This was written in advance of Sunday’s meeting of the Nichiren Buddhist Sangha of the San Francisco Bay Area. Having whined at an earlier meeting that discussion of the Lotus Sutra didn’t include enough actual discussion of the Lotus Sutra, it was decided to allow attendees more opportunity to contribute. In the future, Mark Herrick will provide his overview of that month’s chapter on the first Sunday and the third Sunday will be given over to the “favorite” verses of attendees. Today’s service, an unusual fifth Sunday service was a dry run. Here’s a video of today’s discussion.

In Chapter 1, Introductory, the stage is set for the Sūtra of the Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Dharma. While I normally focus on the this stage as a whole, elements of this staging invite closer inspection. Consider the ray of light emitted by Śākyamuni from the white curls between his eyebrows, illuminating all the corners of eighteen thousand worlds in the east. That light reaches down to the Avchi Hell of each world, and up to the Akanistha Heaven of each world.

The congregation can see from this world the living beings of the six regions of those worlds.

Mañjuśrī recalls seeing the same good omen from a Buddha called Sun-Moon-Light. That Tathagata emitted a ray of light from the white curls between his eyebrows, and illumined all the corners of eighteen thousand Buddha-worlds in the east just as Śākyamuni did.

Consider for a moment that we don’t normally see this simultaneous nature of the 10 worlds. We see our provisional existence but not how each world interpenetrates the other. In our provisional existence we imagine nine realms separate from us, nine doors leading to a different place and within each of those nine doors. Interconnected, but not interpenetrating.

With the light of the Buddha’s wisdom, the simultaneous existence of the 10 worlds is revealed in the same way that the light of our Sun passing through a prism reveals the rainbow of colors inside.

These are not two truths — a separate 10 worlds or an interpenetrating existence; a provisional reality or emptiness — but one truth, the Middle Way.

As explained in Lotus Seeds:

The Truth of the Middle Way is the teaching that Emptiness and Provisionality are different ways of pointing out that the reality of anything, including our own lives, transcends the categories of existence and non-existence.
Lotus Seeds