All posts by John Hughes

Daily Dharma

Daily Dharma – Jan.26, 2024

As we look at each others’ faces, we notice our facial expression changes from time to time. It is full of delight, anger or calm sometimes; but other times it changes to greed, ignorance or flattery. Anger represents hells; greed – hungry spirits; ignorance – beasts; flattery – asura demons; delight – gods; and calm – men. Thus we can see in the countenance of people six realms of illusion, from hells to the realm of gods. We cannot see the four realms of holy ones (śrāvaka, pratyekabuddha, bodhisattvas and Buddhas), which are hidden from our eyes. Nevertheless, we must be able to see them too, if we look for them carefully.

Nichiren wrote this passage in his treatise on Spiritual Contemplation and the Most Venerable (Kanjin Honzon-Shō). In other writings, he described Hell as not being in the earth and Heaven as not in the sky, but both within the two meter frame of our own bodies. In this work he shows us to look outside ourselves and recognize these realms in the beings with whom we share our world. The higher realms of devotion, perseverance, generosity and wisdom are more difficult to recognize, so difficult that we sometimes wonder whether they exist at all. With the Buddha’s teaching, we know they exist. We find what we look for.

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

LS32

Day 14

Day 14 covers all of 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, and opens Chapter 10, The Teacher of the Dharma.

Day 14 Text with annotationsPlay MP3

Having last month considered the benefits of respecting the keeper of the sutra, we consider that the keeper of the sutra is a messenger of the Buddha.

Anyone who keeps
The sūtra of the Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Dharma,
Know this, has compassion towards all living beings
Because he is my messenger.
Anyone who keeps
The Sūtra of the Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Dharma
Should be considered to have given up his pure world and come here
Out of his compassion towards all living beings.

Know that he can appear wherever he wishes!
He should be considered
To have appeared in this evil world
In order to expound the unsurpassed Dharma.

Offer flowers and incense of heaven,
Jeweled garments of heaven,
And heaps of wonderful treasures of heaven
To the expounder of the Dharma!

Join your hands together and bow
To the person who keeps this sūtra
In the evil world after my extinction,
Just as you do to me!
Offer delicious food and drink,
And various garments to this son of mine,
And yearn to hear the Dharma [from him]
Even if for only a moment!

Anyone who keeps this sūtra in the future
Should be considered
To have been dispatched by me
To the world of men in order to do my work.

The Daily Dharma offers this:

Join your hands together and bow
To the person who keeps this sūtra
In the evil world after my extinction,
Just as you do to me!

The Buddha sings these verses to Medicine-King Bodhisattva at the beginning of Chapter Ten of the Lotus Sūtra. By extension he is giving this instruction to all Bodhisattvas and great beings of the universe, and explaining to them that those who keep the Lotus Sūtra are as precious in this world of conflict as the Buddha himself. If we hear these verses with a mind of ego and attachment, we could conclude that we deserve respect and begin to demand it from others. Those who demand respect only generate fear. The Buddha gained respect by respecting all beings. When we treat others as Buddhas, we are certain to have that treatment reflected back towards us.

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: Dogen’s Practice

In Dōgen’s thought there is no goal as distinct from the practice to attain it:

The view that practice and enlightenment are not one is heretical. In the Buddha-Dharma they are one. Inasmuch as practice is based on enlightenment, the practice of a beginner is all of original enlightenment. Therefore, in giving instruction for practice, a Zen master advises his disciples not to seek enlightenment beyond practice, for practice itself is original enlightenment.

Thus Dogen’s teaching, even more than that of the Pure Land teachers, brings the goal of practice within certain reach.

Stone: Seeking Enlightenment in the Last Age, p43 of Part 2
Daily Dharma

Daily Dharma – Jan.25, 2024

He was patient, gentle,
And friendly with others.
Even when many evils troubled him,
His mind was not moved.

The Buddha sings these verses in Chapter Seventeen of the Lotus Sūtra. This stanza is his description of the Bodhisattva perfection of patience. As with all the perfections, these are qualities we cultivate, rather than something to use to judge how close we or anybody else is to enlightenment. As we progress in these perfections, our view of the world is less obscured by our own mental formations. We begin to see the world for what it is, and each other for what we are.

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

LS32

Day 13

Day 13 covers all of Chapter 8, The Assurance of Future Buddhahood of the Five Hundred Disciples.

