All posts by John Hughes

Blog, Kern, d21b

The Color, Smell and Taste of the Dharma

This is another in a series of weekly blog posts comparing and contrasting the Sanskrit and Chinese Lotus Sutra translations.

If there is anything notable in comparing H. Kern’s Chapter 15, Duration of the Life of the Tathāgata, and the English translations of Kumārajīva’s Chapter 16, The Duration of the Life of the Tathāgata, it is their similarity.

Still, I’m disappointed in Kern’s translation of the Parable of the Skillful Physician and His Sick Children when compared to Senchu Murano’s translation of Kumārajīva’s Chinese Lotus Sutra.

Murano offers this:

“The sons who had not lost their right minds saw that this good medicine had a good color and smell, took it at once, and were cured completely. But the sons who had already lost their right minds did not consent to take the medicine given to them, although they rejoiced at seeing their father come home and asked him to cure them, because they were so perverted that they did not believe that this medicine having a good color and smell had a good taste.

In the past, I’ve made a big deal about how this is an excellent definition of faith. In fact, this was the motivation behind my yearlong 800 Years of Faith Project. We can observe that something looks nice and, without taking the medicine, we can determine that it smells nice. But only with faith can we accept that the medicine will taste good before we actually take the medicine.

Kern’s translation completely negates this interpretation:

Those amongst the children of the physician that have right notions, after seeing the color of the remedy, after smelling the smell and tasting the flavor, quickly take it, and in consequence of it are soon totally delivered from their disease. But the sons who have perverted notions cheerfully greet their father and say: Hail, dear father, that thou art come back in safety and welfare; do heal us. So they speak, but they do not take the remedy offered, and that because, owing to the perverseness of their notions, that remedy does not please them, in color, smell, nor taste.

But it was when comparing the other English translations of Kumārajīva’s Chinese Lotus Sutra that I found my interpretation of the parable was a product of Murano’s intervention.

In the other English translations of Kumārajīva’s Chinese Lotus Sutra, those children who are deranged can’t believe that the medicine, having a fine color and smell, is good for them. Nothing is said about taste.

The Modern Risshō Kōsei-kai translation offers:

The others, who have lost their senses, are also delighted to see their fathers return and ask him to cure them. But they are unwilling to take the medicine he offers them. Why is this? The poison’s effect have reached deeper inside them and made them lose their senses. Therefore, although the medicine is fine in color and smell, they do not think it is good.

The BDK English Tripiṭaka translation offers:

The remaining children, those who are delirious, seeing their father coming to them, rejoice and ask him to seek a cure for their illness. Although he offers them the medicine, they will not take it. Why is this? The poison has so deeply penetrated them that they have become delirious. They do not think that the medicine with good color and aroma is good.

This is another demonstration of the value of Senchu Murano’s Insight and the clarity that insight brings.

Next: Piety and Merits

Autumn Writings

Studying the Way of Bodhisattvas

The way we have studied the Lotus Sutra has been the path of modern Shōmon [śrāvakas] and Engaku [pratyekabuddhas]. However, it does not mean that the ways of Shōmon and Engaku were incorrect. The Lotus Sutra encourages us to proceed to the Way of the Bodhisattva from Shōmon and Engaku. In other words, you should not only listen to and learn the teachings, but also teach and preach the Lotus Sutra to others, with an awareness of being the Buddha’s messenger. By doing so, we can learn from our practice as bodhisattvas, and receive the protection of the Eternal Buddha.

Autumn Writings, p 76-77
Tendai Lotus

The Work of Two Masters

The two masters, Hui-ssu of Mt. Nan-yo and Chih-i of Mt, T’ien-t’ai, appeared in the eras of the Ch’en and the Sui. They had been on the sacred Vulture Peak in the distant past and heard the subtle teachings of the Lotus Sutra directly. Reborn in China, they propagated the teaching of the One Vehicle, entered a quiet state of concentration and settled their thoughts, aroused pure wisdom and understood the various potentials [of sentient beings], and once again revealed the Buddhist doctrines and perfected the way of contemplation. All people respected them and accepted from them the pure ambrosia [of the Buddha-dharma]. The four types of Buddhists [monks, nuns, laymen, and laywomen] paid them homage and thus partook of the quintessential taste of ghee. Thereafter the four major [delusions of sentient beings] were further reduced; and the three fields [of precepts, concentration, and wisdom] increasingly prospered.

