All living beings have the potential for Buddhahood. All people possess that seed, as explained in the concept of Inga Guji [both cause and effect are mutually possessed]. So when we recite Namu Myoho Renge Kyo in front of the Mandala Gohonzon, the pure and beautiful flower of enlightenment contained within our lives blossoms, develops and flourishes.
Odaimoku: The Significance Of Chanting Namu Myoho Renge KyoAuthor: John Hughes
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Daily Dharma – March 20, 2017
It is difficult to keep this sūtra.
I shall be glad to see
Anyone keeping it even for a moment.
So will all the other Buddhas.The Buddha sings these verses in Chapter Eleven of the Lotus Sūtra. He is well aware of how hard it is to move from expedient teachings to the Wonderful Dharma. We have habits and attachments built up over many lifetimes, and live in a world that does not always support our practice. Still, one cannot underestimate the importance of trying, even for the briefest amount of time, to hold on to this teaching and bring it to life in this world.
The Daily Dharma is produced by the Lexington Nichiren Buddhist Community. To subscribe to the daily emails, visit zenzaizenzai.com
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Day 9
Day 9 covers Chapter 5, The Simile of Herbs, and introduces Chapter 6, Assurance of Future Buddhahood.
Having last month given the Assurance of Future Buddhahood for Maha-Kasyapa in prose, we repeat it in gathas:
Thereupon the World-Honored One, wishing to repeat what lw had said, sang in gathas:
I will tell you, bhiksus.
I see this Kasyapa
With the eyes of the Buddha.
He will become a Buddha
In his future life
After innumerable’ kalpas from now.He will see in his future life
Three hundred billions
Of Buddhas, of World-Honored Ones.
He will make offerings to them,
And perform brahma practices
To obtain the wisdom of the Buddha.
Having made offerings
To the Most Honorable Bipeds,
He will study and practice
Unsurpassed wisdom,
And become a Buddha on the final stage
Of his physical existence.The ground [of his world] will be pure.
It will be made of lapis lazuli.
Many jeweled trees
Will stand on the roadsides.
The roads will be marked off by ropes of gold.
Anyone will rejoice at seeing them.Fragrance will be sent forth from the trees;
And beautiful flowers will be strewn
On the ground, which will be adorned
With various wonderful things.
The ground will be even,
And devoid of mounds and pits.The number of the Bodhisattvas
Will be beyond calculation.
They will be gentle.
They will have great supernatural powers.
They will keep the sutras of the Great Vehicle
Expounded by the Buddhas.The Sravakas will have already eliminated asravas,
And reached the final stage of their physical existence.
They will become sons of the King of the Dharma.
Their number also will be beyond calculation.
Even those who have heavenly eyes
Will not be able to count them.The duration of the life of that Buddha
Will be twelve small kalpas.
His right teachings will be preserved
For twenty small kalpas.
The counterfeit of his right teachings
Will be preserved also for twenty small kalpas.
All this is my prophecy
About the World-Honored One called Light.Lotus World offers this about the prediction for Buddhahood of Maya-Kasyapa, who is present in Nichiren’s Gohonzon:
In the Lotus Sutra, the voice-hearers fall into three groups of superior capacity, intermediate capacity, and lesser capacity, depending on the manner in which they are able to understand the One Vehicle. Mahakashyapa, Katyayana, and Subhuti comprise the intermediate category. They require the preaching of parables, such as the parable of the burning house in Chapter 3, in order to comprehend the One Vehicle.In the Lotus Sutra, Mahakashyapa, along with Subhuti, Katyayana, and Maudgalyayana all express their joy at hearing the teaching of the One Vehicle in Chapter 4. These four disciples then tell the Buddhist version of the parable of the prodigal son in that same chapter. In chapter five, the Buddha addresses the parable of the herbs to these four. In Chapter 6, the Buddha predicts the future buddhahood of these four disciples beginning with Mahakashyapa, who he announces will become Light Tathagata of the world Light Virtue.
Lotus World: An Illustrated Guide to the Gohonzon -
Daily Dharma – March 19, 2017
World-Honored One! It is difficult for anyone in the world to believe this. It is as difficult as to believe a handsome, black-haired man twenty-five years old who points to men a hundred years old and says, ‘They are my sons,’ or as to believe men a hundred years old who point to a young man and say, ‘This is our father. He brought us up.’
