Therefore this one chapter titled “Devadatta” is a vital sword to be worn at the waist everywhere throughout the world. It is a secret Law to cut down the foes of ignorance and earthly desires and to sever the bonds of birth and death, longing and attachment. Emperor Kao-tsu, founder of the Han dynasty, had his three-foot sword, but it cannot compare to this one-word sword of wisdom. Myo, or wonderful, the one-word sword of wisdom, can sever bonds the bonds of birth and death and earthly desires.
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The Record of the Orally Transmitted Teachings (conclusion)
The Record of the Orally Transmitted Teachings (conclusion)
Chapter Twelve: Devadatta
Eight important points
Point Eight, on the passage “At that time the dragon girl had a precious jewel worth as much as the thousand-millionfold world [or the major world system] which she presented to the Buddha. The Buddha immediately accepted it. The dragon girl said too Bodhisattva Wisdom Accumulated and to the venerable one, Shariputra, ‘I presented the precious jewel and the World-Honored One accepted it—was that not quickly done?’
“They replied, ‘Very quickly!’
“The girl said, ‘Employ you supernatural powers and watch me attain Buddhahood. It will be even quicker than that!’”
Volume eight of Words and Phrases says, “First, the presentation of the jewel symbolizes the attainment of perfect understanding.”
The Record of the Orally Transmitted Teachings says: In the phrase “a precious jewel,” the word “a” or “one” indicates Myoho-renge-kyo [abbreviated as myoho, or the Wonderful Law]. “Precious” indicates the workings of the Wonderful Law., and the jewel indicates the entity of the Wonderful Law. Because it is myo, or “wonderful,” it embodies the element of the mind. And because it is ho, or the “Law,” it embodies the element of form or the body. The body phenomena are the “jewel” and the mind potentials are the “precious” element in it. The words “Wonderful Law” indicate that body and mind are not two different entities.
Expressing the principle of three thousand realms in a single moment of life, the dragon girl presents the precious jewel to the Buddha. When Words and Phrases says that this “symbolizes the attainment of perfect understanding,” it is referring to the principle of three thousand realms in a single moment of life. At the time when the precious jewel was still in the hands of the dragon girl, it represented the attainments that were inherent in her nature. But when the Buddha accepted the precious jewel, it became representative of the attainments acquired through religious practice. Herein is embodied the principle that “acquired through practice” and “inherent in nature” are not two different things.
The words “very quickly” represent the doctrine of sudden fulfillment, sudden and swift attainment, or sudden enlightenment. The same idea is expressed in the passage [in chapter eleven of the Lotus Sutra] that reads, “This way one will quickly attain / the unsurpassed Buddha way.”
In the term jinriki, or “supernatural powers,” the word jin, or “supernatural,” represents the element of the mind, and the word riki, or “powers,” represents the element of the body.
When the dragon girl says, “Watch me attain buddhahood,” Shariputra thinks she is referring only to her own attainment of Buddhahood, but this is an error. She is rebuking him by saying, “Watch how one attains Buddhahood.” The word kan, or “watch,” refers to the kan of the six stages of practice [of T’ien-t’ai’s Great Concentration and Insight]. Here one should understand it as pertaining to the kan, or perception, that is represented in the second of the six stages, the stage of hearing the name and words of the truth. Therefore, as soon as one hears Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, one has [as volume eight of Words and Phrases says in speaking of the dragon girl] “without doubt sat for a moment in the place of practice and thus attained Buddhahood.”
When the sutra says that the members of the assembly saw the dragon girl “change into a man,” it means that the dragon girl’s original state, that of a dragon girl, was already in the state of Nam-myoho-renge-kyo. This idea is brought out very clearly in this passage of the sutra.
The Record of the Orally Transmitted Teachings (conclusion)
Chapter Twelve: Devadatta
Eight important points
Point Eight, on the passage “At that time the dragon girl had a precious jewel worth as much as the thousand-millionfold world [or the major world system] which she presented to the Buddha. The Buddha immediately accepted it. The dragon girl said too Bodhisattva Wisdom Accumulated and to the venerable one, Shariputra, ‘I presented the precious jewel and the World-Honored One accepted it—was that not quickly done?’
“They replied, ‘Very quickly!’
“The girl said, ‘Employ you supernatural powers and watch me attain Buddhahood. It will be even quicker than that!’”
Volume eight of Words and Phrases says, “First, the presentation of the jewel symbolizes the attainment of perfect understanding.”
The Record of the Orally Transmitted Teachings says: In the phrase “a precious jewel,” the word “a” or “one” indicates Myoho-renge-kyo [abbreviated as myoho, or the Wonderful Law]. “Precious” indicates the workings of the Wonderful Law., and the jewel indicates the entity of the Wonderful Law. Because it is myo, or “wonderful,” it embodies the element of the mind. And because it is ho, or the “Law,” it embodies the element of form or the body. The body phenomena are the “jewel” and the mind potentials are the “precious” element in it. The words “Wonderful Law” indicate that body and mind are not two different entities.
Expressing the principle of three thousand realms in a single moment of life, the dragon girl presents the precious jewel to the Buddha. When Words and Phrases says that this “symbolizes the attainment of perfect understanding,” it is referring to the principle of three thousand realms in a single moment of life. At the time when the precious jewel was still in the hands of the dragon girl, it represented the attainments that were inherent in her nature. But when the Buddha accepted the precious jewel, it became representative of the attainments acquired through religious practice. Herein is embodied the principle that “acquired through practice” and “inherent in nature” are not two different things.
The words “very quickly” represent the doctrine of sudden fulfillment, sudden and swift attainment, or sudden enlightenment. The same idea is expressed in the passage [in chapter eleven of the Lotus Sutra] that reads, “This way one will quickly attain / the unsurpassed Buddha way.”
In the term jinriki, or “supernatural powers,” the word jin, or “supernatural,” represents the element of the mind, and the word riki, or “powers,” represents the element of the body.
When the dragon girl says, “Watch me attain buddhahood,” Shariputra thinks she is referring only to her own attainment of Buddhahood, but this is an error. She is rebuking him by saying, “Watch how one attains Buddhahood.” The word kan, or “watch,” refers to the kan of the six stages of practice [of T’ien-t’ai’s Great Concentration and Insight]. Here one should understand it as pertaining to the kan, or perception, that is represented in the second of the six stages, the stage of hearing the name and words of the truth. Therefore, as soon as one hears Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, one has [as volume eight of Words and Phrases says in speaking of the dragon girl] “without doubt sat for a moment in the place of practice and thus attained Buddhahood.”
When the sutra says that the members of the assembly saw the dragon girl “change into a man,” it means that the dragon girl’s original state, that of a dragon girl, was already in the state of Nam-myoho-renge-kyo. This idea is brought out very clearly in this passage of the sutra.
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"There are three categories of people that all human beings should respect. They are the sovereign, the teacher, and the parent."
(The Opening of the Eyes - The Writings of Nichiren Daishonin, page 220) Selection source: "Kyo no Hosshin", Seikyo Shimbun, December 3rd, 2005
"Nichiren Daishonin notes that the Gohonzon is 'a cluster of blessings' (WND, 832). All those who work hard for kosen-rufu, irrespective of whether anyone is aware of their efforts or not, will definitely come to be endowed with the benefit and blessings of faith. This refers to people who blaze with a spirit of challenge, earnestly chanting and engaging in Buddhist dialogue for the happiness of their friends; people who wholeheartedly praise, encourage, and respect their fellow members and exert themselves behind the scenes with all their might.
"As dedicated practitioners of the Mystic Law, we ourselves become 'clusters of blessings,' just as we are. Furthermore, our good fortune not only adorns our own lives but flows on to our family members and loved ones, as well as to our descendants into the eternal future. This is an unchanging law of the Daishonin’s Buddhism.
SGI Newsletter No. 6657, The Victory of Soka Is the Victory of Human Rights, Oct. 26th, 2005, translated Dec. 2nd, 2005
(The Opening of the Eyes - The Writings of Nichiren Daishonin, page 220) Selection source: "Kyo no Hosshin", Seikyo Shimbun, December 3rd, 2005
"Nichiren Daishonin notes that the Gohonzon is 'a cluster of blessings' (WND, 832). All those who work hard for kosen-rufu, irrespective of whether anyone is aware of their efforts or not, will definitely come to be endowed with the benefit and blessings of faith. This refers to people who blaze with a spirit of challenge, earnestly chanting and engaging in Buddhist dialogue for the happiness of their friends; people who wholeheartedly praise, encourage, and respect their fellow members and exert themselves behind the scenes with all their might.
"As dedicated practitioners of the Mystic Law, we ourselves become 'clusters of blessings,' just as we are. Furthermore, our good fortune not only adorns our own lives but flows on to our family members and loved ones, as well as to our descendants into the eternal future. This is an unchanging law of the Daishonin’s Buddhism.
SGI Newsletter No. 6657, The Victory of Soka Is the Victory of Human Rights, Oct. 26th, 2005, translated Dec. 2nd, 2005
By the way, for all interested, the babies are fine. We are almost out of the woods, a couple more weeks and they will almost for sure go full term.
Twin girls would be nice!
I hope that someone got what I got out of the Daishonin's lecture on the Devadatta chapter of the Lotus Sutra. This teaching represents a realization that has changed my life. I am not sure when or how it might have been that my heart and mind could have been so open to such an important truth, were it not for my experience with this thread. Frankly I am probably deriving more influence from these posts than anyone, even though my intention is to share the Daishonin's Buddhism with all of you.
