Monthly Archives: May 2023

LS32

Day 10

Day 10 concludes Chapter 6, Assurance of Future Buddhahood, and opens Chapter 7, The Parable of a Magic City.

Day 10 Text with annotationsPlay MP3

Having last month considered the Buddha’s prediction for Subhūti, we consider the Buddha’s prediction for 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.

See The Admission Permit to the School of Buddhahood

Petzold Nichiren

One Who Wants to Protect and Keep the Proper Dharma

In Japan the place of Kwan-ti, the God of War, as a protector of Buddhist monasteries, is taken by the War-God Hachiman, the “God of the Eight Banners” of pure Shintō extraction. But what is of still greater importance than the protection accorded to Buddhism by Chinese and Japanese native deities of war, is the fact … that already in Indian Buddhism we meet, besides the merciful Bodhisattva, the pitiless Myōō, besides the mild Avalokiteśvara, (the Japanese Kwannon) who graciously looks down on the sinner and endeavors to save him, the revengeful Acala, (the Japanese Fudō) who is unmoved by prayers and wants to surrender the transgressor to his well-merited desert. Both are supplementing each other, both are foreseen in the Buddhist plan of salvation. Though the Myōō or “Lord of Magic Powers” is considered of a lower rank than the Bodhisattva, the “Being of Enlightenment,” they are nevertheless both cooperating in the great work of reaching the living beings—only by opposite methods. The method used by the Bodhisattva and the method used by the Myōō and their striking contrast are brought out by two of the most famous Mahāyāna sūtras, the Bommō-kyō and the Dainehan-gyō.

The tenth of the forty-eight light precepts of the Bommō-kyō says: When one is a child of Buddha, he must not have in his possession any sword or knife, stick, bow, arrows, lance, hatchet or any fighting weapon whatever, nor any net or snare. One must not have in his possession any object destined to put to death living beings, whatever it may be. A Bodhisattva must not revenge a murder, not even one committed against his father or his mother; how much less would it be permitted to him, to kill any living being: He must not have in his possession any instrument destined to kill living beings, and if nevertheless he has one, with his own knowledge and will, he makes himself culpable of a secondary sin causing pollution.”

Diametrically opposite is the injunction of the Dainehan-gyō, as quoted by Nichiren in his Risshō-ankokuron where Buddha says: “Good boy! One who wants to protect and keep the proper dharma [shōbō], ought to keep swords, bows, arrows and halberds without accepting the five śīlas and without studying the igi,” i.e. “the dignified forms” or practical ceremonies, not included in the vinaya. In the same text this sūtra is quoted as saying: “If there is one who wants to accept and to keep the five śīlas, he cannot be called a man of Mahāyāna. If one protects the proper dharma, although he has not received the five śīlas, he is called a man of Mahāyāna. The one who protects the proper dharma, ought to hold swords and sticks. And although he possesses swords and sticks, I [Buddha] will call him a keeper of śīlas.”

Petzold, Buddhist Prophet Nichiren , p 91-93
Daily Dharma, d23b

Daily Dharma – May 28, 2023

The good men or women who keep, read, recite, expound or copy this Sūtra of the Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Dharma, will be able to obtain eight hundred merits of the eye, twelve hundred merits of the ear, eight hundred merits of the nose, twelve hundred merits of the tongue, eight hundred merits of the body, and twelve hundred merits of the mind.

The Buddha gives this teaching in Chapter Nineteen of the Lotus Sūtra. This is another reminder that the practice of the Wonderful Dharma does not take us out of the world of conflict we live in. Instead, it helps us to use the senses we have, in ways we did not think were possible, to see the world for what it is. Merits in this sense are not status symbols. They are an indication of clarity, of our faculties not being impeded by anything that blocks their capacity.

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

LS32

Day 9

Day 9 covers Chapter 5, The Simile of Herbs, and introduces Chapter 6, Assurance of Future Buddhahood.

Day 9 Text with annotationsPlay MP3

Having last month considered how the various teachings are of the same content, we repeat in gāthās the Simile of the Herbs.

Thereupon the World-Honored One, wishing to repeat what he had said, sang in gāthās:

As the destroyer of the bonds of existence,
I, the King of the Dharma, have appeared in this world.
Since then I have expounded the Dharma variously
According to the desires of all living beings.