Maitreya Bodhisattva explains his perplexity to the Buddha in Chapter Fifteen of the Lotus Sūtra. The Buddha has just revealed that all of the Bodhisattvas who have appeared from underground to continue teaching the Wonderful Dharma after the extinction of the Buddha have been taught by the Buddha in the time since he became enlightened. Maitreya realizes that his doubts are no different from the doubts of those gathered to hear the Buddha teach and asks the Buddha to explain. The Buddha says later that he sees the world differently than other living beings. But this does not mean that when our experience does not match what the Buddha teaches, we must keep silence and just accept what he tells us. It is only through sincere questioning that we find the Buddha’s mind and make it our own.
The Daily Dharma is produced by the Lexington Nichiren Buddhist Community. To subscribe to the daily emails, visit zenzaizenzai.com
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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.
Having last month considered the sravakas appreciation of what the Buddha had accomplished, we conclude Chapter 4, Understanding by Faith.
No one will be able to repay your favors
Even if he tries to do so
For many hundreds of millions of kalpas.
No one will be able to repay your favors
Even if he bows to you respectfully,
And offers you his hands, feet or anything else.No one will be able to repay your favors
Even if he carries you on his head or shoulders
And respects you from the bottom of his heart
For as many kalpas
As there are sands in the River Ganges,
Or even if he offers you
Delicious food, innumerable garments of treasures,
Many beddings, and various medicines,
Or even if he erects a stupa-mausoleum
Made of the cow-head candana,
And adorns it with treasures,
Or even if he covers the ground
With garments of treasures
And offers them to the Buddha
For as many kalpas
As there are sands in the River Ganges.The Buddhas have
Great supernatural powers.
Their powers are rare, immeasurable,
Limitless and inconceivable.The Buddhas are the Kings of the Dharma
They are free from asravas, from cause and effect.
The Buddhas practice patience
In order to save inferior people.
They expound the Dharma according to the capacities
Of the ordinary people who are attached to forms.The Buddhas expound the Dharma
In perfect freedom.
Knowing the various desires and dispositions
Of all living beings,
They expound the Dharma
With innumerable parables
And with innumerable similes
According to their capacities.Some living beings planted the roots of good
In their previous existence.
Some of the roots have fully developed.
Seeing all this, the Buddhas understand
The capacities of all living beings,
And divide the teaching of the One Vehicle into three,
According to the capacities
Of all living beings.Tomorrow in the Simile of Herbs we’ll get the Buddha’s side of this concept of the dharma being different according to the capacities of living beings. For now, I’ll add today’s quote from Lotus Path: Practicing the Lotus Sutra Volume 1 and place it in the context of the poor son and his path toward carving his own image of himself as the inheritor of his father’s wealth.
When we think of carving an image of the Buddha I suspect that generally we think in terms of taking some material and simply carving a Buddha. But if we think about this in terms of our lives and sculpting our day and lives we can see another meaning to this.
If we want ourselves to be like the Buddha, an image of the Buddha, we need to carve it out of our lives. Every day, slowly and carefully, chipping away at all the things in our lives that are keeping us from being Buddhas.
Lotus Path: Practicing the Lotus Sutra Volume 1 -
Sculpting an Image of the Buddha
When we think of carving an image of the Buddha I suspect that generally we think in terms of taking some material and simply carving a Buddha. But if we think about this in terms of our lives and sculpting our day and lives we can see another meaning to this.
If we want ourselves to be like the Buddha, an image of the Buddha, we need to carve it out of our lives. Every day, slowly and carefully, chipping away at all the things in our lives that are keeping us from being Buddhas.
Lotus Path: Practicing the Lotus Sutra Volume 1
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Daily Dharma – March 18, 2018
Those who read the Lotus Sutra, therefore, should not regard it as consisting of merely written words. The words are the mind of the Buddha.
Nichiren wrote this passage in his Treatise on Opening the Eyes of Buddhist Images, Wooden Statues or Portraits (Mokue Nizō Kaigen no Koto). Here he reminds us of how words affect each of us differently, and even the same person is affected differently in different parts of their life. If we become dogmatically fixed on a single meaning of the Buddha’s highest teaching, and do not continue to indulge our curiosity about the Buddha’s mind, we miss the point.