Thank you all from the bottom of my heart.
T
Twin girls would be nice!
I hope that someone got what I got out of the Daishonin's lecture on the Devadatta chapter of the Lotus Sutra. This teaching represents a realization that has changed my life. I am not sure when or how it might have been that my heart and mind could have been so open to such an important truth, were it not for my experience with this thread. Frankly I am probably deriving more influence from these posts than anyone, even though my intention is to share the Daishonin's Buddhism with all of you.
Thank you all from the bottom of my heart.
T
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So happy that all is going well with the new baby girls 
Thanks Bud! But I lead no one! The relationship is YOURS! I just share it.
Thanks Bud! But I lead no one! The relationship is YOURS! I just share it.
Ten Worlds
[十界] (Jpn.: jikkai)
1. Ten distinct realms or categories of beings referred to in Buddhist scriptures. From the lowest to the highest, the realms of (1) hell, (2) hungry spirits, (3) animals, (4) asuras, (5) human beings, (6) heavenly beings, (7) voice-hearers, (8) cause-awakened ones, (9) bodhisattvas, and (10) Buddhas. The Ten Worlds were viewed originally as distinct physical locations, each with its own particular inhabitants. The Lotus Sutra, however, teaches that each of the Ten Worlds contains all ten within it, making it possible to interpret them as potential states of life inherent in each individual being. In other words, from the standpoint of the Lotus Sutra, the Ten Worlds indicates ten potential states or conditions that a person can manifest or experience. The mutual possession of the Ten Worlds is a component principle of three thousand realms in a single moment of life, which T'ien-t'ai (538-597) set forth in Great Concentration and Insight.
The Ten Worlds may be described as follows: (1) The world of hell. Nichiren's 1273 treatise The Object of Devotion for Observing the Mind states, "Rage is the world of hell" (358). Hell indicates a condition in which living itself is misery and suffering, and in which, devoid of all freedom, one's anger and rage become a source of further self-destruction. (2) The world of hungry spirits. Also called the world of hunger. A condition governed by endless desire for such things as food, profit, pleasure, power, recognition, or fame, in which one is never truly satisfied. The above work reads, "Greed is the world of hungry spirits" (358). (3) The world of animals. Also called the world of animality. It is a condition driven by instinct and lacking in reason, morality, or wisdom with which to control oneself. In this condition, one is ruled by the "law of the jungle," standing in fear of the strong, but despising and preying upon those weaker than oneself. The same work states, "Foolishness is the world of animals" (358). The worlds of hell, hungry spirits, and animals are collectively known as the three evil paths. (4) The world of asuras. Also called the world of animosity or the world of anger. In Indian mythology, asuras are arrogant and belligerent demons. This condition is called the world of animosity because it is characterized by persistent, though not necessarily overt, aggressiveness. The Object of Devotion for Observing the Mind states, "Perversity is the world of asuras" (358). It is a condition dominated by ego, in which excessive pride prevents one from revealing one's true self or seeing others as they really are. Compelled by the need to be superior to others or surpass them at any cost, one may feign politeness and even flatter others while inwardly despising them. The worlds of hell, hungry spirits, animals, and asuras are collectively called the four evil paths. (5) The world of human beings. Also called the world of humanity. The same work reads, "Calmness is the world of human beings" (358). In this state, one tries to control one's desires and impulses with reason and act in harmony with one's surroundings and other people, while also aspiring for a higher state of life. (6) The world of heavenly beings. Also called the world of heaven. The same work states, "Joy is the world of heaven" (358). This is a condition of contentment and joy that one feels when released from suffering or upon satisfaction of some desire. It is a temporary joy that is dependent upon and may easily change with circumstances. The six worlds from hell through the world of heavenly beings are called the six paths. Beings in the six paths, or those who tend toward these states of life, are largely controlled by the restrictions of their surroundings and are therefore extremely vulnerable to changing circumstances.
The remaining states, in which one transcends the uncertainty of the six paths, are called the four noble worlds: (7) The world of voice-hearers, a condition in which one awakens to the impermanence of all things and the instability of the six paths. Also called the world of learning. In this state, one dedicates oneself to creating a better life through self-reformation and self-development by learning from the ideas, knowledge, and experience of one's predecessors and contemporaries. "Voicehearers" (Skt shravaka ) originally meant those who listen to the Buddha preach the four noble truths and practice the eightfold path in order to acquire emancipation from earthly desires. (8) The world of cause-awakened ones, a condition in which one perceives the impermanence of all phenomena and strives to free oneself from the sufferings of the six paths by seeing some lasting truth through one's own observations and effort. Also called the world of realization. "Cause-awakened ones," also known as "self-awakened ones" (pratyekabuddha), originally meant those who attain a form of emancipation by perceiving the twelve-linked chain of causation or by observing natural phenomena. Persons in the worlds of voice-hearers and cause-awakened ones, which are together called persons of the two vehicles, are given more to the pursuit of self-perfection than to altruism. They are also willing to look squarely at the reality of death and seek the eternal, in contrast to those in the world of heaven, who are distracted from life's harsh realities. (9) The world of bodhisattvas, a state of compassion in which one thinks of and works for others' happiness even before becoming happy oneself. Bodhisattva, which consists of bodhi (enlightenment) and sattva (beings), means a person who seeks enlightenment while leading others to enlightenment. Bodhisattvas find that the way to self-perfection lies only in altruism, working for the enlightenment of others even before their own enlightenment. Nichiren states in The Object of Devotion for Observing the Mind: "Even a heartless villain loves his wife and children. He too has a portion of the bodhisattva world within him" (358). (10) The world of Buddhas, or Buddhahood. This is a state of perfect and absolute freedom in which one realizes the true aspect of all phenomena or the true nature of life. One can achieve this state by manifesting the Buddha nature inherent in one's life. From the standpoint of the philosophy of the mutual possession of the Ten Worlds, Buddhahood should not be viewed as a state removed from the sufferings and imperfections of ordinary persons. Attaining Buddhahood does not mean becoming a special being. In this state, one still continues to work against and defeat the negative functions of life and transform any and all difficulty into causes for further development. It is a state of complete access to the boundless wisdom, compassion, courage, and other qualities inherent in life; with these one can create harmony with and among others and between human life and nature. In the above work, Nichiren states, "Buddhahood is the most difficult to demonstrate" (358), but he also says, "That ordinary people born in the latter age can believe in the Lotus Sutra is due to the fact that the world of Buddhahood is present in the human world" (358).
mutual possession of the Ten Worlds
[十界互具] (Jpn.: jikkai-gogu)
1. A principle formulated by T'ien-t'ai (538-597) on the basis of the Lotus Sutra stating that each of the Ten Worlds possesses the potential for all ten within itself. One of the component principles of T'ien-t'ai's doctrine of three thousand realms in a single moment of life. "Mutual possession" means that life is not fixed in one or another of the Ten Worlds, but can manifest any of the ten, from hell to the state of Buddhahood, at any given moment. While one of the ten is manifest, the other nine remain latent, in the state of non-substantiality. The important point of this principle is that all beings in any of the nine worlds possess the Buddha nature. This means that every person has the potential to manifest Buddhahood, while a Buddha also possesses the nine worlds and in this sense is not separate or different from ordinary people.
From another viewpoint, the mutual possession of the Ten Worlds can be seen as indicating "the world of Buddhahood inherent in the nine worlds," or "inclusion of Buddhahood in the nine worlds," and "the nine worlds inherent in Buddhahood," or "inclusion of the nine worlds in Buddhahood." In his treatise The Object of Devotion for Observing the Mind, Nichiren (1222-1282) writes: "The 'Expedient Means' chapter in volume one of the Lotus Sutra states, 'The Buddhas wish to open the door of Buddha wisdom to all living beings.' This refers to the world of Buddhahood inherent in the nine worlds. The 'Life Span' chapter states: 'Thus, since I attained Buddhahood, an extremely long period of time has passed. My life span is an immeasurable number of asamkhya kalpas, and during that time I have constantly abided here without entering extinction. Good men, originally I practiced the bodhisattva way, and the life span that I acquired then has yet to come to an end but will last twice the number of years that have already passed.' Here the sutra refers to the nine worlds inherent in Buddhahood" (356-57).
ten factors of life
[十如是] (Jpn.: ju-nyoze)
1. Also, ten suchnesses. Ten factors common to all life in any of the Ten Worlds. They are listed in the "Expedient Means" (second) chapter of the Lotus Sutra, which reads: "The true aspect of all phenomena can only be understood and shared between Buddhas. This reality consists of the appearance, nature, entity, power, influence, internal cause, relation, latent effect, manifest effect, and their consistency from beginning to end." This passage provides a theoretical basis for the principle of the replacement of the three vehicles with the one vehicle taught in the theoretical teaching (first half ) of the Lotus Sutra. Since the ten factors are common to all life and phenomena, there can be no fundamental distinction between a Buddha and an ordinary person. On this basis, T'ien-t'ai (538-597) established the philosophical system of three thousand realms in a single moment of life, of which the principle of the ten factors is a component. While the Ten Worlds express differences among phenomena, the ten factors describe the pattern of existence common to all phenomena. For example, both the state of hell and the state of Buddhahood, different as they are, have the ten factors in common.
Briefly, the ten factors are as follows: (1) Appearance: attributes of things discernible from the outside, such as color, form, shape, and behavior. (2) Nature: the inherent disposition or quality of a thing or being that cannot be discerned from the outside. T'ien-t'ai characterizes it as unchanging and irreplaceable. The nature of fire, for instance, is unchanging and cannot be replaced by that of water. He also refers to the "true nature," which he regards as the ultimate truth, or Buddha nature. (3) Entity: the essence of life that permeates and integrates appearance and nature. These first three factors describe the reality of life itself.