I am honorable, and my wisdom is profound.
Therefore, I have been reticent on this truth[,]
[That is, the reality of all things,] for a long time.
I did not make haste to expound it to all living beings.

If they had heard it [without expedients],
Men of ignorance would have had doubts,
And lost their way [to enlightenment] forever,
Though men of wisdom would have understood it by faith.

Therefore, Kāśyapa, I expounded [the Dharma]
With various expedients to all living beings
According to their capacities
In order to cause them to have the right view.

Kāśyapa, know this!
Suppose a large cloud rose in the sky,
And covered everything on the earth.
The cloud was so merciful
That it was about to send a rainfall.
Lightning flashed,
And thunder crashed in the distance,
Causing people to rejoice.

The cloud covered the sun,
And cooled the earth.
It hung down
As low as if we could reach it.

Now the rain came down
To all the quarters of the earth.
The rainwater was immeasurable.
It soaked all the earth.
There were many plants
In the retired and quiet places
Of the mountains, rivers and ravines.

They were herbs, cereal-plants, young rice-plants,
Vegetables, sugar canes, and other grasses;
Fruit-trees including vines,
And other trees, tall and short.
They were sufficiently watered by the rain.
So were all the dry lands.

The herbs and trees grew thick by the rain.
All the grasses and trees in thickets and forests
Were watered variously according to their species
By the rain water of the same taste
Coming down from the [same] cloud.

All the trees grew differently
According to their species.
They became superior or middle or inferior
Or tall or short trees.

The roots, trunks, branches, leaves,
Flowers and fruits of the various trees
Were given a fine and glossy luster
By the same rain.

Although watered by the same rain,
Some of them were tall, while others not,
Because they were different
In their entities, appearances and natures.

See Kern’s Simile of the Herbs Sucks

Petzold Nichiren

Breaking the Sutras

Though the persecution of dissenters by the orthodox party was by no means unknown in the history of Buddhism in China or Japan, it would nevertheless be a great injustice to maintain that Buddhism as a doctrine ever encouraged its adherents to propagate their creed with fire and sword. On the contrary, what has generally distinguished Buddhism, and especially Mahāyāna Buddhism, is a remarkable latitudinarianism, which acknowledged the heterodox standpoint as not altogether bad and in some ways as even necessary and right! All extraneous religions are accordingly considered as propaedeutic steps for the Buddhist religion, which itself is divided into lower and higher steps, representing inferior and superior degrees of the Buddhist truth.

This evolutionary view of Buddhism had been already maintained with the utmost determination by Tendai Daishi. In conformity with it, the lower type of religion, and above all the lower type of Buddhism, must be broken by the higher type—not by annihilating the lower teachings, but by incorporating them as aufgehobene Momente (to speak with Hegel) into the more perfect teaching.

Nichiren—as we have seen from the Kenhōbō shō–justifies the breaking of the Hinayāna Sūtras from the standpoint of the Mahāyāna and the breaking of the General Mahāyāna Sūtras from the standpoint of the Hoke-kyō. In this respect he is entirely in agreement with the Tendai School and does not show any particular intolerance. However, he goes a step further than Tendai Daishi by expressly censuring the opposite method, of breaking Mahāyāna by Hinayāna and breaking the Hoke-kyō by the General Mahāyāna, i.e. the breaking of the higher teaching by the lower. Here his attack against other sects comes in. Carried away by his religious zeal, Nichiren accuses them of having deserted the true teaching of Śākyamuni and having compromised the very fundamentals of Buddhism. They committed the crime which seemed to him the most heinous and which the Mahāparinirvāṇa sūtra exhorts all virtuous priests to extirpate.

Petzold, Buddhist Prophet Nichiren , p 80-81
Daily Dharma, d14b

Daily Dharma – May 27, 2023

Offer him heaps of the treasures of heaven! Why is that? It is because, while he is expounding the Dharma with joy, if you hear it even for a moment, you will immediately be able to attain Anuttara-samyak-saṃbodhi.