The Daily Dharma is produced by the Lexington Nichiren Buddhist Community. To subscribe to the daily emails, visit zenzaizenzai.com
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Day 7
Day 7 concludes Chapter 3, A Parable, and begins Chapter 4, Understanding by Faith.
Having last month concluded Chapter 3, A Parable, it’s time to discuss Understanding by Faith.
Thereupon the men living the life of wisdom: Subhuti, MahaKatyayana, Maha-Kasyapa, and Maha-Maudgalyayana felt strange because they heard the Dharma from the Buddha that they had never heard before, and because they heard that the World-Honored One had assured Sariputra of his future attainment of Anuttara-samyak-sambodhi. They felt like dancing with joy, rose from their seats, adjusted their robes, bared their right shoulders, put their right knees on the ground, joined their hands together with all their hearts, bent themselves respectfully, looked up at the honorable face, and said to the Buddha:
“We elders of the Sangha were already old and decrepit [when we heard of Anuttara-samyak-sambodhi]. We did not seek Anuttara-samyak-sambodhi because we thought that we had already attained Nirvana, and also because we thought that we were too old and decrepit to do so.’ You have been expounding the Dharma for a long time. We have been in your congregation all the while. We were already tired [when we heard of Anuttara-samyak-sambodhi]. Therefore, we just cherished the truth that nothing is substantial, the truth that nothing is different from any other thing, and the truth that nothing more is to be sought. We did not wish to perform the Bodhisattva practices, that is, to purify the world of the Buddha and to lead all living beings [to Buddhahood] by displaying supernatural powers because you had already led us out of the triple world and caused us to attain Nirvana. Neither did we wish at all to attain Anuttara-samyak-sambodhi, which you were teaching to Bodhisattvas, because we were already too old and decrepit to do so. But now we are very glad to hear that you have assured a Sravaka of his future attainment of Anuttara-samyak-sambodhi. We have the greatest joy that we have ever had. We have never expected to hear such a rare teaching all of a sudden. How glad we are! We have obtained great benefits. We have obtained innumerable treasures although we did not seek them.
The Lecture on the Lotus Sutra offers this:
The elders of the congregation, as represented here by those telling the Parable of the Rich Man and His Poor Son, have come to realize that they had been guilty of thinking that the truth and reality of Anuttara-samyak-sambodhi as a possibility in their lives was not something they could actually realize and so they did not seek it. If in your life, at the very core of your life, deep down in the essence of what makes you you, if you are unable to believe you are fundamentally at that deep level a Buddha, then it is likely you will not actually live a life of possibility. If that belief, or even hope, or even faith is lacking then it will be difficult on your own to make the necessary causes to actually manifest it. It will in a sense become as if a negative feedback loop.Lecture on the Lotus Sutra
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The Six Difficult Things
The Six Difficult things are: 1) Expound this Sutra, 2) Copy and keep this Sutra, 3) Read this Sutra, 4) To keep this Sutra and expound to even one person, 5) To hear and receive this Sutra, and 6) Keep this Sutra after the death of the Buddha. In other words it is extremely difficult to keep, read, recite, copy, and teach the Lotus Sutra in this age so far removed from the historical Buddha. These things are more difficult than “putting the great earth on the nail of a toe and go up to the Heaven of Brahman.”
Physician’s Good Medicine
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Daily Dharma – March 17, 2017
We know the defects of the Lesser Vehicle.
But we do not know how to obtain
The unsurpassed wisdom of the Buddha.The Buddha’s disciples Maudgalyāyana, Subhūti and Mahā-Kātyāyana sing these verses in Chapter Six of the Lotus Sūtra. They have heard the Buddha teach that the expedient teachings about Suffering are incomplete. However they still have not yet embraced the One Vehicle teaching of the Lotus Sūtra which leads all beings to enlightenment. Nichiren explained, in his Treatise on Opening the Eyes of Buddhist Images, how teachings that came before the Lotus Sūtra were based on the mind of the hearer, where the Wonderful Dharma is itself the mind of the Buddha. When we read, recite, copy and expound the Lotus Sūtra, we are becoming of one mind with the Buddha.
The Daily Dharma is produced by the Lexington Nichiren Buddhist Community. To subscribe to the daily emails, visit zenzaizenzai.com