Based upon the teachings of the sūtras and the classic treatises explaining Buddhist cosmology and the working of karma, Nichiren believed that the fruition of karma was not just an individual matter but also something that unfolded in terms of whole societies, even nations. This is what we would today call “collective karma.” He also believed that the effects of karma could occur in conspicuous or obvious ways, such as when there are wars or tragic accidents; however, it could occur in more subtle and inconspicuous ways, such as the slow and quiet progress of an illness. Nichiren also taught that the effects of karma can unfold in the present life, in the next life, or even be deferred to some other future lifetime. The intertwining of wholesome and unwholesome karmic seeds, the intermingling of individual and collective karma, and the uncertainty of when causes and conditions will bring about the karmic effects of past deeds all combine to make the unfolding of the karmic law of cause and effect quite subtle and complex.
Open Your Eyes, p519Category Archives: WONS
The Eternal Pure Land
[W]hen the Eternal Buddha was revealed in the essential section of the Lotus Sūtra, this world of endurance (Sahā World) became the Eternal Pure Land, indestructible even by the three calamities of conflagration, flooding, and strong winds, which are said to destroy the world. It transcends the four periods of cosmic change: the kalpa of construction, continuance, destruction, and emptiness. Śākyamuni Buddha, the Lord-preacher of this Pure Land, has never died in the past, nor will He be born in the future. He exists forever throughout the past, present, and future. All those who receive His guidance are one with this Eternal Buddha. It is because each of our minds is equipped with the “3,000 modes of existence” and the “three factors,” namely, all living beings, the land in which they live, and the five elements of living beings (matter, perception, conception, volition and consciousness).
This truth was not made clear in the first fourteen chapters of the theoretical section of the Lotus Sūtra. Perhaps it was because the time was not ripe at this stage of preaching the Lotus Sūtra; and capacity of comprehension on the part of the listeners was not yet sufficient.
Kanjin Honzon-shō, A Treatise Revealing the Spiritual Contemplation and the Most Verable One, Writings of Nichiren Shōnin, Doctrine 2, Page 148
Revealing Hidden Seeds of Past Evil Karma
Nichiren speaks of the power of practice to reveal the hidden seeds of past evil karma in terms of two analogies — the forging of iron and the collection of hemp oil. “It is like forging iron, for instance. Unless you hit it and forge it hard, hidden scars will not be seen. They appear only when the iron is hit hard many times on an anvil. Or it is analogous to squeezing hemp seeds. Unless squeezed hard, there is little oil.” (Murano 2000, p. 107) Nichiren states that he would not have faced any resistance if he had remained content to teach the provisional sūtras that others were already teaching. “Ever since l, Nichiren, strongly condemned those who slander the True Dharma in Japan, I have been persecuted. It must be that grave sins in my past lives are revealed through my merits in defending the Dharma in this life.” (Murano 2000, p. 107) From this perspective, to encounter resistance and even persecutions is proof that one’s practice is valid, that it is making a real difference in one’s life and the lives of others. I think it is true that if we challenge ourselves in our Buddhist practice, we will find ourselves coming up against latent forces of ego and the power of unwholesome habit patterns. We may even find ourselves having to stand up to and confront the people around us who are invested in an unwholesome or unjust status quo. Substance abusers, for instance, who try to break their addictions and change their way of living will meet resistance from “friends” and sometimes even family or co-workers when they try to change their habits and accustomed ways of doing things, and needless to say they will also have to confront their own inner demons. On the other hand, sometimes the resistance we meet in others is not because we are cultivating a more liberated, wholesome, and compassionate way of living but because we are acting out in ways that are needlessly provocative, arrogant, belligerent, and/or paranoid and mistaking that for taking a revolutionary or prophetic stance for everyone’s good. We must be very wary of the view that resistance automatically proves we are right or that we are expiating karma. Sometimes it can be proof that we are on the wrong track, that we are hardening our ego instead of realizing selfless compassion, and actually sowing the seeds of conflict rather than harmony due to our belligerent self-righteousness.
Open Your Eyes, p518Clothing a Happy Mind
Clothing defends our bodies against the cold and protects our bodies against the heat. It also hugs or adorns our bodies. It is preached in the “Medicine King” chapter of the Lotus Sūtra, fascicle 7, “It is as if a naked person was given clothing.” This means that it is tantamount to a person who receives clothes after shivering in the cold without them. It refers to a happy mind.
