All posts by John Hughes

WONS

The ‘Perfect and Sudden’ Precept Dais

Grand Master T’ien-t’ai for the first time in China spread the perfect meditation and wisdom of the Lotus Sūtra, supreme of all sūtras preached by the Buddha during His lifetime. No commentators have ever propagated this sūtra before during the 1,400 years after the death of the Buddha, that is, the 1,000-year Age of the True Dharma and the first 400 years of the Age of the Semblance Dharma. Moreover, Grand Master T’ien-t’ai’s fame has reached as far as India. It appears that the Lotus Sūtra was widely propagated, but the Grand Master did not establish the “perfect and sudden” precept dais. It will not do for Hinayāna precepts to be side by side with the perfect meditation and wisdom of Mahāyāna Buddhism. It is just like an eclipse of the sun or the moon. Moreover, the time of Grand Master T’ien-t’ai was in what the Sūtra of the Great Assembly called the period of “wide reading and much hearing,” that is, the third 500-year period after the death of the Buddha. It was not yet the fifth 500-year period, when the Lotus Sūtra was predicted to spread widely.

Senji-shō, Selecting the Right time: A Tract by Nichiren, the Buddha’s Disciple, Writings of Nichiren Shōnin, Doctrine 1, Page 214-215

Daily Dharma

Daily Dharma – March 7, 2020

Good men or women in the future who hear this Chapter of Devadatta of the Sūtra of the Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Dharma with faithful respect caused by their pure minds, and have no doubts [about this chapter], will not fall into hell or the region of hungry spirits or the region of animals. They will be reborn before the Buddhas of the worlds of the ten quarters.

The Buddha makes this prediction in Chapter Twelve of the Lotus Sūtra. In this Chapter, he assures Devadatta, an evil man who creates great harm, that he too will eventually reach the enlightenment of the Buddha. This prediction is for the rest of us too. It shows that when we nourish our capacity for respect for all beings, no matter how much harm they create, then we uproot the causes of our own greed and fear, and we will always find ourselves in a realm where the Buddha teaches the Wonderful Dharma.

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 heard the Buddha tell Maitreya Bodhisattva-mahāsattva the benefits of anyone who hears that his life is so long, and understands it by faith even at a moment’s thought, we repeat in gāthās the benefits to be received for believing for just a moment.

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

Suppose someone practiced
The five paramitas
For eighty billion nayuta kalpas
In order to attain the wisdom of the Buddha.

Throughout these kalpas he offered
Wonderful food and drink,
Excellent garments and bedding,
And monasteries made of candana
And adorned with gardens and forests
To the Buddhas,
To the cause-knowers, to the disciples,
And to the Bodhisattvas.

Throughout these kalpas he made
These various and wonderful offerings
In order to attain
The enlightenment of the Buddha.

He also observed the precepts,
Kept purity and faultlessness,
And sought the unsurpassed enlightenment
Extolled by the Buddhas.

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

He endured all insults and disturbances
Inflicted upon him by arrogant people who thought
That they had already obtained the Dharma.

He was strenuous and resolute in mind.
He concentrated his mind,
And refrained from indolence
For many hundreds of millions of kalpas.

He Lived in a retired place
For innumerable kalpas.
He sat or walked to avoid drowsiness
And to concentrate his mind.

By doing so, he became able to practice
Many dhyāna-concentrations.
His mind was peaceful, not distracted
For eighty billion kalpas.

With these merits of concentration of his mind,
He sought unsurpassed enlightenment, saying:
“I will complete all these dhyāna-concentrations,
And obtain the knowledge of all things.”

He performed
The meritorious practices
As previously stated
For hundreds of thousands of billions of kalpas.

The good men or women who believe my longevity,
Of which I told you,
Even at a moment’s thought
Will be able to obtain more merits than he.

See Living A Life Of Self-Confidence

b4today, LS32, d22b

Living A Life Of Self-Confidence

Almost all people who enter a religious faith have some form of suffering. It is natural for them to want to free themselves from such sufferings, and they are not to be blamed for this. But when they are concerned only with the desire to recover from illness or to be blessed with money, they are merely attaching themselves to the idea of “disease” or “poverty.” Though they wish to rid themselves of these problems, instead they become their victims because their minds grasp the idea of illness or poverty so tightly that they cannot let go.

People who believe in religion only in order to receive divine favors in this world easily retrogress from their stage of development in that faith. This is because they cannot truly understand the eternity of the Buddha’s life, and at the same time the eternity of man’s life. They think only of the present and begin to doubt the teaching or grow tired of it unless clear material merits are manifested. But there are some people who cannot receive such merits in this world because of deep and inextinguishable unfavorable karma from their former lives, even if they have faith in a true religion, purify their minds, and devote themselves to the bodhisattva practice for the benefit of others in society.

Nevertheless, people who can believe in the immortality of the Buddha’s life can also feel confident of their own eternal life. Therefore they can live with self-confidence, realizing, “If we only continue this way, we are sure to extinguish our former karma eventually and will approach the mental state of the Buddha step by step.” Even if they do not immediately recover from illness or become suddenly blessed with tangible wealth, their minds will be composed. Even if they seem to outsiders to be suffering, their minds are free of suffering. This is the attitude adopted by a real believer.

