As long as peoples’ interests coincide, they can generally work together in harmony: one will usually attempt to ingratiate himself with the other. But when interests conflict, suddenly one turns on the other with hatred, antagonism, and malice. Such things happen when people are completely controlled by the things of the world and strive to satisfy only their own egoistic, narrow aims. People who understand the truth about the nature of all things neither think nor act in this egoistic way, since they see everything from a high, all-encompassing standpoint enabling them to fuse their own interests with those of everyone else. In a society composed of such people there would be no fighting, no discord, no distrust, and no suspicion because everyone would know the joy of union with his fellow human beings.
The Beginnings of BuddhismQuotes
Purification
There is a ritual that we sometimes observe in Nichiren Shu called suigyo, or water purification practice. The phrases we recite as we are performing this ritual speak of cleansing ourselves, making our lives pure in order to carry out the practice of spreading the Dharma.
Let us renew our efforts to clean ourselves, not only physically but spiritually as well. Let us reconcile all of our past grudges, the things that hold us back, let us make fresh our entire lives, and renew our efforts to share the Dharma with great joy.
Lotus Path: Practicing the Lotus Sutra Volume 1The Buddha-Heart
We have said [before] that there is no distinction between the body of any given man and that of the Buddha himself. When the reason of this is understood, everyone ought to exercise the Buddha-heart as soon as any thought arises in his mind. The Buddha-heart means a heart that is set upon practicing the Great Way. Each man ought to pursue the interest proper to his true nature – the acquisition of enlightenment ‐ and to reap the fruits which accrue from the pleasures arising out of friendship for his fellow-men. But the generality of people, not being sufficiently firm in their determination, fail to preserve and enjoy those fruits; their will is weak, and their power of meditation inadequate. This is a human frailty for which provision is made. Instead of insisting upon the mental process, which is too severe for them, our Sect allows them to adopt a mechanical oral practice; in other words, it substitutes the repetition of the Daimoku, or Title of the [Lotus Sutra], for the intellectual discipline. The formula to be repeated is Na-mu Myo Ho Ren-ge Kyo, and these words form the Daimoku, the merits of which were known to Sakyamuni ages and ages ago.
Doctrines of Nichiren (1893)Number 4
Number four is extremely important in Chih-i’s system of classification. The well-established Buddhist notions, such as the Four Noble Truths and the Twelvefold Causality are corresponded by Chih-i’s own theory of the Four Teachings. Coherently, his theories of the four types of the Four Noble Truths and the four types of the Twelvefold Causality are formulated corresponding to the Four Teachings. In my opinion, the number four that is embodied by the Four Teachings is consciously or unconsciously significant to Chih-i. Number four represents the four seasons of a year, signifying a complete cycle of succession. With different seasons, different kinds of plants are able to grow. Our understanding of Chih-i’s use of number four is that, like the function of all four seasons which allow all plants to grow and to ripen, the Fourfold Teaching is designed by Chih-i to signify that it addresses all sentient beings with different capacities. (Pages 126-127)
The Profound Meaning of the Lotus Sutra: Tien-tai Philosophy of BuddhismEight Matters
[I]n the Suttanipata (stanza 267) we find: “To remain unshaken by contact with the things of the secular world, to be free of anxiety, to be undefiled, and to be tranquil. This is the highest blessing.”
The following eight matters are the things of the world referred to in this stanza: gain and loss, fame and disgrace, praise and slander, and pleasure and pain. We are made happy when we gain and grow wealthy; we suffer and are disappointed when we lose property and become poor. We are elated at good reputation but distressed or filled with hatred for others when we are spoken ill of or are ignored by the world. Praise lifts us to the heights of joy; slander or criticism makes us resentful or hateful. We rejoice at health and the free life, but we become despondent when we are ill or fall on hard times. These ways of being moved by the eight things of the world are common to all mankind. The person who lacks true independence is always tossed here and there by these matters and ends his life in a weak, unstable condition. Hatred, fights, bloodshed, despondency, desperation, and suicide are some of the outcomes of being swayed by the eight things of the world. Buddhism teaches that we must not be moved or suffer when we come in contact with these things but must live in tranquility. This does not mean that we must attempt to avoid such contact. It does not mean that we must retire to remote mountainous regions to be free of the things of the world. The teaching of Buddhism is that, remaining part of society and facing the eight things of the world and all they imply directly, we must nonetheless be unmoved by them.
To do this we must maintain in our hearts something transcending these things. Doing this raises us to a position of high independence from which we must observe all things coolly, judge them accurately, and deal with them correctly. The transcendent something that enables us to live in this way is the correct Buddhist view of the world and of human life and the Buddhist understanding of the truth about all phenomena. Unbreakable faith in the Three Treasures, too, is essential. These views and this faith give human beings the ideal, rational critical attitude called right mindfulness and right knowledge. Because of this attitude, the believer is enabled to keep in mind always the basic Buddhist tenets that all things are impermanent, that nothing has an ego, and that nirvana is quiescence. This in turn makes it habitual to remain undisturbed and calm in all considerations and actions. (Page 132-133)
The Beginnings of BuddhismThe ‘Truth Body’
According to the doctrine of the Tendai school, Buddha is really a man and yet the Truth itself. As a man of historical reality, he attained the full truth of existence and lived accordingly; he is the Tathāgata, the Truth-winner. This aspect of his being is, however, but a manifestation of the Dharmaui, the fundamental nature of the universe, which consists in the correlated unity of all the varieties and variations of existence. In other words, in Buddha we see, the one who has come down from the height of enlightenment to live among us in order to reveal the real nature of our being. He is the Tathāgata, the Truth-revealer, and he is the Way, the Truth and the Life. This is the aspect of his personality expressed by the term Dharma-kāya (Jap, Hosshin), the “Truth-body.” All and every one of us participate in this universal Buddha-soul; it is in fact inherent in us, although we may be quite unaware of it. Faith is nothing but a realization, a bringing to full consciousness, of the innermost identity of our own being with the Dharma-kāya.
