Two Buddhas, p21The buddha of the esoteric teachings is not the historical buddha Śākyamuni but the cosmic buddha who is timeless and omnipresent: all forms are his body, all sounds are his voice, and all thoughts are his mind, although the unenlightened do not realize this. Through the performance of the secretly transmitted “three mysteries” — the performing of mudrās or ritual gestures, the chanting of mantras, and the ritual use of mandalas — the esoteric adept was said to unite his body, speech, and mind with those of cosmic Buddha, thus “realizing buddhahood with this very body” (sokushin jōbutsu). Esoteric Buddhism contributed to the rise, in Japan’s medieval period, of the Tendai doctrine of original enlightenment (hongaku hōmon). According to this doctrine, buddhahood is not a distant goal but the true status of all things: the purpose of practice is not to “attain” buddhahood as a future aim but to realize that one is a buddha inherently. These developments all helped to shape the context in which Nichiren would read the Lotus Sūtra.
Quotes
All Beings Are Potential Buddhas
The principle of the mutual possession of the Ten Worlds is based upon the fact that these worlds are not actually separate. They are simply different ways of experiencing life depending upon the prevailing cause and conditions that are in operation at any given moment. As such, they all flow into one another. It works like the weather – rainy days give way to cloudy days, which in turn become sunny days.
Each one also contains aspects of the others within itself. Even as there is a flow from one world to another, each world contains the others within itself. The lower worlds posses the higher worlds as ideals, whereas the higher worlds embrace the lower worlds through compassionate understanding based on personal experience.
The key point to remember, however, is that since we contain all of the Ten Worlds within ourselves, we also carry the world of Buddhahood. Therefore, we all have the capacity to bring out the world of the buddha from within as soon as we meet up with the right causes and conditions. The teaching of the mutual possession of the Ten Worlds is a very profound teaching, but even more important is the realization born from it that all beings are potential buddhas.
Lotus Seeds
Intertwining of Mahāyāna threads
Two Buddhas, p11-12One way to think about the Mahāyāna is not as an internally consistent movement, but as an intertwining of texts made up of threads of varying circumference, weight, and texture. Among those threads, none is more luminous than the Lotus Sūtra, in part because of its influence and in part because so many things that we associate with “the Mahāyāna” are found there. Yet it is also a distinctive text with its own psyche and its own legacy of influence and interpretation. Indeed, the brilliance of the sūtra only becomes clear when one considers (or at least imagines) the circumstances of its composition, and the questions its authors wrestled with.
A Subjective Stimulant to Objective Health, Prosperity
A person struggling with what appears to be an insuperable financial problem worries and frets, cannot sleep, and finds that food has no appeal. Failing health makes it difficult to work. The sudden advent of religious faith changes the person’s attitude toward life overnight. Realizing that one can do no more than one’s best, the person ceases to worry. As anxiety vanishes, the person is once again able to sleep and eat properly. Soon, healthy again, the person is able to attack work with new vigor. The person’s fortunes improve, the apparently insuperable problem fades into insignificance, and before long the person is better off than ever before.
This kind of thing has happened often in the past and will continue to happen. Undeniably, a spiritual awakening can lead to improved health and even to business success. Though perhaps not its highest goal, physical and financial recovery is a frequent side effect of religious faith. Materialist critics of religion as an opiate ignore its positive effects as a subjective stimulant to objective health and prosperity. In addition, while bringing inner peace and a change of mind, religion insists that instead of resting content with an improved state of private affairs, human beings do all within their power to reform the social evils that lead to misery and strife and try to rid the world of both natural and human-caused disasters. It goes without saying that this is a prime consideration in the Buddhist law of dependent origination.
Basic Buddhist Concepts
The perspective of two historical moments
Two Buddhas, p9-10[Two Buddhas Seated Side by Side] takes the form of a chapter-by-chapter discussion of the twenty-eight chapters of the Lotus Sūtra. We consider the significance of each chapter from the perspective of two historical moments: what it may have meant in the first centuries of the Common Era in the Indian cultural sphere as the Lotus Sūtra came to take its present form, and how it was read by Nichiren in Japan roughly a thousand years later. Rather than divide the volume into two sections, the first commenting on the Lotus Sūtra itself and the second introducing Nichiren’s reading, we have intentionally alternated our discussion of the Lotus text with Nichiren’s comments in each chapter, to avoid as much as possible a somewhat artificial division between the original text and Nichiren’s later interpretations. For devotees of the Lotus Sūtra, text and interpretation have been inseparable – in effect, parts of the same scripture – as has been the case with many great religious texts over the course of history.
Variatons on Namu
Two Buddhas, pxiiWe have rendered the daimoku, the invocation of the Lotus Sūtra’s title taught by Nichiren, as Namu Myōhō-Renge-Kyō, which represents the proper romanization for scholarly writing. However, actual pronunciation may vary slightly according to the practice community; some groups collapse the second and third syllables, giving Nam Myōhō-Renge-Kyō (sometimes written without diacritics in their publications). The difference is not one of correct versus incorrect but simply reflects variations among the traditions of individual Nichiren Buddhist lineages.
