People who understand the true principle of dependent origination and discover the highest aim of Buddhism realize that they cannot find happiness through their own salvation alone and that the true aim of human life must be the achievement of peace and well-being for society as a whole. Having reached this point, such people reject the self-oriented for the world-oriented vision. Instead of worrying about their own comfort and peace of mind, they become altruistic enough to fall into lower states of being (the realms of hell, hungry spirits, and beasts) for the sake of saving others. Less noble motives recede into the background or are rejected altogether. This step-by-step advancement accounts for the complexity of religious phenomena and for the expedient methods of Buddhist guidance, in which each teaching is adjusted to the need of the moment, just as medication must be selected to suit the illness being treated.
Basic Buddhist Concepts
Quotes
The Buddha Seed
The Lotus Sutra does not discuss a universal buddha-nature but often speaks of a universal buddha-seed. Chih-i re-uses the image of the seed to formulate a temporal succession in the process of enlightenment, which reflects also the way the Buddha acts: the seed is first sown, then left to sprout and grow, and finally the plant ripens. … [I]n Chih-i’s exegesis of the enlightenment of Śākyamuni the time between the sowing (the original enlightenment of Śākyamuni) and the ripening (the recent enlightenment of Śākyamuni) is an upāya, because the deeds Śākyamuni performs during this period are according to teachings other than the Lotus Sutra. The Lotus Sutra represents the world of the original enlightenment of Śākyamuni and that of his present enlightenment. The world in between is denoted by the other sutras Śākyamuni preached during his lifetime according to people’s capacity.
In Nichiren’s interpretation the upāya no longer has a function, the seed becomes equivalent to enlightenment, and the planting of the seed amounts to the attainment of buddhahood. The temporal interval between the primordial time and the present of Śākyamuni loses significance, and so does the difference between the original time and original land and the present of human beings. The Lotus Sutra is the buddha seed planted in people, the only means to realize the human potential for buddhahood. At any moment this scripture is read and diffused, the seed of buddhahood is again planted in everybody who chooses to listen and keep it, and the primordial relation with the Buddha is reestablished. If nobody “uses” the sutra, the seed disappears and no one is aware of their tie with the Buddha.
The seed is thus the necessary and sufficient cause of buddhahood. Yet, compared with the idea of buddha-nature, unchangeable by definition, the seed gives the idea of something belonging to the phenomenal world, subject to disappearance. “If people do not believe in this sutra and vilify it, then they cut off all the buddha-seeds in the world,” the sutra says. It is thus necessary to sow the seed again. If buddha-seeds occur “according to circumstances and conditioned cause,” as suggested in the Lotus Sutra itself, both the infinite action of the Buddha and one’s own activity are necessary. The image of the seed also conveys a more individual nuance than the universality of the buddha-nature: “Human beings defiled by evil encounter the bodhisattvas of the honmon, and the buddha-seeds are planted.”
A Buddhist Kaleidoscope; Lucia Dolce, Between Duration and Eternity: Hermeneutics of the ‘Ancient Buddha’ of the Lotus Sutra in Chih-i and Nichiren, Page 234-235
The Father of This Sahā World
The presentation of the relationship Buddha-humanity in terms of father and son also deserves attention. The term “the Buddha’s children” appears often in the sutra to indicate the Buddha’s disciples, bodhisattvas, and all those who practice according to the teaching of the Buddha. They are called “children born of the Buddha’s mouth.” Nichiren underlines that only a Buddha coming from this Sahā world can be considered father of the beings living in this world. Other Buddhas who abide in different parts of the universe are not qualified because they do not have this bond, thus their existence is almost irrelevant for people, or at best an upāya.
