Category Archives: LS32

LS32

Day 13

Day 13 covers all of Chapter 8, The Assurance of Future Buddhahood of the Five Hundred Disciples.

Day 13 Text with annotationsPlay MP3

Having last month considered the reaction of the five hundred Arhats and heard the Parable of the Priceless Gem, we repeat in gāthās and conclude Chapter 8, The Assurance of Future Buddhahood of the Five Hundred Disciples.

Thereupon Ājñāta-Kauṇḍinya and the others, wishing to repeat what they had said, sang in gāthās:

Your assurance of our future Buddhahood
Gives us unsurpassed peace.
Hearing your voice, we have the greatest joy that we have ever had.
We bow to you, to the Buddha of Immeasurable Wisdom.

Now in your presence,
We reproach ourselves for our faults.
The Nirvāṇa we attained was
Only part of the immeasurable treasures of yours.
We were like a foolish man with no wisdom.
We satisfied ourselves with what little we had attained.

Suppose a poor man visited
His good friend, who was very rich.
The friend feasted him
With delicacies.

He fastened a priceless gem
Inside the garment of the man as a gift to him,
And went out without leaving a word.
The sleeping man did not notice [the gift].

The man woke up, and went to another country.
He worked to get food and clothing.
He had much difficulty
In earning his livelihood.

He satisfied himself with what little he earned.
He did not wish to get anything more.
He did not notice the priceless gem
Fastened inside his garment.

The good friend who gave the gem to the poor man
Happened to see him later.
He blamed him severely,
And showed him the gem fastened [inside the garment].

Seeing the gem,
The poor man had great joy.
Now he satisfied his five desires
With many treasures.

We are like the poor man.
In the long night you taught us
Out of your compassion towards us,
And caused us to aspire for unsurpassed [enlightenment].

Because we had no wisdom, we did not notice that.
The Nirvāṇa we attained was only part [of your wisdom].
Satisfying ourselves with it,
We did not wish to attain anything more.

Now you have awakened us, saying:
“What you attained was not true extinction.
When you have the unsurpassed wisdom of the Buddha,
You will attain true extinction.”

Hearing from you that we are assured
Of becoming Buddhas one after another,
And that our worlds will be adorned,
We are joyful in body and mind.

See Buddha Nature As Three Causes

2buddhas, d13b, LS32 Text, WONS

Buddha Nature As Three Causes

Commentators have often interpreted the jewel in the garment as the “buddha nature.” The Lotus Sūtra does not contain the precise term “buddha nature” (Ch. foxing; J. busshō), perhaps because it had not yet come into use in Indian Buddhism. However, the Lotus clearly recognizes the buddha potential in all beings, and Chinese exegetes argued that the concept is there, if not the term itself. The expression “buddha nature” was well known in medieval Japan, and Nichiren uses it occasionally, but he appears to have preferred “buddha realm” (among the ten realms) or “seed of buddhahood” (J. busshu). His use of the latter term is quite different from the Hossō idea of untainted seeds in the storehouse consciousness. … “Buddha nature” and “seed of buddhahood” are similar in that both indicate the potential for buddhahood, supreme enlightenment, but where “nature” is constant and unchanging, “seeds” can lie dormant, even rot, or germinate and grow in response to conditions; as the Lotus Sūtra says, “The buddha-seeds germinate through dependent origination.” Thus, Nichiren may have used the term “seed of buddhahood” because he wished to portray buddhahood, not as an abstract potential, but as manifested through specific causes and conditions, that is, by embracing a specific form of practice. In that regard, he sometimes borrows Zhiyi’s concept of the “buddha nature as three causes”: (1) the innate potential for buddhahood; (2) the wisdom that illuminates it; and (3) the practice that manifests that wisdom. For Nichiren, that practice was chanting Namu Myōhō-renge-kyō, the act that manifests the jewel of the buddha realm hidden within the nine realms of ordinary people. Sometimes he refers to the daimoku itself as the “seed of buddhahood.”

Two Buddhas, p126-127
LS32

Day 12

Day 12 concludes Chapter 7, The Parable of the Magic City, and completes the Third Volume of the Sutra of the Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Dharma.

Day 12 Text with annotationsPlay MP3

Having last month considered Śākyamuni’s explanation of the Parable of the Magic City, we repeat in gāthās the story of
Great-Universal-Wisdom-Excellence Buddha.

