the Dharma is expounded,
Will be able to obtain the seat of Sakra or of Brahman
Or of a wheel-turning-holy-king by his merits.
Needless to say, boundless will be the merits
Of the person who hears this sūtra with all his heart,
And expounds its meanings,
And acts according to its teachings.

See The Lotus Sūtra’s Inconceivable Liberative Powers

LS32, d22b, d23b, 2buddhas

The Lotus Sūtra’s Inconceivable Liberative Powers

[I]n another extravagant illustration of the Lotus Sūtra’s inconceivable liberative powers, the Buddha asks his hearers to imagine that one person, hearing the Lotus Sūtra, rejoices and teaches it to another, who similarly rejoices and teaches it to another, and so on. The merit gained by the fiftieth person in succession on merely hearing the sūtra and rejoicing in its message, Śākyamuni says, is incalculably, inconceivably greater than that of someone who over an eighty-year period first gives immeasurable gifts to beings in billions of worlds and then leads them to the liberation of an arhat.

Today we are inclined to read these statements with attention to their rhetorical function in “constructing” the Lotus Sūtra as inconceivably wonderful. Nichiren and his contemporaries, however, would not have seen this as a rhetorical device. For them, the sūtras faithfully recorded the words of the Buddha, who is by definition both omniscient and free from falsehood. In short, they were statements of literal truth. “What other sūtra,” Nichiren asks, “teaches that incalculable merit accrues to one who arouses even a single thought of willing acceptance, or to the fiftieth person who rejoices upon hearing it? Other sūtras do not claim such merit for even the first, second, third, or tenth hearer, let alone the fiftieth!”

As he had with the notions of the first stage of faith and the first stage of practice that are based on the “Description of Merits” chapter, Nichiren employed the analogy of “transmission to the fiftieth person” from the “Merits of Joyful Acceptance” chapter to counter claims from Pure Land devotees that the Lotus Sūtra, being extremely profound, was too difficult to practice for deluded persons of the Final Dharma age. If ease of practice were to be a criterion, he said, no practice could be easier than spontaneously rejoicing on hearing the Lotus Sūtra. Nichiren argued that, far from excluding the ignorant, it is precisely because the Lotus Sūtra is so profound that it can save beings of any capacity whatsoever. In this connection, he often cited Zhanran’s remark: “The more true the teaching, the lower the capacity [of the persons it can bring to liberation.]” However limited one’s capacity might be, that person is ennobled by their Lotus Sūtra practice. Therefore, Nichiren wrote, his followers were not to be despised: “If one looks into their past, they are great bodhisattvas who have made offerings for eight billion eons to buddhas numerous as the sands of the Hiraṇyavatī and Ganges rivers. And in terms of the future, they will be endowed with the merit of the fiftieth person [to hear the sūtra], which surpasses that of one who gives gifts to incalculable sentient beings for a period of eighty years. They are like a crown prince wrapped in swaddling clothes or a newborn dragon. Do not look down on them. Do not hold them in contempt!”

Two Buddhas, p199-200
LS32

Day 23

Day 23 covers all of Chapter 18, The Merits of a Person Who Rejoices at Hearing This Sutra, and opens Chapter 19, The Merits of the Teacher of the Dharma.

Day 23 Text with annotationsPlay MP3

Having last month considered the merits of those who invite others to hear the Lotus Sūtra, we repeat the merits of the 50th person in gāthās.

Thereupon the World-Honored One, wishing to repeat what he had said, sang in gāthās:

Suppose a man rejoices at hearing this sūtra
Or at hearing even a gāthā of it
In a congregation,
And expounds it to a second person.

The second person expounds it to a third person.
In this way it is heard by a fiftieth person.
Now I will tell you of the merits
Of the fiftieth person.

Suppose there was a great almsgiver.
He continued giving alms
To innumerable living beings
For eighty years according to their wishes.

Those living beings became old and decrepit.
Their hair became grey; their faces, wrinkled;
And their teeth, fewer and deformed.
Seeing this, he thought:
“I will teach them because they will die before long.
I will cause them to obtain the fruit of enlightenment.”

