Category Archives: WONS

WONS

The Difference Between Expedient and True Teachings

[T]he Annotations on the Great Concentration and Insight, fascicle 1, states: “Those who listen without revering the perfect and sudden true teaching are influenced by the recent academic tradition of ‘mixing up’ expedient and true teachings among those who study Mahāyāna Buddhism.” Those who do not know the difference between the expedient and true teachings of the Mahāyāna are referred to as “mixed up.” As a result those who believe in the Lotus Sūtra, the true Mahāyāna teaching, are as rare as the soil on a fingernail while those who do not believe in the sūtra and are diverted to expedient teachings are as immeasurable as the dust in the worlds throughout the universe.

Regretting this, Grand Master Miao-lê laments in his Annotations on the Great Concentration and Insight, fascicle 1: “In the Age of the Semblance Dharma and the Latter Age of Degeneration, people are so heartless and impious that they don’t even try to contemplate the perfect and sudden true teaching, scriptures of which are overflowing the libraries and chests, to the very end. They are born and die in vain. How pathetic their lives are!” This remark in the Annotations by Grand Master Miao-lê, an avatar of a bodhisattva, I believe, is his long-range prediction on the state of Japan today, in the Latter Age of Degeneration.

Shugo Kokka-ron, Treatise on Protecting the Nation, Writings of Nichiren Shōnin, Doctrine 1, Page 55

LS32, WONS

Day 7

Day 7 concludes Chapter 3, A Parable, and begins Chapter 4, Understanding by Faith.

Day 7 Text with annotationsPlay MP3
Having last month concluded Chapter 3, A Parable, we begin Chapter 4, Understanding by Faith, with the men of wisdom explaining why they had not sought Anuttara-samyak-saṃbodhi.

Thereupon the men living the life of wisdom: Subhūti, Mahā-Kātyāyana, Mahā-Kāśyapa, and Mahā-Maudgalyāyana felt strange because they heard the Dharma from the Buddha that they had never heard before, and because they heard that the World-Honored One had assured Śāriputra of his future attainment of Anuttara-samyak-saṃbodhi. They felt like dancing with joy, rose from their seats, adjusted their robes, bared their right shoulders, put their right knees on the ground, joined their hands together with all their hearts, bent themselves respectfully, looked up at the honorable face, and said to the Buddha:

“We elders of the Saṃgha were already old and decrepit [when we heard of Anuttara-samyak-saṃbodhi]. We did not seek Anuttara-samyak-saṃbodhi because we thought that we had already attained Nirvāṇa, and also because we thought that we were too old and decrepit to do so.’ You have been expounding the Dharma for a long time. We have been in your congregation all the while. We were already tired [when we heard of Anuttara-samyak-saṃbodhi]. Therefore, we just cherished the truth that nothing is substantial, the truth that nothing is different from any other thing, and the truth that nothing more is to be sought. We did not wish to perform the Bodhisattva practices, that is, to purify the world of the Buddha and to lead all living beings [to Buddhahood] by displaying supernatural powers because you had already led us out of the triple world and caused us to attain Nirvāṇa. Neither did we wish at all to attain Anuttara-samyak-saṃbodhi, which you were teaching to Bodhisattvas, because we were already too old and decrepit to do so. But now we are very glad to hear that you have assured a Śrāvakas of his future attainment of Anuttara-samyak-saṃbodhi. We have the greatest joy that we have ever had. We have never expected to hear such a rare teaching all of a sudden. How glad we are! We have obtained great benefits. We have obtained innumerable treasures although we did not seek them.

Nichiren discusses Mahā-Kāśyapa’s lineage in his letter Reply to Lord Tokimitsu:

Venerable Mahā-Kāśyapa was the most honorable among the Buddha’s disciples. Concerning his lineage, he was the son of Nyagrodha, a millionaire in Magadha, India. The house of his millionaire father was as huge as 1,000 tatami mats, with each mat being seven feet thick and costing at least 1,000 ryō (gold coins). His house had as many as 999 ploughs, each costing 1,000 ryō. It is also said that his house included 60 warehouses each containing 340 koku (about 1200 metric tons) of gold. Nyagrodha was a very wealthy person.