Day 13 Text with annotationsPlay MP3

Having last month concluded Chapter 8, The Assurance of Future Buddhahood of the Five Hundred Disciples, we return to the top and consider Purna’s plea to the Buddha.

Thereupon Pūrṇa, the son of Maitrāyanī having heard from the Buddha the Dharma expounded with expedients by the wisdom [of the Buddha] according to the capacities of all living beings, and having heard that [the Buddha] had assured the great disciples of their future attainment of Anuttara-samyak-saṃbodhi, and also having heard of the previous life of the Buddha, and also having heard of the great, unhindered, supernatural powers of the Buddhas, had the greatest joy that he had ever had, became pure in heart, and felt like dancing [with joy]. He rose from his seat, came to the Buddha, and worshipped him at his feet with his head. Then he retired to one side of the place, looked up at the honorable face with unblenching eyes, and thought:

‘The World-Honored One is extraordinary. What he does is exceptional. He expounds the Dharma with expedients by his insight according to the various natures of all living beings of the world, and saves them from various attachments. The merits of the Buddha are beyond the expression of our words. Only the Buddha, only the World-Honored One, knows the wishes we have deep in our minds.’

The Daily Dharma offers this:

The merits of the Buddha are beyond the expression of our words. Only the Buddha, only the World-Honored One, knows the wishes we have deep in our minds.

In Chapter Eight of the Lotus Sutra, Pūrṇa has these words in mind while looking at the face of the Buddha. The thoughts we have are mostly words, and the words are about the things we want. Words can help us make sense of the world around us, especially the words the Buddha uses to teach us. But words can also confuse us when we mistake our expectations for the reality of the world. When the Buddha calls us to become Bodhisattvas, to realize that our happiness is linked to that of all beings, his words open a part of our mind with which we are not familiar. He asks us to set aside the habits we have learned from this world of conflict and see his world in a new way.

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: Dogen’s Timeless Moment

The Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra states, “ ‘All existences’ without exception possess the Buddha nature” (issai shujō kotogoloku busshō o yūsu). However, in the Busshō (Buddha Nature) chapter of the Shabōgenzō, Dōgen reinterprets the Chinese in an ingenious manner to read, “All existences are the Buddha nature” (issai shujō shitsu u busshō). In this way he rejected the view, held, for example, by the Consciousness-Only school, that the Buddha nature is a “seed” or psychic potential that evolves in a linear fashion from latency to realization, and instead identifies it with the unchanging, ultimate truth, designated as Suchness (Skt. tathatā, Jap. shinnyo), Emptiness (Śūnyatā, kū), or the Dharma nature (dharmatā, hosshō). This Buddha nature, being identified with “all existences,” exists nowhere apart from the destruction and coming-into-being of the phenomenal world in the present moment, or absolute now.

Because this “now” is absolute, and because “there is no time that has not arrived,” Buddhahood is not a potential that will unfold in the future, but can be realized only in the present moment. In other words, attaining Buddhahood is not, in Dōgen’s view, a gradual evolving from potential to realization associated with a linear view of time. In this way, he was able to resolve the contradiction that had originally puzzled him. “The Buddha nature and becoming a Buddha always occur simultaneously, he concluded. This view wipes out at a single stroke any metaphysical gap between practice and enlightenment: Whenever one sits in meditation, he simultaneously enters the realm of Buddha. Dōgen called this the “kōan realized in reality,” or genjō kōan.

Viewing time and enlightenment in this way, Dōgen found himself unable to accept the historical view of three-period thought, according to which the Dharma becomes obscured with the passage of time. “Time does not pass,” he believed, and the Dharma does not decline; wherever one sits in meditation, he is contemporaneous with Buddha.

Stone: Seeking Enlightenment in the Last Age, p40-41 of Part 2
Daily Dharma

Daily Dharma – Jan.24, 2024

Truly, truly good men! I am peaceful. I am in good health. The living beings are ready to be saved. They do not fatigue me because I already taught them in their consecutive previous existences, and also because they have already honored the past Buddhas respectfully and planted the roots of good.

