Began the New Year at the Sacramento Nichiren Buddhist Church ringing the bell 108 times.
For my first service of the New Year I used special incense that says “Namu Myoho Renge Kyo, Mount Minobu” when it burns.
And to complete the morning, I attended the New Year service at Kannon Temple in Las Vegas with Shoda Kanai Shonin and his father, Rev. Shokai Kanai.
Ignorant of the past and future [these Four Chinese] sages cannot help in the future lives of their parents, rulers and teachers. Not knowing what they owe to them in the past, they cannot be considered truly holy and wise. This is why Confucius said, “Truly wise and holy men do not exist in China, but in the land to the west, there is a man called Buddha. He is a true sage.”
Confucius thus indicated Confucianism, which is non-Buddhist (geten), to be the first step toward Buddhism. It would be easier, Confucius knew, for the people to understand the fundamental Buddhist teachings of commandments, meditation, and wisdom if they first learned the fundamental Confucian concepts of rituals and music.
He therefore taught the kings’ subjects to be loyal to their rulers, children to be devoted to their parents, and students to respect their teachers. Grand Master Miao-lê therefore declared in his Annotations on the Great Concentration and Insight: “The dissemination of Buddhism in China indeed depended on Confucianism. Buddhism found its way by following on the heels of the rituals and music of Confucianism.”
Kaimoku-shō, Open Your Eyes to the Lotus Teaching, Writings of Nichiren Shōnin, Doctrine 2, Pages 30
For the New Year I’ve decided to repost the quotes I’ve gathered from the seven-volume Writings of Nichiren Shōnin. I collected those quotes originally during my 100 Days of Study project that started in March 2018. Since then Nichiren Shu has published a second edition of the writings.
My ostensible reason for reposting the quotes is to update them to reflect the page numbers from the second edition. To tell if a quote you find on this website is from the first or second edition, look at the bottom of the article for the “2ndEd” tag.
However, the real reason is I’m reposting these quotes is because I want to have something to read each day and this is a simple, if time consuming, project.
In a perfect world, I’d sit down and read the seven volumes again and gather a new collection of quotes. With more than a decade of study behind me I’m sure I’d find new material overlooked the first time. But with two grandkids to babysit and the requirements of my “Honey, do…” chores, I just don’t think I’ll have the time.
Between the 100 Days of Study, the Phrase a Day booklet and Rev. Shinkyo Warner’s Daily Dharma, this website contains more than 1,700 quotes from Nichiren’s writings. I’m unsure how many of those quotes I gathered from the Writings of Nichiren Shōnin. I expect that I will be posting daily quotes well into 2027 and maybe beyond.
