All posts by John Hughes

Daily Dharma

Daily Dharma – Feb. 8, 2024

If anyone keeps, reads, recites, expounds and copies even a gāthā of the Sūtra of the Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Dharma, and respects a copy of this sūtra just as he respects me…or just joins his hands together respectfully towards it, Medicine-King, know this, that person should be considered to have appeared in the world of men out of their compassion towards all living beings.

The Buddha declares these lines to Medicine-King Bodhisattva at the beginning of Chapter Ten of the Lotus Sūtra. We might believe that everything happens by chance, or that we were sent into this life by someone who is testing us. This Sūtra awakens us to our existence as Bodhisattvas who asked to be born in this world of suffering out of our vow to benefit all beings.

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

LS32

Day 27

Day 27 concludes Chapter 23, The Previous Life of Medicine-King Bodhisattva.

Day 27 Text with annotationsPlay MP3

Having last month considered the merits of offering a light to the stupa of a Buddha, we compare the Lotus Sutra to all the other sutras.

“Star-King-Flower! Just as the sea is larger than the rivers, this Sūtra of the Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Dharma is more profound than any of the other sūtras expounded by the Tathāgatas. Just as Mt. Sumeru is the largest of all the mountains including earth mountains, black mountains, the Small Surrounding Iron Mountains, the Great Surrounding Iron Mountains, and the Ten Treasure Mountains, this Sūtra of the Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Dharma is above all the other sūtras. Just as the Moon God is brighter than the stars, this Sūtra of the Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Dharma gives us more light than any of the other sūtras numbering thousands of billions. Just as the Sun God dispels all darkness, this sūtra drives away all the darkness of evils. Just as the wheel-turning-holy-king is superior to the kings of small countries, this sūtra is more honorable than the other sūtras. Just as King Sakra is the king of the thirty-three gods, this sūtra is the king of all the sūtras. Just as the Great Brahman Heavenly-King is the father of all living beings, this sūtra is the father of all the sages and saints, of the Śrāvakas who have something more to learn, of the Śrāvakas who have nothing more to learn, and of those who aspire for Bodhisattvahood. Just as Srota-āpannas, Sakrdāgāmins, Anāgāmins, Arhats, and Pratyekabuddhas are superior to ordinary men, this sūtra is superior to any of the other sūtras expounded either by Tathāgatas or by Bodhisattvas or by Śrāvakas. The person who keeps this sūtra is superior to any other living being. Just as Bodhisattvas are superior to Śrāvakas or to Pratyekabuddhas, this sūtra is superior to any other sūtra. Just as the Buddha is the king of the Dharma, this sūtra is the king of all the sūtras.

The Daily Dharma offers this:

Just as the Moon God is brighter than the stars, this Sūtra of the Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Dharma gives us more light than any of the other sūtras numbering thousands of billions. Just as the Sun God dispels all darkness, this sūtra drives away all the darkness of evils.

The Buddha gives this explanation to Star-King-Flower Bodhisattva in Chapter Twenty-Three of the Lotus Sūtra. The Buddha uses comparisons from our common experience of the sun, moon and stars to illustrate how this teaching of the Wonderful Dharma is superior to all other teachings. This is not just hyperbole. This teaching illuminates not only the other teachings of the Buddha, but all teachings. It lets us see them for what they are, and use them to do the Buddha’s work of leading all beings to enlightenment.

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

mappō, Stone Last Age

The Last Age: Believing in Buddha Nature

The fact that both Nichiren and Hōnen emphasized the efficacy of a single phrase uttered with faith has led many to deduce a false similarity between their teachings. In actuality, they require an altogether different posture on the part of the believer. Faith in Amida as taught by Hōnen and Shinran rests on a thorough conviction of one’s own helplessness and depravity. The absolute emphasis on tariki or “other power” demands this; to the extent that one remains unconvinced of his own moral inadequacy, he cannot fully entrust himself to the power of Amida’s grace. For Nichiren, however, once one embraces the daimoku, the single, inadmissible doubt that will hinder his enlightenment is doubt about his own Buddha nature. Faith in the daimoku of the Lotus Sutra rests on the premise that one possesses the absolute within himself, and to believe this—in the face of one’s obvious shortcomings—Nichiren acknowledged to be difficult.