Thereupon the World-Honored One, wishing to repeat what he had said, sang in gāthās;

Great-Universal-Wisdom-Excellence Buddha sat
At the place of enlightenment for ten [small] kalpas.
He could not attain the enlightenment of the Buddha
Because the Dharma of the Buddhas had not yet come into his mind.

The gods, dragon-kings,
And asuras rained down
Heavenly flowers,
And offered them to him.

The gods beat heavenly drums,
And made many kinds of music.
Withered flowers were swept away by fragrant winds;
And fresh and beautiful flowers were rained down.

After the ten small kalpas elapsed,
He attained the enlightenment of the Buddha.
The gods and men of the world
Felt like dancing with joy.

Surrounded by their followers,
Thousands of billions in number,
The sixteen sons of that Buddha
Came to him.

Worshipping the feet of the Buddha with their heads,
They begged him to turn the wheel of the Dharma, saying:
“Lion-like Saint! Send the rain of the Dharma
On us and on all others also!”

It is difficult to meet a World-Honored One.
He appears only once in a very long time.
When he appears, he causes all the worlds to quake
In order to awaken all living beings.

The palaces of the Brahmans
Of five hundred billion worlds in the east
Were illumined
More brightly than ever.

Traveling to find [the place from where the light had come],
The Brahmans of those worlds came to that Buddha.
They strewed flowers and offered them to him.
They also offered their palaces.

They praised him with gāthās,
And begged him to turn the wheel of the Dharma.
The Buddha sat in silence although he was begged
Because he knew that the time was not yet ripe for that.

The Brahmans came also from the three other quarters,
From the four intermediate quarters, zenith, and nadir.
They strewed flowers, offered their palaces,
And begged the Buddha to turn the wheel of the Dharma, saying:

“It is difficult to meet you.
Open the gate of the teachings as sweet as nectar
Out of your great compassion towards us,
And turn the wheel of the unsurpassed Dharma!”

Assenting to their appeal,
The World-Honored One of Immeasurable Wisdom
Expounded the various teachings, that is,
The four truths and the twelve causes, saying:
“All the causes, from ignorance to aging-and-death,
Rise one after another.
You should know
All these illusions.”

When he expounded these teachings,
Sixty quadrillions of living beings
Eliminated sufferings,
And became Arhats.

At his second expounding of these teachings also,
Tens of millions of living beings, that is,
As many living beings as there are sands in the River Ganges,
Became Arhats because they gave up wrong views.

Those who attained the enlightenment [of Arhats] afterwards
Were also innumerable.
No one would be able to count them
Even if he tried to do so for a billion kalpas.

See An Ideal This-Worldly Buddha Land

2buddhas, LS32, d9b

An Ideal This-Worldly Buddha Land

[Given Nichiren’s travails, did he understand] the sūtra’s promise of “peace in the present world” only as expressing an inner mental composure? By no means. Its promise was also that of an actual peace to be realized in the outer world through the spread of the Lotus Sūtra. Another letter he wrote from Sado reads: “Question: Those who practice the Lotus Sūtra as it teaches should be ‘at peace in this world.’ Why then are you beset by the three powerful enemies [who oppose the Lotus Sūtra’s practitioners]?” In this instance, Nichiren responds that teachers of the Lotus Sūtra in the past, such as Daosheng, Zhiyi, Saichō — even Śākyamuni Buddha himself — surely practiced in accordance with the Lotus Sūtra and yet they endured great trials to communicate its message; meeting hardships does not in and of itself imply flaws in one’s practice. Rather, troubles are to be expected in an evil age when the dharma has been obscured and everyone from the ruler down to the common people has turned against the Lotus Sūtra. That is why it is all the more important to persevere. He concludes: “When all people of the realm, including the various Buddhist schools, convert to the one vehicle and chant Namu Myōhō-renge-kyō as one, the wind will not thrash the branches nor the rain fall hard enough to erode the soil. The world will be as it was in the ages [of the ancient sage kings] Fuxi and Shennong. In this life, inauspicious disasters will be banished, and people will obtain the art of longevity. You will behold a time when the principle becomes manifest that persons and dharmas neither age nor die.”