The next six factors, from the fourth, power, through the ninth, manifest effect, explain the functions and workings of life. (4) Power: life's potential energy. (5) Influence: the action or movement produced when life's inherent power is activated. (6) Internal cause: the cause latent in life that produces an effect of the same quality as itself, i.e., good, evil, or neutral. (7) Relation: the relationship of indirect causes to the internal cause. Indirect causes are various conditions, both internal and external, that help the internal cause produce an effect. (8) Latent effect: the effect produced in life when an internal cause is activated through its relationship with various conditions. (9) Manifest effect: the tangible, perceivable result that emerges in time as an expression of a latent effect and therefore of an internal cause, again through its relationship with various conditions. Miao-lo (711-782) regarded the Buddhist law of causality described by the four factors from internal cause to manifest effect as the distinctive characteristic of the ten factors. It concerns the cause and effect for attaining Buddhahood. (10) Consistency from beginning to end: the unifying factor among the ten factors. It indicates that all of the other nine factors from the beginning (appearance) to the end (manifest effect) are consistently and harmoniously interrelated. All nine factors thus consistently and harmoniously express the same condition of existence at any given moment.
three realms of existence
[三世間] (Jpn.: san-seken)
1. The realm of the five components, the realm of living beings, and the realm of the environment. This concept originally appeared in The Treatise on the Great Perfection of Wisdom, and T'ien-t'ai (538-597) adopted it as a component of his doctrine of three thousand realms in a single moment of life. The concept of three realms of existence views life from three different standpoints and explains the existence of individual lives in the real world. The five components, a living being as their temporary combination, and that being's environment all manifest the same one of the Ten Worlds at any given point in time.
(1) The realm of the five components: An analysis of the nature of a living entity in terms of how it responds to its surroundings. The five components are form, perception, conception, volition, and consciousness. Form includes everything that constitutes the body and its sense organs, through which one perceives the outer world. Perception means the function of receiving or apprehending external information through one's sense organs. Conception indicates the function by which one grasps and forms some idea or concept about what has been perceived. Volition means the will to initiate action following the creation of conceptions about what has been perceived. Consciousness is the cognitive function of discernment that integrates the components of perception, conception, and volition. It distinguishes an object from all others, recognizes its characteristics, and exercises value judgments, such as distinguishing between right and wrong. From another viewpoint, while consciousness is regarded as the mind itself, the components of perception, conception, and volition are regarded as mental functions. Form corresponds to the physical aspect of life, and the other four components, to the spiritual aspect. The principle of the five components explains how life expresses each of the Ten Worlds differently. Someone in the world of hell, for example, will perceive, form a conception of, and react to the same object in a completely different manner than someone in the world of bodhisattvas.
(2) The realm of living beings: The individual living being, formed of a temporary union of the five components, who manifests or experiences any of the Ten Worlds. The realm of living beings refers to an individual as an integrated whole, but since no living being exists in perfect isolation, it is also taken to mean the collective body of individuals who interact with one another.
(3) The realm of the environment: The place or land where living beings dwell and carry out life-activities. The state of the land is a reflection of the state of life of the people who live in it. A land manifests any of the Ten Worlds according to which of the Ten Worlds dominate in the lives of its inhabitants. The same land also manifests different worlds for different individuals. Therefore, Nichiren says, "There are not two lands, pure or impure in themselves. The difference lies solely in the good or evil of our minds" (4). In making this statement, Nichiren was countering the popular view that there are separately existing impure lands and pure lands.
In addition, the three realms themselves are not to be viewed separately, but as aspects of an integrated whole, which simultaneously manifests any of the Ten Worlds.
From source: The Soka Gakkai Dictionary of Buddhism
Thanks Bud! But I lead no one! The relationship is YOURS! I just share it.
Ten Worlds
[十界] (Jpn.: jikkai)
1. Ten distinct realms or categories of beings referred to in Buddhist scriptures. From the lowest to the highest, the realms of (1) hell, (2) hungry spirits, (3) animals, (4) asuras, (5) human beings, (6) heavenly beings, (7) voice-hearers, (8) cause-awakened ones, (9) bodhisattvas, and (10) Buddhas. The Ten Worlds were viewed originally as distinct physical locations, each with its own particular inhabitants. The Lotus Sutra, however, teaches that each of the Ten Worlds contains all ten within it, making it possible to interpret them as potential states of life inherent in each individual being. In other words, from the standpoint of the Lotus Sutra, the Ten Worlds indicates ten potential states or conditions that a person can manifest or experience. The mutual possession of the Ten Worlds is a component principle of three thousand realms in a single moment of life, which T'ien-t'ai (538-597) set forth in Great Concentration and Insight.
The Ten Worlds may be described as follows: (1) The world of hell. Nichiren's 1273 treatise The Object of Devotion for Observing the Mind states, "Rage is the world of hell" (358). Hell indicates a condition in which living itself is misery and suffering, and in which, devoid of all freedom, one's anger and rage become a source of further self-destruction. (2) The world of hungry spirits. Also called the world of hunger. A condition governed by endless desire for such things as food, profit, pleasure, power, recognition, or fame, in which one is never truly satisfied. The above work reads, "Greed is the world of hungry spirits" (358). (3) The world of animals. Also called the world of animality. It is a condition driven by instinct and lacking in reason, morality, or wisdom with which to control oneself. In this condition, one is ruled by the "law of the jungle," standing in fear of the strong, but despising and preying upon those weaker than oneself. The same work states, "Foolishness is the world of animals" (358). The worlds of hell, hungry spirits, and animals are collectively known as the three evil paths. (4) The world of asuras. Also called the world of animosity or the world of anger. In Indian mythology, asuras are arrogant and belligerent demons. This condition is called the world of animosity because it is characterized by persistent, though not necessarily overt, aggressiveness. The Object of Devotion for Observing the Mind states, "Perversity is the world of asuras" (358). It is a condition dominated by ego, in which excessive pride prevents one from revealing one's true self or seeing others as they really are. Compelled by the need to be superior to others or surpass them at any cost, one may feign politeness and even flatter others while inwardly despising them. The worlds of hell, hungry spirits, animals, and asuras are collectively called the four evil paths. (5) The world of human beings. Also called the world of humanity. The same work reads, "Calmness is the world of human beings" (358). In this state, one tries to control one's desires and impulses with reason and act in harmony with one's surroundings and other people, while also aspiring for a higher state of life. (6) The world of heavenly beings. Also called the world of heaven. The same work states, "Joy is the world of heaven" (358). This is a condition of contentment and joy that one feels when released from suffering or upon satisfaction of some desire. It is a temporary joy that is dependent upon and may easily change with circumstances. The six worlds from hell through the world of heavenly beings are called the six paths. Beings in the six paths, or those who tend toward these states of life, are largely controlled by the restrictions of their surroundings and are therefore extremely vulnerable to changing circumstances.
The remaining states, in which one transcends the uncertainty of the six paths, are called the four noble worlds: (7) The world of voice-hearers, a condition in which one awakens to the impermanence of all things and the instability of the six paths. Also called the world of learning. In this state, one dedicates oneself to creating a better life through self-reformation and self-development by learning from the ideas, knowledge, and experience of one's predecessors and contemporaries. "Voicehearers" (Skt shravaka ) originally meant those who listen to the Buddha preach the four noble truths and practice the eightfold path in order to acquire emancipation from earthly desires. (8) The world of cause-awakened ones, a condition in which one perceives the impermanence of all phenomena and strives to free oneself from the sufferings of the six paths by seeing some lasting truth through one's own observations and effort. Also called the world of realization. "Cause-awakened ones," also known as "self-awakened ones" (pratyekabuddha), originally meant those who attain a form of emancipation by perceiving the twelve-linked chain of causation or by observing natural phenomena. Persons in the worlds of voice-hearers and cause-awakened ones, which are together called persons of the two vehicles, are given more to the pursuit of self-perfection than to altruism. They are also willing to look squarely at the reality of death and seek the eternal, in contrast to those in the world of heaven, who are distracted from life's harsh realities. (9) The world of bodhisattvas, a state of compassion in which one thinks of and works for others' happiness even before becoming happy oneself. Bodhisattva, which consists of bodhi (enlightenment) and sattva (beings), means a person who seeks enlightenment while leading others to enlightenment. Bodhisattvas find that the way to self-perfection lies only in altruism, working for the enlightenment of others even before their own enlightenment. Nichiren states in The Object of Devotion for Observing the Mind: "Even a heartless villain loves his wife and children. He too has a portion of the bodhisattva world within him" (358). (10) The world of Buddhas, or Buddhahood. This is a state of perfect and absolute freedom in which one realizes the true aspect of all phenomena or the true nature of life. One can achieve this state by manifesting the Buddha nature inherent in one's life. From the standpoint of the philosophy of the mutual possession of the Ten Worlds, Buddhahood should not be viewed as a state removed from the sufferings and imperfections of ordinary persons. Attaining Buddhahood does not mean becoming a special being. In this state, one still continues to work against and defeat the negative functions of life and transform any and all difficulty into causes for further development. It is a state of complete access to the boundless wisdom, compassion, courage, and other qualities inherent in life; with these one can create harmony with and among others and between human life and nature. In the above work, Nichiren states, "Buddhahood is the most difficult to demonstrate" (358), but he also says, "That ordinary people born in the latter age can believe in the Lotus Sutra is due to the fact that the world of Buddhahood is present in the human world" (358).
mutual possession of the Ten Worlds
[十界互具] (Jpn.: jikkai-gogu)
1. A principle formulated by T'ien-t'ai (538-597) on the basis of the Lotus Sutra stating that each of the Ten Worlds possesses the potential for all ten within itself. One of the component principles of T'ien-t'ai's doctrine of three thousand realms in a single moment of life. "Mutual possession" means that life is not fixed in one or another of the Ten Worlds, but can manifest any of the ten, from hell to the state of Buddhahood, at any given moment. While one of the ten is manifest, the other nine remain latent, in the state of non-substantiality. The important point of this principle is that all beings in any of the nine worlds possess the Buddha nature. This means that every person has the potential to manifest Buddhahood, while a Buddha also possesses the nine worlds and in this sense is not separate or different from ordinary people.
