Category Archives: LS32

LS32

Day 6

Day 6 continues Chapter 3, A Parable

Day 6 Text with annotationsPlay MP3
Having last month concluded today’s portion of Chapter 3, A Parable, we return to the top and witness the great joy the children had riding in the carts.

“The children rode in the large carts, and had the greatest joy that they had ever had because they had never expected to get them. Śāriputra! What do you think of this? Do you think that the rich man was guilty of falsehood when he gave his children the large carts of treasures?”
Śāriputra said:

“No, World-Honored One! He saved his children from the fire and caused them to survive. [Even if he had not given them anything,] he should not have been accused of falsehood because the children should be considered to have already been given the toys [they had wished to have] when they survived. He saved them from the burning house with the expedient. World-Honored One! Even if he had not given them the smallest cart, he should not have been accused of falsehood because he thought at first, ‘I will cause them to get out with an expedient.’ Because of this, he should not. Needless to say, he was not guilty of falsehood when he remembered his immeasurable wealth and gave them the large carts in order to benefit them.”

The Buddha said to Śāriputra:

“So it is, so it is. It is just as you say. Śāriputra! The same can be said of me. [I thought, ‘] I am the father of the world. I eliminated fear, despondency, grief, ignorance and darkness. I obtained immeasurable insight, powers and fearlessness. I have great supernatural powers, the power of wisdom, the paramita of expedients, the paramita of wisdom, great compassion, and great loving-kindness. I am not tired of seeking good things or of benefiting all living beings. I have appeared in the triple world, which can be likened to the rotten and burning house, in order to save all living beings from the fires of birth, old age, disease, death, grief, sorrow, suffering, lamentation, stupidity, darkness, and the three poisons, to teach all living beings, and to cause them to attain Anuttara-samyak-saṃbodhi. I see that all living beings are burned by the fires of birth, old age, disease, death, grief, sorrow, suffering and lamentation. They undergo various sufferings because they have the five desires and the desire for gain. Because they have attachments and pursuits, they have many sufferings in their present existence, and will suffer in hell or in the world of animals or in the world of hungry spirits in their future lives. Even when they are reborn in heaven or in the world of humans, they will still have many sufferings such as poverty or parting from their beloved ones or meeting with those whom they hate. Notwithstanding all this, however, they are playing joyfully. They are not conscious of the sufferings. They are not frightened at the sufferings or afraid of them. They do not dislike them or try to get rid of them. They are running about this burning house of the triple world, and do not mind even when they undergo great sufferings.[‘]

“Śāriputra! Seeing all this, I [also] thought, ‘I am the father of all living beings. I will eliminate their sufferings, give them the pleasure of the immeasurable wisdom of the Buddha, and cause them to enjoy it.’

“Śāriputra! I also thought, ‘If I extol my insight, powers, and fearlessness in the presence of those living beings only by my supernatural powers and by the power of my wisdom, that is to say, without any expedient, they will not be saved because they have not yet been saved from birth, old age, disease, death, grief, sorrow, suffering and lamentation, but are burning up in the burning house of the triple world. How can they understand the wisdom of the Buddha?’

See Riding in Smaller Vehicles

LS32, d5b, d6b, stories

Riding in Smaller Vehicles

We should realize that in this story it is the lure of the three “lesser” vehicles that actually saves the children. In running out, the children are pursuing the shravaka, pratyekabuddha, and bodhisattva ways. And here, these three ways, including the bodhisattva way, are essentially equal, as they are equally effective, perhaps with one appealing to some of the children, another to others, and the other to still other children. These “smaller” vehicles, in other words, are sufficient for saving people, that is, for enabling them to enter the One Buddha Vehicle and become bodhisattvas, ones who are on the way to becoming buddhas themselves.

The Stories of the Lotus Sutra, p51
LS32

Day 5

Day 5 begins Chapter 3, A Parable

Day 5 Text with annotationsPlay MP3
Having last month heard Śāriputra’s prediction in gāthās, we hear the reaction of the great multitude.

At that time the great multitude included bhikṣus, bhikṣunīs, upāsakās and upāsikās, that is, the four kinds of devotees; and gods, dragons, yakṣas, gandharvas, asuras, garuḍas, kiṃnaras and mahoragas. When they saw that Śāriputra was assured of his future attainment of Anuttara-samyak-saṃbodhi by the Buddha, they danced with great joy. They took off their garments and offered them to the Buddha. Śakra-Devanam-Indra, the Brahman Heavenly-King, and innumerable other gods also offered their wonderful heavenly garments and the heavenly flowers of mandāravas and mahā-mandāravas to the Buddha. The heavenly garments, which had been released from the hands of the gods, whirled in the sky. The gods simultaneously made many thousands of millions of kinds of music in the sky, and caused many heavenly flowers to rain down.

