Category Archives: d7b

d7b, d8b, WONS

Not Only the Śrāvaka But Also Śākyamuni Buddha Is Within Us

[I]t is stated in the Lotus Sūtra (chapter four, “Understanding by Faith”) that four great Śrāvakas such as Kāśyapa rejoiced in their understanding of the teaching of the Lotus Sūtra enabling śrāvakas to attain Buddhahood, and reported to the Buddha that they had been given invaluable jewels without asking for them. This represents the attainment of Buddhahood by the śrāvaka realm contained in our minds.

Not only the śrāvaka but also Śākyamuni Buddha is within us. For, we encounter such a statement like this in the second chapter of the Lotus Sūtra: “It was My (Śākyamuni’s) original vow to let all beings become like Myself. My vow has now been fulfilled. I have helped them all enter the way of the Buddha.” Does this not mean, that Śākyamuni Buddha, who has attained Perfect Enlightenment, is our flesh and blood, and all the merits He has accumulated before and after attaining Buddhahood are our bones?

Kanjin Honzon-shō, A Treatise Revealing the Spiritual Contemplation and the Most Verable One, Writings of Nichiren Shōnin, Doctrine 2, Page 146

d12b, d7b, d8b, stories

The Limits of Power; The Compassionate Challenge

The Buddha has come into the world of suffering and suffers with the living beings of this world. Like others, he participates in the creation of the world at every moment. He does so by being a teacher and medicine giver, not by being a kind of external, unilateral power. Above all, the Buddha is a teacher. And it is precisely in reference to his being a teacher that bodhisattvas are so frequently referred to in the Dharma Flower Sutra as children of the Buddha. Those whose lives are shaped by the teachings of the Buddha, by the Buddha Dharma, have been created as much by the Buddha’s words as by their biological parents. But, like normal parents, the Buddha does not have absolute power over his children. Like the father in the parable of the rich father and poor son in Chapter 4, the Buddha longs for his children to be ready to receive their inheritance from him, his great wealth of the Dharma.

The Buddha can be called the loving father of all, not because he has complete power over others, but precisely because he does not. Far from demanding that human beings be obedient to him, the Buddha challenges us to enter into and take up the way of the bodhisattva, a way to which we can be led but cannot be forced to enter. Like the poor son in Chapter 4, we may need encouragement in order to learn gradually to accept responsibility for the responsibilities we have inherited, for the buddhas’ business, or, like the weary travelers in Chapter 7, we may need a resting place, even an illusory one, in order to pursue the valuable treasure in our own lives, but finally it is we ourselves who have to be responsible.

The Stories of the Lotus Sutra, p205-206
d7b, d8b, stories

Enabling the Buddha to Continue to Live

The focus of [the Parable of the Rich Man and His Poor Son] is the poor son and his attitude toward himself, but it is also, in important ways not always recognized, a story about the Buddha. Here we are told that the Buddha needs his son, yearns for his son, and seeks to find him. Why? Because he wants to give him the great treasure that is his inheritance.

Shakyamuni Buddha was a human being who lived for a time in India, eating and sleeping like other human beings. He left to his descendants, his followers, a great treasure house of profound teachings. He died and his body was cremated, the ashes being distributed and installed in stupas. He is no longer around in the way that he once was. Responsibility for taking care of that great treasure house, for preserving those teachings and developing them by applying them in new situations, and especially for sharing them with others, is given to the Buddha’s children. The Buddha’s work must be done by us, can only be done by us. It is we who can embody the Buddha in the contemporary world, enabling the Buddha to continue to live.

The Stories of the Lotus Sutra, p70-71
b4today, LS32, d7b, d8b

The Meaning of Faith and Discernment

Faith (shin) is the working of one’s emotions, and discernment (ge) that of one’s reason. Though people often say that a religion or faith ought to be believed in instead of argued about, it is very dangerous to believe blindly in a religion without having any knowledge of it. If this religion is a worthless or wrong teaching, blind belief will result in not only ruining ourselves but also exerting an extremely harmful influence on our families and on society in general.