The wife of Mahā-Kāśyapa had a golden body so brilliant that it illuminated an area 16 ri (about 80 km) around herself. She was more beautiful than Princess Sotoori of Japan or Lady Li of Han China. Having aspirations for enlightenment, Kāśyapa and his wife became disciples of the Buddha and were guaranteed by the Buddha to become the future Light Buddha in the Lotus Sūtra.

Looking into their Buddhist practices in their prior existences, the husband was reborn as Venerable Mahā-Kāśyapa due to his offering of a bowl of barley rice to a pratyekabuddha. His wife, a poor woman, paid one gold coin to a Buddhist sculptor for gilding a statue of Vipaśyin Buddha and thereby was reborn as a beautiful golden woman to be the wife of Mahā-Kāśyapa.

Tokimitsu-dono Gohenji, Reply to Lord Tokimitsu, Writings of Nichiren Shōnin, Volume 7, Followers II, Pages 25

Eyes, WONS

The Great Vehicle of Salvation

Quote

Nichiren states that any of the teachings of the Buddha’s fifty years of teaching are a great vehicle of salvation compared to the non-Buddhist teachings. This is because the other teachings either do not teach about karma and rebirth in the six worlds or they do not show how to thoroughly extinguish the greed, hatred, delusion and other defilements that perpetuate the cycle of rebirth. At the same time, there are differences in degrees of profundity even among the Buddha’s teachings between Mahāyāna and Hinayāna, exoteric and esoteric, accommodating and confrontational rhetoric, and between provisional and final statements of truth. Nichiren asserts that the highest truth can only be found in the Lotus Sūtra, and he cites the testimony of Śākyamuni Buddha, Many Treasures Buddha, and the buddhas of the ten direction in the Lotus Sūtra itself as confirmation of this.

Open Your Eyes, p139
WONS

Preaching the True Intent of the Buddha

QUESTION: When we look at our own faces reflected in the mirror or faces of other people, we can see that our six sense-organs: eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body, and mind exist. However, we cannot see the existence of the ten realms in our own mind and others. How can we believe in it?

ANSWER: Certainly, it is not easy to believe in this existence. It is said in the tenth chapter, “The Teacher of the Dharma,” of the Lotus Sūtra that the sūtra is most difficult to put faith in and most difficult to comprehend. The eleventh chapter, “Appearance of the Stupa of Treasures,” preaches the “six difficult and nine easy acts,” maintaining that keeping faith in the Lotus Sūtra after the death of Śākyamuni Buddha is harder than trying to grasp Mt. Sumeru and hurling it over countless Buddha lands.

According to Grand Master T’ien-tai, the Lotus Sūtra is hard to have faith in and hard to understand because what is preached in both the essential and theoretical sections of the sūtra are altogether different from what is preached in those sūtras expounded before the Lotus Sūtra. Grand Master Chang-an states: “The doctrine of ‘mutual possession of ten realms’ (jikkai gogu) is the very reason why the Buddha appeared in the world. How can we ordinary people be expected to put faith in the Lotus Sūtra and comprehend it easily?” Grand Master Dengyō maintains: “This Lotus Sūtra is most difficult to believe in and comprehend, because the sūtra preaches the true intent of the Buddha.”

Kanjin Honzon-shō, A Treatise Revealing the Spiritual Contemplation and the Most Verable One, Writings of Nichiren Shōnin, Doctrine 2, Page 133-134

WONS

Complete Agreement with the Lotus Sūtra

[I]n the Lotus Sūtra we find many things mysterious and difficult to believe. Yet when we think of doubting the Lotus Sūtra, the Buddha of Many Treasures testified it to be true, Lord Preacher Śākyamuni Buddha Himself declared it to be His direct and true words, and the Buddhas in manifestation throughout the universe extolled it by extending their wide and long tongues to the Brahma Heaven. This is like a father’s letter of conveyance attached by a mother’s signed deed and approved by a wise king. When they are in complete agreement, how can anyone doubt this?

