All posts by John Hughes

LS32

Day 24

Day 24 concludes Chapter 19, The Merits of the Teacher of the Dharma, and closes the Sixth Volume of the Sutra of the Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Dharma.

Day 24 Text with annotationsPlay MP3

Having last month considered the eight hundred merits of the nose, we consider the twelve hundred merits of the tongue.

“Furthermore, Constant-Endeavor! The good men or women who keep, read, recite, expound or copy this sūtra, will be able to obtain twelve hundred merits of the tongue. Anything which tastes good, bad, delicious, distasteful, bitter or astringent, will become as delicious as the nectar of heaven and not distasteful when it is put on their tongues. When they expound the Dharma to the great multitude with their tongues, they will be able to raise deep and wonderful voices, to cause their voices to reach the hearts of the great multitude so that the great multitude may be joyful and cheerful. Hearing their speeches given in good order by their deep and wonderful voices, Śakra, Brahman, and the other gods and goddesses will come and listen to them. In order to hear the Dharma, dragons, dragons’ daughters, gandharvas, gandharvas’ daughters, asuras, asuras’ daughters, garuḍas, garuḍas’ daughters, kiṃnaras, kiṃnaras’ daughters, mahoragas, and mahoragas’ daughters also will come to them, respect them, and make offerings to them. Bhikṣus, bhikṣunīs, upāsakās, and upāsikās; and kings, princes, ministers, and their attendants [also will come and hear the Dharma]. The wheel-turning[holy-]kings of small [countries], and the wheel-turning-[holy-]kings of great [countries, each of whom has the] seven treasures and one thousand children, also will come with their [treasures, children and] internal and external retinues, riding in their [movable] palaces, and hear the Dharma. These [good men or women, that is,] Bodhisattvas will expound the Dharma so well that the brahmanas, householders, and people of their country will, throughout their lives, attend on them, and make offering to them. The Śrāvakas, Pratyekabuddhas, Bodhisattvas, and Buddhas also will wish to them. [These good men or women] will expound the Dharma in the places which the Buddhas will face. They will keep all the teaching of the Buddhas and raise deep and wonderful voices of the Dharma.”

The Daily Dharma offers this:

Anything which tastes good, bad, delicious, distasteful, bitter or astringent, will become as delicious as the nectar of heaven and not distasteful when it is put on their tongues.

The Buddha gives this explanation to Constant-Endeavor Bodhisattva in Chapter Nineteen of the Lotus Sūtra, describing those who keep the Lotus Sūtra. In our habitual pursuit of pleasure, we often forget that what is pleasant to some people is irritating to others. This is most obvious with food. Flavors that some find delicious others find disgusting. When we understand that the things in the world are not the cause of our happiness or misery, and that our minds affect how we perceive the world, we find more joy and wonder than we thought possible, and no longer depend on this capricious existence for our happiness.

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: Sowing, Maturing and Harvesting in a Single Moment

In Nichiren’s teaching, the entire process of sowing, maturing and harvesting concludes in the moment of chanting the daimoku, the act by which one “simultaneously makes the cause and receives the effect of Buddhahood.” Or, if enlightenment is viewed as a process, one reaps the harvest of emancipation within this single lifetime. Those born in the True and Counterfeit Dharma ages, Nichiren taught, could attain Buddhahood through traditional disciplines, but these in general demanded practice spanning many cycles of birth and death. On the other hand, those born in the time of mappo cannot attain Buddhahood through such disciplines, but by chanting Namu-myōhōrengekyō-kyō, they can become Buddhas in this very lifetime.

Thus for Nichiren, birth in the Final Dharma age is ultimately a matter for rejoicing. “What joy to have been born in mappō, and to have shared in the propagation [of the daimoku of the Lotus Sutra)!” he exclaims. “To be a common mortal seeking the Way in this Final Dharma age is better than being a mighty ruler during the two thousand years of the True and Counterfeit Dharma ages. Rather than be abbot of the Tendai sect, it is better to be a leper who chants Namu- myōhō-rengekyō-kyō.” And, “I rejoice at whatever good fortune enabled me to be born in the fifth five-hundred years. When one compares the rewards of living in the three different periods, it is clear that mine surpass not only those of Nāgārjuna and Vasubandhu but those of T’ien-t’ai (Chih-i) and Dengyō.” Similar expressions of joy and gratitude abound in his writings, contrasting sharply with the gloom of conventional mappō thought. For Nichiren, mappō was defined not in terms of its depravity, but in terms of the relationship between the people and the Dharma. From one perspective, he taught that the daimoku of the Lotus Sutra is the correct practice for people in the Final Dharma age, but more fundamentally, he held the Final Dharma age to be significant because that is the time when the daimoku of the Lotus Sutra—the seed for the direct attainment of Buddhahood—shall spread.