From another viewpoint, the mutual possession of the Ten Worlds can be seen as indicating "the world of Buddhahood inherent in the nine worlds," or "inclusion of Buddhahood in the nine worlds," and "the nine worlds inherent in Buddhahood," or "inclusion of the nine worlds in Buddhahood." In his treatise The Object of Devotion for Observing the Mind, Nichiren (1222-1282) writes: "The 'Expedient Means' chapter in volume one of the Lotus Sutra states, 'The Buddhas wish to open the door of Buddha wisdom to all living beings.' This refers to the world of Buddhahood inherent in the nine worlds. The 'Life Span' chapter states: 'Thus, since I attained Buddhahood, an extremely long period of time has passed. My life span is an immeasurable number of asamkhya kalpas, and during that time I have constantly abided here without entering extinction. Good men, originally I practiced the bodhisattva way, and the life span that I acquired then has yet to come to an end but will last twice the number of years that have already passed.' Here the sutra refers to the nine worlds inherent in Buddhahood" (356-57).
ten factors of life
[十如是] (Jpn.: ju-nyoze)
1. Also, ten suchnesses. Ten factors common to all life in any of the Ten Worlds. They are listed in the "Expedient Means" (second) chapter of the Lotus Sutra, which reads: "The true aspect of all phenomena can only be understood and shared between Buddhas. This reality consists of the appearance, nature, entity, power, influence, internal cause, relation, latent effect, manifest effect, and their consistency from beginning to end." This passage provides a theoretical basis for the principle of the replacement of the three vehicles with the one vehicle taught in the theoretical teaching (first half ) of the Lotus Sutra. Since the ten factors are common to all life and phenomena, there can be no fundamental distinction between a Buddha and an ordinary person. On this basis, T'ien-t'ai (538-597) established the philosophical system of three thousand realms in a single moment of life, of which the principle of the ten factors is a component. While the Ten Worlds express differences among phenomena, the ten factors describe the pattern of existence common to all phenomena. For example, both the state of hell and the state of Buddhahood, different as they are, have the ten factors in common.
Briefly, the ten factors are as follows: (1) Appearance: attributes of things discernible from the outside, such as color, form, shape, and behavior. (2) Nature: the inherent disposition or quality of a thing or being that cannot be discerned from the outside. T'ien-t'ai characterizes it as unchanging and irreplaceable. The nature of fire, for instance, is unchanging and cannot be replaced by that of water. He also refers to the "true nature," which he regards as the ultimate truth, or Buddha nature. (3) Entity: the essence of life that permeates and integrates appearance and nature. These first three factors describe the reality of life itself.
The next six factors, from the fourth, power, through the ninth, manifest effect, explain the functions and workings of life. (4) Power: life's potential energy. (5) Influence: the action or movement produced when life's inherent power is activated. (6) Internal cause: the cause latent in life that produces an effect of the same quality as itself, i.e., good, evil, or neutral. (7) Relation: the relationship of indirect causes to the internal cause. Indirect causes are various conditions, both internal and external, that help the internal cause produce an effect. (8) Latent effect: the effect produced in life when an internal cause is activated through its relationship with various conditions. (9) Manifest effect: the tangible, perceivable result that emerges in time as an expression of a latent effect and therefore of an internal cause, again through its relationship with various conditions. Miao-lo (711-782) regarded the Buddhist law of causality described by the four factors from internal cause to manifest effect as the distinctive characteristic of the ten factors. It concerns the cause and effect for attaining Buddhahood. (10) Consistency from beginning to end: the unifying factor among the ten factors. It indicates that all of the other nine factors from the beginning (appearance) to the end (manifest effect) are consistently and harmoniously interrelated. All nine factors thus consistently and harmoniously express the same condition of existence at any given moment.
three realms of existence
[三世間] (Jpn.: san-seken)
1. The realm of the five components, the realm of living beings, and the realm of the environment. This concept originally appeared in The Treatise on the Great Perfection of Wisdom, and T'ien-t'ai (538-597) adopted it as a component of his doctrine of three thousand realms in a single moment of life. The concept of three realms of existence views life from three different standpoints and explains the existence of individual lives in the real world. The five components, a living being as their temporary combination, and that being's environment all manifest the same one of the Ten Worlds at any given point in time.
(1) The realm of the five components: An analysis of the nature of a living entity in terms of how it responds to its surroundings. The five components are form, perception, conception, volition, and consciousness. Form includes everything that constitutes the body and its sense organs, through which one perceives the outer world. Perception means the function of receiving or apprehending external information through one's sense organs. Conception indicates the function by which one grasps and forms some idea or concept about what has been perceived. Volition means the will to initiate action following the creation of conceptions about what has been perceived. Consciousness is the cognitive function of discernment that integrates the components of perception, conception, and volition. It distinguishes an object from all others, recognizes its characteristics, and exercises value judgments, such as distinguishing between right and wrong. From another viewpoint, while consciousness is regarded as the mind itself, the components of perception, conception, and volition are regarded as mental functions. Form corresponds to the physical aspect of life, and the other four components, to the spiritual aspect. The principle of the five components explains how life expresses each of the Ten Worlds differently. Someone in the world of hell, for example, will perceive, form a conception of, and react to the same object in a completely different manner than someone in the world of bodhisattvas.
(2) The realm of living beings: The individual living being, formed of a temporary union of the five components, who manifests or experiences any of the Ten Worlds. The realm of living beings refers to an individual as an integrated whole, but since no living being exists in perfect isolation, it is also taken to mean the collective body of individuals who interact with one another.
(3) The realm of the environment: The place or land where living beings dwell and carry out life-activities. The state of the land is a reflection of the state of life of the people who live in it. A land manifests any of the Ten Worlds according to which of the Ten Worlds dominate in the lives of its inhabitants. The same land also manifests different worlds for different individuals. Therefore, Nichiren says, "There are not two lands, pure or impure in themselves. The difference lies solely in the good or evil of our minds" (4). In making this statement, Nichiren was countering the popular view that there are separately existing impure lands and pure lands.
In addition, the three realms themselves are not to be viewed separately, but as aspects of an integrated whole, which simultaneously manifests any of the Ten Worlds.
From source: The Soka Gakkai Dictionary of Buddhism
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The Object of Devotion for Observing the Mind / WND pg. 354
The Object of Devotion for Observing the Mind / WND pg. 354
The Object of Devotion for Observing the Mind Established in the Fifth Five-Hundred-Year Period after the Thus Come One's Passing
Nichiren, the shramana of Japan.
Volume five of Great Concentration and Insight states: "Life at (1) each moment is endowed with the Ten Worlds. At the same time, each of the Ten Worlds is endowed with all Ten Worlds, so that an entity of life actually possesses one hundred worlds. Each of these worlds in turn possesses (2) thirty realms, which means that in the one hundred worlds there are three thousand realms. The three thousand realms of existence are all possessed by life in a single moment. If there is no life, that is the end of the matter. But if there is the slightest bit of life, it contains all the three thousand realms. . . . This is what we mean when we speak of the 'region of the unfathomable.'"
Note: "[Three thousand] realms" might also read "[three thousand] factors," but the number is the same. The only difference lies in the method of expansion. Another copy of Great Concentration and Insight states, "Each world is endowed with the three realms of (3) existence."
Question: Is the principle of three thousand realms in a single moment of life explained in The Profound Meaning of the Lotus Sutra?
Answer: Miao-lo states that it is not.
Question: Then is it explained in The Words and Phrases of the Lotus Sutra?
Answer: Miao-lo states that it is not.
Question: What are his exact words?
Answer: He says, "None of them reveal that a single moment of life contains (4) the three thousand realms."
Question: Is this principle mentioned in any of the first four volumes of Great Concentration and Insight?
Answer: No, it is not.
Question: What proof is there of this?
Answer: Miao-lo says, "When at last he revealed the method of meditation in Great Concentration and Insight, he at the same time employed the 'three thousand realms' as a way to understand (5)."
Question: Volume two of Profound Meaning states, "Each of the Ten Worlds contains the other nine, and in those one hundred worlds are one thousand factors." Volume one of Words (6) and Phrases states, "Each sense field is endowed with the Ten Worlds, each of which again is endowed with all of the ten within itself. Since each of those hundred worlds is endowed with the ten factors, the total becomes one thousand." The Profound Meaning of the (7) "Perceiver of the World's Sounds" Chapter comments, "The Ten Worlds are all mutually inclusive, thus making one hundred worlds. One thousand factors are inherent in life. Even though these are not visible, life by its nature possesses all of them."