A Buddhist Kaleidoscope; Lucia Dolce, Between Duration and Eternity: Hermeneutics of the ‘Ancient Buddha’ of the Lotus Sutra in Chih-i and Nichiren, Page 233-234
The Past of Śākyamuni Is Reflected in the Past of His Disciples
For Nichiren, the revelation of the original Buddha which takes place in the sixteenth chapter has two meanings: that of a theory of the nature of the Buddha, and that of a speculation on the situation of humankind. Śākyamuni’s “original causes and original results” become the turning point which allows postulating the contemporaneity of human beings to the Buddha. Human beings, in their spatial and temporal limitations, share the temporality of Śākyamuni in this world. Nichiren uses a theory elaborated by Chih-i according to which the past of Śākyamuni is reflected in the past of his disciples. This is the tie established, in the original time, between Śākyamuni and those who listen to the sutra or are willing to accept it. From here Nichiren draws the certainty of buddhahood for human beings:
We living beings of this land are since as many kalpas ago as five hundred particles of dust Śākyamuni’s beloved children. [The relation] between a Buddha with ties and the living beings [bound] by karmic ties can be compared to [the reflection of] the moon in the sky floating on clear water. A Buddha without ties in relation to sentient beings is like a deaf man listening for the sound of thunder or a blind man turning to sun and moon.
A Buddhist Kaleidoscope; Lucia Dolce, Between Duration and Eternity: Hermeneutics of the ‘Ancient Buddha’ of the Lotus Sutra in Chih-i and Nichiren, Page 233The Original Land, A Pure Buddha Realm
According to Nichiren, in the second section of the Lotus Sutra Śākyamuni speaks of this Sahā world as the original land, a pure Buddha realm compared to which the other lands of the ten directions are mere conventional worlds. In Chih-i’s exegesis, the “original land” is the land in which the original Buddha attained enlightenment, therefore the realm of only one type of Buddha. This “Sahā world of the original time” contrasts with the Sahā world where human beings live, which retains the characteristics of a “trace-land.” For Nichiren, on the contrary, there is only one Sahā world. Vulture Peak, the place where the Lotus Sutra is taught, represents both this world of ours and the most perfect world, the only possible “paradise.” There is no other reality, neither for humanity, nor for the Buddha. Whereas Chih-i apparently believed in the Western paradise of Amitābha and hoped to reach it after his death, Nichiren considered the assembly on Vulture Peak a symbol of those who, having received the teachings of the Lotus Sutra, are able to transform our Sahā world into a “resplendent land.” (See this blog post.)
In Nichiren’s hermeneutics the original land thus equals the human world. Since the world where humans live is also the original world in which the Buddha attained buddhahood, phenomenal reality becomes the ground of the most complete enlightenment, which opens to ultimate reality. This enlightenment of the Buddha in the remote past justifies the buddhahood of all beings of this world: Nichiren insists that the śrāvakas and pratyekabuddhas who are promised enlightenment in the first section of the Lotus Sutra could never in fact attain it if the original enlightenment of the Buddha described in chapter 16 had not occurred.
A Buddhist Kaleidoscope; Lucia Dolce, Between Duration and Eternity: Hermeneutics of the ‘Ancient Buddha’ of the Lotus Sutra in Chih-i and Nichiren, Page 232-233
The True Mahāyāna Buddha
Nichiren classifies all the Buddhas of sutras other than the Lotus and the Śākyamuni described in the first section and in the last six chapters of the second section of the Lotus scripture as temporal bodies, or “Buddhas of the Hinayāna.” Only the Śākyamuni who reveals his enlightenment in the past embodies the true Mahāyāna Buddha. To indicate the infiniteness of this Buddha, Nichiren uses the expression “without beginning and without end,” which properly belonged to a context related to Mahāvairocana Buddha and signified an existence not subject to temporal limitations. This expression suggests that Nichiren attributes an eternal nature to Śākyamuni, and at first seems to imply that he envisages a dharmakāya as the only ground of any reality. But Nichiren develops this infiniteness in a different direction.
