Monthly Archives: January 2021

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Reciting the Lotus Sutra in English

20210110_LV_English_Service
Rev. Shoda Kanai before the start of the Jan. 10, 2021, English language service at the Nichiren Buddhist Kannon Temple of Nevada

Today I attended the English language service at the Nichiren Buddhist Kannon Temple of Nevada. Prior to the start of the service Rev. Shoda Kanai explained that he doesn’t chant the sutra in English and instead reads the sutra, which he feels makes it more understandable.

I heartily endorse the idea of reading aloud the Lotus Sutra, which I have been doing daily since 2015.

When I explain my daily practice I point to the years when my son was an infant and I would read to him every night as he fell asleep. This is how I read the sutra aloud, imagining myself reading to my son.

English simply does not lend itself to the shindoku style of recitation. And besides, you have some great opportunities to embellish when reading to your child.

This month the Nichiren Buddhist Sangha of the Bay Area is discussing Chapter 3, which includes the Parable of the Burning House. This is my favorite chapter to embellish.

Consider the father’s warning to this children in the gāthās:

Or the children’s pestering of their father to get the promised toys:

And then there is my personal favorite, the Used Car Salesman and The Buddha Vehicle:

d29b, Peaceful Action

A Vast, Incalculable Ocean of Happiness

Fully endowed with all the merits,
His benevolent eye beholding the beings,
He is happiness accumulated, a sea incalculable.
For this reason one must bow one’s head to him.

This is the concluding verse of [Chapter 25, The Universal Gate of World-Voice-Perceiver Bodhisattva]. The bodhisattva of compassion is equipped with all kinds of merits (sattva punya), acquired during countless lifetimes of manifesting understanding and compassion. He is able to regard all beings with love and compassion. I think this is the most beautiful sentence in the entire sutra: “The bodhisattva regards all beings with the eyes of love.” You too have the eyes of compassion and love. The Buddha eye has been transmitted to you. The question is whether you will choose to make use of those eyes to look deeply.

Looking deeply, listening carefully, you understand the suffering of the other person, you accept him or her, and naturally your love and compassion flow freely. This is the most beautiful practice, the most powerful method of bringing about transformation and healing. Happiness is not described here in terms of weights or measures, but as a vast, incalculable ocean.

Peaceful Action, Open Heart, p199-200
Lotus Seeds

The Actualization of Ichinen Sanzen.

Ichinen Sanzen, the theoretical expression of the interdependent nature of all reality, teaches that all states of life are constantly present in all phenomena and are subject to the law of cause and effect. Therefore, the state of Buddhahood is an ever-present possibility that requires the right cause and conditions in order to make itself fully known. The Three Great Secret Dharmas produce those causes and conditions, in that they are the signs of the Buddha-nature within our life and the means for attaining Buddhahood. For this reason, Nichiren Shonin regarded the Three Great Secret Dharmas as the actualization of Ichinen Sanzen.

Lotus Seeds

WONS

Gods Attesting to the Truth of the Lotus Sūtra

The ancient gods of India, China, and Japan also attended the assembly. Goddess Amaterasu, Great Bodhisattva Hachiman, and the gods of Kumano and Suzuka cannot dispute with the words that attest to the truth of the Lotus Sūtra. The Lotus Sūtra is supreme among all the scriptures of Buddhism. It is like a lion, the king of animals that run on the earth, and the eagle, the king of birds that fly in the sky.

Sennichi-ama Gozen Gohenji, A Reply to My Lady Nun Sennichi, Writings of Nichiren Shōnin, Faith and Practice, Volume 4, Page 146

Daily Dharma

Daily Dharma – Jan. 10, 2021

This sūtra opens the gate of expedients and reveals the seal of the truth. The store of this Sūtra of the Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Dharma is sound and deep. No one can reach its core. Now I show it to the Bodhisattvas in order to teach them and cause them to attain [Anuttara-samyak-saṃbodhi].

The Buddha declares these lines to Medicine-King Bodhisattva in Chapter Ten of the Lotus Sūtra. At the beginning of the sūtra, the Buddha declared that he was no longer preparing those who hear him to receive his highest wisdom. The purpose of his instruction was always to lead all beings to unsurpassed enlightenment, even though it seemed that he was ending their suffering. When later the Buddha revealed his true existence as constantly present in our world, he showed that this teaching is not just something he did 2500 years ago. He is teaching this Wonderful Dharma for the benefit of all beings right now, today.

The Daily Dharma is produced by the Lexington Nichiren Buddhist Community. To subscribe to the daily emails, visit zenzaizenzai.com

LS32

Day 25

Day 25 covers all of Chapter 20, Never-Despising Bodhisattva, and opens Chapter 21, The Supernatural Powers of the Tathāgatas.

Day 25 Text with annotationsPlay MP3
Having last month concluded today’s portion of Chapter 21, The Supernatural Powers of the Tathāgatas, we return to Chapter 20, Never-Despising Bodhisattva and meet the Buddha Powerful-Voice-King.

Thereupon the Buddha said to Great-Power-Obtainer Bodhisattva-mahāsattva:
“Know this! Anyone who speaks ill of or abuses or slanders the bhikṣus, bhikṣunīs, upāsakās or upāsikās who keep the Sūtra of the Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Dharma, will incur the retributions previously stated. Anyone [who keeps this sūtra] will be able to have his eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body and mind purified, that is to say, to obtain the merits as stated in the previous chapter.

