Two Buddhas, p14[W]hether or not one accepted the Mahāyāna sūtras as the Buddha’s word, it was widely acknowledged that they had appeared long after his passage into nirvāṇa (the period of four hundred years was often mentioned). For their opponents, the sūtras were newly composed; for their proponents, they were newly revealed to the world of humans, having – for example – been hidden and safeguarded for centuries by gods and nāgas.
Things were very different in East Asia. The Mahāyāna sūtras were already being produced when Buddhism first entered China. The Chinese, at least initially, had little sense of the historical progression of the tradition, of what had transpired over the previous four centuries. Under the circumstances, the Mahāyāna sūtras were particularly appealing. Their teachings of nonduality resonated with indigenous notions of an integrated, holistic cosmos, while the bodhisattva ideal paralleled Chinese philosophical notions of human perfectibility. And the Lotus Sūtra, said to have been the Buddha’s ultimate and final teaching, in which he explains his teaching method within the context of his traditional life story, came to hold a special prominence.
Category Archives: LS32
Day 17
Day 17 covers all of Chapter 12, Devadatta, and opens Chapter 13, Encouragement for Keeping this Sutra.
Having last month greeted Mañjuśrī who has been teaching in the palace of the Dragon-King Sagara, we hear Accumulated-Wisdom Bodhisattva greet Mañjuśrī and Mañjuśrī tell of the skills of the dragon king’s daughter.
Thereupon Accumulated-Wisdom Bodhisattva praised him with gāthās:
Possessor of Great Wisdom and Virtue!
You were brave in saving innumerable living beings.
This great congregation and I understand
That you expounded
The truth of the reality of all things,
Revealed the teaching of the One Vehicle,
And led those innumerable living beings
[Into the Way] to Bodhi quickly.Mañjuśrī said, “In the sea I expounded only the Sūtra of the Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Dharma.”
Accumulated-Wisdom asked Mañjuśrī:
“The sūtra is exceedingly profound and wonderful. This is the treasure of all the sūtras. It is rare in the world. Do you know anyone who acted according to this sūtra so strenuously that he has already been qualified to become a Buddha quickly?”
Mañjuśrī answered:
“Yes. There is a daughter of Dragon-King Sagara [among those whom I taught]. She is eight years old. She is clever. She knows the karmas of all living beings. She obtained dhārāṇis. She keeps all the treasury of the profound and hidden core expounded by the Buddhas. She entered deep into dhyāna-concentration, and understood all teachings. She aspired for Bodhi in a ksana, and reached the stage of irrevocability. She is eloquent without hindrance. She is compassionate towards all living beings just as a mother is towards her babe. She obtained all merits. Her thoughts and words are wonderful and great. She is compassionate, humble, gentle and graceful. She [has already been qualified to] attain Bodhi[, and to become a Buddha quickly].”
‘A Woman Who Embraces This Sūtra’
Two Buddhas, p157To be sure, Nichiren’s assertions about women’s realization of buddhahood tend to foreground the power of the Lotus Sūtra, rather than women’s capacity for buddhahood in and of itself. Unless women place faith in the Lotus, buddhahood lies beyond their reach. But because he believed that no one, male or female, could attain buddhahood through provisional teachings, his stance is hardly discriminatory. Nichiren’s core followers included several women whom, judging by his letters, he held in great respect. Unlike Śāriputra in the “Devadatta” chapter, and against notions of female pollution in his own time, Nichiren did not see the female body as filthy and on at least one occasion explicitly denied that menstrual blood is defiling. He also suggested that faith in the Lotus Sūtra might even in some sense subvert conventional gender hierarchy: “A woman who embraces this sūtra,” he wrote,” not only surpasses all other women but also surpasses all men.”
Day 16
Day 16 concludes Chapter 11, Beholding the Stūpa of Treasures, and completes the Fourth Volume of the Sūtra of the Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Dharma.
Having last month heard the Buddha ask the great multitude: Who will protect and keep this sūtra, and read and recite it after my extinction?, we compare difficult and easy tasks.
Good men! Think this over clearly!
It is difficult
[To expound this sūtra].
Make a great vow to do this!It is not difficult
To expound all the other sūtras
As many as there are sands
In the River Ganges.It is not difficult
To grasp Mt. Sumeru
And hurl it to a distance
Of countless Buddha-worlds.It is not difficult to move [a world]
[Composed of] one thousand million Sumeru-worlds
With the tip of a toe
And hurl it to another world.It is not difficult
To stand in the Highest Heaven
And expound innumerable other sūtras
To all living beings.It is difficult
To expound this sūtra
In the evil world
After my extinction.