Isn't the principle of three thousand realms in a single moment of life mentioned in the first four volumes of Great Concentration and Insight?
Answer: Miao-lo says it is not.
Question: What does he say exactly?
Answer: Volume five of The Annotations on "Great Concentration and Insight" reads: "In comparison with the (8) chapter on correct meditation, the preceding chapters fall short of describing the practice in its entirety. But they do contain the twenty-five preparatory exercises that lead to understanding, and thus they provide the expedient means to the correct practice. The first six chapters, then, are all meant to bring about understanding." Also in the same volume: "When at last he revealed the method of meditation in Great Concentration and Insight, he at the same time employed the 'three thousand realms' as a way to understand. This principle is the ultimate revelation of his final and supreme teaching. That is why Chang-an states in his introduction [to Great Concentration and Insight], 'Great Concentration and Insight reveals the teaching that T'ien-t'ai Chih-che himself practiced in the depths of his being.' He had good reason for saying this. I hope that those who read this work and seek to understand it will not allow their minds to be distracted by anything else."
T'ien-t'ai Chih-che propagated his teachings for thirty years. During the first twenty-nine years, expounding the doctrines contained in Profound Meaning, Words and Phrases, and other works, he explained the five periods and the eight teachings as well as the hundred worlds and thousand factors. He not only refuted the erroneous doctrines of the preceding more than five hundred years, but also clarified matters that had not been fully explained by the Buddhist scholars of India. The Great Teacher Chang-an states: "Even the great scholars of India were not in a class with him, and the Chinese teachers - well, one need hardly mention them. This is no idle boast - the doctrine he taught was indeed of such (9) excellence." How pitiful that T'ien-t'ai's successors allowed those thieves, the founders of the Flower Garland and True Word schools, to steal the priceless gem of three thousand realms in a single moment of life and then, ironically, became their followers! The Great Teacher Chang-an was fully aware this would happen when he remarked in sorrow, "If this teaching should be lost, it would be a tragedy (10) for the future."
Question: What is the difference between the principle of the hundred worlds and thousand factors and that of three thousand realms in a single moment of life?
Answer: The former concerns only sentient beings, but the latter applies to both sentient and insentient beings.
Question: If insentient beings are endowed with the ten factors, is it correct to assume that plants and trees have minds and can attain Buddhahood like sentient beings?
Answer: This is a matter that is difficult to believe and difficult to understand. T'ien-t'ai defined two points that are "difficult to believe and difficult to understand." One lies in the realm of doctrinal teachings and the other in the realm of meditative practice. With regard to the former, in the sutras preached before the Lotus Sutra we read that persons of the two vehicles and icchantikas, or persons of incorrigible disbelief, are forever barred from attaining Buddhahood, and that Shakyamuni Buddha, the lord of teachings, attained enlightenment for the first time in this world. Nevertheless,we find that the theoretical and the essential teachings of the Lotus Sutra repudiate both these statements. One Buddha who says two things as opposite as fire and water - who could believe him? This is the point that is "difficult to believe and difficult to understand" in the realm of doctrinal teachings.
The point that is "difficult to believe and difficult to understand" in the realm of meditative practice concerns the principle of the hundred worlds and thousand factors and that of three thousand realms in a single moment of life, which explains that even insentient beings are endowed with the ten factors of life, and that they are endowed with both material and spiritual aspects.
Both the Buddhist and the non-Buddhist scriptures permit wooden or painted images to be used as objects of devotion, but T'ien-t'ai and his followers were the first to explain the principle behind this practice. If a piece of wood or paper lacked the cause and effect [of Buddhahood] in either the material or the spiritual aspect, it would be futile to rely on it as an object of devotion.
Question: What authority do you have for stating that a plant, a tree, or a land manifests cause and effect, or the ten factors?
Answer: Volume five of Great Concentration and Insight says, "The realm of the environment also has the ten factors. Thus an evil land has appearance, nature, entity, power, and so on." Volume six of The Annotations on "The Profound Meaning of the Lotus Sutra" states: "Appearance exists only in what is material; nature exists only in what is spiritual. Entity, power, influence, and relation in principle combine both the material and the spiritual. Internal cause and latent effect are purely spiritual; manifest effect exists only in (11) what is material." The Diamond Scalpel states: "A plant, a tree, a pebble, a speck of dust - each has the Buddha nature, and each is endowed with cause and effect and with the function to manifest and the wisdom to realize its Buddha nature."
Question: You have told us about the sources of this doctrine. Now what is meant by the observation of the mind?
Answer: The observation of the mind means to observe one's own mind and to find the Ten Worlds within it. This is what is called observing the mind. For example, though we can see the six sense organs of other people, we cannot see our own. Only when we look into a clear mirror do we see, for the first time, that we are endowed with all six sense organs. Similarly, various sutras make reference here and there to the six paths and the four noble worlds [that constitute the Ten Worlds], but only in the clear mirror of the Lotus Sutra and of the Great Teacher T'ien-t'ai's Great Concentration and Insight can one see one's own Ten Worlds, hundred worlds and thousand factors, and three thousand realms in a single moment of life.
Question: What part of the Lotus Sutra do you refer to, and what section of T'ien-t'ai's commentaries?
Answer: The "Expedient Means" chapter in volume one of the Lotus Sutra states, "The Buddhas wish to open the door of Buddha wisdom to all living beings." This refers to the world of Buddhahood inherent in the nine worlds. The "Life Span" chapter states: "Thus, since I attained Buddhahood, an extremely long period of time has passed. My life span is an immeasurable number of asamkhya kalpas, and during that time I have constantly abided here without ever entering extinction. Good men, originally I practiced the bodhisattva way, and the life span that I acquired then has yet to come to an end but will last twice the number of years that have already passed." Here the sutra refers to the nine worlds inherent in Buddhahood.
The sutra states, "Devadatta will be called the Thus Come One Heavenly (12) King." This indicates that the world of hell also contains Buddhahood. In the sutra it says, "There were demon daughters, the first named Lamba . . . [The Buddha said to them], 'If you can shield and guard those who accept and uphold the mere name of the Lotus Sutra, your merit will be immeasurable (13).'" Thus, the world of hungry spirits contains all the Ten Worlds. When the sutra speaks of "the dragon girl . . . attaining impartial and correct (14) enlightenment," it is indicating that the world of animals has the Ten Worlds. The sutra says that, by listening to one verse or one phrase of the sutra, the asura king Balin will attain (15) supreme perfect enlightenment. Thus the world of asuras contains the Ten Worlds. The sutra says, "If there are persons who for the sake of the Buddha fashion and set up images . . . then (16) all have attained the Buddha way," meaning that the world of human beings contains the Ten Worlds. The sutra states that the great heavenly king Brahma and the other deities declared, "We too in the same way will surely be (17) able to attain Buddhahood." Thus the world of heavenly beings contains the Ten Worlds. The sutra says, "Shariputra . . . will be able to become a Buddha with the name Flower Glow Thus (18) Come One." Thus the world of voice-hearers contains the Ten Worlds. The sutra says, "Those who seek to become pratyekabuddhas, monks, and nuns . . . all press their palms and with reverent minds wish to hear the teaching (19) of perfect endowment." Thus the world of pratyekabuddhas, or cause-awakened ones, has the Ten Worlds. The sutra describes the bodhisattvas who emerged from the earth, numerous as the dust particles of a thousand worlds, and who declared, "We ourselves wish to gain this great Law, true (20) and pure." Thus the world of bodhisattvas contains the Ten Worlds. The sutra says, "Sometimes I speak of myself (21), sometimes of others." Thus the world of Buddhahood contains the Ten Worlds.
Question: Although I can see both my own six sense organs and those of others, I cannot see the Ten Worlds in myself or others. How can I believe in them?
Answer: The "Teacher of the Law" chapter of the Lotus Sutra says, "[This Lotus Sutra is] the most difficult to believe and the most difficult to understand." [In describing how difficult it will be to fulfill the teachings of the Lotus Sutra after the Buddha's passing,] the "Treasure Tower" chapter speaks of the six difficult and nine easy acts. The Great Teacher T'ien-t'ai states, "Because the theoretical and the essential teachings [of the Lotus Sutra] contradict all the earlier sutras, they are extremely difficult to believe and difficult to understand (22)." The Great Teacher Chang-an comments, "The Buddha intended these as his ultimate teachings. How could they ever be easy to understand?" (23) The Great Teacher Dengyo says, "The Lotus Sutra is the most difficult to believe and to understand because in it the Buddha directly revealed (24) what he had attained."
Those who were born in the days of Shakyamuni Buddha and heard his teachings in person had formed deep karmic bonds with him in past existences. In addition, Shakyamuni Buddha, the lord of teachings, as well as Many Treasures Buddha, the Buddhas of the ten directions who are Shakyamuni's emanations, the countless Bodhisattvas of the Earth, and the other bodhisattvas such as Manjushri and Maitreya, aided them and encouraged them to believe, but even then there were those who failed to take faith. Five thousand people left the assembly, [arrogantly thinking that they had understood what they had not]. All human and heavenly beings [other than (25) those already present in the assembly] were moved to other worlds. How much more difficult it was to believe in the Lotus Sutra after the Buddha's passing - in the Former and Middle Days of the Law - and even more difficult it is now at the beginning of the Latter Day of the Law! If it were easy for you to believe in, it would not be the Buddha's correct teaching.
Notes
1. In Great Concentration and Insight, the Chinese word for "one mind" or "one thought" is used here, but in Nichiren Daishonin's teaching it is interpreted as indicating the entire psychosomatic entity; hence the word is translated as "life" rather than "mind."