“Great-Power-Obtainer! Innumerable, limitless, inconceivable, asaṃkhya kalpas ago, there lived a Buddha called Powerful-Voice-King, 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 kalpa in which he lived was called Free-From-Decay; and his world, Great-Achievement. Powerful-Voice-King Buddha expounded the Dharma to the gods, men and asuras of his world. To those who were seeking Śrāvakahood, he expounded the teaching suitable for them, that is, the teaching of the four truths, saved them from birth, old age, disease and death, and caused them to attain Nirvana. To those who were seeking Pratyekabuddhahood, he expounded the teaching suitable for them, that is, the teaching of the twelve causes. To the Bodhisattvas who were seeking Anuttara-samyak-saṃbodhi, he expounded the teaching suitable for them, that is, the teaching of the six paramitas, and caused them to obtain the wisdom of the Buddha.

“Great-Power-Obtainer! The duration of the life of Powerful-Voice-King Buddha was forty billion nayuta kalpas, that is, as many kalpas as there are sands in the River Ganges. His right teachings were preserved for as many kalpas as the particles of dust of the Jambudvipa. The counterfeit of his right teachings was preserved for as many kalpas as the particles of dust of the four continents. The Buddha benefited all living being and then passed away. After [the two ages:] the age of his right teaching and the age of their counterfeit, there appeared in that world another Buddha also called Powerful-Voice-King, 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. After him, the Buddhas of the same name appeared one after another, two billion altogether.

See Taking Personally the Three Phases of the Dharma

LS32, d10b, d13b, d14b, d18b, d19b, d25b, d5b, d9b, stories

Taking Personally the Three Phases of the Dharma

We can, of course, understand the three phases [of the Dharma] not as an inevitable sequence of periods of time, but as existential phases of our own lives. There will be times when the Dharma can be said to be truly alive in us, times when our practice is more like putting on a show and has little depth, and times when the life of the Dharma in us is in serious decline. But there is no inevitable sequence here. There is no reason, for example, why a period of true Dharma cannot follow a period of merely formal Dharma. And there is no reason to assume that a period has to be completed once it has been entered. We might lapse into a period of decline, but with the proper influences and circumstances we could emerge from it into a more vital phase of true Dharma. A coming evil age is mentioned several times in the Dharma Flower Sutra, but while living in an evil age, or an evil period of our own lives, makes teaching the Dharma difficult, even extremely difficult, nowhere does the Dharma Flower Sutra suggest that it is impossible to teach or practice true Dharma.

The Stories of the Lotus Sutra, p214
d29b, Peaceful Action

Compassion

Happiness is made of one substance – compassion. If you don’t have compassion in your heart you cannot be happy. Cultivating compassion for others, you create happiness for yourself and for the world. And because Avalokiteśvara is the embodiment of this practice, the Sutra says that we pay respect to him by bowing and touching our foreheads to the ground. This is an ancient Indian practice, a gesture of deep respect to one’s teacher.

Peaceful Action, Open Heart, p200
d29b, Peaceful Action

With Avalokiteśvara as Our Refuge and Protection

From moment to moment conceive no doubts,
For the pure saint Who Observes the Sounds of the World
In the discomforts of pain, agony, and death
Can be a point of reliance.

Dwell in mindfulness every moment, without any doubt about the power of compassion and understanding. With great confidence and faith in Avalokiteśvara, every moment is a moment of mindfulness with compassion and understanding as its object. The symbol of compassion becomes the object of your mindfulness, the object of your recollection. And even in a situation of danger, “of pain, agony, and death,” you maintain this awareness and recollection.

Avalokiteśvara is a holy person, but holiness is not something we find only in certain persons. Everywhere that there is mindfulness, concentration, and insight, there is the element of holiness. So when we take the qualities of Avalokiteśvara as the object of our mindfulness, then the element of holiness arises in us too. With Avalokiteśvara as our refuge and protection, we reach the shore of non-fear, no longer afraid of danger or suffering, no longer in fear of death.
Peaceful Action, Open Heart, p199

d15b, WONS

The Comparative Superiority of the Lotus Sūtra

The comparative superiority of all the sūtras preached during fifty years or so by Śākyamuni Buddha is declared in chapter 10 of the Lotus Sūtra, “The Teacher of the Dharma”: “I have expounded numerous sūtras. I am now expounding this sūtra. I also will expound many sūtras in the future. The total number of the sūtras will amount to many thousands, ten thousands and millions of them. This Sūtra of the Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Dharma is the most difficult to believe and the most difficult to understand.”

Even if this statement of the Lotus Sūtra were uttered by Śākyamuni Buddha alone, anybody from the highest ranking bodhisattvas down should respect and believe in it. The Buddha of Many Treasures, coming from the Eastern Hōjō World, attested to its truth. Besides, various Buddhas in manifestation from all the worlds in the universe gathered to verify its truth “with their long and wide tongues extended to the Brahma Heaven” just as Śākyamuni Buddha did, and returned to their respective lands.

The three phrases of “already preached, being now preached, and going to be preached” (i, kon, tō) include all the sūtras preached not only by Śākyamuni Buddha during fifty years or so of His preaching but also by all the Buddhas from all the worlds in the universe through the past, present, and future. These numerous sūtras are all compared with the Lotus Sūtra. Suppose that these Buddhas, from all the worlds in the universe, who presented themselves at the assembly of the Lotus Sūtra and added their seals of approval, should return to their respective homelands and say to their disciples that there is a sūtra superior to the Lotus Sūtra, would their disciples trust them at all?

Hōon-jō, Essay on Gratitude, Writings of Nichiren Shōnin, Doctrine 3, Pages 5.