Day 2 completes Chapter 1, Introductory
I’d like to begin today with something I picked up today while reading Etsu Sugimoto’s autobiography, “A Daughter of the Samurai.”
Etsu, who lived in Japan at the start of the Meji period, was given the education of a girl who was supposed to be destined to be a priestess. Her first teacher instructed her in the Confucius classics.
“I was only six years old, and of course I got not one idea from this heavy reading. My mind was filled with many words in which were hidden grand thoughts, but they meant nothing to me then. Sometimes I would feel curious about a half-caught idea and ask my teacher the meaning. His reply invariably was:
“Meditation will untangle thoughts from words,” and “A hundred times reading reveals the meaning.”
The chanting of namu-myoho-renge-kyo is my meditation and this my “hundred times reading” in search of meaning.
On with the show…
Today’s portion of Chapter 1 confirms for the congregation that what they are seeing as the result of the light being emitted by Sakyamuni is the same omen witnessed long ago in a previous life by Manjusri. The one aspect of today’s reading that stands out is the rarity of hearing the Lotus Sutra.
Good men! Innumerable, inconceivable, asamkya kalpas ago, there lived a Buddha called Sun-Moon-Light, the Tathagata, the Deserver of Offerings, the Perfectly Enlightened One, the Man of Wisdom and Practice, the Well-Gone, the Knower of the World, the Unsurpassed Man, the Controller of Men, the Teacher of Gods and Men, the Buddha, the World-Honored One. He expounded the right teachings. His expounding of the right teachings was good at the beginning, good in the middle, and good at the end. The meanings of those teachings were profound. The words were skilful, pure, unpolluted, perfect, clean, and suitable for the explanation of brahma practices. To those who were seeking Sravakahood, he expounded the teaching of the four truths, a teaching suitable for them, saved them from birth, old age, disease, and death, and caused them to attain Nirvana. To those who were seeking Pratyekabuddhahood, he expounded the teaching of the twelve causes, a teaching suitable for them. To Bodhisattvas, he expounded the teaching of the six paramitas, a teaching suitable for them, and caused them to attain Anuttara-samyak-sambodhi, that is, to obtain the knowledge of the equality and differences of all things.
After he died, another Buddha named Sun-Moon-Light did the same and then another Buddha named Sun-Moon-Light did the same and then another and another and another until a total of 20,000 Buddhas had expounded these right teachings. It was the last Sun-Moon-Light who, like Sakyamuni, preached the Great Vehicle called the ‘Innumerable Teachings, the Dharma for Bodhisattvas, the Dharma Upheld by the Buddhas’ and entered into the samadhi for the purport of the innumerable teachings.
The ray of light of [Sun-Moon]-Light Buddha,
That is, the good omen, was the same as what I see now.
Judging from this, the present Buddha also will expound
The Sutra of the Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Dharma.