Tendai Lotus School Teachings, p 6
history, d7b

The Lord with the Three Virtues

So who is our true lord? The answer for this question is also included in the Genealogical Chart of the Buddha’s Lifetime Teachings. In the first part, Nichiren Shōnin classified several figures of the Buddha appearing in various sūtras. The classification for Śākyamuni Buddha shows him to possess the three virtues of ruler, teacher, and parent.

In the ninth year of the Bunei era (1272) at the age of 51, Nichiren Shōnin wrote A Treatise on the Differences of the Lotus Sect from Eight Other Sects, Hasshū Imoku-shō. He interpreted the following passage in Chapter 3 of the Lotus Sūtra, “A Parable,” as expressing the three virtues: “Now, this threefold world is all my domain, and the living beings therein are all my children. Now this place is beset by many pains and trials. I am the only one who can rescue and protect others.” The virtue of ruler corresponds to the passage “Now, this threefold world is all my domain,” the virtue of parent to “the living beings therein are all my children”, and the virtue of teacher to “Now this place is beset by many pains and trials. I am the only one who can rescue and protect others.”

We know of many feudal lords in the long history of India, China and Japan. We also know of many teachers of Indian and Chinese philosophy such as the teachers of Brahmanism, in Japanese gedōshi, or teachers of Confucianism, in Japanese getenshi. Parents mean the normal family relationships of up to six or eight degrees of kinship. However, nobody other than Śākyamuni Buddha possessed all three virtues. Thus, Śākyamuni Buddha should be regarded as superior among all teachers in the three countries.

History and Teachings of Nichiren Buddhism, p 172
Daily Dharma

Daily Dharma – Feb. 27, 2023

Anyone who keeps this sūtra
Will be able to expound
The meanings of the teachings,
And the names and words [of this sūtra].
Their eloquence will be as boundless
And as unhindered as the wind in the sky.

The Buddha sings these verses to Superior-Practice Bodhisattva (Jōgyo, Viśiṣṭacārītra) in Chapter Twenty-One of the Lotus Sūtra. This teaching transforms us from beings who exist for our own comfort and awakens our true nature as Bodhisattvas: beings who exist for the benefit of all beings. This transition requires that we engage with these other beings and break out of the isolation of our own attachments. The first step is simply to listen, to be present and accept whatever the world has to offer. But at some point we need to speak. It can be difficult to know what to say. But with this Wonderful Dharma of the Lotus Sūtra, we find that because it embodies the Buddha’s highest wisdom, so long as we transmit what it has taught us, we will always have ways to use it to benefit other beings and bring this teaching to life in our world.

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

LS32

Day 21

Day 21 covers all of Chapter 16, The Duration of the Life of the Tathāgata.

Day 21 Text with annotationsPlay MP3

Having last month considered the admonition of the Buddha to the great multitude including Bodhisattvas and others, we consider the lifespan of the Tathāgata.

Thereupon the World-Honored One, seeing that they repeated their appeal even after they repeated it three times, said to them:

“Listen to me attentively! I will tell you about my hidden core and supernatural powers. The gods, men and asuras in the world think that I, Śākyamuni Buddha, left the palace of the Śākyas, sat at the place of enlightenment not far from the City of Gayā, and attained Anuttara-samyak-saṃbodhi [forty and odd years ago]. To tell the truth, good men, it is many hundreds of thousands of billions of nayutas of kalpas since I became the Buddha. Suppose someone smashed into dust five hundred thousand billion nayuta asaṃkhya worlds, which were each composed of one thousand million Sumeru-worlds, and went to the east [carrying the dust with him). When he reached a world at a distance of five hundred thousand billion nayuta asaṃkhya worlds [from this world], he put a particle of dust on that world. Then he went on again to the east, and repeated the putting of a particle of the dust [on the world at every distance of five hundred thousand billion nayuta asaṃkhya worlds] until the particles of the dust were exhausted. Good men! What do you think of this? Do you think that the number of the world he went through is conceivable, countable, or not?”

Maitreya Bodhisattva and others said to the Buddha:

“World-Honored One! Those worlds are innumerable, uncountable, inconceivable. No Śrāvaka or Pratyekabuddha could count them even by his wisdom-without-āsravas. We are now in the state of avaivartika, but cannot, either. World-Honored One! Those worlds are innumerable.”

Thereupon the Buddha said to the great multitude of Bodhisattvas:

“Good Men! Now I will tell you clearly. Suppose those worlds, whether they were marked with the particles of the dust or not, were smashed into dust. The number of the kalpas which have elapsed since I became the Buddha is on hundred thousand billion nayuta asaṃkhyas larger than the number of the particles of the dust thus produced. All this time I have been living in this Sahā-World, and teaching [the living beings of this world] by expounding the Dharma to them. I also have been leading and benefiting the living beings of one hundred thousand billion nayuta asaṃkhya worlds outside this world.

