With each reading of Chapter 5, The Simile of Herbs, I am encouraged by the sutra’s embrace of diversity. One Dharma rains on all manner of different species, and as we take faith in the Lotus Sutra and practice and grow, nourished by that universal rain, we obtain different flowers and fruits.
We are not all the same. There is no reason to expect uniformity in those who take faith in the Lotus Sutra. We cannot expect flowering herbs to become towering oak trees. That’s just not going to happen.
When I was still a member of Soka Gakkai I would frequently hear whispers about this or that leader’s practice or, more often, lack of practice. Such gossip undermined everyone’s faith. Today, I’ve moved so far in the other direction that I now argue that any sincere practice will have the same benefit as any formal ritual.
In Nichiren’s Gassui Gosho, A Letter on Menstruation, Nichiren explains:
“You may chant the whole twenty-eight chapters, one chapter, one paragraph, one sentence or even one character of the Lotus Sūtra a day. Or, you may chant the daimoku, ‘Namu Myōhō Renge Kyō,’ just once in a day or once in your whole life. Even if you may never chant the daimoku yourself, you may rejoice at hearing others chant it just once in your whole life. Or you may rejoice with others who rejoice at hearing a voice chanting the daimoku. The joy of the daimoku chanting transmitted 50 times this way from person to person, will grow weaker steadily until in the last fiftieth person it will be as uncertain as the mind of a two- or three-year-old baby or as unpredictable as a horse or a cow, which cannot tell the difference between head and tail. Nevertheless, the merit of such people is one hundred thousand billion times greater than that of those whose wisdom is as great as Śāriputra, Maudgalyāyana, Mañjuśrī, and Maitreya, but put faith in sūtras other than the Lotus Sūtra and memorize them all.”
Nyonin Gosho, Letters Addressed to Female Followers, p22-24
I know of more than one couple where one person practices formally and the other is supportive of the partner’s practice. In the verses at the end of Chapter 2 a lengthy list of such people are promised wonderful benefits.
“Those who bowed to the image of the Buddha,
Or just joined their hands together towards it,
Or raised only one hand towards it,
Or bent their head a little towards it
And offered the bending to it,
Became able to see innumerable Buddhas one after another.
They attained unsurpassed enlightenment,
Saved countless living beings,
And entered into the Nirvana-without-remainder
Just as fire dies out when wood is gone.”
I am the master of only myself. Your practice is yours. Mine is mine. I encourage everyone to bathe in the rain of the Dharma and allow the seed of enlightenment to sprout and grow and eventually bear its unique fruit.
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