Nine Easy and Six Difficult Acts
Two Buddhas, p146-147In the concluding verse section of this chapter, now seated in midair within the jeweled stūpa beside Prabhūtaratna, Śākyamuni Buddha again stresses how difficult it will be to uphold the Lotus Sūtra after his passing, setting forth the analogy of what Nichiren summarized as the “nine easy and six difficult acts.” There is some irony in this term; the “nine easy acts” are virtually impossible. They involve either extraordinary physical feats, such as placing the earth on one’s toe and ascending with it to the heavens of Brahmā, or teaching incalculable numbers of sentient beings by means of provisional teachings, leading them to lesser attainments than buddhahood, such as arhatship or the six supernormal powers. In contrast, the “six difficult acts” all entail the practice of the true teaching, the Lotus Sūtra, in the troubled world after the Buddha’s passing. The six acts are: (1) to teach the Lotus Sūtra; (2) to copy it, or cause others to copy it; (3) to recite it, even for a short while; (4) to teach it to even one other person; (5) to hear and accept it, and inquire about its meaning; and (6) to preserve it. The compilers of the Lotus Sūtra may have sought to ensure the Lotus Sūtra’s survival into the future by showing that the Buddha himself praised the heroism of those who would brave any adversity to uphold it after he was gone from the world.
Day 15
Day 15 concludes Chapter 10, The Teacher of the Dharma, and opens Chapter 11, Beholding the Stūpa of Treasures.
Having last month considered the reaction of the four kinds of devotees to the arrival of the Stupa of Treasures, we conclude today’s portion of Chapter 11, Beholding the Stūpa of Treasures.
Thereupon Great-Eloquence Bodhisattva, resorting to the supernatural powers of [Śākyamuni] Tathāgata, said to him, “World-Honored One! We wish to see that Buddha.”
The Buddha said to Great-Eloquence Bodhisattva-mahāsattvas:
“Many-Treasures Buddha made another great vow: ‘If a Buddha wishes to show me to the four kinds of devotees when my stūpa of treasures appears before him in order that l may be able to hear the Sūtra of the Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Dharma [directly from him], he must call back all the Buddhas of his replicas who will be expounding the Dharma in the worlds of the ten quarters at that time. Then I will show myself [to the four kinds of devotees].’ Great-Eloquence! Now I will collect the Buddhas of my replicas who are now expounding the Dharma in the worlds of the ten quarters.”
Great-Eloquence said to him, “World-Honored One! We also wish to see the Buddhas of your replicas, bow to them, and make offerings to them.”
Thereupon the Buddha emitted a ray of light from the white curls [between his eyebrows, and faced the east]. The congregation saw the Buddhas of five hundred billion nayuta worlds, that is, as many worlds as there are sands in the River Ganges, in the east. The ground of those worlds was made of crystal. Those worlds were adorned with jeweled trees and garments, and filled with many thousands of billions of Bodhisattvas. Jeweled curtains were stretched and jeweled nets were hung over those worlds, where the Buddhas were expounding the Dharma with loud and wonderful voices. The congregation also saw that many thousands of billions of Bodhisattvas, with whom those worlds were filled, were expounding the Dharma to the living beings of those worlds.
The Buddha also illumined the worlds of the south, west, north, the four intermediate quarters, zenith, and nadir, with rays of light emitted from the white curls [between his eyebrows]. The worlds of those quarters looked like those of the east.
The Buddha Realm Within Oneself
Two Buddhas, p144-145We have already touched on how, in part under the influence of the esoteric Buddhist teachings, medieval Tendai notions of practice and attainment shifted from a linear model of practice, in which one gradually cultivates merit and wisdom, striving for buddhahood as a future goal, to what one might call a timeless or “mandalic” model, in which buddhahood is revealed in the very act of faith and practice. Medieval Tendai texts sometimes express this conceptual shift with the phrase, “The assembly on Sacred Vulture Peak is still awesomely present and has not yet dispersed.” Just as enlightenment was redefined as accessible in the present, so the assembly of the Lotus Sūtra where the two buddhas sat side by side in the jeweled stūpa came to be represented not as an event in the distant past, but as still ongoing. Some medieval Tendai writings identify this ever-present Lotus assembly with the liberating discernment of the three thousand realms in a single thought-moment, or more specifically, of the buddha realm within oneself.