The Buddha makes this proclamation to the leaders of the Bodhisattvas from Underground in Chapter Fifteen of the Lotus Sūtra. These Bodhisattvas appeared when the Buddha asked who would teach the Lotus Sūtra after the Buddha’s death, and asked about the Buddha’s health and whether those he was teaching could keep what he provided for them. The Buddha assures us not only of the certainty of our future enlightenment, but that for us to receive his teaching, there was an earlier time, which we may have forgotten, when we met him. This awareness of our future and our past helps us to see our place in the world and maintain our determination 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 12

Day 12 concludes Chapter 7, The Parable of the Magic City, and completes the Third Volume of the Sutra of the Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Dharma.

Day 12 Text with annotationsPlay MP3

Having last month concluded Chapter 7, The Parable of the Magic City, we return to the top of today’s portion of Chapter 7 and consider the teachings of Great-Universal-Wisdom-Excellence Tathāgata.

“Thereupon the Brahman-heavenly-kings of the five hundred billion [worlds], having praised the Buddha with these gāthās, said to him, ‘World-Honored One! Turn the wheel of the Dharma so that all living beings may be peaceful, and that they may be saved!’ They said in gāthās:
World-Honored One, turn the wheel of the Dharma,
Beat the drum of the Dharma as sweet as nectar,
Save the suffering beings,
And show them the way to Nirvāṇa!

Assent to our appeal!
You studied the Dharma for innumerable kalpas.
Expound it with your exceedingly wonderful voice
Out of your compassion towards us!

“Thereupon Great-Universal-Wisdom-Excellence Tathāgata, having assented to the appeals made by the Brahman-heavenly­kings of the words of the ten quarters and also by the sixteen princes, turned the wheel of the teaching [of the four truths] three times, making twelve proclamations altogether. The wheel of this teaching could not be turned by any other one in the world, be he a śramaṇas, a brahmana, a god, Mara or Brahman. The Buddha said, ‘This is suffering. This is the cause of suffering. This is extinction of suffering. This is the Way to extinction of suffering.’

“Then he expounded the teaching of the twelve causes, saying, ‘Ignorance causes predisposition. Predisposition causes consciousness. Consciousness causes name-and-form. Name­and-form causes the six sense organs. The six sense organs cause impression. Impression causes feeling. Feeling causes craving. Craving causes grasping. Grasping causes existence. Existence causes birth. Birth causes aging-and-death, grief, sorrow, suffering and lamentation. When ignorance is eliminated, predisposition is eliminated. When predisposition is eliminated, consciousness is eliminated. When consciousness is eliminated, name-and-form is eliminated. When name-and-form is eliminated, the six sense organs are eliminated. When the six sense organs are eliminated, impression is eliminated. When impression is eliminated, feeling is eliminated. When feeling is eliminated, craving is eliminated. When craving is eliminated, grasping is eliminated. When grasping is eliminated, existence is eliminated. When existence is eliminated, birth is eliminated. When birth is eliminated, aging-and-death, grief, sorrow, suffering and lamentation are eliminated.’

See Four Noble Truths and Three Ways of Preaching

mappō, Stone Last Age

The Last Age: Dogen’s Rejection of Mappō

In the Bendōwa (A Story of the Way) chapter of Dōgen’s major work Shōbōgenzō (The Eye and Treasury of the True Dharma), we find the following exchange:

QUESTION: Is it possible to obtain the proof of enlightenment by this practice [of zazen] even during this evil latter age?

ANSWER: The doctrinal schools emphasizing names and appearances distinguish between the True, Counterfeit, and Final Dharma ages, but in True Mahayana (Zen) we find no such distinction. It teaches that all who practice will attain the way.

Stone: Seeking Enlightenment in the Last Age, p37-38 of Part 2
Daily Dharma

Daily Dharma – Jan.23, 2024

Although I shall never enter into Nirvāṇa, I say to men of little virtue, ‘I shall pass away.’ I teach them with this expedient. Why is that? It is because, if they see me for a long time, they will not plant the roots of good, but become poor and base, and cling to the five desires so much that they will be caught in the nets of wrong views.

The Buddha gives this explanation in Chapter Sixteen of the Lotus Sutra. This Chapter is the first time he reveals himself as the Ever-Present Buddha who became enlightened in the far distant past and will continue to lead all beings to enlightenment into the far distant future. The Buddha uses the death of his physical body as an expedient so that those who take him for granted will make efforts to practice his teachings. When we practice the Wonderful Dharma of the Lotus Sūtra, then we learn to see the Buddha in ourselves and all beings.

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