Buddhism for Today, p259-260
2buddhas, d21b, WONS

The Awakened Reality of the Buddha

“In terms of realizing buddhahood with this very body,” Nichiren wrote, “the trace teaching is the gate that affords entry, while the origin teaching holds its true meaning, that is, its actualization.” Where the trace teaching presents buddhahood as a potential inherent in the nine realms of unenlightened beings, the origin teaching shows the buddha realm revealed through the Buddha’s conduct in the nine realms, represented in particular by the bodhisattva realm. The buddha realm has no separate existence or mode of expression apart from the nine realms. Rather, the nine realms, without losing their individual character, are purified, elevated, and positively redirected in the light of the realized buddha realm. This is the awakened reality of the Buddha, which Nichiren termed “the single thought-moment comprising three thousand realms in actuality” (ji no ichinen sanzen). For him, this revelation had one sole scriptural locus: it was “hidden in the depths” of the “Lifespan” chapter of the origin teaching of the Lotus Sūtra.

Two Buddhas, p187
Lotus Seeds

The Ten Factors: Entity

Quote

Of the Ten Factors, Entity is the integration of the spiritual and material aspects in phenomena. Phenomena cannot be understood one-sidedly, either from the viewpoint of external appearances or internal natures. The factor of entity is a recognition that nothing can be understood without both its objective and its subjective sides.

Lotus Seeds

WONS

The Merit of Saving the Practicer of the Lotus Sūtra

As Śākyamuni Buddha also states, suppose there lives a person in the Latter Age of Degeneration, when the world is in confusion and the ruler as well as the ruled united in one mind look on a practicer of the Lotus Sūtra as an enemy forcing the practicer to be like a fish in a drought-stricken body of water or a deer surrounded by 10,000 hunters. Suppose this person single-handedly tries to save the practicer, his merit would be even greater than if he were to serve the living Śākyamuni Buddha bodily, verbally, and mentally for as long as one kalpa (aeon). This is a maxim of Śākyamuni Buddha. As the sun shines brilliantly and the moon clearly, characters of the Lotus Sūtra are brilliantly clear like seeing our own faces in a clear mirror or the moon reflecting upon clear water.

Nanjō-dono Gohenji, Reply to Lord Nanjō, Writings of Nichiren Shōnin, Volume 7, Followers II, Page 16

Daily Dharma

Daily Dharma – March 6, 2020

However, we now live in the Latter Age of Degeneration, when disputes and quarrels are rampant while the True Dharma is lost. There is nothing but evil lands where evil rulers, evil subjects and evil people reject the True Dharma, showing respect only to evil dharmas and evil teachers. Evil spirits take advantage of this, filling the lands with the so-called three calamities and seven disasters.

Nichiren wrote this passage in his Treatise on the True Way of Practicing the Teaching of the Buddha (Nyosetsu Shugyō-shō). It can be hard for us to imagine how what we believe can change our society. We think we have to create a new political system, or put the right people in power, or acquire wealth before we can have peace. What would happen in a world where people believed their happiness was intertwined with that of others? What happens in a world where people believe their happiness has to come at the expense of others? Our beliefs are far more powerful than we realize. When we put our belief in the Buddha’s description of the world as it is, and see our place in it as Bodhisattvas who have chosen to be here to benefit others, the world changes before our eyes.

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 skillfull physician and what happened while he was away, we consider the medicine and the unwillingness of some sons to take the medicine.

“The father thought, ‘These sons are pitiful. They are so poisoned that they are perverted. Although they rejoice at seeing me and ask me to cure them, they do not consent to take this good medicine. Now I will have them take it with an expedient.’

“He said to them, ‘Know this! Now I am old and decrepit. I shall die soon. lam leaving this good medicine here. Take it! Do not be afraid that you will not be cured!’ Having thus advised them, he went to a [remote] country again. Then he sent home a messenger to tell them, ‘Your father has just died.’

“Having heard that their father had passed away from this world, leaving them behind, they felt extremely sorry. They thought, ‘If our father were alive, he would love and protect us. Now he has
deserted us and died in a remote country.’

“They felt lonely and helpless because they thought that they were parentless and shelterless. Their constant sadness finally caused them to recover their right minds. They realized that the medicine had a good color, smell and taste. They took it and were completely cured of the poison. On hearing that they had recovered their health, the father returned home, and showed himself to them.

“Good men! What do you think of this? Do you think that anyone can accuse this excellent physician of falsehood?”

“No, World-Honored One!”

The Buddha said:

“I am like the father. It is many hundreds of thousands of billions of nayutas of asaṃkhyas of kalpas since I became the Buddha. In order to save the [perverted] people, I say expediently, ‘I shall pass away.’ No one will accuse me of falsehood by the [common] law.”

See The Invitation To Take the Medicine of Salvation

b4today, LS32, d21b

The Invitation To Take the Medicine of Salvation

The Buddha never tries to force open our mouths and cram his excellent medicine down our throats. It is a sacred task for us to take it in our hands and put it into our mouths ourselves. The Buddha uses various means so tactfully that we quickly feel inclined to do so. That is, he indicates himself or indicates others, indicates his own affairs or the affairs of others. Of these indications, the greatest and the most urgent is that he himself has become extinct. Realizing that, those who have felt complacently that they can hear his teachings whenever they like or lazy people who have become tired of the teachings cannot help suddenly becoming serious. This is the most important reason that the Buddha’s extinction is a tactful means full of his great compassion.

Buddhism for Today, p248