Matsuno-dono Goshōsoku, Letter to Lord Matsuno, Writings of Nichiren Shōnin, Volume 7, Followers II, Page 66

Eyes, WONS

Eight Phases of Śākyamuni’s Life

Quote

Nichiren sometimes alludes to the eight phases of Śākyamuni Buddha’s life. This is a way of summing up the story of the Buddha in the following eight events:

  1. Descent from the Tushita Heaven — Before his last earthly rebirth, the future Buddha lived in the Heaven of Contentment (Skt. Tuṣita) awaiting the right time, place and family for his final rebirth.
  2. Entering Queen Māyā’s womb — When the right conditions arose Queen Māyā of Kapilavastu had a most singular dream. She dreamed that a six-tusked white elephant holding a white lotus flower in its trunk circled around her three times and then entered into her womb. At that moment Queen Māyā conceived the bodhisattva.
  3. Emerging from Queen Māyā’s womb—Queen Māyā gave birth to him painlessly while standing up and holding onto a sal tree branch while visiting the Lumbini Garden near Kapilavastu. The legend states that immediately upon entering the world, the young Prince Siddhārtha took seven steps and made the following statement: “I am born for awakening for the good of the world; this is my last birth in the world of phenomena.” (Asvaghosa’s Buddhacarita, part Il, p. 4)
  4. Leaving home— After witnessing an old man, a sick man, a funeral procession, and a religious mendicant, Prince Siddhārtha left his family (his father King Suddhodana, his wife Yaśodharā, and his son Rahula) and became an forest ascetic.
  5. Overcoming Māra — After turning away from asceticism, the bodhisattva sat beneath the Bodhi Tree at Bodhgaya and overcame temptations and distractions of the demon Māra.
  6. Attaining the Way—As the morning star (Venus?) rose in the morning sky, the bodhisattva attained buddhahood and henceforth became known as Śākyamuni Buddha.
  7. Turning the Wheel of the Dharma —Starting at the Deer Park near the city of Vārāṇasi, the Buddha began to teach the Dharma and continued to do so for fifty years.
  8. Entering final nirvāṇa —At the age of eighty, the Buddha passed away beneath the twin sal trees near the city of Kuśinagara.
Open Your Eyes, p137-138
d21b, d5b, d9b, WONS

The Difficulty of the Lotus Sūtra

In the “Life Span of the Buddha” chapter of the Lotus Sūtra the Buddha preaches about Himself, “I have been the Buddha since the eternal past, 500 (million) dust-particle kalpa (aeons).” We, ordinary beings, do not remember things in the past even things that occurred after our birth. How much more so can we remember things in the past life or two! How can we believe anything that took place as far away in the past as 500 million dust-particle kalpa ago?

The Buddha also spoke to His disciple Śāriputra predicting his future Buddhahood, “You will become a Buddha in the future after passing numerous and unimaginable number of kalpa (aeons). You will then be called the Flower Light Buddha.” Predicting the future of Mahā-Kāśyapa, the Buddha stated, “In a future life, you will become a Buddha named the Light Buddha during your last incarnation.”

These scriptural statements, however, are the predictions of the future, which does not seem possible for us ordinary people to put faith in. Therefore, this Lotus Sūtra is difficult for us, ordinary men and women, who have no knowledge of things in the past or in the future. Hence it does not make sense for us to practice the Lotus Sūtra. Yet it may be possible for some people to believe this Lotus Sūtra if there was someone at present who could present factual proofs to people in front of their very eyes.

Hōren-shō, Letter to Hōren, Writings of Nichiren Shōnin, Volume 6, Followers I, Page 50

WONS

Hachiman’s Failure

Before the time of Grand Master Dengyō, this Great Bodhisattva Hachiman had been fed with the taste of a diluted Lotus Sūtra, like milk diluted with water. Due to the merit of his virtuous acts in previous lives, the Great Bodhisattva was reborn as Emperor Ōjin and manifested himself as a god to protect the land of Japan. However, Hachiman’s merit of good acts in previous lives has been exhausted and the taste of the True Dharma has been lost and it has been many years since the slanderers of the True Dharma filled the country of Japan. Being revered by the people of Japan for many years as their protective deity, Hachiman did not abandon them, but kept the slanderers of the True Dharma under his protection, like aged parents refusing to cast aside unfilial children. Therefore, Hachiman’s palace was burnt down probably by heavenly beings as punishment.