The Daily Dharma from Aug. 5, 2022, offers this:

The gods, men and asuras in the world think that I, Śākyamuni Buddha, left the palace of the Śākyas, sat at the place of enlightenment not far from the City of Gayā, and attained Anuttara-samyak-saṃbodhi [forty and odd years ago]. To tell the truth, good men, it is many hundreds of thousands of billions of nayutas of kalpas since I became the Buddha.

The Buddha makes this proclamation in Chapter Sixteen of the Lotus Sutra. This was the first time he revealed himself not as the temporal Siddhartha Gautama, the man who left home and became enlightened, but as the Ever-Present Buddha Śākyamuni who has been alive for innumerable eons helping beings to become enlightened and will continue that existence for twice that time into the future. This is the highest teaching of the Buddha, the purpose of all his expedient teachings that came before, and the Wonderful Dharma that is most difficult to believe and understand. When we comprehend the existence of this Ever-Present Buddha for even the blink of an eye, we gain more clarity about the world than through any of the Buddha’s other teachings.

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

Tendai Lotus

Grasping the Nature of Reality

I humbly submit that true reality is without marks and not something known through discrimination. The nature of reality is beyond words. How can it be adequately grasped through conceptualization? Nevertheless the Great Hero [the Buddha] transmitted the truth by relying on forms and images in accordance with [the capabilities of] sentient beings. The noble Buddha was spiritually proficient and assumed subtle language in order to foster the Path. At the beginning in the Deer Park, his first words were the teaching of the Four Noble Truths, and so on until the perfect culmination in the teaching of the three points [of the Dharma Body, the prajña-wisdom, and liberation before entering Nirvāṇa] at Kuśināgara. During this period his words flowed forth unceasingly, so that an elephant or horse could not carry [all the texts]. His various sermons were so abundant that the Dragon Palace could be filled without exhausting them. Surely a trap is used to catch rabbits, but after the rabbits are caught one forgets the trap. By means of a pointing finger one can find the moon; after one finds the moon the finger is ignored. The Dharma Body is established at sixteen feet tall for those who are attached to formal existence. The highest Path finds its ultimate expression in written texts for those who are caught up in verbal teachings. The one-sided emotional understanding of ordinary people is not the profound erudition of the Enlightened One.

Furthermore, when the sun is wrapped up in shadows, the moon succeeds it in giving forth light. Thus Śākyamuni Buddha “unleashed [the horse from] the carriage” [i.e., passed away into Nirvāṇa] and the Bodhisattvas propagated the Path. Thereafter Aśvaghoṣa and Nāgārjuna revived the declining Law [of the Buddha in India], and then Mo-t’eng and Fa-lang passed on the secret key [in China]. Thenceforth pure men of wisdom appeared one after the other, and men of eminent spiritual talents followed, so that they could not all be counted.

Tendai Lotus School Teachings, p p5-6
Daily Dharma

Daily Dharma – Feb. 26, 2023

Whoever for as long as a kalpa,
With evil intent and flushed face,
Speaks ill of me,
Will incur immeasurable retributions. Whoever for even a moment
Reproaches those who read, recite and keep
The Sūtra of the Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Dharma
Will incur even more retributions.

The Buddha declares these lines to Medicine-King Bodhisattva in Chapter Ten of the Lotus Sūtra. Why is it worse to criticize someone who is even beginning to practice the Wonderful Dharma than it is to criticize the Buddha who is fully enlightened? It is like the difference between kicking a full-grown tree and kicking a young sapling. The Buddha knows how to handle criticism. One who has just started with the Buddha Dharma could be discouraged from this practice through criticism. We should encourage anyone who wants to practice with us.

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

LS32

Day 20

Day 20 completes Chapter 15, The Appearance of Bodhisattvas from Underground, and concludes the Fifth Volume of the Sutra of the Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Dharma.

Day 20 Text with annotationsPlay MP3

Having last month considered Maitreya’s doubts, we conclude today’s portion of Chapter 15, The Appearance of Bodhisattvas from Underground.

Thereupon Maitreya Bodhisattva, wishing to repeat what he had said, sang in gāthās:

It is not long
Since you renounced the family of the Śākyas
And sat under the Bodhi-tree
Near Gaya.

These sons of yours are innumerable.
They have practiced
The way to Buddhahood for a long time.
They have supernatural powers and the power of wisdom.

