The Stories of the Lotus Sutra, p90-91At the end of the series of stories of heavenly kings coming to the Buddha, the last group of them says:
May these blessings
Extend to all,
That we with all the living
Together attain the Buddha way.This is an important expression for Rissho Kosei-kai and for many other Buddhists as well. It is a kind of summary of the heart of Mahayana Buddhist teaching. The expression “with all the living” is a way of reminding ourselves that we are related to all, and that the highest Buddhist practice is doing something for the good of all.
To speak of doing something for the good of all is a way of talking about serving the Buddha. Nothing is good all by itself. Good is always a blessing for somebody. It is relational. Our own personal good is always limited, limited in part by the very limited scope of our experience, our knowledge, and our compassion. The good of our family is larger, less limited, than our individual good, but still very limited. The good of the community is larger than the good of our family. The good of the nation is larger than the good of our community. The good of all people is larger still. But all of these are still limited goods.
The Buddha, who is in all times and places, is not so limited. That is why “serving the Buddha,” “doing the Buddha’s will,” and similar expressions have the meaning of doing something for the good of all, of working for the common good. But doing something for the good of all should not be seen as opposed to doing something for our own good.
The Buddha never asks us to completely give up our own interests, our own good, to be completely selfless, to serve only the good of others. The Buddha does ask us to go beyond our own good, to understand and to feel deeply that we are related to a whole cosmos of living beings, and to know that it is by doing something for the good of all that we ourselves can realize our own highest good – the buddha in us.
Monthly Archives: August 2020
This Stream of Consciousness
Dhammapada, p86It is this stream of consciousness that we identify with a self, because its experiences seem to have happened to a particular individual. But according to the Buddha, this self is only imagined, superimposed on momentary, unconnected mental events. If the mind is compared to a movie, vijnana is like the series of clicks of the camera shutter: “This frame (and nothing outside it) is I, this is I, this is I.” The Buddha would ask, “What is I?” What we see is simply not there. We see the images flash by and think we are watching Clark Gable; but in reality, of course, we are watching no one, only a series of stills.
Daily Dharma – Aug. 12, 2020
Medicine-King! An evil man who speaks ill of me in my presence with evil intent for as long as a kalpa is not as sinful as the person who reproaches laymen or monks with even a single word of abuse for their reading and reciting the Sūtra of the Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Dharma.
The Buddha declares this sentence in Chapter Ten of the Lotus Sūtra. Since the Buddha is secure in the enlightenment he enjoys, anyone attacking him either questioning his enlightenment or disparaging his wisdom is only going to make themselves look bad. Attacking someone just starting on the path towards enlightenment could lead them to doubt the value of the Wonderful Dharma. It is beneficial to remember these words, not just for what they mean about how we treat others, but for how we treat ourselves.
The Daily Dharma is produced by the Lexington Nichiren Buddhist Community. To subscribe to the daily emails, visit zenzaizenzai.com
Day 10
Day 10 concludes Chapter 6, Assurance of Future Buddhahood, and opens Chapter 7, The Parable of a Magic City.
Having last month heard the prediction for Subhūti, we hear the prediction for Great Kātyāyana.