Kangyō Hachiman-shō, Remonstration with Bodhisattva Hachiman, Writings of Nichiren Shōnin, Doctrine 1, Page 264-265

LS32, WONS

Day 3

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

Day 3 Text with annotationsPlay MP3
Having last month concluded today’s portion of Chapter 2, Expedients, we return to the top and the World-Honored One emerging quietly from his samādhi.

Thereupon the World-Honored One emerged quietly from his samādhi, and said to Śāriputra:
“The wisdom of the [present] Buddhas is profound and immeasurable. The gate to it is difficult to understand and difficult to enter. [Their wisdom] cannot be understood by any Śrāvaka or Pratyekabuddha because the [present] Buddhas attended on many hundreds of thousands of billions of [past] Buddhas, and practiced the innumerable teachings of those Buddhas bravely and strenuously to their far-flung fame until they attained the profound Dharma which you have never heard before, [and became Buddhas,] and also because [since they became Buddhas] they have been expounding the Dharma according to the capacities of all living beings in such various ways that the true purpose of their [various] teachings is difficult to understand.

“Śāriputra! Since I became a Buddha, I [also] have been expounding various teachings with various stories of previous lives, with various parables, and with various similes. I have been leading all living beings with innumerable expedients in order to save them from various attachments, because I have the power to employ expedients and the power to perform the pāramitā of insight.

“Śāriputra! The insight of the Tathāgatas is wide and deep. [The Tathāgatas] have all the [states of mind towards] innumerable [living beings,] unhindered [eloquence,] powers, fearlessness, dhyāna-concentrations, emancipations, and samādhis. They entered deep into boundlessness, and attained the Dharma which you have never heard before.

“Śāriputra! The Tathāgatas divide [the Dharma] into various teachings, and expound those teachings to all living beings so skillfully and with such gentle voices that living beings are delighted. Śāriputra! In short, the Buddhas attained the innumerable teachings which you have never heard before. No more, Śāriputra, will I say because the Dharma attained by the Buddhas is the highest Truth, rare [to hear] and difficult to understand. Only the Buddhas attained [the highest Truth, that is,] the reality of all things’ in regard to their appearances as such, their natures as such, their entities as such, their powers as such, their activities as such, their primary causes as such, their environmental causes as such, their effects as such, their rewards and retributions as such, and their equality as such [despite these differences].

Nichiren discusses how the dharma can be understood only between Buddhas and Buddhas alone in his letter “Listening to the Once Buddha Vehicle Teachings for the First Time”:

Pondering the Great Wisdom Discourse, we are reminded of the quotation in the second chapter of the Lotus Sūtra, “Expedients,” which reads: “Only between Buddhas and Buddhas alone can this be understood.” This quotation exists for the Two Vehicles (śrāvaka and pratyekabuddha) who, through pre-Lotus teachings, have overcome the delusions arising from incorrect views and thoughts, have undertaken extreme austerities, turning the body to ashes and annihilating consciousness, and are allowed to gain enlightenment by the grace of the Lotus Sūtra, which assures that the three ways of evil passions, karma, and suffering would immediately be transformed into the three merits of the Dharma Body, wisdom, and emancipation. Since what was believed to be beyond the reach of the Two Vehicles is attainable, it can be assumed that bodhisattvas and the untutored may also anticipate enlightenment. Grand Master T’ien-t’ai in his Profound Meaning of the Lotus Sūtra claims: “Granted that the condition in which someone of the Two Vehicles reaches a state of extreme mental and physical exhaustion where desires, which were called ‘poison,’ are thoroughly extinguished, then with the advent of enlightenment as guaranteed by the Lotus Sūtra such a poison would be transformed into medicine. This summarizes Nāgārjuna’s position. Nāgārjuna’s Great Wisdom Discourse further claims, ‘The Lotus Sūtra is indeed truly representative of an esoteric teaching; other teachings cannot be referred to as being so defined.’ ”