The Buddha gives this instruction to Medicine-King Bodhisattva at the beginning of Chapter Ten of the Lotus Sūtra. In Chapter Twenty-Three, the Buddha tells of all the hardships Medicine-King endured to practice the Wonderful Dharma. This Bodhisattva knows all the difficulties we face because he has experienced them himself. When anyone sees us practicing, living and sharing the Dharma with others, they will see the joy we have and want to experience it for themselves. The treasures of heaven we receive from Medicine-King are not like the pleasures and comforts we find in the world. They are the assurance we have of our enlightenment and that of all beings.

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

LS32

Day 8

Day 8 concludes Chapter 4, Understanding by Faith, and closes the second volume of the Sutra of the Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Dharma.

Day 8 Text with annotationsPlay MP3

Having last month considered how the great rich man is the Buddha, we repeat in gāthās and begin the Parable of the Rich Man and His Poor Son.

Thereupon Mahā-Kāśyapa, wishing to repeat what they had said, sang in gāthās:

Hearing your teaching of today,
We are dancing with joy.
We have never had
Such joy before.

You say:
“The Śrāvakas will be able to become Buddhas.”
We have obtained unsurpassed treasures
Although we did not seek them.

Suppose there lived a boy.
He was young and ignorant.
He ran away from his father
And went to a remote country.
He wandered from country to country
For more than fifty years.

The father anxiously sought him
In all directions.
Finally tiring of looking for him,
He settled in a certain city.

He built a house,
And enjoyed satisfaction
Of the five desires.
He was very rich.
He had a great deal of gold, silver,
Shell, agate, pearl and lapis lazuli;
And many elephants, horses,
Cows, sheep,
Palanquins, carts,
Farmers and attendants.
He invested his money in all the other countries,
And earned interest.
Merchants and customers
Were seen everywhere [around him].

Thousands of billions of people
Surrounded him respectfully.
He was favored by the king,
And respected
By the ministers,
And by the powerful families.

Many people came to see him
For various purposes. Because he was rich,
He was very powerful.
As he became older,
He thought more of his son.
He thought from morning till night:
“I shall die before long.
It is more than fifty years
Since my ignorant son left me
What shall I do
With the things in the store-houses?”

At that time the poor son
Wandered from village to village,
From country to country,
Seeking food and clothing.
Sometimes he got what he wanted,
At other times he could not.
Getting thinner from hunger,
He had scabs and itches on his skin.
Wandering from one place to another,
He came to the city of his father.
Employed at places from day to day,
He came to the house of his father.

At that time the rich man was sitting
On the lion-like seat
Under the great awning of treasures
Inside the gate of the house.
Many attendants were surrounding him.
Many people were on his guard.

Some of his attendants were counting
Gold, silver, and other treasures.
Some were keeping accounts;
Others, writing notes and bills.

Seeing his father noble and honorable,
The poor son thought:
“Is he a king,
Or someone like a king?”

Frightened and scared,
He wondered:
“Why did I come here?”
He thought:
“If I stay here any longer,
I shall be forced to work.”

Having thought this, he ran away.
He asked someone
For the way to a village of the poor
In order to get a job.

From his lion-like seat,
The rich man saw the poor son in the distance,
And recognized him as his son.
But he did not tell this to the others.

He immediately dispatched a messenger
To chase, catch, and bring him back.
The poor son cried out with fright,
And fell to the ground in agony, thinking:
“He caught me. I shall be killed.
What use was it coming here
For food and clothing?”

The rich man thought:
“He is ignorant, narrow-minded, and mean.
If I tell him that I am his father,
He will not believe me.”

The Daily Dharma from April 17, 2023, offers this:

The rich man thought:
“He is ignorant, narrow-minded, and mean.
If I tell him that I am his father,
He will not believe me.”

These verses are part of the story of the Wayward Son told by Subhūti, Mahā-Kātyāyana, Mahā-Kāśyapa, and Mahā-Maudgalyāyana in Chapter Four of the Lotus Sūtra. The son in the story has forgotten who his father is. The father cannot just bring him into his inheritance while the son is still attached to his lowly life. The story explains the disciples’ understanding of why the Buddha cannot give his highest teaching without expedients.