Thereupon the World-Honored One said to the bhikṣus:
“Now I will tell you. This Great Kātyāyana will make many offerings to eight hundred thousand millions of Buddhas, attend on them, respect them, and honor them in his future life. After the extinction of each of those Buddhas, he will erect a stūpa-mausoleum a thousand yojanas high, and five hundred yojanas wide and deep. He will make it of the seven treasures: gold, silver, lapis lazuli, shell, agate, pearl and ruby. He will offer flowers, necklaces, incense to apply to the skin, incense powder, incense to burn, canopies, banners and streamers to this stūpa-mausoleum. After that he will make the same offerings to two billions of Buddhas. Having made offerings to those Buddhas, he will complete the Way of Bodhisattvas, and become a Buddha called Jambunada-Gold-Light, the Tathāgata, the Deserver of Offerings, the Perfectly Enlightened One, the Man of Wisdom and Practice, the Well-Gone, the Knower of the World, the Unsurpassed Man, the Controller of Men, the Teacher of Gods and Men, the Buddha, the World-Honored One. The ground [of his world] will be even, made of crystal, and adorned with jeweled trees. The roads will be marked off by ropes of gold, and wonderful flowers will cover the ground to purify it. Anyone will rejoice at seeing it. The four evil regions: hell, the region of hungry spirits, that of animals, and that of asuras, will not exist in that world. Many gods and men will live there. Śrāvakas and Bodhisattvas, many billions in number, also will live there to adorn that world. The duration of the life of that Buddha will be twelve small kalpas. His right teachings will be preserved for twenty small kalpas, and the counterfeit of his right teachings also will be preserved for twenty small kalpas.”
Thereupon the World-Honored One, wishing to repeat what he had said, sang in gāthās:
Bhikṣus!
Listen with one mind!
What I say
Is true, not false.This Kātyāyana
Will make
Wonderful offerings
To the Buddhas.After the extinction of each of the Buddhas,
He will erect a stūpa of the seven treasures,
And offer flowers and incense to the śarīras
[Of the Buddha enshrined in the stūpa].On the final stage of his physical existence,
He will obtain the wisdom of the Buddha
And attain perfect enlightenment.
His world will be pure.
He will save many billions of living beings.
All living beings
In the worlds of the ten quarters
Will make offerings to him.No light will surpass
The light of that Buddha.
The name of that Buddha will be
Jambu [nada]-Gold-Light.Innumerable Bodhisattvas and Śrāvakas
Will live in his world, and adorn that world.
They will have already eliminated
The bonds of existence.
Making All People of the World Happy
Buddhism for Today, p35Those who believe sincerely in the Lotus Sutra and practice its spirit faithfully have already received admission to the highest, universal university, that of buddhahood. Knowing this, how proud we feel and how worthwhile our life becomes!
Our natural joy and pride in this fact must never lead to self-satisfaction, however. If we make this feeling our own personal joy alone, it is meaningless. This is the second important point of the Buddha’s prediction.
At the end of the second verse portion of chapter 6, Maudgalyāyana, Subhūti, Kātyāyana, and others spoke in unison as follows:
“Great Hero, World-honored One! /
Thou dost ever desire to pacify the world;
Be pleased to bestow our prediction”What they are saying is: “The Buddha always desires to make all the people of the world feel at ease. We also desire to become buddhas and to make them live in peace. Please give us your assurance of becoming buddhas.”
They do not mean that they alone be saved and become buddhas, or that they alone become buddhas and attain peace of mind. Their final purpose is to make all the people of the world happy. This is a most important point. We must understand that the real intention of these disciples in earnestly requesting that the Buddha give them his assurance of becoming buddhas lies in the fact that they wanted to obtain such freedom and power as to be capable of making others happy. If we do not realize this, we are likely to receive the mistaken impression that they asked the Buddha for only their own personal enlightenment and mental peace.
Ryusho Kansho Jeffus Shonin
At 8:27 am today I received word that Rev. Ryusho Shonin had died this morning at the Syracuse VA Medical Center, where he had been hospitalized since July 24, 2020. Anyone who has followed this blog will understand just how important Ryusho Shonin has been in the development of my practice.
Here’s a chronological snapshot of his influence.
March 21, 2016, Monday night study is an example of Ryusho’s efforts to merge practice and study.
Introduction
I attended Ryusho’s 2015 and 2016 Urban Retreats.
As a former member of Soka Gakkai, Ryusho Jeffus was able to help others understand how Nichiren Shu differed from SGI.
