Yesterday I finished an eight-month-long study of the Lotus Sutra offered by Rissho Kosei-Kai. I had been drawn by the promise of an “advanced course examining all the chapters in detail of the Threefold Lotus Sutra.” What I failed to fully appreciate was that this would solely be “as interpreted through the writings of Nikkyo Niwano, founder of Rissho Kosei-kai.” It became clear at the first class that the “advanced course” would be nothing more than a review of Nikkyō Niwano’s Buddhism for Today, with most of each hour-and-a-half session spent reading aloud passages from the book.
But I stuck with it for 34 Wednesday evenings because, frankly, no one else that I’m aware of is offering such discussions. In order to make the class more useful I decided to write an essay on the topic of each day’s class in advance. Thirty-three essays are available here.
Many of the essays I wrote praised what Nikkyo Niwano had written in Buddhism for Today, but several were critical. I was even motivated to write blog posts outside the class:
In keeping with my generally ambivalent attitude toward the teachings of Nikkyō Niwano, I want to conclude with a discussion of Nikkyō Niwano’s teaching that we are caused to live by Śākyamuni.
This comes up in several places in Buddhism for Today. Take for example this quote from the discussion of Chapter 16, The Duration of the Life of the Tathāgata:
Buddhism for Today, p206Our awareness of being caused to live is our true salvation. Our absolute devotion to the truth that imparts life to us, so that we utter “Namu” in our hearts, must be said to be the highest reach of faith.
In the discussion of Chapter 17, The Variety of Merits, we are instructed:
Buddhism for Today, p257The mental happiness, hope, and self-confidence of those who have attained true faith are not frothy and superficial but deep and firm-rooted in their minds. These people have calm, steadfast minds not agitated by anything – fire, water, or sword – because they maintain a mental attitude of great assurance, realizing, “I am always protected by the Buddha as an absolute existence; I am caused to live by the Buddha.”
Nikkyō Niwano summarizes this teaching in his discussion of Chapter 25, The Universal Gate of World-Voice-Perceiver Bodhisattva:
Buddhism for Today, p377-378As has already been explained in chapter 16, salvation lies in our awareness of the existence of the Eternal Buddha, who is omnipresent both within and outside us, and in our earnest and heartfelt realization that we are caused to live by the Buddha.
But I chafe under this idea that “all beings are caused to live by the universal truth.” For me, this universal truth is a condition, not a cause. There are just two causes for our provisional existence: ignorance of the Dharma or a Bodhisattva vow to give up personal enlightenment and return to this Sahā World in order to save everyone.
In defense of my opposing view, I want to offer some quotes from The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism’s discussion of prarītyasamutpāda, dependent origination:
In one of the earliest summaries of the Buddha’s teachings (which is said to have been enough to bring Śāriputra to enlightenment), the Buddha is said to have taught: “When this is present, that comes to be. / From the arising of this, that arises. / When this is absent, that does not come to be. / From the cessation of this, that ceases.” This notion of causality is normatively described in a sequence of causation involving twelve interconnected links (nidāna), which are often called the “twelvefold chain” in English sources: (l) ignorance, (2) predispositions, or volitional actions, (3) consciousness, (4) name and form, or mentality and materiality, (5) the six internal sense-bases, (6) sensory contact, (7) sensation, or feeling, (8) thirst, or attachment, (9) grasping, or clinging, (10) existence or a process of becoming, (11) birth or rebirth, and (12) old age and death, this last link accompanied in its full recital by sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief, and despair.
And:
This chain of dependent origination stands as the middle way between the two “extreme views” eternalism — viz., the view that there is a perduring soul that continues to be reborn unchanged from one lifetime to the next — and annihilationism — the view that the person ceases to exist at death and is not reborn — because it validates the imputed continuity of the personality, without injecting any sense of a permanent substratum of existence into the process. Thus, when the Buddha is asked, “Who is it who senses?,” he rejects the question as wrongly framed and rephrases it as, “With what as condition does sensation occur? By contact … .” Or when asked, “Who is it who is reborn?,” he would rephrase the question as “With what as condition does birth occur? By becoming … .” Accurate understanding of dependent origination thus serves as an antidote to the affliction of delusion and contemplating the links in this chain helps to overcome ignorance.
(For a discussion of Nikkyo Niwano’s understanding of this twelvefold chain see Understanding the 12-Linked Chain of Causation.)
Then again, consider this from the Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism:
Another denotation of prarītyasamutpāda [dependent origination] is a more general one, the notion that everything comes into existence in dependence on something else, with such dependence including the dependence of an effect upon its cause, the dependence of a whole upon its parts, and the dependence of an object on the consciousness that designates it. This second meaning is especially associated with the Mādhyamika school of Nāgārjuna, which sees a necessary relation between dependent origination and emptiness (śūnyatā), arguing that because everything is dependently arisen, everything is empty of independence and intrinsic existence (svabhāva). Dependent origination is thus central to Nāgārjuna’s conception of the middle way: because everything is dependent, nothing is independent, thus avoiding the extreme of existence, but because everything is originated, nothing is utterly nonexistent, thus avoiding the extreme of nonexistence.
Is “dependently arisen” the same as “caused to live”?
This is why studying the Lotus Sutra is fun.