They have studied the Way of Bodhisattvas well.
They are not defiled by worldliness
Just as the lotus-flower
Is not defiled by water.

They sprang up from underground,
And are now standing before you respectfully.
This is difficult to understand.
How can we believe this?

You attained enlightenment quite recently.
But you have done so many things.
Remove our doubts!
Explain all this as it is!

Suppose a man twenty-five years old
Points to grey-haired and wrinkle-faced men
A hundred years old,
And says, “They are my sons.”
Suppose old men point to a young man
And say, “He is our father.”
No one in the world will believe
That a father is younger than his sons.

You are like the father.
You attained enlightenment quite recently.
These Bodhisattvas are resolute in mind.
They are not timid.
They have practiced the Way of Bodhisattva
For the past innumerable kalpas.

They are good at answering difficult questions.
They are fearless and patient.
They are handsome, powerful and virtuous.
They are praised by the Buddhas
Of the worlds of the ten quarter .
They expound [the Dharma] clearly.

They did not wish to live among men.
They preferred dwelling in dhyana-concentration.
They lived in the sky below
In order to attain the enlightenment of the Buddha.

We do not doubt your words
Because we heard them direct from you.
Explain all this so that the living beings in the future
May be able to understand your words, Buddha!

Those who doubt this sūtra
And do not believe it
Will fall into the evil regions.
Explain all this to us now!

How did you teach these innumerable Bodhisattvas
In such a short time,
And cause them to aspire for enlightenment
And not falter in seeking enlightenment?

[Here ends] the Fifth Volume of the Sūtra of the Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Dharma.

The Daily Dharma from Sept. 6, 2022, offers this:

How did you teach these innumerable Bodhisattvas
In such a short time,
And cause them to aspire for enlightenment
And not falter in seeking enlightenment?

Maitreya Bodhisattva sings these verses to the Buddha in Chapter Fifteen of the Lotus Sūtra. Despite the Buddha’s explanation that he personally taught all of the Bodhisattvas who appear in Chapter Fifteen, Maitreya and others are still confused by what the Buddha has told them. Since they have faith that whatever the Buddha teaches is for their benefit, they persist with their sincere questioning, assured that the Buddha is leading them to enlightenment. While faith is an important part of our practice, recognizing our own confusion, and using questions to resolve that confusion are equally important. The Buddha does not ask for blind obedience. He knows we cannot find peace until we bring our whole being to his practice.

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

Blog, Tendai Lotus

Tendai Lotus Teachings and Nichiren

Beginning today and running through April 28, I’ll be publishing quotes taken from “The Collected Teachings of the Tendai Lotus School,” which was written by Gishin in 830 CE and translated from the Japanese by Paul L. Swanson. The book was published as part of the BDK English Tripiṭaka (97-II) in 1995. (PDF)

Having read Swanson’s Foundations of T’ien-T’ai Philosophy and Haiyan Shen’s The Profound Meaning of the Lotus Sutra: Tien-tai Philosophy of Buddhism and Paul Groner’s Saicho : The Establishment of the Japanese Tendai School, I have a dilettante’s understanding of the basics of the teachings of Chih-i, a Chinese monk who lived in the 6th century CE and wrote extensively on the structure and ideas of the Lotus Sūtra. And having had that introduction I found Gishin’s explanation of the Tendai teachings an excellent summary.

Nichiren’s teachings draw extensively from Tendai and Chih-i, but I’m not confident in my understanding of where Nichiren’s teachings diverge. That has led me to wonder whether there is a reason why  Nichiren Shu appears to have ignored Gishin’s text and instead embraced the work of Korean monk Chegwan, who wrote “A Guide to the Tiantai Fourfold Teachings” in the late 10th century. (See History and Teachings of Nichiren Buddhism, p 99.)

I asked Rev. Ryuei McCormick whether there is a specific issue with Gishin’s work that troubles Nichiren Shu, and he replied:

This is a question I have also asked and not received a satisfactory answer from anyone. I can’t remember who replied to me but the answer from a Nichiren Shu priest was basically that Chegwan’s book wasn’t tainted by the Tendai esoteric associations. But as Paul Swanson points out, neither is the book by Gishin. So I can only shrug. I have certainly found nothing in Gishin’s book that would go against Nichiren’s teachings. Frankly, I think Chegwan and Gishin’s books are very complimentary.

I will return to the question of how Nichiren’s teaching departs from  Tendai and Chih-i on April 29 after I’ve finished publishing the selected quotes from Gishin’s “The Collected Teachings of the Tendai Lotus School.”