History of Japanese ReligionNumber 5
Number “five” in Chinese culture elaborates the change of worldly phenomena. This is to say that the fundamental set of five is composed of wood, fire, earth, metal, and water. They are the five basic elements that construe the world, and each of them is connected to one another in sequence and rotates one after another in a full circle (i.e., wood produces fire, fire produces earth, earth produces metal, metal produces water, and water produces wood). These Five Elements (Wu-hang) incorporate all other sets of five things, in a sense that all of them correspond to the Five Elements, such as five directions (east, west, south, north, and center), five musical notes (Kung, Shang, Chüeh, Chih, Yü), five internal organs (heart, liver, spleen, lungs and kidneys), five grains (rice, two kinds of millet, wheat and beans), and so forth. Although these numerical categories of five represent different phenomena, each of them is simply a different name for the same principle the Five Elements denote (since all of them correspond to the Five Elements). That is, the universe (whether as microcosm or macrocosm) is presented as a complete circle of change among five elements (each of which is related to one another). Therefore, any set of these five phenomena forms a circle of correspondence among each other and symbolizes completion and perfection.
It is interesting to note that Chih-i’s Five Sections (five categories of analysis or five layers of the abstruse meaning), i.e., name, substance, gist, function, and teaching, are arranged for the interpretation of the Lotus Sūtra. Whether intentionally or not, this number five corresponds to the number of words “Miao-fa Lien-hua Ching” that constitute the title of the Lotus Sūtra. While these five words as the title of the Lotus Sūtra is underlined the profound principle, the Five Sections are designed to explore the profound meaning that is contained in each word. Furthermore, the Five Periods (Wu-shih) in Chih-i’s system of classifying the teaching of the Buddha (P’an-chiao) are able to incorporate the whole of the Buddha’s teachings chronologically. In addition, the five flavors of dairy products are employed to analogize these five periods, denoting the perfection of the complete circle of the Buddha’s teaching career.
The Profound Meaning of the Lotus Sutra: Tien-tai Philosophy of BuddhismKeep Calm and Carry On
[Shakyamuni admonished his followers on how they should react to outside criticism or praise of the Three Treasures]:
“O brothers, you must not be disappointed or angry or harbor ill will against others who slander the Buddha, the Law, and the Order, for if you do, you will lose the calm that enables you to judge rationally whether what the person has to say is true or false.
“In instances of slander, you must remain cool so that you can distinguish between truth and error and be able to say, ‘For this reason, what he says is different from the truth. In this point he fails to reach the truth. We are not as he says we are.’
“Similarly, you must not be quick to rejoice and be glad when an outsider praises the Three Treasures, for if you become carried away with being lauded, you will lose the calm that enables you to judge rationally whether the praise is true or erroneous. In cases of praise, too, you must remain cool so that you can judge facts as facts and can say, ‘For this reason, what he says is a fact. In this point he has reached the truth. We do have the characteristics he attributes to us.’
“In many instances, praise of an outsider is directed toward trivial, superficial aspects and not to the basic doctrines of Buddhism. Therefore, since they do not praise the things that are truly praiseworthy, you must not rejoice or be elated by what people speaking in this way have to say.” (Page 131)
The Beginnings of BuddhismNumber 6
Number “six” plays an important role in the system of hexagrams in the Book of Changes, which reflects in six lines forming a complete pattern of succession of six positions of Yin and Yang. This suggests that what “six” represents is the completion of the pattern of the universe represented by a hexagram, which is constituted by the doubled three powers (that can refer to heaven, earth, and man). The pattern of the hexagram is formulated by the elements of Yin and Yang, each of which is employed in succession, forming six lines. It is interesting to note that Chih-i uses a similar way to define the Origin and the Traces in terms of using the numerical category of six and in terms of the two elements being employed in succession. This indicates that Chih-i defines the Traces and the Origin in six groups in terms of the six polar concepts (i.e., “principle” and “phenomenal appearances”, “principle” and “teaching”, “teaching” and “practice”, “substance” and “function”, “ultimate” and “relative”, and “present” and “past”), and each of the following groups of definition takes the meaning of its proceeding one. With the employment of these six polar concepts, the Traces and the Origin are defined in succession. Such a way to define the Traces and the Origin denotes a complementary relation between these two entities. Moreover, instead of the two elements of Ying and Yang that constitute the hexagram as the representation of a complete pattern of the universe (possibly intended by Chih-i himself), this pattern is also completed with number six. However, since this pattern is defined in the Buddhist context, it is spoken of in terms of time (embodied by the Traces) and space (embodied by the Origin).
The Profound Meaning of the Lotus Sutra: Tien-tai Philosophy of BuddhismOverworking and Suffering
Shakyamuni earnestly explained the rational way to eliminate delusion and the fires of suffering. Deeply moved by what he heard, Vappa said, “World-honored One, a person who engages in the horse trade to become rich and fails to make a profit overworks and suffers greatly. Similarly, in search of merit, I became a Jainist, and when I failed to attain merit, I overworked and suffered. Now that I have heard the teaching of the World-honored One, for the first time I have attained merit. I will blow away my Jainist faith, as with a great wind, and will cast it into the rapid stream. I entrust myself to the Buddha, the Law, and the Order. Please accept me as a lifelong believer in the Buddhist faith.”
The Beginnings of Buddhism