This is one of the few passages in Nichiren’s extant writings that sets forth his vision of an ideal, this-worldly buddha land to be established in the future. It seems to entail a state of harmony with nature, just government, long life, and freedom from catastrophe. Included in the ichinen sanzen principle is the idea that sentient beings and their insentient environments are nondual; human actions, whether wise and compassionate or selfish and deluded, shape the world that they inhabit. Thus, for Nichiren, the awakening of the Lotus Sūtra was not simply to be experienced subjectively by individual practitioners, but would also find expression as concord, creativity, and fulfillment in the outer world. This conviction gives his teaching a distinctively social dimension. On this basis, he took “peace in this world” to mean not only the unwavering inner wisdom and security established by faith, but also an ideal to be concretely and visibly realized in everyday life.

Two Buddhas, p103-104
LS32

Day 11

Day 11 continues Chapter 7, The Parable of the Magic City

Day 11 Text with annotationsPlay MP3

Having last month concluded today’s portion of Chapter 7, The Parable of the Magic City, we return to the top and witness what happened when Great-Universal-Wisdom-Excellence Buddha attained Anuttara-samyak-saṃbodhi.

The Buddha said to the bhikṣus:
“When Great-Universal-Wisdom-Excellence Buddha attained Anuttara-samyak-saṃbodhi, five hundred billion Buddha-worlds in each of the ten quarters quaked in the six ways, and all those worlds, including those intercepted from the brilliant rays of light of the sun and the moon by the neighboring worlds, were illumined [by great rays of light], and the living beings of those worlds were able to see each other for the first time. They said to each other, ‘How did you appear so suddenly?’ The palaces of the gods of those worlds, including the palace of Brahmans, also quaked in the six ways. The great rays of light which illumined all those worlds were brighter than the rays of light emitted by those gods.

“The palaces of the Brahman-heavenly[-kings] of the five hundred billion worlds in the east were illumined twice as brightly as ever. The Brahman-heavenly-kings [of those worlds] each thought, ‘My palace has never been illumined so brightly before. Why is that?’ They visited each other and discussed the reason. There was a great Brahman-heavenly-king called All-Saving among them. He said to the other Brahmans in gāthās:

Why are our palaces illumined
More brightly than ever?
Let us find [the place]
[From where this light has come].
Did a god of great virtue or a Buddha
Appear somewhere in the universe?
This great light illumines
The worlds of the ten quarters.

“Thereupon the Brahman-heavenly-kings of the five hundred billion worlds went to the west, carrying flower-plates filled with heavenly flowers, in order to find [the place from where the light had come]. Their palaces also moved as they went. They [reached the Well-Composed World and] saw that Great­Universal-Wisdom-Excellence Tathāgata was sitting on the lion­like seat under the Bodhi-tree at the place of enlightenment, surrounded respectfully by gods, dragon-kings, gandharvas, kiṃnaras, mahoragas, men and nonhuman beings. They also saw that the sixteen princes were begging the Buddha to turn the wheel of the Dharma. Thereupon the Brahman-heavenly­kings worshipped the Buddha with their heads, walked around him a hundred thousand times, and strewed heavenly flowers to him. The strewn flowers were heaped up to the height of Mt. Sumeru. The Brahman-heavenly-kings offered flowers also to the ten-yojana-tall Bodhi-tree of the Buddha. Having offered flowers, they offered their palaces to the Buddha, saying, ‘We offer these palaces to you. Receive them and benefit us out of your compassion towards us!’ In the presence of the Buddha, they simultaneously praised him in gāthās with all their hearts:

You, the World-Honored One, are exceptional.
It is difficult to meet you.
You have innumerable merits.
You are saving all living beings.

As the great teacher of gods and men,
You are benefiting all living beings
Of the worlds of the ten quarters
Out of your compassion towards them.

We have come here from five hundred billion worlds.
We gave up the pleasure
Of deep dhyāna-concentration
Because we wished to make offerings to you.
Our palaces are beautifully adorned
Because we accumulated merits in our previous existence.
We offer [these palaces] to you.
Receive them out of your compassion towards us!

“Thereupon the Brahman-heavenly-kings, having praised the Buddha with these gāthās, said, ‘World-Honored One! Turn the wheel of the Dharma and save all living beings! Open the Way to Nirvāṇa!’ They simultaneously said in a gāthā with all their hearts:

Hero of the World,
Most Honorable Biped!
Expound the Dharma!
Save the suffering beings
By the power of your great compassion!