Nichiren emphasizes that the Lotus Sutra is the only scripture where not only the dharma body, but also the recompense body, and the transformation body are presented as “infinite”: “When other Mahayana sutras speak of ‘without beginning and without end,’ they refer to the dharmakāya only, not to the three bodies.” Nichiren does not regard the distant past represented by the five hundred kalpas as a metaphorical image, but as a concrete reality identifying an active original body, a “Buddha who in the far distant past has truly manifested himself, has truly practiced, and has truly actualized his enlightenment.” Consequently, the meaning that Nichiren attributes to Śākyamuni is not symbolized either by a transcendental body whose existence is set in a world other than ours or by the recompense body of which Chih-i spoke. This “without beginning without end” of the temporal body is most difficult to believe, Nichiren repeatedly suggests, but the infiniteness of the nirmāṇakāya is the crucial evidence that the Buddha has always abided in this world and that his soteriological activity has been constant since the original time.
Thus Nichiren resolves the conflict between the mundane and the ultimate by creating an all-encompassing Śākyamuni Buddha, who maintains characteristics of the historical Śākyamuni (the activity of preaching) and at the same time is endowed with attributes of the dharmakāya (infinite existence). In this way, the dharma world itself comes to be conceived as the phenomenal reality which actualizes the ultimate truth. Borrowing from Tendai terminology, Nichiren calls this reality “a concretely accomplished ‘three thousand worlds in one single thought.’ ”
A Buddhist Kaleidoscope; Lucia Dolce, Between Duration and Eternity: Hermeneutics of the ‘Ancient Buddha’ of the Lotus Sutra in Chih-i and Nichiren, Page 231-232
Followers of the Lord Śākyamuni
In chapter [11] of the sutra, Śākyamuni’s emanations materialize, having been asked to gather from the ten directions. Chih-i had already suggested that the emanation-bodies of Śākyamuni prove that he had not attained enlightenment only forty years before preaching the Lotus Sutra, otherwise there could not have been so many kalpa-old beings who had received instruction from him. However, Chih-i did not invest Śākyamuni’s emanations with a universal significance, probably because he did not regard Śākyamuni as the only true Buddha of the universe. Nichiren’s declaration that all Buddhas enlightened in the past are emanations of Śākyamuni is of a different nature: it challenges the equality of all Buddhas and, furthermore, operates as a reduction which unifies all Buddhas, not only those appearing in the Lotus Sutra, but also those appearing in other scriptures of the Buddhist canon. It should be noted that this “absolutization” of Śākyamuni, although reminiscent of the idea that “all Buddhas are just one single Buddha” developed by esoteric Tendai in Japan, does not proceed by equating Śākyamuni with another Buddha already defined as universal, like Vairocana, but rather by including all Buddhas (Vairocana, too) in the person of Śākyamuni.
Nichiren discusses at length how all Buddhas are enlightened because of their relation to Śākyamuni Buddha.
If we consider the stage of results, the many Tathāgatas are Buddhas of a past ten kalpas, one hundred kalpas or a thousand kalpas long. Lord Śākyamuni is a Buddha who has [attained] the complete result of subtle awakening as many kalpas ago as five hundred particles of dust. The various Buddhas of the ten directions such as the Tathāgata Vairocana, the Tathāgata Amitābhā and the Tathāgata Bhaisajyaguru are followers of our original teacher, the Lord Śākyamuni. One moon in the sky floats in the water as ten-thousand [moons]. … This Buddha Abundant Treasures, too, is a follower of the Lord Śākyamuni of the chapter “The Long Life of the Tathāgata.
A Buddhist Kaleidoscope; Lucia Dolce, Between Duration and Eternity: Hermeneutics of the ‘Ancient Buddha’ of the Lotus Sutra in Chih-i and Nichiren, Page 231Nichiren’s Interpretation: One Single Buddha
Nichiren’s interpretation of the Śākyamuni of the Lotus Sutra, although it took as its point of departure Chih-i’s theories, was definitively influenced by various hermeneutical patterns that developed in the Japanese exegetical tradition of the Lotus Sutra, and by Nichiren’s personal experience of the reality disclosed in the scripture.