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

Petzold Nichiren

‘The King of the Śīlas’

The Bommō-kyō [or Brahmajāla-sūtra, the most important of the Mahāyāna Vinaya texts,] is a sūtra of the “open doctrine,” and by the Tendai School intimately associated with the Hoke-kyō. The most renowned commentary on it is written by Tendai Daishi. But Nichiren, as we have seen from his criticism of the Kai Ritsu Sect, rejected not only the two hundred and fifty Hinayāna precepts, but also the fifty-eight Mahāyāna precepts of the Bommō kai, and the interpretation of the Hinayāna śīlas in a Mahāyāna spirit. Moreover, he refused to acknowledge the ten precepts of the Yōraku-kyō that were approved of, together with the Bommō kai and the Hinayāna kai, by Tendai Daishi. Neither did Nichiren recognize the ten infinite precepts of the Kegongyō. For Nichiren, the only true and real kai or “the king of the śīlas,” was that of the Hoke-kyō, in which he distinguished the kai of the shakumon and the kai of the hommon, placing the latter over the former. He considered the ten heavy precepts taught in the Juryō hon of the hommon part of the Hoke-kyō as the acme of morality and as the only kai suitable for the Mappō time of “non-śīla.” He also made use of the promises referring to the attainment of buddhahood, contained in the Hōben hon in the Shakumon part.

In this context, the question arises of whether the intolerance of Nichiren is not in large measure a direct reflection of the spirit of the Hoke-kyō itself. This text is generally considered to be a mere didactic writing, impregnated with a serene mysticism that rises again and again to apocalyptic exuberance. However, there is also intermingled with it a decided polemic tendency, that in some places finds even passionate expression. Therefore the Hoke-kyō, this “book of peace and divine love,” can also be considered as an apocalyptic work, and as such it was apt to inflame the mind of a man like Nichiren, who by natural disposition was inclined to go to extremes. Moreover, we ought to remember that already in the early time of the Mahāyāna creed, the opinion was advanced by its propagandists that anybody who caused a schism in the community and infringed upon the foundations of belief might be killed, if the religion could not be saved otherwise. The interests of Buddhism as a whole are thereby placed higher than the life of the individuals; and the Mahāyāna teaching was advised not to shrink back from taking an individual life at a time when the existence of religion itself was at stake, and thus invalidating for a while the first and most important of the five precepts.

Petzold, Buddhist Prophet Nichiren , p 79-80
Daily Dharma, d14b

Daily Dharma – May 26, 2023

Good men! Ānanda and I resolved to aspire for Anuttara-samyak-saṃbodhi under the Void-King Buddha at the same time [in our previous existence]. At that time Ānanda always wished to hear much while I always practiced strenuously. Therefore, I have already attained Anuttara-samyak-saṃbodhi[, but he has not yet]. Now he protects my teachings.

The Buddha gives this description to those gathered to hear him teach in Chapter Nine of the Lotus Sūtra. In the story, he has just assured his cousin Ānanda that he will become a Buddha. He then explains the difference between hearing what the Buddha teaches and making it a part of our lives. It is when we practice the Buddha Dharma that we truly understand it. But even if we believe we do not have the capacity to practice, it is still important for us to hear and protect what the Buddha left for us. By giving others the opportunity to learn and do what perhaps we cannot, we help to improve their lives, and give them a chance to improve ours.

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

LS32

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 considered how the Buddha taught to his listeners’ capacity, we consider the Buddha’s admonition not to teach this sutra to those who are arrogant and idle.

I expound only to people of profound wisdom
This Sūtra of the Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Dharma
Because men of little wisdom would doubt this sūtra,
And not understand it even if they heard it.
No Śrāvaka
Or Pratyekabuddha
Can understand
This sūtra.

Even you, Śāriputra,
Have understood this sūtra
Only by faith.
Needless to say,
The other Śrāvakas cannot do otherwise.
They will be able to follow this sūtra
Only because they believe my words,
Not because they have wisdom.

Śāriputra
Do not expound this sūtra
To those who are arrogant and idle,
And who think that the self exists!

Do not expound it to men of little wisdom!
They would not be able to understand it
Even if they heard it
Because they are deeply attached to the five desires.

Those who do not believe this sūtra
But slander it,
Will destroy the seeds of Buddhahood
Of all living beings of the world.

See Why Is Slandering Lotus Sutra So Important?