Day 1

Day 1 covers the first half of Chapter 1, Introductory

Having last month witnessed the Buddha emitting a ray of light illumining all the corners of eighteen thousand worlds in the east, we consider what Maitreya Bodhisattva thought of all this.

Thereupon Maitreya Bodhisattva thought:

“The World-Honored One is now displaying a wonder [, that is, a good omen]. Why is he displaying this good omen? The Buddha, the World-Honored One, has entered into a samadhi. Whom shall I ask why he is displaying this inconceivable, rare thing? Who can answer my question?”

He thought again:

“This Mañjuśrī, the son of the King of the Dharma, has already met innumerable Buddhas and made offerings to them in his previous existence. He must have seen this rare thing before. Now I will ask him.”

At that time the bhikṣus, bhikṣunīs, upāsakās, upāsikās, gods, dragons, and other supernatural beings thought, “Whom shall we ask why the Buddha is emitting this ray of light, that is, why he is displaying this wonder?”

I offer this quote from the Writings of Nichiren Shōnin:

Among all the Buddhist scriptures preached by the Buddha there is no sutra which does not mention the trembling of the earth in six different ways. However, the shaking of the earth in six ways when the Buddha was about to expound the Lotus Sūtra was so striking that the living beings who gathered to listen to Him were all startled and it moved Bodhisattva Maitreya to ask what was happening, prompting Bodhisattva Mañjuśrī to answer. This shows that the omen for the preaching of the Lotus Sūtra was much greater and longer than the omens of other sūtras that the question concerning it was more difficult to respond to. Therefore, Grand Master Miao-lê states in his Annotations on the Words and Phrases of the Lotus Sutra, fascicle 2, “Which Mahayana sūtra does not have the omens such as a crowd of living beings gathered together like a cloud, emitting of light from the forehead of the Buddha, the rain of flowers from the heaven, and trembling of the earth? However, they have never caused such a great concern as this.” This means that every sūtra has a preface before preaching the main discourse, but no preface is accompanied by such great omens like those that accompanied the preface of the Lotus Sūtra.

Zuisō Gosho, Writing on Omens, Writings of Nichiren Shōnin, Volume 6, Followers I, Page 122