Nichiren reread the entire sutra focusing on the “section of the origin.” From this perspective, he constructed an image of Śākyamuni Buddha as the only true Buddha of all Buddhist systems, and eventually produced an interpretation of the Lotus Sutra very different from that of Chih-i. In Nichiren’s writings we find a sort of dilation of the chapters constituting the second half of the Lotus Sutra, especially the end of chapter 15 and chapter 16, which Nichiren judges to be almost exclusively representative of the meaning of the entire scripture. This corresponds to the dilation of the temporal dimension expressed in those chapters, that is, the distant past in which Śākyamuni obtained his original enlightenment. Nichiren absolutizes this original moment and makes it the only significant time and relates it to the existence of humanity in a certain time and place.
He writes:
The true attainment of buddhahood in the far distant past is the original ground of all the Buddhas. To use a metaphor, if the vast sea is the true enlightenment in the past, the fishes and birds are the thousand two hundred and more Venerables. Had the enlightenment in the past not occurred, the thousand two hundred and more Venerables would be without roots like duckweed. …
When the past [of Śākyamuni] and [his] eternal abiding are disclosed, all Buddhas become Śākyamuni’s emanations. At the time of the earlier sutras and of the first part of the Lotus Sutra, the various Buddhas performed each practice and each discipline side by side with Śākyamuni. … Now it is manifest that the various Buddhas [of other sutras] all are followers of Śākyamuni. … When the Buddha is the Buddha of the far distant past, even the great bodhisattvas of the “trace section” and the great bodhisattvas of other realms are disciples of the Lord of the Doctrine Śākyamuni.
A Buddhist Kaleidoscope; Lucia Dolce, Between Duration and Eternity: Hermeneutics of the ‘Ancient Buddha’ of the Lotus Sutra in Chih-i and Nichiren, Page 230The Three Bodies Reveal the “Origin”
[I]t is debatable whether Chih-i ever conceived the idea of one single Buddha, or found it meaningful. There is, in fact, a fundamental difference between the doctrine that “the three bodies are one body” and the idea that “all buddhas are one Buddha only” (issaibutsu ichibutsu), which would later be put forward in Japanese Tendai. Chih-i acknowledged, and justified, the existence of other Buddhas, and did not eventually reduce them to Śākyamuni Buddha (they are not Śākyamuni’s upāya). In the last analysis, Chih-i regarded Śākyamuni only as the most important Buddha of the Lotus Sutra and only as the Buddha of the present world. He claimed that the three bodies all reveal the “origin,” but he never qualified this original time as the absolute time. His “origin” is just the archetypal movement, the attainment of buddhahood.
A Buddhist Kaleidoscope; Lucia Dolce, Between Duration and Eternity: Hermeneutics of the ‘Ancient Buddha’ of the Lotus Sutra in Chih-i and Nichiren, Page 229
The Primacy of the Recompense Body
[Chih-i’s] integration [dharma body, the recompense body and the transformation body] notwithstanding, Chih-i eventually puts the accent on one of the three bodies:
“[Chapter 16 of the Lotus Sutra] reveals the three bodies. If they are differentiated in a vertical sense, the true one is the recompense body. The wisdom of the recompense body, being one with what is above and in accord with what is below, encompasses the three bodies. … The text says ‘In the very far distant past since I became Buddha, I have benefited human beings in the three worlds.’ What is enlightened is the dharma body, what causes enlightenment is the recompense body. Because the dharma [body] and the recompense [body] become one, things may receive benefits. … Thus, the correct meaning [of the scriptural passage] is to postulate the virtues of the Buddha in his recompense body.”
This is perhaps the most interesting feature of Chih-i’s theory of the three bodies. The saṃbhogakāya represents a Buddha who has a beginning, and thus is finite before attaining enlightenment, but who becomes immeasurable, infinite, after his awakening. It exemplifies a Buddha who encompasses in himself both historical existence and universal principle: not an absolute Tathāgata who assumes for some time a phenomenal form and then goes back to his true nature, but a Tathāgata who is, at the same time, his true nature and his temporal manifestation.
A Buddhist Kaleidoscope; Lucia Dolce, Between Duration and Eternity: Hermeneutics of the ‘Ancient Buddha’ of the Lotus Sutra in Chih-i and Nichiren, Page 227