Developing One’s Buddha-Nature
[N]otice that there is not much use of the notion of emptiness (śūnyā or śūnyāta) in the Lotus Sutra. Of course, all things are empty. But it is because they are empty that there is space, so to speak, for the development of one’s buddha-nature. If things were substantial, they could not truly grow or change. But because they are without substantiality, they can be influenced by and have influence on others. Undue emphasis on emptiness is rejected because it can easily become a kind of nihilism in which nothing matters. In the Lotus Sutra everything matters. The Buddha works to save all beings. Even the poor Bodhisattva Never Disrespectful, who goes around telling everyone that they are to become buddhas, though initially not very successful, eventually “converted a multitude of a thousand, ten thousand, millions, enabling them to live in the state of supreme enlightenment.” And this is to say nothing of the fact that he later became the Buddha Śākyamuni!
A Buddhist Kaleidoscope; Gene Reeves, Appropriate Means as the Ethics of the Lotus Sutra, Page 389
The Radically World-Affirming Lotus Sutra
One of the ways, I think, in which the Lotus Sutra and its teaching of hōben is ethical is by being radically world-affirming. By this I mean simply that it is this sahā world which is Śākyamuni Buddha’s world. It is in this world that he is a bodhisattva and encourages us to be bodhisattvas. This world is our home, and it is the home of Śākyamuni Buddha, precisely because he is embodied, not only as the historical Buddha, but as the buddha-nature in all things. Thus, things, ordinary things, including ourselves and our neighbors, are not primarily to be seen as empty, though they are; not primarily to be seen as phenomenal, though they are; not primarily to be seen as illusions, though in one sense they are; not primarily to be seen as evil even though they may be in part. It is in dharmas (things/ “conventional” existence) that the Dharma is. It is in transient, changing things that the Buddha is. They are, therefore, to be treated with as much insight and compassion and respect as we can muster.
A Buddhist Kaleidoscope; Gene Reeves, Appropriate Means as the Ethics of the Lotus Sutra, Page 388
Hōben as Provisional
Ways of being helpful are not, at least not primarily, grounded in principles. The Lotus Sutra has very little to say about precepts, though it does not reject them and in chapter 14 (Carefree Practice) the Buddha provides four sets of prescriptions which bodhisattvas should follow, one having to do primarily with outward behavior, one with speech, one with attitudes, and one with intentions. But these are to be understood, I think, not as commandments but more like counsel or rules of thumb. Principles, at least in the strongest sense, are eternal, God-given, or at least implanted permanently in the nature of things. The hōben of the Lotus Sutra, in contrast, are provisional. Once used, they may no longer be useful, precisely because they were appropriate for some concrete situation. The children will not return to the burning house to be saved again. Once his sons have drunk the antidote to the poison, their father need not again tell them that he has died. This is because these stories involve discoveries, made rapidly or gradually. And once something has been seen or discovered, it cannot be unseen or undiscovered, though it might, of course, be rediscovered or be discovered again independently. So the means by which it is discovered is always provisional, viable in some point in time. Once the father has guided his son to maturity, he can die in peace, no longer needed. Once a raft has been used to cross over to the other shore, we no longer need the raft and we would be seriously burdened by trying to take it with us over land.
In such provisionality there is a scriptural basis, not so much for a critique of the tradition, but for the continuing development, the continued flowering of the Dharma. And this is why the Lotus Sutra provided an important basis for the transformation of Buddhism in a Chinese context. From the perspective of the Lotus Sutra the transformation of Avalokiteśvara into Kwan-yin is not a corruption of Buddhism but a flowering.
A Buddhist Kaleidoscope; Gene Reeves, Appropriate Means as the Ethics of the Lotus Sutra, Page 387
Bodhisattva Ethics
What … does it mean to be a bodhisattva? Basically, in the Lotus Sutra it means using appropriate means to help others. And that finally, for the Lotus Sutra, is what Buddhism itself is. It is an enormous variety of means developed to help people live more fulfilling lives, which can be understood as lives lived in the light of their interdependence. This is what most of the stories are about: someone — father-figure/buddha, or friend/buddha, or guide/buddha — helping someone else gain more responsibility for their own lives.
Even if you search in all directions,
There are no other vehicles,
Except the appropriate means preached by the Buddha.
Thus, the notion of appropriate means is at once both a description of what Buddhism is, or what Buddhist practice primarily is, and a prescription for what our lives should become. The Lotus Sutra, accordingly, is a prescription of a medicine or religious method for us — and, therefore, at once both extremely imaginative and extremely practical.
A Buddhist Kaleidoscope; Gene Reeves, Appropriate Means as the Ethics of the Lotus Sutra, Page 386