2. Each of the Ten Worlds is endowed with ten factors, each of which in turn is endowed with the three realms of existence. The thirty realms refer to the ten factors multiplied by the three realms.
3. The Japanese text contains two parenthetical notes, one directly following the beginning clause, "Volume five of Great Concentration and Insight states," and the other following the quotation. They are translated together here. T'ien-t'ai's Great Concentration and Insight elucidates two ways to arrive at the "three thousand" of the "three thousand realms in a single moment of life": (1) The hundred worlds are multiplied by the three realms of existence and then by the ten factors to arrive at the "three thousand factors." (2) The hundred worlds are multiplied by the ten factors and then by the three realms of existence to arrive at the "three thousand realms of
existence." Although the method differs, the principle is the same.
4. The Annotations on "Great Concentration and Insight."
5. Ibid.
6. "Each sense field" refers to each of the six sense organs (the eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body, and mind) and the objects that stimulate them.
7. T'ien-t'ai's annotations on the "Perceiver of the World's Sounds" chapter of the Lotus Sutra, recorded by his disciple Chang-an.
8. The seventh chapter, which is regarded as the core of Great Concentration and Insight because it explains the practice of meditation.
9. The Profound Meaning of the Lotus Sutra, T'ien-t'ai's major work, recorded by Chang-an.
10. Introduction to Profound Meaning.
11. A work by Miao-lo that maintains that even insentient beings are endowed with the potential for Buddhahood.
12. Lotus Sutra, chap. 12.
13. Ibid., chap. 26.
14. Ibid., chap. 12.
15. A rephrasing of a passage in chapter 10 of the Lotus Sutra.
16. Lotus Sutra, chap. 2.
17. Ibid., chap. 3.
18. Ibid.
19. Ibid., chap. 2.
20. Ibid., chap. 21.
21. Ibid., chap. 16.
22. The Words and Phrases of the Lotus Sutra.
23. The Annotations on "The Treatise on the Observation of the Mind."
24. The Outstanding Principles of the Lotus Sutra.
25. According to the "Expedient Means" chapter of the Lotus Sutra, the five thousand arrogant people, who are mentioned in the preceding sentence, left the assembly as Shakyamuni began to preach about "the replacement of the three vehicles with the one vehicle," because they supposed they had attained what they had not attained. In the "Treasure Tower" chapter, Shakyamuni transforms the lands three times to accommodate the Buddhas who assemble from the ten directions. He purifies the saha world by removing all heavenly and human beings to other worlds, leaving only the assembled multitude.
(to be continued from pg. 358)
The Object of Devotion for Observing the Mind / WND pg. 354
The Object of Devotion for Observing the Mind Established in the Fifth Five-Hundred-Year Period after the Thus Come One's Passing
Nichiren, the shramana of Japan.
Volume five of Great Concentration and Insight states: "Life at (1) each moment is endowed with the Ten Worlds. At the same time, each of the Ten Worlds is endowed with all Ten Worlds, so that an entity of life actually possesses one hundred worlds. Each of these worlds in turn possesses (2) thirty realms, which means that in the one hundred worlds there are three thousand realms. The three thousand realms of existence are all possessed by life in a single moment. If there is no life, that is the end of the matter. But if there is the slightest bit of life, it contains all the three thousand realms. . . . This is what we mean when we speak of the 'region of the unfathomable.'"
Note: "[Three thousand] realms" might also read "[three thousand] factors," but the number is the same. The only difference lies in the method of expansion. Another copy of Great Concentration and Insight states, "Each world is endowed with the three realms of (3) existence."
Question: Is the principle of three thousand realms in a single moment of life explained in The Profound Meaning of the Lotus Sutra?
Answer: Miao-lo states that it is not.
Question: Then is it explained in The Words and Phrases of the Lotus Sutra?
Answer: Miao-lo states that it is not.
Question: What are his exact words?
Answer: He says, "None of them reveal that a single moment of life contains (4) the three thousand realms."
Question: Is this principle mentioned in any of the first four volumes of Great Concentration and Insight?
Answer: No, it is not.
Question: What proof is there of this?
Answer: Miao-lo says, "When at last he revealed the method of meditation in Great Concentration and Insight, he at the same time employed the 'three thousand realms' as a way to understand (5)."
Question: Volume two of Profound Meaning states, "Each of the Ten Worlds contains the other nine, and in those one hundred worlds are one thousand factors." Volume one of Words (6) and Phrases states, "Each sense field is endowed with the Ten Worlds, each of which again is endowed with all of the ten within itself. Since each of those hundred worlds is endowed with the ten factors, the total becomes one thousand." The Profound Meaning of the (7) "Perceiver of the World's Sounds" Chapter comments, "The Ten Worlds are all mutually inclusive, thus making one hundred worlds. One thousand factors are inherent in life. Even though these are not visible, life by its nature possesses all of them."
Isn't the principle of three thousand realms in a single moment of life mentioned in the first four volumes of Great Concentration and Insight?
Answer: Miao-lo says it is not.
Question: What does he say exactly?
Answer: Volume five of The Annotations on "Great Concentration and Insight" reads: "In comparison with the (8) chapter on correct meditation, the preceding chapters fall short of describing the practice in its entirety. But they do contain the twenty-five preparatory exercises that lead to understanding, and thus they provide the expedient means to the correct practice. The first six chapters, then, are all meant to bring about understanding." Also in the same volume: "When at last he revealed the method of meditation in Great Concentration and Insight, he at the same time employed the 'three thousand realms' as a way to understand. This principle is the ultimate revelation of his final and supreme teaching. That is why Chang-an states in his introduction [to Great Concentration and Insight], 'Great Concentration and Insight reveals the teaching that T'ien-t'ai Chih-che himself practiced in the depths of his being.' He had good reason for saying this. I hope that those who read this work and seek to understand it will not allow their minds to be distracted by anything else."
T'ien-t'ai Chih-che propagated his teachings for thirty years. During the first twenty-nine years, expounding the doctrines contained in Profound Meaning, Words and Phrases, and other works, he explained the five periods and the eight teachings as well as the hundred worlds and thousand factors. He not only refuted the erroneous doctrines of the preceding more than five hundred years, but also clarified matters that had not been fully explained by the Buddhist scholars of India. The Great Teacher Chang-an states: "Even the great scholars of India were not in a class with him, and the Chinese teachers - well, one need hardly mention them. This is no idle boast - the doctrine he taught was indeed of such (9) excellence." How pitiful that T'ien-t'ai's successors allowed those thieves, the founders of the Flower Garland and True Word schools, to steal the priceless gem of three thousand realms in a single moment of life and then, ironically, became their followers! The Great Teacher Chang-an was fully aware this would happen when he remarked in sorrow, "If this teaching should be lost, it would be a tragedy (10) for the future."
Question: What is the difference between the principle of the hundred worlds and thousand factors and that of three thousand realms in a single moment of life?
Answer: The former concerns only sentient beings, but the latter applies to both sentient and insentient beings.
Question: If insentient beings are endowed with the ten factors, is it correct to assume that plants and trees have minds and can attain Buddhahood like sentient beings?
Answer: This is a matter that is difficult to believe and difficult to understand. T'ien-t'ai defined two points that are "difficult to believe and difficult to understand." One lies in the realm of doctrinal teachings and the other in the realm of meditative practice. With regard to the former, in the sutras preached before the Lotus Sutra we read that persons of the two vehicles and icchantikas, or persons of incorrigible disbelief, are forever barred from attaining Buddhahood, and that Shakyamuni Buddha, the lord of teachings, attained enlightenment for the first time in this world. Nevertheless,we find that the theoretical and the essential teachings of the Lotus Sutra repudiate both these statements. One Buddha who says two things as opposite as fire and water - who could believe him? This is the point that is "difficult to believe and difficult to understand" in the realm of doctrinal teachings.
The point that is "difficult to believe and difficult to understand" in the realm of meditative practice concerns the principle of the hundred worlds and thousand factors and that of three thousand realms in a single moment of life, which explains that even insentient beings are endowed with the ten factors of life, and that they are endowed with both material and spiritual aspects.
Both the Buddhist and the non-Buddhist scriptures permit wooden or painted images to be used as objects of devotion, but T'ien-t'ai and his followers were the first to explain the principle behind this practice. If a piece of wood or paper lacked the cause and effect [of Buddhahood] in either the material or the spiritual aspect, it would be futile to rely on it as an object of devotion.
Question: What authority do you have for stating that a plant, a tree, or a land manifests cause and effect, or the ten factors?
Answer: Volume five of Great Concentration and Insight says, "The realm of the environment also has the ten factors. Thus an evil land has appearance, nature, entity, power, and so on." Volume six of The Annotations on "The Profound Meaning of the Lotus Sutra" states: "Appearance exists only in what is material; nature exists only in what is spiritual. Entity, power, influence, and relation in principle combine both the material and the spiritual. Internal cause and latent effect are purely spiritual; manifest effect exists only in (11) what is material." The Diamond Scalpel states: "A plant, a tree, a pebble, a speck of dust - each has the Buddha nature, and each is endowed with cause and effect and with the function to manifest and the wisdom to realize its Buddha nature."
Question: You have told us about the sources of this doctrine. Now what is meant by the observation of the mind?