Stone: Seeking Enlightenment in the Last Age, p51-52 of Part 2
Daily Dharma

Daily Dharma – Feb. 4, 2024

Star-King-Flower! Strew blue lotus flowers and a bowlful of powdered incense to the person who keeps this sūtra when you see him! After strewing these things [to him], you should think, ‘Before long he will collect grass [for his seat], sit at the place of enlightenment, and defeat the army of Māra. He will blow the conch-shell horn of the Dharma, beat the drum of the great Dharma, and save all living beings from the ocean of old age, disease and death.’

The Buddha gives this explanation to Star-King-Flower Bodhisattva in Chapter Twenty-Three of the Lotus Sūtra. Māra is the deity who creates confusion and delusion in the world. His army consists of those who reinforce these delusions and reward those who share them. Such rewards do not benefit those who receive them. They only serve to produce fear and attachment which creates misery in the world. With our practice of this Lotus Sūtra, we learn to recognize delusion for what it is, and reject the superficial benefits that come with it.

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

LS32

Day 23

Day 23 covers all of Chapter 18, The Merits of a Person Who Rejoices at Hearing This Sutra, and opens Chapter 19, The Merits of the Teacher of the Dharma.

Day 23 Text with annotationsPlay MP3

Having last month compared the merits of the great almsgiver to the merit of the fiftieth person who rejoices at hearing even a gāthā of this Sūtra, we consider merits of those who lead others to hear the Lotus Sutra.

“Furthermore, Ajita! Anyone who goes to a monastery in order to hear this sūtra and hears it even for a moment while he is sitting or standing, in his next life will be able to go up to the palace of heaven, riding in a beautiful and wonderful elephant-cart or horse-cart or in a palanquin of wonderful treasure by his merits. Anyone who, while sitting in the place of the expounding of the Dharma, persuades another per on to it down or shares his seat with him to hear [the Dharma] when he sees him coming to the place, in his next life by his merits, will be able to obtain the seal of King Sakra, of the Brahman Heavenly-King or of a wheel-turning-holy-king.

“Ajita! Anyone who[, while he is staying outside the place of the expounding of the Dharma,] says to another person, ‘Let us go and hear the sūtra called the Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Dharma which is being expounded [in that place],’ and cause him to hear it even for a moment, in his next life by his merit , will be able to live with the Bodhisattvas who obtain dharanis. He will be clever and wise. He will not be dumb throughout thousands of millions of his future existences. His breath will not be foul. He will have no disease of the tongue or the mouth. His teeth will not be defiled, black, yell w, few, fallen out, uneven or crooked. His lips will not be pendulous, shrunk, chapped, cracked, broken, distorted, thick, large, yellow-black or loathsome. His nose will not be flat or awry. His face will not be black, long, distorted or displeasing. His lips, tongue and teeth will be well-shaped; his nose, long, high and straight. His face will be full; his eyebrows, thick and long; and his forehead, broad and even. In a word, he will have all the good features of a man. He will be able to see the Buddhas, hear the Dharma from them, and receive their teachings by faith throughout his future existences.

“Ajita, look! The merits of the person who causes even a single man to go and hear the Dharma are so many. It is needless to speak of the merits of the person who hears [this sūtra] with all his heart, reads it, recites it, expounds it to the great multitude, and acts according to its teachings.

The Daily Dharma offers this:

Ajita! Anyone who[, while he is staying outside the place of the expounding of the Dharma,] says to another person, ‘Let us go and hear the sūtra called the Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Dharma which is being expounded [in that place],’ and causes him to hear it even for a moment, in his next life by his merits, will be able to live with the Bodhisattvas who obtain dhāraṇīs.

The Buddha gives this explanation to Maitreya (whom he calls Ajita – Invincible) in Chapter Eighteen of the Lotus Sutra. The dhāraṇīs are promises made by Bodhisattvas to protect those who keep and practice the Lotus Sūtra. They are included in the sūtra so that we can use them to remind these Bodhisattvas, and ourselves, of the protection we enjoy from our practice. This protection is not just meant for us. It is for all beings. When we share the teaching of the Wonderful Dharma with others, we help them become aware of their potential to become enlightened.