Shimon Butsujō-gi, Listening to the Once Buddha Vehicle Teachings for the First Time, Writings of Nichiren Shōnin, Doctrine 2, Page 249

d17b, d19b, d21b, d25b, d30b, d3b, d4b, WONS

Lotus Sūtra and Ten Realms

The second, “Expedients,” chapter of the Lotus Sūtra (fascicle 1) states that the purpose of the Buddhas appearing in the worlds was “to cause all living beings to open the gate to the insight of the Buddha.” This means that of the nine of the ten realms of living beings (excepting the realm of Buddhas), each embraces the realm of Buddhas. In the sixteenth chapter, “The Life Span of the Buddha,” the sūtra also declares: “As I said before, it is immeasurably long since I, Śākyamuni Buddha, obtained Buddhahood. My life spans an innumerably and incalculably long period of time. Nevertheless, I am always here and I shall never pass away. Good men! The duration of my life, which I obtained by practicing the way of bodhisattvas, has not yet expired. It will last twice as long as the length of time as stated above.” This passage also shows that the nine realms are included in the realm of Buddhas.

The following passages in the Lotus Sūtra also show that the ten realms of living beings embrace one another. It is said in the twelfth chapter, “Devadatta,” that after an incalculably long period of time, Devadatta will be a Buddha called “Heavenly King.” This shows the realm of Buddhas included in the realms of hells as it says that even a man as wicked as Devadatta, who had tried to kill the Buddha and had gone to hell, will be able to become a Buddha.

In the twenty-sixth chapter on the “Mystic Phrases,” the Buddha praises the ten female rākṣasa demons such as Lambā saying, “Your merits will be immeasurable even when you protect the person who keeps only the name of the Lotus Sūtra.” Since even these rākṣasa demons in the realm of hungry spirits protect the practicer of the Lotus Sūtra, the ten realms, from hells up to the realm of Buddhas, are comprised in the realm of hungry spirits.

The “Devadatta” chapter states also that a daughter of a dragon king attained perfect enlightenment, proving the existence of the ten realms in the realm of beasts.

The tenth chapter, “The Teacher of the Dharma,” says that even a semi-god like Asura King Balin (a king of asura demons mentioned in the first “Introduction” chapter) will obtain Buddhahood if he rejoices for a moment at hearing a verse or a phrase of the Lotus Sūtra. This shows that the ten realms are contained in the realm of asura demons.

It is stated in the second “Expedients” chapter: “Those who carve an image of the Buddha with proper physical characteristics in His honor have already attained the enlightenment of the Buddha,” showing that the realm of man includes the ten realms in it.

Then in the first “Introduction” and the third “A Parable” chapters, various gods such as the great King of the Brahma Heaven declare, “we also shall be able to become Buddhas,” proving that the ten realms are contained in the realm of gods. In the third chapter, the Buddha assures Śāripūtra, the wisest of His śrāvaka disciples, that he will also attain Buddhahood in future life and will be called “Kekō (Flower Light) Buddha.” This confirms the existence of the ten realms in the realm of śrāvaka.

The second chapter states that those monks and nuns who sought emancipation through the way of pratyekabuddha (without guidance of teachers by observing the principle of cause and effect) pressed their hands together in respect, wishing to hear the Perfect Way. This affirms the existence of the ten realms in the realm of pratyekabuddha.

It is written in the twenty-first chapter, “Divine Powers of the Buddha,” that bodhisattvas as numerous as particles of dust of 1,000 worlds, who had sprung up from underground, beseeched the Buddha for this true, pure, and great dharma, namely the Lotus Sūtra. This verifies the existence of the ten realms in the realm of bodhisattvas.

Finally, in the sixteenth chapter, the Buddha sometimes appears as a Buddha in the realm of Buddhas but at other times appears as some of the others who reside in the other nine realms. This indicates that the ten realms are included in the realm of Buddhas.

Kanjin Honzon-shō, A Treatise Revealing the Spiritual Contemplation and the Most Verable One, Writings of Nichiren Shōnin, Doctrine 2, Page 132-133