Even if a religion is a good teaching, as long as we believe in it blindly our faith is liable to be easily shaken by circumstances. Let us suppose that one believes that he will recover from a disease or that his circumstances will improve if only he has faith in a particular religion, without understanding its teachings. He does recover from his illness, believing that his cure is due to his religion, but he suffers a relapse and then begins to doubt. Suppose that then his son fails his university-entrance examination; the father forsakes the faith to which he has so firmly adhered regardless of others’ opinions. This kind of thing is a common occurrence.

This kind of faith is not a firm faith in the true sense of the term but merely a narrow faith. A true religion can always be understood through reason; this kind of understanding is called discernment.

Buddhism for Today, p63
b4today, LS32, d7b

The Recompense of the Various Sins of Slandering the Law

Next the recompense of the various sins of slandering the Law are mentioned. What we must pay special attention to here is that such recompense is not meted out by the Buddha as a punishment. The Buddha does not have this kind of relationship with man. Because he is the truth that gives life to all things in the universe, it is hardly possible that he would perform an action running counter to man’s life, such as letting him fall into hell or letting him become an animal or a deformed person. Who brings such punishment on man? Needless to say, man brings it upon himself. His own illusion brings it upon him. Illusion is like a dark cloud that covers our intrinsic buddha-nature. When the light of our buddha-nature is covered with illusions, darkness arises in our minds and various unpleasant things happen to us. This state is the punishment that we have meted to ourselves. If we blow away the dark clouds of our own illusions, our buddha-nature will immediately begin to shine forth. Therefore we have nothing to fear in the Buddha. We must keep firmly in mind and truly believe that the Buddha is that which enlivens all beings at all times.

Buddhism for Today, p62
2buddhas, d7b, WONS

Grieving Deeply Over Slandering

Like his contemporaries, Nichiren embraced the idea that human beings are an integral part of the cosmos, and their actions affect both society and the natural world. He attributed the disasters confronting Japan during his lifetime — famine, epidemics, earthquakes, and the Mongol threat — to this fundamental error of “disparaging the Lotus Sutra.” Rejection of the sutra, in his eyes, would destroy the country in this life; in the future, it would condemn its people to countless rebirths in the Avici hell. The horrific sufferings described in the verse section of [Chapter 3] were for him not mere rhetorical hyperbole but an actual account, coming from the Buddha’s own mouth, of the fate that awaited the great majority of his contemporaries, something that grieved him deeply.

Two Buddhas, p85
2buddhas, d7b, WONS

Dharma Slanderers

What particularly drew Nichiren’s attention in the “Parable” chapter was the long segment of the final verse section detailing the horrific karmic retribution incurred by those who disparage the Lotus Sūtra. The act of “disparaging the dharma” (S. saddharmapratiksepa, J. hōbō, also translated as “slandering” or “maligning” the dharma) was considered so grave a sin that in East Asia it was sometimes appended to the list of the five heinous deeds. The term occurs frequently in the Mahāyāna sūtras, where it often means maligning the Great Vehicle scriptures; in its Indic context, it was probably intended to counter the mainstream Buddhist criticism that the Mahāyāna was not the Buddha’s teaching.

Japanese Buddhists, however, understood theirs to be a “Mahāyāna country.” Unlike the situation faced by the Lotus Sūtra’s compilers, no one questioned the Mahāyāna’s legitimacy. Nichiren therefore took the term “dharma slander” in a different sense, to mean rejecting the Lotus Sūtra in favor of provisional teachings.