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

Blog, LS32

Reading the Lotus Sutra with Embedded Annotations

One of my New Year’s goals for 2024 is to divide the text of the 28 chapters of the Lotus Sutra into 365 roughly equal portions and provide a commentary taken from the Daily Dharma or from the many quotes from books I’ve posted here. If successful, I’ll publish these daily in 2025.

To that end, I’ve embedded more than 2100 links in the text of the Lotus Sutra. This has become The Lotus Sutra with Annotations. (The text of the Lotus Sutra without annotations is still available.)

The The Lotus Sutra with Annotations replaces my separate commentary divided among the 32 Days of the Lotus Sutra practice. If nothing else, this will immediately speed my daily 32 Days of the Lotus Sutra posts.

Some trivia about this links:

When you compare each of the eight fascicles, Fascicle Five – Chapter 12, Devadatta; Chapter 13, Encouragement for Keeping this Sutra; Chapter 14, Peaceful Practices; and Chapter 15, The Appearance of Bodhisattvas from Underground – has the most links, 332; followed by Fascicle Four – Chapter 8, The Assurance of Future Buddhahood of the Five Hundred Disciples; Chapter 9, The Assurance of Future Buddhahood of the Śrāvakas Who Have Something More to Learn and the Śrāvakas Who Have Nothing More to Learn; Chapter 10, The Teacher of the Dharma; Chapter 11, Beholding the Stūpa of Treasures – with 319 links.

Among individual chapters, Chapter 2, Expedients has the most links, with 178, followed by Chapter 16, The Duration of the Life of the Tathāgata, with 125 links. The fewest links are found in Chapter 26, Dhāraṇīs, with 29 links, followed by Chapter 24, Wonderful-Voice Bodhisattva, with 38 links.

The most commented upon topic is “They had lived in the sky below this Sahā-World,”  which has 32 links. The next most linked section is the decision of the rich man to give his sons who escaped the burning house the large carts, with 29 links.

mappō, Stone Last Age

The Last Age: The Dharma of Only  One Vehicle

According to [Nichiren’s] account, people born in the Final Dharma age, by definition, have never received the seed of Buddhahood—i.e.. heard the Lotus Sutra—from Shakyamuni in prior existences. Thus no matter how assiduously they might practice, they cannot attain enlightenment through Shakyamuni’s teachings, any more than one can reap a harvest from a field that has never been sown.

Now in the age of mappō, only the teaching remains; there is neither practice nor proof. There is no longer a single person who has formed a relationship with Shakyamuni Buddha. Those who possessed the capacity to gain enlightenment through either the provisional or true Mahayana sutras have long since disappeared. In this age of impurity and evil, Namu-myōhō-renge-kyō should be planted as the seed of Buddhahood for the first time in the minds of those who commit the five cardinal offenses and slander the true Dharma.

Here we can see one reason why Nichiren established a new way of practice. He firmly believed that, as the Lotus Sutra teaches, “With  the Buddha-lands of the ten directions/There is the Dharma of only  One Vehicle”—that is, only one great truth by which all beings can attain enlightenment. Nichiren often referred to this truth as “the Lotus Sutra,” abstracting this name from its historical association with the Saddharma Pundarika. Yet this one truth must inevitably assume different forms according to the time and the people’s capacity. In Shakyamuni’s lifetime, Nichiren held. it took form as the Saddharma Pundarika Sutra, which served as the Buddhism of the harvest for people who had already received the seed of enlightenment and nurtured it through their Buddhist practice in prior lifetimes. Now in the time of mappō, however, people have never received the seed of enlightenment, let alone cultivated their capacity through practice; they are defined as people “without prior good causes” (honmi uzen). Therefore, the one vehicle of the Lotus Sutra must for their sake take form as the Buddhism of sowing, which Nichiren defined as the five characters of Myōho-renge-kyō. As he wrote:

The essential teaching of the Lotus Sutra and that intended for the beginning of the Final Dharma age are both pure and perfect teachings that lead directly to Buddhahood. But Shakyamuni’s is the Buddhism of the harvest. while this is the Buddhism of sowing.

Nichiren never denied outright the prevailing opinion that people in the time of mappō are more evil and deluded than those in previous ages and less capable of discerning true from false, or profound from shallow, in religious doctrines. In his thinking, however, the major hindrance to their enlightenment lay, not in their innate evil, but in their lack of those prior causes (i.e., practice in past lifetimes under the guidance of Shakyamuni), that would have enabled them to attain enlightenment through traditional disciplines.