They said, “The Buddha turned the first wheel of the Dharma at Varanasi a long time ago. Now he turns the wheel of the unsurpassed and greatest Dharma.”

Thereupon the gods, wishing to repeat what they had said, sang in gāthās:

The Buddha turned the wheel of the teaching of the Four Truths
At Varanasi a long time ago.
He taught that all things are composed of the five aggregates
And that they are subject to rise and extinction.

Now he turns the wheel of the Dharma,
The most wonderful, unsurpassed, and greatest.
The Dharma is profound.
Few believe it.
So far we have heard
Many teachings of the World-Honored One.
But we have never heard
Such a profound, wonderful, and excellent teaching as this.
We are very glad to hear this
From the World-Honored One.

Śāriputra, a man of great wisdom,
Was assured of his future Buddhahood.
We also shall be able
To become Buddhas,
And to receive
The highest and unsurpassed honor in the world.

The Buddha expounds his enlightenment, difficult to understand,
With expedients according to the capacities of all living beings.
We obtained merits by the good karmas which we did
In this life of ours and in our previous existence.
We also obtained merits by seeing the Buddha.
May we attain the enlightenment of the Buddha by these merits!

See Shariputra Reborn

LS32, d5b, stories

Shariputra Reborn

Throughout the Dharma Flower Sutra two things are affirmed: 1) that the Sutra is continuous with what was taught and done in the early years of the Buddha’s ministry, and 2) that something new is happening. This is generally true of Mahayana sutras. They both affirm a continuity with older Buddhist traditions and claim that in Mahayana something new has emerged.

Thus, it is significant that Shariputra becomes further enlightened here, “re-born” as he puts it. This can be contrasted with some other Mahayana sutras, in which he is treated as merely stupid, meaning that Hinayana Buddhists are quite stupid and unworthy of the Dharma. In some cases, shravakas were even said to be icchanti – hopeless, incorrigible, utterly devoid of buddha-nature.

The Stories of the Lotus Sutra, p64
LS32

Day 4

Day 4 concludes Chapter 2, Expedients, and completes the first volume of the Sūtra of the Lotus flower of the Wonderful Dharma.

Day 4 Text with annotationsPlay MP3
Having last month concluded Chapter 2, Expedients, we begin at the top of today’s portion with the 5,000 arrogant bhikṣus and bhikṣunīs.

Thereupon the World-Honored One, wishing to repeat what he had said, sang in gāthās:
Some bhikṣus and bhikṣunīs
Were arrogant.
Some upāsakās were self-conceited.
Some upāsikās were unfaithful.
Those four kinds of devotees
Were five thousand in number.

They could not see their own faults.
They could not observe all the precepts.
They were reluctant to heal their own wounds.
Those people of little wisdom are gone.
They were the dregs of this congregation.
They were driven away by my powers and virtues.

They had too few merits and virtues
To receive the Dharma.
Now there are only sincere people here.
All twigs and leaves are gone.

See The Great Power in Tactful Means

b4today, LS32, d3b, d4b

The Great Power in Tactful Means

The World-honored One was silent and did not stop [the 5,000 who left]. This was because he thought that even if he forced them to remain, they could not understand his teaching and it would tend instead to produce an adverse result. He also considered that they would wish to seek a true teaching sometime in the future and would in time develop the capacity to understand it. His preaching to them at that time would be the quickest way to save them.

At first glance this attitude of the Buddha seems to indicate indifference to others, but his mind in its profundity was filled with the great wisdom and benevolence of the Buddha. This is clear from the incident recounted in chapter 8, “The Five Hundred Disciples Receive the Prediction of Their Destiny.” When he gave a great many arhats the prediction that they would become buddhas in accordance with their practice, he said to Kāśyapa, “The other band of śrāvakas will also be like them. To those who are not in this assembly, do you proclaim my words.” The Buddha’s words “those who are not in this assembly” refer to the five thousand monks who had risen from their seats and left the assembly earlier. The fact that he purposely did not stop them at that time demonstrates his great power in tactful means.

Buddhism for Today, p45
LS32, WONS

Day 3

Day 3 covers the first half of Chapter 2, Expedients.

Day 3 Text with annotationsPlay MP3
Having last month learned of the inexplicable nature of the dharma in gāthās, we learn of the difficulty of understanding the Dharma.