Nanjō-dono Gohenji, Reply to Lord Nanjō, Writings of Nichiren Shōnin, Volume 7, Followers II, Pages 17
The Stronger Our Faith The Greater the Divine Protection
In the Differences Between the Lotus School and Other Schools Such as the Mantra School (Shingon Shoshū Imoku) Nichiren wrote a clear and concise statement about his belief that he had both expiated his past misdeeds and received divine protection:
The sun and moon are clear mirrors shining on all the worlds in the universe, but do they know about Nichiren? I am sure that they know me. So, we should not doubt or worry about the protection of various heavenly beings. Nevertheless, I, Nichiren, have been persecuted because the sins that I committed in my past lives have not been completely eradicated. As I have been exiled because of my faith in the Lotus Sūtra, some of my sins may have been atoned so the Buddha may protect me under his robe. It was the protection of the Buddha that saved me from near death at Tatsunokuchi at midnight on the twelfth of the ninth month last year.
Grand Master Miaole said in his Supplemental Amplifications on the Great Calming and Contemplation that the stronger our faith is, the greater the divine protection will be. Do not doubt this. You should firmly believe in and do not doubt that there always is divine protection. (Murano 2000, p. 125 adapted)
Open Your Eyes, p517Children Propagating Their Father’s Dharma
It is preached in the Lotus Sūtra, chapter 15 on “The Appearance of Bodhisattvas from Underground”:
“There are bodhisattvas as many as the sand of 60,000 Ganges Rivers originally in this Sahā World, and each of them is accompanied by followers also numbering 60,000 times as many as the sands of the Ganges River. They will uphold, read, recite and expound this sūtra.”
When the Buddha had said these words, the earth of the one billion countries of the Sahā World all trembled and split open and out of them emerged simultaneously immeasurable thousands, ten thousands, millions of bodhisattvas. …
These bodhisattvas had four leaders. The first was Superior Practice, the second was Limitless Practice, the third was Pure Practice and the fourth was Steadily Established Practice. These four were the foremost leaders and guiding teachers of all in the group.”
Grand Master T’ien-t’ai interprets this scriptural statement in his Words and Phrases of the Lotus Sūtra, “These bodhisattvas are My (the Buddha’s) disciples, who will spread My dharma;” and Grand Master Miao-lê comments on this in the Annotations on the Words and Phrases of the Lotus Sūtra, “Śākyamuni Buddha is the father and bodhisattvas who emerged from underground are His children, so the children are going to propagate their father’s dharma;” while Tao-hsien explains this in his Supplement to the Annotations on the Words and Phrases of the Lotus Sūtra, “Speaking of entrusting the dharma, this sūtra was entrusted only to the bodhisattvas who emerged from the earth. Why was this? Because it was the dharma attained by the Buddha in the eternal past, it was entrusted to those bodhisattvas guided by the Buddha in the eternal past.”
For these great bodhisattvas to deliver benefits to the people in the Latter Age of Degeneration is as easy as fish swimming in the water and birds flying in the sky. For those who were born in the evil world to meet these great bodhisattvas and have the seed of Buddhahood sown in them is like the spirit of water that faces the moon and pours out water or a peahen that becomes pregnant upon hearing the sounds of thunder. As T’ien-t’ai says of this in his Profound Meaning of the Lotus Sutra, “As all rivers pour into the sea, bodhisattvas are born drawn by karmic relations.”
Soya Nyūdō-dono-gari Gosho, A Letter to Lay Priest Lord Soya, Writings of Nichiren Shōnin, Doctrine 3, Pages 162.
The Lesson of Never Despising Bodhisattva
Nichiren takes the description of the three kinds of enemies as a prophecy that vindicates his mission even as his persecutions fulfill the prophecy, but what should we make of this in our own lives and practice? Some people have interpreted this teaching to mean that one is only practicing the Lotus Sūtra correctly if one is arousing opposition. Consequently, these people believe that they must either identify who their enemies are or else preach the Lotus Sūtra so stridently that they will be sure to make enemies. I am not convinced that this is what the Lotus Sūtra really intends, even if it might appear to be the way Nichiren did things.