“Thereupon Great-Universal-Wisdom-Excellence Tathāgata gave his tacit consent to their appeal

See The Richest Man In All Japan

2buddhas, LS32

The Richest Man In All Japan

During the bleak Sado Island years, Nichiren grappled with the question of why, when the Lotus Sūtra promises “peace in this world,” he should have to undergo such ordeals. He also pondered other doubts, sometimes voiced by his followers: If he was indeed correctly practicing the Lotus Sūtra, why didn’t the benevolent deities who protect the buddha-dharma intervene to assist him? Why didn’t those who persecuted him meet with obvious karmic retribution?

Nichiren addressed these questions in a deeply introspective mode, for example, in his famous treatise Kaimoku shō (“Opening the Eyes,” 1272), one of his most important writings, written as a testament to his followers in the event of his death. Here he reflects that in prior lifetimes, he himself must have committed offenses against the Lotus Sūtra and its devotees and was now enduring his present trials to expiate such offenses, just as iron is cleansed of impurities when forged in a fire. In this context, Nichiren drew upon the six-fascicle Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra, which states: “By the power of the merit gained by protecting the dharma, one receives lightened [karmic retribution for past offenses] in the present life.” In adopting this perspective, Nichiren claimed agency for his sufferings by representing them, not as a trial inflicted upon him by his enemies, but as an ordeal that he had deliberately chosen as an act of expiation. He also encouraged his followers by saying that the hardships they faced had in fact been predicted in the Lotus Sūtra itself, and thus confirmed the legitimacy of their practice and the certainty of their eventual buddhahood.

As for why their tormentors failed to experience obvious karmic retribution, Nichiren simply noted that when a person’s sins are so weighty as to condemn them after death to the Avici hell, there may be no sign of retribution in that individual’s present life. Alternatively, Nichiren maintained that because people had abandoned the Lotus Sūtra, the protective deities, no longer able to hear the true dharma, had abandoned their shrines and returned to the heavens; thus, they could not be counted on to safeguard Lotus devotees or to punish their persecutors. Yet his conclusion was a resolve that seeks no explanation for adversity and no guarantee of protection; it is a resolve to simply persevere, whatever may happen: “Let heaven forsake me. Let ordeals confront me. I will not begrudge bodily life. … Whatever trials I and my disciples may encounter, so long as we do not cherish doubts, we will naturally achieve buddhahood. Do not doubt because heaven does not extend its protection. Do not lament that you do not enjoy peace in this world.”

Nichiren’s conviction infused his life with immense meaning and enabled him to assert — in the midst of privation and danger — that he was “the richest man in all Japan today.” Nichiren taught his followers that while faith might result in this-worldly good fortune, more importantly, it revealed inner resources of joy and assurance, independent of outward circumstances, that would sustain them through trying times.

Two Buddhas, p101-102
Lecture on Lotus Sutra, d15b

Emphasis on the Teaching, Not the Teacher

In Chapter 10 there is another transition that takes place in the Lotus Sutra and that is the transition from an emphasis on the body of the Buddha to the teaching of the Buddha. In this chapter the Buddha tells his disciples that instead of enshrining his relics, the teaching of the Wonderful Dharma of the Lotus Flower Sutra should be what is contained within the stupa we revere. Here too in this great drama we should remember that because the teaching is true, the teacher is great. We devote ourselves to the Lotus Sutra and to the teacher of that sutra and through our devotion we bring it to life.

Lecture on the Lotus Sutra

LS32

Day 10

Day 10 concludes Chapter 6, Assurance of Future Buddhahood, and opens Chapter 7, The Parable of a Magic City.

Day 10 Text with annotationsPlay MP3

Having last month heard the prediction for Great Kātyāyana, we hear the prediction for Great Maudgalyāyana.

Thereupon the World-Honored One said again to the great multitude:

“Now I will tell you. This Great Maudgalyāyana will make various offerings to eight thousand Buddhas, respect them, and honor them. After the extinction of each of those Buddhas, he will erect a stūpa-mausoleum a thousand yojanas high, and five hundred yojanas wide and deep. He will make it of the seven treasures: gold, silver, lapis lazuli, shell, agate, pearl and ruby. He will offer flowers, necklaces, incense applicable to the skin, incense powder, incense to burn, canopies, banners and streamers to the stūpa-mausoleum. After that he will make the same offerings to two hundred billions of Buddhas. Then he will become a Buddha called Tamālapattra-candana-Fragrance, the Tathāgata, 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. The kalpa in which he will become that Buddha will be called Joyfulness; and his world, Mind-­Happiness. The ground [of his world] will be even, made of crystal, adorned with jeweled trees, and purified with strewn flowers of pearls. Anyone will rejoice at seeing it. Innumerable gods, men, Bodhisattvas and Śrāvakas will live there. The duration of the life of that Buddha will be twenty-four small kalpas. His right teachings will be preserved for forty small kalpas, and the counterfeit of his right teachings also will be preserved for forty small kalpas.”