Stone: Seeking Enlightenment in the Last Age, p54 of Part 2
Daily Dharma

Daily Dharma – Feb. 7, 2024

I, Nichiren, am the lone forerunner of the bodhisattvas who emerged from the earth. I may even be one of them. If I am counted as one of the bodhisattvas who emerged from the earth, my disciples and followers too are among the ranks of those bodhisattvas from the earth, are they not? The “Teacher of the Dharma” chapter states, “If someone expounds even a phrase of the Lotus Sūtra even to one person in secret, then you should know that such a person is my messenger, dispatched by Me and carries out My work.” This refers to none other than us.

Nichiren wrote this passage as part of his Treatise on All Phenomena as Ultimate Reality (Shohō Jissō-Shō), sent to the monk Sairen-Bō. He refers to Chapters Ten and Fifteen of the Lotus Sūtra. This passage reminds us of our position as followers of Nichiren, and fellow messengers of Śākyamuni Buddha.

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

LS32

Day 26

Day 26 concludes Chapter 21, The Supernatural Powers of the Tathāgatas, includes Chapter 22, Transmission, and introduces Chapter 23, The Previous Life of Medicine-King Bodhisattva.

Day 26 Text with annotationsPlay MP3

Having last month considered the offerings made by Gladly-Seen-By-All-Beings Bodhisattva after hearing the Sūtra of the Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Dharma, we consider the reaction of the Buddha’s to Gladly-Seen-By-All-Beings Bodhisattva’s offering.

“The Buddhas of those worlds praised him, saying simultaneously, ‘Excellent, excellent, good man! All you did was a true endeavor. You made an offering to us according to the true Dharma. This offering excels the offerings of flowers, incense, necklaces, incense to burn, powdered incense, incense applicable to the skin, streamers and canopies of heavenly cloth, and the incense of the candana grown on this shore of the sea. It also excels the offerings of countries, cities, wives and children. Good man! This is the most excellent and honorable offering because you made it to us according to the Dharma.’

“Having said this, they became silent. The body of the Bodhisattva kept burning for twelve hundred years, and then was consumed. Having made this offering according to the Dharma, Gladly-Seen-By-All-Beings Bodhisattva passed away. In his next life, he appeared again in the world of Sun-Moon-Pure-Bright-Virtue Buddha. It was in the house of King Pure-Virtue [in that world] that he suddenly appeared with his legs crossed [in the person of the son of the king] . He said to his father in a gāthā:

Great King, know this, [in my previous existence]
I walked about this world, and at once obtained
The samadhi by which I can transform myself
Into any other living being. With a great endeavor,
I gave up my own dear body.

See The Contemplation of Revelation of All Forms

mappō, Stone Last Age

The Last Age: Difficulty in Daimoku Chanting

Nichiren consistently opposed any suggestion that enlightenment or ultimate truth or the Buddha land lies anywhere apart from oneself in the present moment. “There are not two lands, pure or impure in themselves,” he remarked. “The difference lies solely in the good or evil in our minds.” In this way, he saw the individual as fully responsible for his own enlightenment, a view that heavily influenced his position on another of the standard mappō issues—the question of ease versus difficulty of practice.

The daimoku, like the nembutsu, requires neither profound doctrinal understanding nor the institution of monastic life nor even the ability to read. Nichiren himself acknowledged the virtue of its extreme simplicity, which rendered it accessible to all people. However, unlike Hōnen, he rarely argued the authenticity of the daimoku on the basis of its ease of practice. Rather, looking beyond mere mechanical simplicity, he defined the practice of the daimoku as “diffcult.”