If we look at chapter twenty, “Never Despising Bodhisattva,” of the Lotus Sūtra we will find a story that illustrates what the sūtra intends. In that chapter the Buddha tells a story of a past life when he was known as the Never Despising Bodhisattva. That bodhisattva’s whole practice consisted of bowing to all he met and greeting them with the words, “I do not despise you because you can become buddhas.” (Murano 2012, p. 292) This practice of showing respect to all people and assuring them that they could attain buddhahood aroused the opposition of the arrogant monastics and laity who did not believe that ordinary people could attain buddhahood. They mocked him and even attempted to strike him with sticks and to throw stones at him. Never Despising Bodhisattva, however, did not return their abuse but moved to a safe distance and continued to regard them with respect and to assure them of their future buddhahood. This story seems to be a dramatization of the description given in the twenty stanzas of chapter thirteen. This story tells us two important things. The first is that Never Despising Bodhisattva did not seek to make enemies. All he did was respectfully share the message of the Lotus Sūtra, even if it contradicted the preconceived ideas of those who believed they had nothing more to learn about Buddhism. The second is that even when he was abused, he continued to maintain a respectful attitude and did not compromise his mission to preach the Lotus Sūtra. Nichiren himself equates his mission to teach Odaimoku with that of Never Despising Bodhisattva in Testimony to the Prediction of the Buddha (Kembutsu Mirai-ki):
Nevertheless, if there is a man after the death of the Buddha who breaks the attachment to the false doctrines of the “four tastes and three teachings” of the pre-Lotus sūtras and puts faith in the True Dharma of the Lotus Sūtra, all the virtuous gods and numerous bodhisattvas who sprang up from underground will protect such a practitioner of the Lotus Sūtra. Under such protection, this practitioner would be able to spread over the world the focus of devotion (honzon) revealed in the Original Gate and the five-word daimoku of Myō, Hō, Ren, Ge, and Kyō,” the essence of the Lotus Sūtra.
He is just like Never Despising Bodhisattva, who, in the
Age of the Semblance Dharma after the death of
Powerful Voice King Buddha, spread in the land of this Buddha the twenty-four character passage in the Lotus Sūtra (chapter twenty) saying: “I respect you deeply. I do not despise you. Why is this? It is because you all will practice the way of bodhisattvas and will be able to attain buddhahood.” With such propagation, the bodhisattva was severely persecuted by all the people in the land, who beat him with sticks and threw stones at him.
Although the twenty-four characters of Never Despising Bodhisattva differ in wording from the five characters which I, Nichiren, spread, they are the same in meaning. We both appeared in the world under the same conditions: he toward the end of the Age of the Semblance Dharma after the death of Powerful Voice King Buddha, and I at the beginning of the Latter Age after the death of Śākyamuni Buddha. (Hori 2002, p. 174 adapted)
Open Your Eyes, p508-509Reading Teachings for Ourselves
I would propose that Śākyamuni Buddha, as a literary figure in the sūtras, is a personification of the ideals and insights of the Buddhist tradition. The Eternal Śākyamuni Buddha of the Original Gate therefore personifies what those Mahāyāna Buddhists who have given credence to the Lotus Sūtra believe is the ultimate message of Mahāyāna Buddhism. Nichiren believed that this message was one of the universal and immediate accessibility of buddhahood, and that this message was what the Tiantai school had been championing until it had become obscured by other messages that Nichiren saw as departures from what is taught in the Mahāyāna sūtras and particularly the Lotus Sūtra. For Nichiren, fidelity to Buddhism is fidelity to the tradition expressed in the sūtras that had inspired and guided Mahāyāna Buddhists for well over a millennium at the time he wrote Kaimoku-shō. In our present time and circumstances I think that to avoid falling into the category of “ignorant laypeople” we who wish to be inspired and guided by the Mahāyāna teachings should read these teachings for ourselves so that we will be in a position to judge whether or not a particular Buddhist group or a particular teacher is authentically representing that tradition or distorting it due to biased ideas or for less than worthy goals.
Open Your Eyes, p504Practicing Solely the Lotus Sūtra
“Honestly” in the phrase of “honestly casting away the expedient” stated in the sūtra means that when a beginner practices the Lotus Sūtra, the beginner should be devoted to practicing solely the Lotus Sūtra, casting away all the other sūtras mentioned before; such is a really honest practicer. If, on the contrary, a beginner practices the various sūtras and the Lotus Sūtra simultaneously, just like highly trained bodhisattvas, this person would surely be regarded as a dishonest practicer. As the proverbs say: “A sage never served two rulers;” and “A virtuous wife does not remarry;” they describe the honest practicer.
Shimoyama Goshōsoku, The Shimoyama Letter, Writings of Nichiren Shōnin, Volume 5, Page 69
Virtue of the Chinese Character Myō
“Myō” means revival. For example, when a mother crane calls out to her dead child, “Shian,” the dead crane will come back to life. When a poisonous bird called chinchō enters the water, fish and clam will die from the bird’s poison, but the touch of a rhinoceros horn will bring them back to life. Similarly, when the Two Vehicles of śrāvaka and pratyekabuddha, (who were nearly dead because their seeds of Buddhahood were roasted in various sūtras,) icchantika, women and others who uphold the character “myō,” their dead seeds will be revived and they will all be resuscitated.
Hokke Daimoku Shō, Treatise on the Daimoku of the Lotus Sūtra, Writings of Nichiren Shōnin, Faith and Practice, Volume 4, Page 46