Then he expounded the truth of Nirvana to them
As an expedient, saying:
“This world is as unstable
As a spray of water,
Or as a foam, or as a filament of air.
Hate it, and leave it quickly!”

Hearing this teaching, they attained Arhatship,
And obtained the six supernatural powers,
Including the three major supernatural powers,
And the eight emancipations.

The superiority of the merits of the fiftieth person
Who rejoices at hearing even a gāthā [of this sūtra]
To the merits of this [great almsgiver]
Cannot be explained by any parable or simile.

The merits of the [fiftieth] person
[Who hears this sūtra] are immeasurable.
Needless to say, so are the merits of the first person
Who rejoices at hearing it in the congregation.

The Daily Dharma from May 2, 2019, offers this:

The merits of the [fiftieth] person
[Who hears this sūtra] are immeasurable.
Needless to say, so are the merits of the first person
Who rejoices at hearing it in the congregation.

The Buddha sings these verses to Maitreya Bodhisattva in Chapter Eighteen of the Lotus Sutra. This chapter includes a story of a person who hears the Wonderful Dharma, then explains it to the best of their ability to someone else. In this way there is a chain of fifty people who hear versions of this teaching modified by the capacities of those transmitting it. The effectiveness of this teaching does not depend on who delivers it. No matter what our capacity, any of us can teach the Lotus Sutra and practice it in our lives.

The Daily Dharma is produced by the Lexington Nichiren Buddhist Community. To subscribe to the daily emails, visit zenzaizenzai.com

LS32, WONS

Day 23

Day 23 covers all of Chapter 18, The Merits of a Person Who Rejoices at Hearing This Sutra, and opens Chapter 19, The Merits of the Teacher of the Dharma.

Day 23 Text with annotationsPlay MP3

Having last month considered merits of the 50th person who rejoices, we consider the merits of those who invite others to hear the Lotus Sūtra.

“Furthermore, Ajita! Anyone who goes to a monastery in order to hear this sūtra and hears it even for a moment while he is sitting or standing, in his next life will be able to go up to the palace of heaven, riding in a beautiful and wonderful elephant-cart or horse-cart or in a palanquin of wonderful treasure by his merits. Anyone who, while sitting in the place of the expounding of the Dharma, persuades another per on to it down or shares his seat with him to hear [the Dharma] when he sees him coming to the place, in his next life by his merits, will be able to obtain the seal of King Sakra, of the Brahman Heavenly-King or of a wheel-turning-holy-king.

“Ajita! Anyone who[, while he is staying outside the place of the expounding of the Dharma,] says to another person, ‘Let us go and hear the sūtra called the Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Dharma which is being expounded [in that place],’ and cause him to hear it even for a moment, in his next life by his merit , will be able to live with the Bodhisattvas who obtain dharanis. He will be clever and wise. He will not be dumb throughout thousands of millions of his future existences. His breath will not be foul. He will have no disease of the tongue or the mouth. His teeth will not be defiled, black, yell w, few, fallen out, uneven or crooked. His lips will not be pendulous, shrunk, chapped, cracked, broken, distorted, thick, large, yellow-black or loathsome. His nose will not be flat or awry. His face will not be black, long, distorted or displeasing. His lips, tongue and teeth will be well-shaped; his nose, long, high and straight. His face will be full; his eyebrows, thick and long; and his forehead, broad and even. In a word, he will have all the good features of a man. He will be able to see the Buddhas, hear the Dharma from them, and receive their teachings by faith throughout his future existences.

“Ajita, look! The merits of the person who causes even a single man to go and hear the Dharma are so many. It is needless to speak of the merits of the person who hears [this sūtra] with all his heart, reads it, recites it, expounds it to the great multitude, and acts according to its teachings.