Answer: The observation of the mind means to observe one's own mind and to find the Ten Worlds within it. This is what is called observing the mind. For example, though we can see the six sense organs of other people, we cannot see our own. Only when we look into a clear mirror do we see, for the first time, that we are endowed with all six sense organs. Similarly, various sutras make reference here and there to the six paths and the four noble worlds [that constitute the Ten Worlds], but only in the clear mirror of the Lotus Sutra and of the Great Teacher T'ien-t'ai's Great Concentration and Insight can one see one's own Ten Worlds, hundred worlds and thousand factors, and three thousand realms in a single moment of life.
Question: What part of the Lotus Sutra do you refer to, and what section of T'ien-t'ai's commentaries?
Answer: The "Expedient Means" chapter in volume one of the Lotus Sutra states, "The Buddhas wish to open the door of Buddha wisdom to all living beings." This refers to the world of Buddhahood inherent in the nine worlds. The "Life Span" chapter states: "Thus, since I attained Buddhahood, an extremely long period of time has passed. My life span is an immeasurable number of asamkhya kalpas, and during that time I have constantly abided here without ever entering extinction. Good men, originally I practiced the bodhisattva way, and the life span that I acquired then has yet to come to an end but will last twice the number of years that have already passed." Here the sutra refers to the nine worlds inherent in Buddhahood.
The sutra states, "Devadatta will be called the Thus Come One Heavenly (12) King." This indicates that the world of hell also contains Buddhahood. In the sutra it says, "There were demon daughters, the first named Lamba . . . [The Buddha said to them], 'If you can shield and guard those who accept and uphold the mere name of the Lotus Sutra, your merit will be immeasurable (13).'" Thus, the world of hungry spirits contains all the Ten Worlds. When the sutra speaks of "the dragon girl . . . attaining impartial and correct (14) enlightenment," it is indicating that the world of animals has the Ten Worlds. The sutra says that, by listening to one verse or one phrase of the sutra, the asura king Balin will attain (15) supreme perfect enlightenment. Thus the world of asuras contains the Ten Worlds. The sutra says, "If there are persons who for the sake of the Buddha fashion and set up images . . . then (16) all have attained the Buddha way," meaning that the world of human beings contains the Ten Worlds. The sutra states that the great heavenly king Brahma and the other deities declared, "We too in the same way will surely be (17) able to attain Buddhahood." Thus the world of heavenly beings contains the Ten Worlds. The sutra says, "Shariputra . . . will be able to become a Buddha with the name Flower Glow Thus (18) Come One." Thus the world of voice-hearers contains the Ten Worlds. The sutra says, "Those who seek to become pratyekabuddhas, monks, and nuns . . . all press their palms and with reverent minds wish to hear the teaching (19) of perfect endowment." Thus the world of pratyekabuddhas, or cause-awakened ones, has the Ten Worlds. The sutra describes the bodhisattvas who emerged from the earth, numerous as the dust particles of a thousand worlds, and who declared, "We ourselves wish to gain this great Law, true (20) and pure." Thus the world of bodhisattvas contains the Ten Worlds. The sutra says, "Sometimes I speak of myself (21), sometimes of others." Thus the world of Buddhahood contains the Ten Worlds.
Question: Although I can see both my own six sense organs and those of others, I cannot see the Ten Worlds in myself or others. How can I believe in them?
Answer: The "Teacher of the Law" chapter of the Lotus Sutra says, "[This Lotus Sutra is] the most difficult to believe and the most difficult to understand." [In describing how difficult it will be to fulfill the teachings of the Lotus Sutra after the Buddha's passing,] the "Treasure Tower" chapter speaks of the six difficult and nine easy acts. The Great Teacher T'ien-t'ai states, "Because the theoretical and the essential teachings [of the Lotus Sutra] contradict all the earlier sutras, they are extremely difficult to believe and difficult to understand (22)." The Great Teacher Chang-an comments, "The Buddha intended these as his ultimate teachings. How could they ever be easy to understand?" (23) The Great Teacher Dengyo says, "The Lotus Sutra is the most difficult to believe and to understand because in it the Buddha directly revealed (24) what he had attained."
Those who were born in the days of Shakyamuni Buddha and heard his teachings in person had formed deep karmic bonds with him in past existences. In addition, Shakyamuni Buddha, the lord of teachings, as well as Many Treasures Buddha, the Buddhas of the ten directions who are Shakyamuni's emanations, the countless Bodhisattvas of the Earth, and the other bodhisattvas such as Manjushri and Maitreya, aided them and encouraged them to believe, but even then there were those who failed to take faith. Five thousand people left the assembly, [arrogantly thinking that they had understood what they had not]. All human and heavenly beings [other than (25) those already present in the assembly] were moved to other worlds. How much more difficult it was to believe in the Lotus Sutra after the Buddha's passing - in the Former and Middle Days of the Law - and even more difficult it is now at the beginning of the Latter Day of the Law! If it were easy for you to believe in, it would not be the Buddha's correct teaching.
Notes
1. In Great Concentration and Insight, the Chinese word for "one mind" or "one thought" is used here, but in Nichiren Daishonin's teaching it is interpreted as indicating the entire psychosomatic entity; hence the word is translated as "life" rather than "mind."
2. Each of the Ten Worlds is endowed with ten factors, each of which in turn is endowed with the three realms of existence. The thirty realms refer to the ten factors multiplied by the three realms.
3. The Japanese text contains two parenthetical notes, one directly following the beginning clause, "Volume five of Great Concentration and Insight states," and the other following the quotation. They are translated together here. T'ien-t'ai's Great Concentration and Insight elucidates two ways to arrive at the "three thousand" of the "three thousand realms in a single moment of life": (1) The hundred worlds are multiplied by the three realms of existence and then by the ten factors to arrive at the "three thousand factors." (2) The hundred worlds are multiplied by the ten factors and then by the three realms of existence to arrive at the "three thousand realms of
existence." Although the method differs, the principle is the same.
4. The Annotations on "Great Concentration and Insight."
5. Ibid.
6. "Each sense field" refers to each of the six sense organs (the eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body, and mind) and the objects that stimulate them.
7. T'ien-t'ai's annotations on the "Perceiver of the World's Sounds" chapter of the Lotus Sutra, recorded by his disciple Chang-an.
8. The seventh chapter, which is regarded as the core of Great Concentration and Insight because it explains the practice of meditation.
9. The Profound Meaning of the Lotus Sutra, T'ien-t'ai's major work, recorded by Chang-an.
10. Introduction to Profound Meaning.
11. A work by Miao-lo that maintains that even insentient beings are endowed with the potential for Buddhahood.
12. Lotus Sutra, chap. 12.
13. Ibid., chap. 26.
14. Ibid., chap. 12.
15. A rephrasing of a passage in chapter 10 of the Lotus Sutra.
16. Lotus Sutra, chap. 2.
17. Ibid., chap. 3.
18. Ibid.
19. Ibid., chap. 2.
20. Ibid., chap. 21.
21. Ibid., chap. 16.
22. The Words and Phrases of the Lotus Sutra.
23. The Annotations on "The Treatise on the Observation of the Mind."
24. The Outstanding Principles of the Lotus Sutra.
25. According to the "Expedient Means" chapter of the Lotus Sutra, the five thousand arrogant people, who are mentioned in the preceding sentence, left the assembly as Shakyamuni began to preach about "the replacement of the three vehicles with the one vehicle," because they supposed they had attained what they had not attained. In the "Treasure Tower" chapter, Shakyamuni transforms the lands three times to accommodate the Buddhas who assemble from the ten directions. He purifies the saha world by removing all heavenly and human beings to other worlds, leaving only the assembled multitude.
(to be continued from pg. 358)
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Those who were born in the days of Shakyamuni Buddha and heard his teachings in person had formed deep karmic bonds with him in past existences. In addition, Shakyamuni Buddha, the lord of teachings, as well as Many Treasures Buddha, the Buddhas of the ten directions who are Shakyamuni's emanations, the countless Bodhisattvas of the Earth, and the other bodhisattvas such as Manjushri and Maitreya, aided them and encouraged them to believe, but even then there were those who failed to take faith. Five thousand people left the assembly, [arrogantly thinking that they had understood what they had not]. All human and heavenly beings [other than (25) those already present in the assembly] were moved to other worlds. How much more difficult it was to believe in the Lotus Sutra after the Buddha's passing - in the Former and Middle Days of the Law - and even more difficult it is now at the beginning of the Latter Day of the Law! If it were easy for you to believe in, it would not be the Buddha's correct teaching.
The Object of Devotion for Observing the Mind / WND pg. 354 (continued)
The Object of Devotion for Observing the Mind / WND pg. 354 (continued)
Question: The passages from the Lotus Sutra and the explanations by T'ien-t'ai, Chang-an, and others that you have cited are free from obscurities and doubtful points. But you seem to be saying that fire is water, or that black is white. Although they are the teachings of the Buddha, I find it difficult to accept them. Now I look repeatedly at people's faces, but I see only the human world. I do not see the other worlds. And the same is true when I look at my own face. How am I to believe in the Ten Worlds?
Answer: When we look from time to time at a person's face, we find him or her sometimes joyful, sometimes enraged, and sometimes calm. At times greed appears in the person's face, at times foolishness, and at times perversity. Rage is the world of hell, greed is that of hungry spirits, foolishness is that of animals, perversity is that of asuras, joy is that of heaven, and calmness is that of human beings. These worlds, the six paths, are all present in the physical appearance of the person's face. The remaining four noble worlds are hidden and dormant and do not appear in the face, but if we search carefully, we can tell that they are there.
Question: Although I am not entirely certain about the six paths, it would appear from what you have said that we possess them. But what about the four noble worlds that cannot be seen at all?