Stone: Seeking Enlightenment in the Last Age, p50-51 of Part 2
Daily Dharma

Daily Dharma – Feb. 3, 2024

Suppose parents who had an aversion to alcohol had a son who loved to drink liquor. Because of their love for their son and also to cater to his whim, they made it a point to offer him alcohol, pretending that they were also drinkers of liquor. The hopeless son then assumed that his parents truly loved alcohol. Sutras preached according to others’ minds are the same.

Nichiren wrote this passage in his treatise, The Sutra Preached in Accordance to [the Buddha’s] Own Mind (Zui-jii Gosho). In the Lotus Sūtra, the Buddha sets aside his expedient teachings and leads us to his own way of thinking. He knew the difficulty of changing our habits and beliefs, so he started by catering to our selfish desires to be happy and end our own suffering. For us to realize our full potential for wisdom and compassion, we must stand up to our fears and nourish our true nature as Bodhisattvas: beings who exist to create benefits for the entire universe.

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

LS32

Day 22

Day 22 covers all of Chapter 17, The Variety of Merits.

Day 22 Text with annotationsPlay MP3

Having last month considered the merits of those who keep or copy this sutra or cause others to copy it, we consider in gāthās the offerings made by those who keep this sutra.

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

Anyone who keeps this sūtra
After my extinction
Will be able to obtain
Innumerable merits a previously stated.

He should be considered
To have already made various offerings.
He should be considered
To have already built a stupa
With a yasti soaring up to the Heaven of Brahman,
The upper part of it being the smaller,
A stupa which was adorned with the seven treasures,
And with thousands of billions of jeweled bells
Sounding wonderful when fanned by the wind.
He should be considered to have already enshrined
My śarīras in this stupa,
And offered flowers, incense, necklaces, heavenly garments,
And various kinds of music to it,
And lit lamps of perfumed oil around it for innumerable kalpas.

Anyone who keeps this sūtra in the evil world
In the age of the decline of my teachings
Should be considered
To have already made these offerings.

Anyone who keeps this sūtra should be considered
To have already built a monastery
Made of the cow-head candana,
installed with thirty-two beautiful hall ,
Eight times as tall as the tala-tree,
Provided with delicious food and drink,
With wonderful garments and bedding,
With accommodations for one hundred thousand people,
With gardens, forests, and pools for bathing,
And with promenades and caves for the practice of dhyāna.
He should be considered lo have already offered
That monastery to me in my presence.

The Daily Dharma offers this:

Anyone who keeps this sūtra in the evil world
In the age of the decline of my teachings
Should be considered
To have already made these offerings.

The Buddha sings these verses to Maitreya Bodhisattva in Chapter Seventeen of the Lotus Sūtra. Given the trauma we have suffered in our previous existences, especially the calamity of death, it should be no surprise that our memories of those lives is dim at best. It can be enough to know that beneficial actions bring benefit and harmful actions bring harm, even if we do not know the specific causes of our condition. Our finding and practicing the Wonderful Dharma in this life is an indication of our great generosity in previous lives, and our capacity to continue practicing that same generosity.

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: Linear Enlightenment

Chih-i, in chuan one of his (Words and Phrases of the Lotus Sutra), likens the process by which the Buddha leads the people to enlightenment to that of “sowing, maturing and harvesting.” First the Buddha plants the seed of Buddhahood in the minds of living beings by causing them to hear the Dharma and thus form a bond with it. Then he gradually nurtures their understanding by expounding various provisional teachings suited to their individual capacities, and at last brings them the last step or the way to emancipation with a final teaching. This analogy rests on the traditional view of the attainment of Buddhahood as a linear endeavor spanning many lifetimes. Based on it, Buddhist teachings may be classified according to which stage they occupy in the process—teachings of sowing, or teachings of maturing and harvesting.

Stone: Seeking Enlightenment in the Last Age, p47-48 of Part 2
Daily Dharma

Daily Dharma – Feb. 2, 2024

We were satisfied with the elimination
Of illusions within ourselves.
What we accomplished was that elimination.
We did nothing more.

These verses are sung by Subhūti, Mahā-Kātyāyana, Mahā-Kāśyapa, and Mahā-Maudgalyāyana in Chapter Four of the Lotus Sūtra. They use the parable of the wayward son in this chapter to describe their own realization that the Buddha had not held any teaching back from them. Instead, the Buddha earlier allowed them to remain in the satisfaction of ending their own suffering. But before they can continue their progress towards the Buddha’s own enlightenment, they must give up their preoccupation with suffering, as the boy in the parable had to give up his idea of himself as a lowly hired worker, rather than the heir to his father’s treasure.

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