Nichiren explains the importance of these merits in his Treastise on Chanting the Daimoku of the Lotus Sūtra:

The Pure Land Buddhists today … [say] it is impossible to practice the Lotus Sūtra unless one possesses a high capacity to understand and it bewilders the evil ordinary people in the Latter Age of Degeneration. Are they not contradicting themselves? Grand Master Miao-lê in his Annotations to the Words and Phrases of the Lotus Sūtra asserts, “Most people make mistakes, without knowing how great the merits of the inexperienced practicers can be. They imagine that only the experienced practicers can have merits and slander the inexperienced. Therefore, in the ‘Merits of Rejoicing at Hearing This Sūtra’ chapter it is shown that the merits of the inexperienced practicer can be great and how great the merits of the Lotus Sūtra are.” This passage means that the merit of the 50th person rejoicing at hearing the Lotus Sūtra transmitted one after another was preached to show that the merit of an ignorant person with little capacity in the Latter Age rejoicing even for a moment at hearing the sūtra preached is superior to the merit of sages who practice the pre-Lotus sūtras preached during the 40 or so years before the Lotus Sūtra. This is preached so that the Lotus Sūtra is not mistaken as the teaching attained by only persons of superior capacity and devotion.

Therefore, Grand Master T’ien-t’ai in his Words and Phrases of the Lotus Sūtra compares the 50th person rejoicing at hearing the Lotus Sūtra transmitted one after another, the lowest rank in the practice of the Lotus Sūtra, against the practicers of non-Buddhist teachings, Hinayana Buddhism, and provisional Mahayana Buddhism. He states that the merits of the lowest rank in the practice of the Lotus Sūtra are superior to those of any other practice.

Shō Hokke Daimoku-shō, Treastise on Chanting the Daimoku of the Lotus Sūtra, Writings of Nichiren Shōnin, Faith and Practice, Volume 4, Page 7-8

LS32

Day 23

Day 23 covers all of Chapter 18, The Merits of a Person Who Rejoices at Hearing This Sutra, and opens Chapter 19, The Merits of the Teacher of the Dharma.

Day 23 Text with annotationsPlay MP3

Having last month considered the great alms giver’s merits, we consider the merits of the 50th person who rejoices.

The Buddha said to Maitreya:

“Now I will tell you clearly. The merits of the person who gave all those pleasing things to the living beings of the six regions of four hundred billion asaṃkhya worlds, and caused them to attain Arhatship are less than the merit of the fiftieth person who rejoices at hearing even a gāthā of this Sūtra of the Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Dharma. The merits of the former person are less than a hundredth or a thousandth of the merits of the latter person, or less than the merits of the latter person divided by a hundred thousand billion. [The superiority of the merits of the latter person to those of the former person] cannot be explained by any calculation, parable or simile.

“Ajita! The merits of the fiftieth person who rejoices at hearing this Sūtra of the Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Dharma are immeasurable, limitless, asaṃkhya. Needless to say, so are the merits of the first person who rejoices at hearing [this sūtra] in the congregation. His merits are immeasurable, limitless, asaṃkhya and incomparable.

On my 21-day retreat encouraged by Universal-Sage Bodhisattva, we consider Day 13 of 21.

LS32

Day 23

Day 23 covers all of Chapter 18, The Merits of a Person Who Rejoices at Hearing This Sutra, and opens Chapter 19, The Merits of the Teacher of the Dharma.

Day 23 Text with annotationsPlay MP3

Having last month begun Chapter 18, The Merits of a Person Who Rejoices at Hearing This Sutra, we consider the great alms giver’s merits.

“Suppose the Jambudvipa was filled with wonderful treasures such as gold, silver, lapis lazuli, shell, agate, coral and amber; elephant-carts and horse-carts; and palaces and stately buildings made of the even treasures. Suppose a man who was seeking merits gave all those pleasing things [filling the Jambudvipa] to the living beings of four hundred billion asaṃkhya worlds according to their wishes. A world consists of the six regions. The living beings [of the six regions] are of one or another of the four kinds of births: oviparous, viviparous, from moisture, or without any medium. Some of them have form while others do not. Some have desire while others do not. Some have no feet while other have two feet or four or more. Having continued giving those alms to them for eighty years, this great almsgiver thought, ‘I gave those pleasing things to them according to their wishes. Now they are old and decrepit. They are more than eighty years old. Their hair is grey; and their face , wrinkled. They will die before long. I will lead them by the Dharma of the Buddha.’