Even the Buddhas’ disciples who made offerings
To the [past] Buddhas in their previous existence,
[Even the disciples] who eliminated all asravas,
[Even the disciples] who are now at the final stage
Of their physical existence,
Cannot understand [the Dharma].

As many people as can fill the world,
Who are as wise as you, Śāriputra, will not be able
To measure the wisdom of the Buddhas,
Even though they try to do so with their combined efforts.

As many people as can fill the worlds of the ten quarters,
Who are as wise as you, Śāriputra,
Or as many other disciples of mine
As can fill the ksetras of the ten quarters,
Will not be able to know [the wisdom of the Buddhas]
Even though they try to do so with their combined efforts.

As many Pratyekabuddhas as can fill
The worlds of the ten quarters, or as many as bamboo groves,
Who are wise enough to reach
The final stage of their physical existence without āsravas,
Will not be able to know
Even a bit of the true wisdom of the Buddhas
Even though they continue trying to do so with all their hearts
For many hundreds of millions of kalpas.

As many Bodhisattvas as rice-plants, hemps, bamboos or reeds,
Or as can fill the ksetras of the ten quarters,
Who have just begun to aspire for enlightenment,
Who made offerings to innumerable Buddhas in their previous existence,
Who understand the meanings of the Dharma [in their own ways],
And who are expounding the Dharma [as they understand it],
Will not be able to know the wisdom of the Buddhas
Even though they continue trying to do so with all their hearts
And with all their wonderful wisdom
For as many kalpas as there are sands in the River Ganges.

As many never-faltering Bodhisattvas
As there are sands in the River Ganges
Will not be able to know the wisdom of the Buddhas
Even though they try to do so with all their hearts.

We may not be able to know the wisdom of the Buddhas, but we certainly try.

“Two Buddhas” discusses different ideas of liberation. The Kegon and Zen traditions hold that “the differentiated phenomena of the world are in their essence no different from the one mind and thus originally pure. From this perspective, the purpose of Buddhist practice is to dispel delusion and return the mind to its original clarity. …

“This model explains principle and phenomena as nondual, but it does not value them equally. The one mind is original, pure, and true, while concrete phenomena are ultimately unreal, arising only as the one mind is filtered through human ignorance. From that perspective, the ordinary elements of daily experience remain at a second-tier level as the epiphenomena of a defiled consciousness. Zhiyi termed this perspective the “realm of the conceivable” – understandable, but not yet adequately expressing the true state of affairs. He himself expressed a different, more subtle view. … [H]e states: ‘Were the mind to give rise to all phenomena, that would be a vertical [relationship]. Were all phenomena to be simultaneously contained within the mind, that would be a horizontal [relationship]. Neither horizontal nor vertical will do. It is simply that the mind is all phenomena and all phenomena are the mind. … [This relationship] is subtle and profound in the extreme; it can neither be grasped conceptually nor expressed in words. Therefore, it is called the realm of the inconceivable.’

“In Zhiyi’s understanding, phenomena do not arise from a pure mind or abstract prior principle. “Principle” means that the material and the mental, subject and object, good and evil, delusion and enlightenment are always nondual and mutually inclusive; this is the ‘real aspect of all dharmas’ that only buddhas can completely know, referred to in the ‘Skillful Means’ chapter. This perspective revalorizes the world, not as a realm of delusion, but as the very locus of enlightenment. The aim of practice, then, is not to recover a primal purity, but to manifest the buddha wisdom even amid ignorance and delusion.”
Two Buddhas, p203-205

As Nichiren writes:

For those who are incapable of understanding the truth of the “3,000 existences contained in one thought,” Lord Śākyamuni Buddha, with His great compassion, wraps this jewel with the five characters of myō, hō, ren, ge, and kyō and hangs it around the neck of the ignorant in the Latter Age of Degeneration.

Kanjin Honzon-shō, A Treatise Revealing the Spiritual Contemplation and the Most Verable One, Writings of Nichiren Shōnin, Doctrine 2, Page 164