I want to finish this with a quote from Ryusho’s Lecture on the Lotus Sutra:
Perhaps it is the reality of our modern advertisement saturated media that has led many to believe that only after buying and using every product known to man, after every single penny is spent that has ever been earned in the entire history of man- and womankind then and only then will somehow perfection and happiness be possible. Somehow by doing something so unlikely to produce indestructible happiness as buying a product is more realistic than the realization that each one of us is already all we need to be. We are as complete as we need to be in order to become indestructibly happy. All we need to do is simply wake up to this reality in our lives, and the Buddha is telling us that the Lotus Sutra is the most efficacious way of doing this.
The Wrapper of the Spices
Dhammapada, p82-83Even in such abstract thinking, the Buddha remains in touch with his audience. Everyone would have been familiar with the village marketplace, where vendors spread their wares on mats for passersby to see. When someone wants spices for that night’s dinner, the spice-seller takes a banana leaf, doles out little heaps of coriander, ginger, and the like, wraps them up in the leaf, and ties the bundle with a banana string. That is how the Buddha describes personality: a blend of five skandhas or “heaps” of ingredients like these piles of spices in their banana-leaf wrapper. These ingredients are rupa, form; vedana, sensation or feeling; samjna, perception; samskara, the forces or impulses of the mind; and vijnana, consciousness. Without reference to an individual self or soul, the Buddha says that birth is the coming together of these aggregates; death is their breaking apart.
“Form” is the body, with which most of us identify ourselves and others. It is the sameness of body from day to day that provides the continuity of who we are. When the body dies, what is left? Even in an afterlife, we can’t really imagine ourselves without form.
For the Buddha, however, this physical identification is as ridiculous as mistaking the dinner spices for the leaf in which they are wrapped. The body is only a wrapper.
Daily Dharma – Aug. 11, 2020
Know this, Śāriputra!
I once vowed that I would cause
All living beings to become
Exactly as I am.
That old vow of mine
Has now been fulfilled.
I lead all living beings
Into the Way to Buddhahood.
The Buddha sings these verses in Chapter Two of the Lotus Sūtra. Earlier in the chapter he explained that all the teachings he used before the Lotus Sūtra were mere expedients, intended to use our desire for happiness to bring us out of our suffering and onto the path of enlightenment. The expedient teachings were tailored to the ignorant and deluded minds of those who heard them, but had not yet revealed the true wisdom and compassion of the Buddha. Now that we have met this Wonderful Dharma, we are assured of our enlightenment and that of all beings. We learn to see innumerable Buddhas in limitless worlds through unimaginable time, and our own true selves at the heart of reality.
The Daily Dharma is produced by the Lexington Nichiren Buddhist Community. To subscribe to the daily emails, visit zenzaizenzai.com
Day 9
Day 9 covers Chapter 5, The Simile of Herbs, and introduces Chapter 6, Assurance of Future Buddhahood.
Having last month considered the Simile of the Herbs in gāthās, we consider how the Buddha is like the cloud.I am like the cloud.
I appeared in this world
Just as the large cloud covered
Everything on the earth.Since I appeared in this world,
I have been expounding
The reality of all things
To all living beings.(The Great Saint,
The World-Honored One,
Said to the multitude
Of gods and men:)I am the Tathāgata,
The Most Honorable Biped.
I have appeared in this world
Just as the large cloud rose.All living beings are dying of thirst.
I will water them.
I will save them from suffering.
I will give them the pleasure of peace,
The pleasure of the world,
And the pleasure of Nirvana.
Nourished by the Same Living Energy
The Stories of the Lotus Sutra, p80The central message of the simile of the cloud and rain is that the Buddha’s teachings, the Dharma, is equally available to everyone. The Dharma can be found anywhere, ready to nourish each and every one of us. All living beings participate in a process in which they are nourished by the same living energy as everyone else, a living energy that Buddhists call “Buddha Dharma.” But we are not all alike. We live in different cultures, have different histories, use different languages, are born in different generations, have different abilities to hear and understand, and so on. This why the one Dharma has to be embodied in many different teachings and practices.