“Then he collected them. He propagated the Dharma to them, led them by the Dharma, showed them the Dharma, taught them, benefited them, and caused them to rejoice. He caused them to attain in a moment the enlightenment of the Srota-āpanna, of the Sakrdāgāmin, of the Anāgāmin or of the Arhat, eliminate all āsravas, practice deep dhyāna-concentration without hindrance, and obtain the eight emancipations. What do you think of this? Do you think that the merits obtained by this great alms giver were many or not?”

Maitreya said to the Buddha:

“World-Honored One! I think that his merits were many, immeasurable and limitless. His merits were already immeasurable when he gave all those pleasing things to them. Needless to say, so were his merits when he caused them to attain Arhatship.”

Continuing with tales of the Hoke-kyō (Lotus Sūtra) from Miraculous Stories from the Japanese Buddhist Tradition (Nihon ryōiki), we consider On Ridiculing a Reciter of the Hoke-kyō and Getting a Twisted Mouth as an Immediate Penalty.

LS32

Day 23

Day 23 covers all of Chapter 18, The Merits of a Person Who Rejoices at Hearing This Sutra, and opens Chapter 19, The Merits of the Teacher of the Dharma.

Day 23 Text with annotationsPlay MP3

Having last month concluded today’s portion of Chapter 19, The Merits of the Teacher of the Dharma, we return Chapter 18, The Merits of a Person Who Rejoices at Hearing This Sutra.

Thereupon Maitreya Bodhisattva-mahāsattva said to the Buddha: “World-Honored One! How many merits will be given to a good man or woman who rejoices at hearing this Sūtra of the Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Dharma?” He sang in a gāthā:

How many merits will be given
To a person who rejoices
At hearing this sūtra
After your extinction?

Thereupon the Buddha said to Maitreya Bodhisattva-mahāsattva: “Ajita! Suppose a bhikṣu, a bhikṣunī, an upāsakā, an upāsikā, or some other wise person, whether young or old, rejoices at hearing this sūtra in a congregation after my extinction. After leaving the congregation, he or she goes to some other place, for instance, to a monastery, a retired place, a city, a street, a town, or a village. There he or she expounds this sūtra, as he or she has heard it, to his or her father, mother relative, friend or acquaintance as far as he or she can. Another person who has heard [this sūtra from him or her], rejoices, goes [to some other place] and expounds it to a third person. The third person also rejoices at hearing it and expounds it to a fourth person. In this way this sūtra is heard by a fiftieth person. Ajita! Now I will tell you the merits of the fiftieth good man or woman who rejoices at hearing [this sūtra]. Listen attentively!

Continuing with the content from Miraculous Tales of the Lotus Sutra from Ancient Japan, we learn of An Administrative Priest of the Jōhōji Temple.

LS32

Day 23

Day 23 covers all of Chapter 18, The Merits of a Person Who Rejoices at Hearing This Sutra, and opens Chapter 19, The Merits of the Teacher of the Dharma.

Day 23 Text with annotationsPlay MP3

Having last month considered the eight hundred merits of the eye, we consider the twelve hundred merits of the ear and conclude today’s portion of Chapter 19, The Merits of the Teacher of the Dharma.

“Furthermore, Constant-Endeavor! The good men or women who keep, read, recite, expound or copy this sūtra, will be able to obtain twelve hundred merits of the ear. With their pure ears, they will be able to recognize all the various sounds and voices inside and outside the one thousand million Sumeru-worlds, [each of which is composed of the six regions] down to the Avici Hell and up to the Highest Heaven. They will be able to recognize the voices of elephants, horses and cows; the sounds of carts; cryings and sighings; the sounds of conch-shell horns, drums, gongs and bells; laughter and speech; the voices of men, women, boy and girls; meaningful voices, meaningless voices; painful voices, delightful voices; the voices of the unenlightened ones, the voices of the enlightened ones; joyful voices, joyless voices; the voices of gods, dragons, yakṣas, gandharvas, asuras, garuḍas, kiṃnaras and mahoragas; the sounds of fire, water and wind; the voices of hellish denizens, animals and hungry spirits; and the voices of bhikṣus, bhikṣunīs, Śrāvakas, Pratyekabuddhas, Bodhisattvas and Buddhas. In a word, with their pure and natural ears given by their parents, they will be able to recognize all the sounds and voices inside and outside the one thousand million Sumeru-worlds, although they have not yet obtained heavenly ears. Even when they recognize all these various sounds and voices, their organ of hearing will not be destroyed.”