See One’s Own Practice Affects Others

2buddhas, LS32, d10b, d9b

One’s Own Practice Affects Others

In the original story, Maudgalyāyana cannot assist his mother with his own magical powers; he can only do so by the power of the dharma. The fact that she is saved when he offers a meal to the monastic assembly reflects the widely held idea that the transfer of merit to the deceased is most efficacious when ritually mediated by monastics, especially those earnest in practice and pure in their vows. … Nichiren presents an alternative explanation, showing how he adapted traditional Buddhist stories to his Lotus exclusivism:

The Urabon service began with the Venerable Maudgalyāyana’s attempts to save his mother, Shōdai-nyo, who on account of her miserliness and greed had fallen for five hundred lifetimes into the realm of hungry ghosts. But he could not make her become a buddha. The reason was because he himself did not yet practice the Lotus Sūtra, and so he could not lead even his own mother to buddhahood. But at the eight-year assembly on Vulture Peak, he embraced the Lotus Sūtra, chanted Namu Myōhō-renge-kyō, and became the Buddha Tamālapattracandanagandha [Tamālapattra Sandalwood Fragrance]. At that time, his mother became a Buddha too.

You also asked about offerings for hungry ghosts. The third fascile of the Lotus Sūtra says, ‘It is as though someone coming from a country suffering from famine were suddenly to find a great king’s feast spread before him.’ … When you make offerings for hungry ghosts, you should recite this passage from the sūtra and also chant Namu Myōhō-renge-kyō.

Claims that one person’s religious attainment would simultaneously benefit that individual’s family members, sometimes for seven generations in each direction, was common in Nichiren’s time. They express a confidence, grounded in Mahāyāna notions of interconnection, that one’s own practice affects others across time, space, and the boundaries of life and death. Nichiren here assimilates such ideas to the practice of chanting the daimoku, the title of the Lotus Sūtra.

Two Buddhas, p108-109
LS32

Day 9

Day 9 covers Chapter 5, The Simile of Herbs, and introduces Chapter 6, Assurance of Future Buddhahood.

Day 9 Text with annotationsPlay MP3

Having last month heard the prediction for Mahā-Kāśyapa, we repeat the prediction in gāthās.

Thereupon the World-Honored One, wishing to repeat what he had said, sang in gāthās:

I will tell you, bhikṣus.
I see this Kāśyapa
With the eyes of the Buddha.
He will become a Buddha
In his future life
After innumerable’ kalpas from now.

He will see in his future life
Three hundred billions
Of Buddhas, of World-Honored Ones.
He will make offerings to them,
And perform brahma practices
To obtain the wisdom of the Buddha.
Having made offerings
To the Most Honorable Bipeds,
He will study and practice
Unsurpassed wisdom,
And become a Buddha on the final stage
Of his physical existence.

The ground [of his world] will be pure.
It will be made of lapis lazuli.
Many jeweled trees
Will stand on the roadsides.
The roads will be marked off by ropes of gold.
Anyone will rejoice at seeing them.

Fragrance will be sent forth from the trees;
And beautiful flowers will be strewn
On the ground, which will be adorned
With various wonderful things.
The ground will be even,
And devoid of mounds and pits.

The number of the Bodhisattvas
Will be beyond calculation.
They will be gentle.
They will have great supernatural powers.
They will keep the sutras of the Great Vehicle
Expounded by the Buddhas.

The Śrāvakas will have already eliminated āsravas,
And reached the final stage of their physical existence.
They will become sons of the King of the Dharma.
Their number also will be beyond calculation.
Even those who have heavenly eyes
Will not be able to count them.

The duration of the life of that Buddha
Will be twelve small kalpas.
His right teachings will be preserved
For twenty small kalpas.
The counterfeit of his right teachings
Will be preserved also for twenty small kalpas.
All this is my prophecy
About the World-Honored One called Light.

See Divisions of the Lotus Sutra