Category Archives: WONS

WONS

Ice and Fire

Ice, before the sun rises, is as hard as gold. Fire, when there is no water, is as hot as iron in a furnace. However, hard ice can easily be melted by the sun in summer and fire can be extinguished by water. In the same fashion, although the esoterists appear to be noble and wise, they are like those who rely on the hardness of ice, without seeing the potential of the sun, or fire without considering water.

Oto Gozen Go-shōsoku, A Letter to Lady Oto, Nyonin Gosho, Letters Addressed to Female Followers, Page 116

WONS

69,384 Kinds of ‘Wonders’ in the Lotus Sūtra

The Lotus Sūtra consists of two “wonders,” one is the first 14 chapters called the theoretical section, and the other the last 14 chapters called the essential section. The two “wonders” can be divided into 10 “wonders” each, amounting to twenty. Or, the 30 “wonders” of the theoretical section and the 30 “wonders” of the essential section are put together to be 60. The 40 “wonders” of both theoretical and essential sections and the 40 “wonders” of meditation are joined together to be 120 tiers of “wonders.” Each of the 69,384 Chinese characters of the Lotus Sūtra has its own “wonder,” which means that there are in total 69,384 kinds of “wonders.”

Hokke Daimoku Shō, Treatise on the Daimoku of the Lotus Sūtra, Writings of Nichiren Shōnin, Faith and Practice, Volume 4, Page 42

WONS, Eyes

Twenty Important Doctrines and Two Important Teachings

Quote

Why is the Lotus Sūtra considered the highest teaching of Śākyamuni Buddha? Kyōtsū Hori’s translation of Kaimoku-shō has Nichiren state, “Twenty important doctrines are in this Lotus Sūtra.” (Hori 2002, p. 34) Senchū Murano’s version states, “The Buddha expounds two important teachings in this sūtra.” (Murano 2000, p. 13). …

The twenty important doctrines can be found in the commentary Profound Meaning of the Lotus Sūtra by Zhiyi. In that work Zhiyi states that there are ten “wonders” or “subtleties” (he uses the Chinese word miao, which is myō in Japanese) that can be found in the Trace Gate (J. Shakumon) comprised of the first fourteen chapters of the Lotus Sūtra, and there are another ten wonders that can be found in the Original Gate (J. Honmon) comprised of the last fourteen chapters of the Lotus Sūtra. The two important teachings are the One Vehicle teaching expounded in the Trace Gate and the Buddha’s revelation of the true extent of his lifespan expounded in the Original Gate.

Open Your Eyes, p141
WONS

The Difference Between Expedient and True Teachings

[T]he Annotations on the Great Concentration and Insight, fascicle 1, states: “Those who listen without revering the perfect and sudden true teaching are influenced by the recent academic tradition of ‘mixing up’ expedient and true teachings among those who study Mahāyāna Buddhism.” Those who do not know the difference between the expedient and true teachings of the Mahāyāna are referred to as “mixed up.” As a result those who believe in the Lotus Sūtra, the true Mahāyāna teaching, are as rare as the soil on a fingernail while those who do not believe in the sūtra and are diverted to expedient teachings are as immeasurable as the dust in the worlds throughout the universe.

Regretting this, Grand Master Miao-lê laments in his Annotations on the Great Concentration and Insight, fascicle 1: “In the Age of the Semblance Dharma and the Latter Age of Degeneration, people are so heartless and impious that they don’t even try to contemplate the perfect and sudden true teaching, scriptures of which are overflowing the libraries and chests, to the very end. They are born and die in vain. How pathetic their lives are!” This remark in the Annotations by Grand Master Miao-lê, an avatar of a bodhisattva, I believe, is his long-range prediction on the state of Japan today, in the Latter Age of Degeneration.

Shugo Kokka-ron, Treatise on Protecting the Nation, Writings of Nichiren Shōnin, Doctrine 1, Page 55

LS32, WONS

Day 7

Day 7 concludes Chapter 3, A Parable, and begins Chapter 4, Understanding by Faith.

Day 7 Text with annotationsPlay MP3
Having last month concluded Chapter 3, A Parable, we begin Chapter 4, Understanding by Faith, with the men of wisdom explaining why they had not sought Anuttara-samyak-saṃbodhi.