Thereupon the World-Honored One, wishing to repeat what he bad said, sang in gāthās:

Their ears given by their parents will be purified, not defiled.
With their natural ears,
They will be able to recognize the sounds of voices
Of the one thousand million sumeru-worlds.

They will be able to recognize
The voices of elephants, horses and cows;
Th sounds of carts, gongs, bells, conch-shell horns,
And of drums, lyres, harps, reed-pipes and flutes.
Although they recognize pure and sweet songs,
They will not be attached to them.
They also will be able to recognize
The countless kinds of voices of men.

They will be able to recognize
The voices of gods,
The wonderful songs [of gods],
And the voices of men, women, boy and girls.

They will be able to recognize
The songs of kalavinkas, of jivakajivakas,
And of the other birds in mountains,
And on rivers and ravines.

The expounder of the Dharma
Will be able to recognize from afar,
While he is staying in the world [of men],
The cryings and shriekings
Of the denizens in hell,
The shoutings of hungry and thirsty spirits
Who are seeking food and drink,
And the voices of asuras
Bellowing to each other
[As they pound] on the seacoasts.
Even when he recognizes all this by hearing,
His organ of hearing will not be destroyed.

The expounder of the Dharma will be able to recognize,
While he is staying [in this world],
The voices of birds and animals calling each other
In the worlds of the ten quarters.

The teacher of the Dharma will be able to recognize,
While he is staying [in the world of men],
The voices of the gods of the heavens
Above the Heaven of Brahman,
[That is,] of the Light-Sound Heaven,
Of the Universal-Pure Heaven, and of the Highest Heaven.

The teacher of the Dharma
Will be able to recognize,
Without moving about,
The voices of the bhikṣus and bhikṣunīs
Who read or recite sūtras
Or expound them to others.

He will be able to recognize
The voices of the Bodhisattvas
Who read or recite sūtras
Or expound the meanings
Of quotations from them
To others.

Anyone who keeps this Sūtra
Of the Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Dharma
Will be able to recognize the voices of the Buddhas,
That is, the voices of the Great Honorable Saints
Who teach all living beings,
And who expound the Wonderful Dharma in great congregations.

He will be able to recognize
All the sounds and voices
Inside and outside the one thousand million Sumeru-worlds,
[Each being composed of the six regions]
Down to the Avici Hell and up to the Highest Heaven.
And yet his organ of hearing will not be destroyed.
He will be able to recognize everything by hearing
Because his ears are sharp.

Anyone who keeps
This Sūtra of the Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Dharma
Will be able to obtain these merits with his natural ears
Although he has not yet obtained heavenly ears.

The Daily Dharma from Feb. 7, 2019, offers this:

He will be able to recognize
All the sounds and voices
Inside and outside the one thousand million Sumeru-worlds,
[Each being composed of the six regions]
Down to the Avīci Hell and up to the Highest Heaven.
And yet his organ of hearing will not be destroyed.
He will be able to recognize everything by hearing
Because his ears are sharp.

The Buddha sings these verses in Chapter Nineteen of the Lotus Sūtra about those who practice the Buddha Dharma. We may believe that a spiritual practice leads us to “otherworldly” experiences that allow us to escape the problems we find in the world around us. These verses remind us that the teachers of the Dharma become more engaged with the world around us rather than becoming separate from it. It is through our right practice of the Lotus Sūtra that we become aware of the world as it is, and our place in making it better.

The Daily Dharma is produced by the Lexington Nichiren Buddhist Community. To subscribe to the daily emails, visit zenzaizenzai.com