Eyes, d25b, WONS

Subduing Evil by Never Despising

[T]he story of Never Despising Bodhisattva in chapter twenty of the Lotus Sūtra is cited by Nichiren as an example of the method of subduing evil. In the chapter the Buddha tells of a bodhisattva who lived during the age of the counterfeit Dharma of the Powerful-Voice-King Buddha. This bodhisattva’s sole practice was to bow to all he met and say to them, “l respect you deeply. I do not despise you. Why is that? It is because you will be able to practice the Way of bodhisattvas and become buddhas.” (Murano 2012, p. 292) Because of this he was called Never Despising Bodhisattva. The arrogant monks, nuns, laymen, and laywomen at that time felt that he was speaking falsely and so abused him and even threw things at him. Though forced to run away, Never Despising Bodhisattva did not relent and continued to assure people “in a loud voice from afar” (Murano 2012, p. 293) that they would become buddhas. In time, those who abused him became his followers and took faith in the teaching that they would be able to attain buddhahood. The Buddha goes on to say that Never Despising Bodhisattva was himself in a past life and that because he was able to lead so many people into the way to perfect and complete awakening he was able to meet many hundreds of thousands of millions of buddhas and expound the Lotus Sūtra and ultimately become a buddha himself. Those who abused him had to expiate their sins in the Avici Hell but afterwards were able to become bodhisattvas themselves and meet many buddhas including Śākyamuni Buddha.

In the story of Never Despising Bodhisattva the method of subduing evil becomes clear. The bodhisattva does not berate or argue with others, nor does he resort to the coercive power of the state. Rather, he forthrightly proclaims the True Dharma that all beings can attain buddhahood in the face of disbelief, abuse, and even violence. Never Despising Bodhisattva is not only motivated by compassion, but his sole practice is a gesture of reverence and respect for the buddha-nature in all beings. When faced with abuse and violence he does not allow himself to be hurt but retreats to a safe distance. Instead of retaliating in kind he continues to voice his deepest conviction and reverence. The method of subduing therefore is about having the courage and compassion to stand up for what is right and to give voice to the True Dharma even though one may meet with derision or even persecution.

Open Your Eyes, p564-565
LS32

Day 2

Chapter 1, Introductory (Conclusion).

Day 2 Text with annotationsPlay MP3

Having last month repeated in gāthās Mañjuśrī’s recollection of Sun-Moon-Light Buddha, we consider what happened when the Buddha emitted a ray of light.

The worlds of the Buddhas quaked much.
The Buddha emitted a ray of light
From between his eyebrows,
And showed things rarely to be seen.

This ray of light illumined
Eighteen thousand Buddha-worlds in the east.
It showed the region
To which each living being was to go by his karmas.

The worlds of the Buddha were
Adorned with many treasures,
And given the colors of lapis lazuli and crystal.
I saw all this by the light of the Buddha.

I also saw the gods, men, dragons, yakṣas,
Gandharvas, and kiṃnaras of those worlds.
Each of them made offerings
To the Buddha by whom he was taught.

I also saw the Tathagatas of those worlds
Who had attained enlightenment by themselves.
The color of their bodies was as beautiful
And as wonderful as that of the golden mountains,
Or as that of a golden image
Put in a shrine of pure lapis lazuli.

Those World-Honored Ones explained to the great multitudes
The meaning of the profound teaching.
There were innumerable Śrāvakas
In the worlds of those Buddhas.
All those great multitudes were seen
By the light of the Buddha.

The bhikṣus were living in mountains and forests.
They made endeavors,
And observed the pure precepts
As carefully as one keeps brilliant gem·.

As many Bodhisattvas
As there are sands in the River Ganges
Performed almsgiving, patience, and other practices.
I saw all this by the light of the Buddha.

I also saw some Bodhisattvas
Who entered deep into dhyāna-concentrations,
And became tranquil and motionless in body and mind,
In order to attain unsurpassed enlightenment.

I also saw some Bodhisattvas,
Who realized the tranquil extinction of all things,
And expounded the Dharma to [the people of] their worlds
In order to attain the enlightenment of the Buddha.

See The True Nature of Things

LS32, d2b, stories

The True Nature of Things

There are two versions of the story, one in prose, the other in verse. Except for the fact that the verse version gives much more detail about what can be seen by the Buddha’s beam of light, the two versions are basically the same. Yet there are some interesting small differences. For example, in the prose version Manjushri Bodhisattva explains that the purpose of the beam of light is to announce that the Dharma Flower Sutra is about to be taught, while at the end of the verse version he says that its purpose is “to help reveal the principle of the true nature of all things.”

This phrase, “the true nature of all things,” has been variously translated and interpreted. There are two major possibilities: One is that it is an affirmation of the reality of the everyday world of concrete realities, as opposed to views that understand this world to be a product of our minds or an illusion. The other possibility is that it is a claim that the Buddha’s teachings reveal the nature of all things, namely, that all things are interrelated and interdependent, ultimately empty of independent nature. The fact that a kind of equivalence of announcing the teaching of the Dharma Flower Sutra and revealing the principle of the true nature of things suggest this latter interpretation. That is: the Dharma Flower Sutra itself reveals the true nature of things.

The Stories of the Lotus Sutra, p45-46