Day 14
Day 14 covers all of Chapter 9, The Assurance of Future Buddhahood of the Śrāvakas Who Have Something More to Learn and the Śrāvakas Who Have Nothing More to Learn, and opens Chapter 10, The Teacher of the Dharma.
Having last month heard the Buddha’s prediction for Rāhula, we repeat the prediction for Rāhula in gāthās.
Thereupon the World-Honored One, wishing to repeat what he had said, sang in gāthās:
When I was a crown prince,
Rāhula was my eldest son.
When I attained the enlightenment of the Buddha,
He received the Dharma, and became the son of the Dharma.In his future life he will see
Many hundreds of millions of Buddhas,
Become the eldest son of those Buddhas, and seek
The enlightenment of the Buddha with all his heart.Only I know his secret practices.
He shows himself
To all living beings
In the form of my eldest son.He has many thousands of billions of merits.
His merits are countless.
He dwells peacefully in the Dharma of the Buddha,
And seeks unsurpassed enlightenment.
Universal Buddhahood
Two Buddhas, p58-60Because the notion of universal buddhahood now seems so obvious to those familiar with the Mahāyāna, it is difficult to imagine how radical this declaration of a single vehicle would have been in its own time. Up until this point, in the mainstream tradition, the goal of the Buddhist path was to become an arhat. The achievement of buddhahood was far more difficult, and the path to buddhahood was far longer; only the rarest of individuals in a given cosmic age was capable of undertaking that task. The arhat’s path to nirvāṇa was shorter and easier. Furthermore, there was no need for many buddhas as long as the teaching of a single buddha remained known in the world; hence the idea that there is only one buddha in the world at a time. Here, the Buddha is therefore saying something new. While his disciples had thought that they were following the path of the two vehicles culminating in nirvāṇa, in reality, that was the Buddha’s “skillful means,” taught in order to guide them to the bodhisattva path. This revelation could not be ignored; Śākyamuni declares that those who claim to be arhats and yet do not accept that the buddhas “lead and inspire only bodhisattvas” are not true arhats, nor are they true disciples of the Buddha.
He further declares that those who claim to be arhats and do not aspire to buddhahood are arrogant. It is impossible that a true arhat should not accept this dharma. He makes an exception for those who might become arhats after his death; such individuals might not believe in the single buddha vehicle because, after the Buddha has passed into nirvāṇa, it will be difficult to find people who preserve, recite, and understand the Lotus Sūtra. We have here again a barb directed at the opponents of the Lotus Sūtra. At the time of the text’s composition, centuries after the Buddha’s death, there would have been those who denied its authenticity. The sūtra, setting itself in the final years of the Buddha’s life, explains that such people are merely ignorant of his true intent.
Practicers of the Lotus Sūtra Are Not Found Anywhere
Some raise the question:
Although there seem to be the three kinds of enemies of the Lotus in this world today, practicers of the Lotus Sūtra are not found anywhere. It is difficult for us to call you a practicer of the Lotus because there is a great deal of discrepancy. Affirming divine intervention in favor of a practicer, the Lotus Sūtra in the chapter on the “Peaceful Practices” says: “Heavenly servants will come to serve the man who upholds the Lotus Sūtra so that swords and sticks will not injure him, and poisons will not harm him;” in the fifth chapter on “The Simile of Herbs,” “His life in this world will be peaceful and he will be reborn in a better place in the future;” in the 26th chapter on “Mystic Phrases,” “Should anyone hate and speak ill of the man who upholds the Lotus Sūtra, his mouth will be sealed—anyone who does harm to him will have his head split into seven pieces like a twig of an arjaka tree;” and in the 28th chapter on the “Encouragement of the Universal Sage Bodhisattva,” “He will be rewarded with happiness in this present life;” and “If anyone, upon seeing a man upholding this sūtra, exposes his faults, justifiably or not, such a man will be afflicted with white leprosy.”
They have a good reason to doubt me. So I will answer their question to dispel their doubt. It is said in the “Never-Despising Bodhisattva” (20th) chapter of the Lotus Sūtra that the practicer of the Lotus will be spoken ill of, despised, or struck with sticks, tiles, and stones; while it is said in the Nirvana Sūtra that such a man will be killed or hurt. The Lotus Sūtra also states in the “Teacher of the Dharma” (10th) chapter that those who spread it will be the target of much hatred and jealousy even during the lifetime of the Buddha.
Kaimoku-shō, Open Your Eyes to the Lotus Teaching, Writings of Nichiren Shōnin, Doctrine 2, Page 103