Thereupon the men living the life of wisdom: Subhūti, Mahā-Kātyāyana, Mahā-Kāśyapa, and Mahā-Maudgalyāyana felt strange because they heard the Dharma from the Buddha that they had never heard before, and because they heard that the World-Honored One had assured Śāriputra of his future attainment of Anuttara-samyak-saṃbodhi. They felt like dancing with joy, rose from their seats, adjusted their robes, bared their right shoulders, put their right knees on the ground, joined their hands together with all their hearts, bent themselves respectfully, looked up at the honorable face, and said to the Buddha:

“We elders of the Saṃgha were already old and decrepit [when we heard of Anuttara-samyak-saṃbodhi]. We did not seek Anuttara-samyak-saṃbodhi because we thought that we had already attained Nirvāṇa, and also because we thought that we were too old and decrepit to do so.’ You have been expounding the Dharma for a long time. We have been in your congregation all the while. We were already tired [when we heard of Anuttara-samyak-saṃbodhi]. Therefore, we just cherished the truth that nothing is substantial, the truth that nothing is different from any other thing, and the truth that nothing more is to be sought. We did not wish to perform the Bodhisattva practices, that is, to purify the world of the Buddha and to lead all living beings [to Buddhahood] by displaying supernatural powers because you had already led us out of the triple world and caused us to attain Nirvāṇa. Neither did we wish at all to attain Anuttara-samyak-saṃbodhi, which you were teaching to Bodhisattvas, because we were already too old and decrepit to do so. But now we are very glad to hear that you have assured a Śrāvakas of his future attainment of Anuttara-samyak-saṃbodhi. We have the greatest joy that we have ever had. We have never expected to hear such a rare teaching all of a sudden. How glad we are! We have obtained great benefits. We have obtained innumerable treasures although we did not seek them.

Nichiren discusses Mahā-Kāśyapa’s lineage in his letter Reply to Lord Tokimitsu:

Venerable Mahā-Kāśyapa was the most honorable among the Buddha’s disciples. Concerning his lineage, he was the son of Nyagrodha, a millionaire in Magadha, India. The house of his millionaire father was as huge as 1,000 tatami mats, with each mat being seven feet thick and costing at least 1,000 ryō (gold coins). His house had as many as 999 ploughs, each costing 1,000 ryō. It is also said that his house included 60 warehouses each containing 340 koku (about 1200 metric tons) of gold. Nyagrodha was a very wealthy person.

The wife of Mahā-Kāśyapa had a golden body so brilliant that it illuminated an area 16 ri (about 80 km) around herself. She was more beautiful than Princess Sotoori of Japan or Lady Li of Han China. Having aspirations for enlightenment, Kāśyapa and his wife became disciples of the Buddha and were guaranteed by the Buddha to become the future Light Buddha in the Lotus Sūtra.

Looking into their Buddhist practices in their prior existences, the husband was reborn as Venerable Mahā-Kāśyapa due to his offering of a bowl of barley rice to a pratyekabuddha. His wife, a poor woman, paid one gold coin to a Buddhist sculptor for gilding a statue of Vipaśyin Buddha and thereby was reborn as a beautiful golden woman to be the wife of Mahā-Kāśyapa.

Tokimitsu-dono Gohenji, Reply to Lord Tokimitsu, Writings of Nichiren Shōnin, Volume 7, Followers II, Pages 25

WONS, Eyes

The Great Vehicle of Salvation

Quote

Nichiren states that any of the teachings of the Buddha’s fifty years of teaching are a great vehicle of salvation compared to the non-Buddhist teachings. This is because the other teachings either do not teach about karma and rebirth in the six worlds or they do not show how to thoroughly extinguish the greed, hatred, delusion and other defilements that perpetuate the cycle of rebirth. At the same time, there are differences in degrees of profundity even among the Buddha’s teachings between Mahāyāna and Hinayāna, exoteric and esoteric, accommodating and confrontational rhetoric, and between provisional and final statements of truth. Nichiren asserts that the highest truth can only be found in the Lotus Sūtra, and he cites the testimony of Śākyamuni Buddha, Many Treasures Buddha, and the buddhas of the ten direction in the Lotus Sūtra itself as confirmation of this.

Open Your Eyes, p139
WONS

Preaching the True Intent of the Buddha

QUESTION: When we look at our own faces reflected in the mirror or faces of other people, we can see that our six sense-organs: eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body, and mind exist. However, we cannot see the existence of the ten realms in our own mind and others. How can we believe in it?

ANSWER: Certainly, it is not easy to believe in this existence. It is said in the tenth chapter, “The Teacher of the Dharma,” of the Lotus Sūtra that the sūtra is most difficult to put faith in and most difficult to comprehend. The eleventh chapter, “Appearance of the Stupa of Treasures,” preaches the “six difficult and nine easy acts,” maintaining that keeping faith in the Lotus Sūtra after the death of Śākyamuni Buddha is harder than trying to grasp Mt. Sumeru and hurling it over countless Buddha lands.