Here Nichiren applied to the daimoku the words of the Saddharma Puṇḍarīka, which describes itself as the teaching that is “the hardest to believe, the hardest to understand.” Nichiren analyzed this difficulty in several ways. First. he said, there is doctrinal difficulty; because the daimoku encompasses all truth within itself, it is infinitely profound and therefore “difficult to understand.” Second, he stressed the difficulty of propagation, which in the Final Dharma age invariably entails hardships and misunderstandings. The Lotus Sutra itself enumerates the persecutions that will befall its votaries in the “evil age”—prophecies borne out with almost uncanny accuracy in the lives of Nichiren and his disciples. Third, he warned against the difficulty of sustaining faith, for one’s deluded mind will attempt to thwart him in various ways as he advances in practice. Finally, and perhaps most interestingly, Nichiren emphasized the extreme difficulty of believing in one’s own Buddha nature. He wrote, “To believe that Buddhahood exists within Humanity (ninkai) is the most difficult thing of all.”

Stone: Seeking Enlightenment in the Last Age, p53-54 of Part 2
Daily Dharma

Daily Dharma – Feb. 6, 2024

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

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 considered the Buddha’s reaction to the announcement by the Bodhisattvas from underground, we conclude today’s portion of Chapter 21, The Supernatural Powers of the Tathāgatas.

At that time the gods in the skies [of the worlds of the ten quarters] said loudly:

“There is a world called Sahā beyond a distance of many hundreds of thousands of billions of asaṃkhyas of worlds. In that world lives a Buddha called Śākyamuni. He is now expounding to Bodhisattva-mahāsattvas a sūtra of the Great Vehicle, called the ‘Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Dharma, the Dharma for Bodhisattvas, the Dharma Upheld by the Buddhas.’ Rejoice from the bottom of your hearts! Bow and make offerings to Śākyamuni Buddha!”

Having heard their voice from the skies, the living beings of those worlds joined their hands together towards the Sahā World, and said, “Namah Sakyamunaye Buddhaya, namah Sakyamunaye Buddhaya.” Then they strewed various flowers, various kinds of incense, various necklaces, streamers, canopies, personal ornaments, treasures, and other wonderful things to the Sahā-World from afar.

The strewn things came from the worlds of the ten quarters like gathering clouds and changed into a jeweled awning over the Sahā-World. The awning extended over the Buddhas staying in this world. At that time the worlds of the ten quarters became passable through each other without hindrance as if they had been a single Buddha-world.

See A True and Peerless Teaching

mappō, Stone Last Age

The Last Age: Medicine Standing Too Long Upon the Shelf

What did, in Nichiren’s estimation, make mappō a dark and evil era was stubborn adherence to provisional teachings no longer suited to the time or the people’s capacity. These fragmentary revelations of truth had been able to trigger full awakening in the people of the True and Counterfeit Dharma ages, who had cultivated the requisite capacity through their past practice. However, like medicine standing too long upon the shelf which loses its potency and turns poisonous, by the Final Dharma age, far from leading to enlightenment, these incomplete doctrines served only to compound people’s illusions and evil karma. Convinced of the essential non-duality of the individual and his objective world, Nichiren saw the disasters and upheavals of his age as an outward expression of widespread delusion arising from faith in these inferior teachings. He asserted that if people would instead embrace the daimoku of the Lotus Sutra, awakening to their own Buddha nature, then the present world, just as it is, would become the Buddha land.

Stone: Seeking Enlightenment in the Last Age, p52-53 of Part 2
Daily Dharma

Daily Dharma – Feb. 5, 2024

Mind is called the spiritual aspect while voice is the physical aspect. Therefore the spiritual aspect reveals the physical aspect. But it is also possible to perceive the mind by listening to the voice. In this case, the physical aspect (voice) reveals the spiritual aspect (mind)

Nichiren wrote this passage in his Treatise on Opening the Eyes of Buddhist Images, Wooden Statues or Portraits (Mokue Nizō Kaigen no Koto). This is one of the many instructions Nichiren gives us for how to read the Lotus Sūtra and find the wisdom of the Buddha within it. It is easy to understand how the intentions we have in our minds guide our words and actions. By cultivating the intention to benefit all beings, rather than just focusing on making ourselves happy, we mold our speech and actions to accord with that intention. Finding the mind behind the voice is more difficult. When we look for the Buddha speaking to us in all situations, especially those which are demanding, we bring ourselves closer to the Buddha’s own mind. We bring our speech and actions into harmony with the world as it is.

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