Two Buddhas, p83
b4today, LS32, d7b, d8b

Devoting Ourselves to Hearing and Receiving the Law

In the [Chapter 4], we were taught that we must not have the servile idea that we have the capacity to understand the Buddha’s teachings only to a certain limited extent. We should abandon such trifling discriminations and devote ourselves to hearing and receiving the Law. The Parable of the Herbs states that every effort of ours will be surely rewarded. That is, though various kinds of plants and trees are produced in the same soil and moistened by the same rain, each develops according to its own nature. In the same way, though the Buddha’s teachings are only one, they are understood differently according to each hearer’s nature, intellect, environment, and so on.

Even if we have only a shallow understanding of the Buddha’s teachings or can practice only a part of them, this is never useless. Every effort will be surely rewarded with the merits of the Law. But we should not be satisfied with this reward. We must always desire and endeavor to deepen our understanding and to elevate ourselves further. Thus, we can use shallow faith and discernment as the first step in advancing ourselves to a higher level of faith and discernment. Ascending step by step, we can unfailingly reach a superior state of mind. We should understand this well when we read the latter part of this chapter. It is stated here that though the Buddha’s teachings are one, there are differences in faith and discernment according to one’s capacity to understand the teachings. But we must not interpret this as stating an absolute condition.

Buddhism for Today, p75
d7b, WONS

The Hell of Slanderers of the Practicer of the Lotus Sūtra

QUESTION: What kind of hell do slanderers of the practicer of the Lotus Sūtra fall into?

ANSWER: The Lotus Sūtra, fascicle 2 (“A Parable” chapter), preaches, “Those who despise, hate, envy, and bear a grudge against a person who reads, recites, copies and upholds the Lotus Sūtra will fall into Avici Hell upon death. After suffering in this hell for as long as a kalpa, they will again die at the end of the kalpa and fall into the same hell to suffer. They will repeat this countless times and continue to suffer for innumerable kalpa (aeons).”

The palace of King Yama is located 500 yojana below the surface of the earth. Below the palace, between the depths of 500 and 1,500 yojana underground are located 136 hells such as the Eight Great Hells. 128 of the 136 hells are the abodes of minor criminals while the Eight Great Hells are the abodes of felons. Seven of the Eight Great Hells are for the offenders of the Ten Evil Acts while the last of the Eight Great Hells, the Hell of Incessant Suffering, is the abode of those who committed the Five Rebellious Sins, undutiful children, and slanderers of the Lotus Sūtra. To sum up, this passage cited from the “Parable” chapter of the Lotus Sūtra preaches that those who speak ill of or slander the practicer of the Lotus Sūtra in the Latter Age of Degeneration in this world even in jest must fall into the Hell of Incessant Suffering.

Hōren-shō, Letter to Hōren, Writings of Nichiren Shōnin, Volume 6, Followers I, Page 45

b4today, LS32, d7b

The Fourteen Sins of Slandering the Law

The fourteen sins of slandering the Law are the following:

  1. haughtiness, or kyōman (to be conceited and to think one has understood what one has not understood);
  2. neglect, or kedai (to be lazy and to be absorbed in trivial things);
  3. self-centeredness, or kriga (to act only for selfish ends);
  4. shallowness, or senshiki (to look only at the surface of things, not trying to grasp their essence);
  5. sensuality, or jakuyoku (to be deeply attached to the desires of the senses and to material things);
  6. irrationality, or fuge (to interpret everything according to one’s own limited viewpoint and to not understand important points);
  7. unbelief, or fushin (not to believe in the sutra and to vilify it because of one’s shallow understanding);
  8. sullenness, or hinshuku (to frown upon the sutra and to show ill feeling toward it);
  9. doubting, or giwaku (to harbor doubts of the truth of the sutra and to hesitate to believe in it);
  10. slander, or hibō (to speak ill of the sutra) ;
  11. scorning goodness, or kyōzen (to despise those who read and recite, write and keep the sutra);
  12. hating goodness, or zōzen (to hate those who practice the above mentioned goodness);
  13. jealousy of goodness, or shitsuzen (to envy those who practice this goodness);
  14. grudging goodness, or konzen (to grudge those who practice this goodness).
Buddhism for Today, p61-62