According to Grand Master T’ien-tai, the Lotus Sūtra is hard to have faith in and hard to understand because what is preached in both the essential and theoretical sections of the sūtra are altogether different from what is preached in those sūtras expounded before the Lotus Sūtra. Grand Master Chang-an states: “The doctrine of ‘mutual possession of ten realms’ (jikkai gogu) is the very reason why the Buddha appeared in the world. How can we ordinary people be expected to put faith in the Lotus Sūtra and comprehend it easily?” Grand Master Dengyō maintains: “This Lotus Sūtra is most difficult to believe in and comprehend, because the sūtra preaches the true intent of the Buddha.”

Kanjin Honzon-shō, A Treatise Revealing the Spiritual Contemplation and the Most Verable One, Writings of Nichiren Shōnin, Doctrine 2, Page 133-134

WONS

Complete Agreement with the Lotus Sūtra

[I]n the Lotus Sūtra we find many things mysterious and difficult to believe. Yet when we think of doubting the Lotus Sūtra, the Buddha of Many Treasures testified it to be true, Lord Preacher Śākyamuni Buddha Himself declared it to be His direct and true words, and the Buddhas in manifestation throughout the universe extolled it by extending their wide and long tongues to the Brahma Heaven. This is like a father’s letter of conveyance attached by a mother’s signed deed and approved by a wise king. When they are in complete agreement, how can anyone doubt this?

Matsuno-dono Goshōsoku, Letter to Lord Matsuno, Writings of Nichiren Shōnin, Volume 7, Followers II, Page 66

WONS, Eyes

Eight Phases of Śākyamuni’s Life

Quote

Nichiren sometimes alludes to the eight phases of Śākyamuni Buddha’s life. This is a way of summing up the story of the Buddha in the following eight events:

  1. Descent from the Tushita Heaven — Before his last earthly rebirth, the future Buddha lived in the Heaven of Contentment (Skt. Tuṣita) awaiting the right time, place and family for his final rebirth.
  2. Entering Queen Māyā’s womb — When the right conditions arose Queen Māyā of Kapilavastu had a most singular dream. She dreamed that a six-tusked white elephant holding a white lotus flower in its trunk circled around her three times and then entered into her womb. At that moment Queen Māyā conceived the bodhisattva.
  3. Emerging from Queen Māyā’s womb—Queen Māyā gave birth to him painlessly while standing up and holding onto a sal tree branch while visiting the Lumbini Garden near Kapilavastu. The legend states that immediately upon entering the world, the young Prince Siddhārtha took seven steps and made the following statement: “I am born for awakening for the good of the world; this is my last birth in the world of phenomena.” (Asvaghosa’s Buddhacarita, part Il, p. 4)
  4. Leaving home— After witnessing an old man, a sick man, a funeral procession, and a religious mendicant, Prince Siddhārtha left his family (his father King Suddhodana, his wife Yaśodharā, and his son Rahula) and became an forest ascetic.
  5. Overcoming Māra — After turning away from asceticism, the bodhisattva sat beneath the Bodhi Tree at Bodhgaya and overcame temptations and distractions of the demon Māra.
  6. Attaining the Way—As the morning star (Venus?) rose in the morning sky, the bodhisattva attained buddhahood and henceforth became known as Śākyamuni Buddha.
  7. Turning the Wheel of the Dharma —Starting at the Deer Park near the city of Vārāṇasi, the Buddha began to teach the Dharma and continued to do so for fifty years.
  8. Entering final nirvāṇa —At the age of eighty, the Buddha passed away beneath the twin sal trees near the city of Kuśinagara.
Open Your Eyes, p137-138
d5b, d9b, d21b, WONS

The Difficulty of the Lotus Sūtra

In the “Life Span of the Buddha” chapter of the Lotus Sūtra the Buddha preaches about Himself, “I have been the Buddha since the eternal past, 500 (million) dust-particle kalpa (aeons).” We, ordinary beings, do not remember things in the past even things that occurred after our birth. How much more so can we remember things in the past life or two! How can we believe anything that took place as far away in the past as 500 million dust-particle kalpa ago?

The Buddha also spoke to His disciple Śāriputra predicting his future Buddhahood, “You will become a Buddha in the future after passing numerous and unimaginable number of kalpa (aeons). You will then be called the Flower Light Buddha.” Predicting the future of Mahā-Kāśyapa, the Buddha stated, “In a future life, you will become a Buddha named the Light Buddha during your last incarnation.”

These scriptural statements, however, are the predictions of the future, which does not seem possible for us ordinary people to put faith in. Therefore, this Lotus Sūtra is difficult for us, ordinary men and women, who have no knowledge of things in the past or in the future. Hence it does not make sense for us to practice the Lotus Sūtra. Yet it may be possible for some people to believe this Lotus Sūtra if there was someone at present who could present factual proofs to people in front of their very eyes.

Hōren-shō, Letter to Hōren, Writings of Nichiren Shōnin, Volume 6, Followers I, Page 50