Answer: Earlier you doubted that the six lower worlds exist within the human world, but when I illustrated the point through an analogy, you understood. Perhaps it will be the same with the four noble worlds. I will try to employ reasoning to explain a bit about the matter. The fact that all things in this world are transient is perfectly clear to us. Is this not because the worlds of the two vehicles are present in the human world? Even a heartless villain loves his wife and children. He too has a portion of the bodhisattva world within him. Buddhahood is the most difficult to demonstrate. But since you possess the other nine worlds, you should believe that you have Buddhahood as well. Do not permit yourself to have doubts. Expounding on the human world, the Lotus Sutra says, "The Buddhas wish to open the door of Buddha wisdom to all living beings." The Nirvana Sutra states, "Those who study the teachings of the great vehicle, though they have the eyes of ordinary beings, are said to have the eyes of the Buddha." That ordinary people born in the latter age can believe in the Lotus Sutra is due to the fact that the world of Buddhahood is present in the human world.
Question: The Buddha clearly explained that each of the Ten Worlds has the same Ten Worlds within itself. Nonetheless, I find it difficult to believe that our base hearts could be endowed with the world of Buddhahood. If I cannot believe it, I will become an icchantika. With your great compassion, please help me believe, and save me from the torture of the Avichi hell.
Answer: You have already seen and heard the sutra passage concerning "the one great reason" [why the Buddhas appear in the world]. If you still do not believe, then how can anyone - from Shakyamuni Buddha on down to the four ranks of bodhisattvas or we ordinary people of the latter age who are at the stage of being a Buddha (26) in theory - save you from disbelief ? Nevertheless, I will try to explain. After all, some could not attain enlightenment through the direct teaching of the Buddha, but were able to do so later through the preaching of Ananda and other disciples.
People can attain enlightenment in two ways: by meeting the Buddha and hearing the Lotus Sutra, or by believing in the sutra even though they do not meet the Buddha. Even before the advent of the Buddha, some Brahmans in India realized the correct view of life through the four Vedas. In China before the arrival of Buddhism, some realized the correct view through Tao-ism and Confucianism. Many bodhisattvas and ordinary people, endowed with keen faculties, perceived [even before they heard the Lotus Sutra] that Shakyamuni had planted the seeds of Buddhahood within them in the days of the Buddha Great Universal Wisdom Excellence or in the far more distant past [when he attained his original enlightenment]. They understood this by hearing the Mahayana sutras of the Flower Garland, Correct and Equal, and Wisdom periods. They were like the pratyekabuddhas [who could perceive the impermanence of life] at the sight of scattering blossoms or falling leaves. These, then, are the type of people who gained the way through teachings other than the Lotus Sutra.
But many who neither received the seeds of Buddhahood nor formed ties with the Buddha in past existences cling to Hinayana or provisional Mahayana teachings, and even if they are fortunate enough to encounter the Lotus Sutra, they cannot advance beyond their Hinayana or provisional Mahayana views. They are convinced that their own views are correct, and as a result they place the Lotus Sutra on the same level as the Hinayana sutras or [the provisional Mahayana sutras such as] the Flower Garland and the Mahavairochana. Some even regard the Lotus Sutra as subordinate to these. The Buddhist teachers who preach such views of the Lotus Sutra are inferior to the worthies and sages of Confucianism and Brahmanism. But let us set this matter aside for the moment.
The mutual possession of the Ten Worlds is as difficult to believe as fire existing in a stone or flowers within a tree. Yet under the right conditions such phenomena actually occur and are believable. To believe that Buddhahood exists within the human world is the most difficult thing of all - as difficult as believing that fire exists in water or water in fire. Nevertheless, the dragon is said to produce fire from water and water from fire, and although people do not understand why, they believe it when they see it occur. Since you now believe that the human world contains the other eight worlds, why are you still unable to include the world of Buddhahood? The Chinese sage kings Yao and Shun were impartial toward all people. They manifested one aspect of Buddhahood within the human world. Bodhisattva Never Disparaging saw the Buddha in everyone he met, and Prince Siddhartha was a human who became a Buddha. These examples should help you believe.
Note: The teaching that follows must be kept in the strictest secrecy.
Question: Shakyamuni, the lord of teachings, is the Buddha who has completely destroyed the three categories of illusion. He is the sovereign of all rulers, bodhisattvas, persons of the two vehicles, human and heavenly beings, and others in the ten directions. When ever the Buddha moves, Brahma attends him on the left and Shakra on the right. The four kinds of Buddhists and the eight kinds of nonhuman beings followbehind, while the vajra-bearing gods march in the vanguard. With his eighty thousand teachings he leads all living beings to emancipation. How could a Buddha such as this dwell in the hearts of us ordinary people?
Both the teachings before the Lotus Sutra and the theoretical teaching of the Lotus Sutra itself tell us that Shakyamuni Buddha attained enlightenment for the first time in this world. Searching for the cause of his enlightenment, we find that he practiced bodhisattva austerities in past existences as Prince Earnest Donor, Bodhisattva Learned Youth, King Shibi, and Prince Sattva. The Buddha practiced his austerities for three asamkhya kalpas or a hundred major kalpas, or for kalpas equal in number to countless dust particles, or for countless asamkhya kalpas, or from the time he first set his mind on enlightenment, or for as long as major world system dust particle kalpas. He served as many as seventy-five, seventy-six, or seventy-seven thousand (28) Buddhas, passed through innumerable kalpas and, having completed his practice, became, in this life, Shakyamuni Buddha, the lord of teachings. Are you saying that within each of us exists the world of the bodhisattva, which is endowed with all the blessings the Buddha attained as a result of his practice?
Looking into the results of his practice, we see that Shakyamuni Buddha, the lord of teachings, first attained enlightenment in this life. For more than forty years the Buddha revealed himself in four different ways in the four kinds (29) of teachings; thus, by expounding the pre-Lotus Sutra teachings, the theoretical teaching, and the Nirvana Sutra, he was able to benefit all living beings.
When he preached the Lotus Treasury (30) World [in the Flower Garland Sutra], Shakyamuni appeared as Vairochana Buddha seated on the lotus pedestal with other Buddhas surroundinghim in the ten directions. When he preached the Agama sutras, he appeared as a Buddha who had eliminated illusions and attained the way by practicing thirty-four kinds of spiritual purification. When he preached the Correct and Equal sutras, he was accompanied by a great multitude of Buddhas. One thousand Buddhas joined him when he preached the Wisdom sutras. In the Mahavairochana and Diamond Crown sutras, he made a dignified appearance as the twelve hundred and more honored (31) ones. In the "Treasure Tower" chapter of the theoretical teaching of the Lotus Sutra, the Buddha manifested himself in four different ways, corresponding to the four kinds of lands. When the Buddha preached the Nirvana Sutra, those assembled saw him variously as a Buddha sixteen feet tall, as having a small or large body, as Vairochana Buddha, or as a Buddha with a body as vast as space. Thus he manifested (32) four kinds of bodies. When the Buddha passed into extinction at the age (33) of eighty, he left his relics to benefit people in the Former, Middle, and Latter Days of the Law.
Now, the essential teaching of the Lotus Sutra says that Shakyamuni Buddha, the lord of teachings, attained Buddhahood numberless major world system dust particle kalpas ago, and that the cause that made this possible was the practice he had carried out at that time. Since then he has manifested emanation bodies throughout the worlds of the ten directions and preached all the sacred teachings of his lifetime to teach and convert people as numerous as the dust particles of the land. When we compare the number of disciples in the essential teaching with that of disciples in the theoretical teaching, the former is like the ocean, and the latter, like a drop of water, or the one, like a great mountain, and the other, like a speck of dust. What is more, a bodhisattva of the essential teaching is far superior to any bodhisattva of the theoretical teaching, including Manjushri, Perceiver of the World's Sounds, or any of the others who gathered from the worlds in the ten directions. The difference between them is even greater than that between Shakra and a monkey. Are you saying that besides these bodhisattvas, the persons of the two vehicles who obtained their enlightenment by destroying their illusions, Brahma, Shakra, the gods of the sun and moon, the four heavenly kings, the four wheel-turning kings, and the immense flames of the great citadel of the hell of incessant suffering - all beings and all things in the ten directions are inherent in the Ten Worlds and in the three thousand realms of our own lives? Even if you say that this is what the Buddha taught, I still cannot believe it.
When we consider the matter in this light, we see that the sutras that came before the Lotus Sutra are genuine in both substance and wording. The Flower Garland Sutra describes enlightenment [at the stage of security] as "ultimately perfect and free from all falsehood and defilement, like the empty sky." The Benevolent Kings Sutra reads, "[If one obtains the great wisdom of nirvana], one can penetrate the ultimate source of delusion and realize one's essential nature until nothing but wonderful wisdom remains." In the Diamond Wisdom Sutra it says, "[When one reaches enlightenment], nothing but pure goodness will remain." Bodhisattva Ashvaghosha states in The Awakening of Faith in the Mahayana, "Only pure blessings exist within the matrix of the Thus Come One." Bodhisattva Vasubandhu remarks in his Treatise on the Consciousness-Only Doctrine, "When adamantine meditation is achieved, other remaining defilements and a lesser form of non-defilement will draw forth the ultimate consciousness of perfect clarity and total purity.Then, being no longer necessary, they will be abandoned forever."
A careful comparison of the Lotus Sutra and the sutras taught before it shows that those sutras are innumerable, and that they have been taught over a long time. Therefore, although both are the Buddha's teachings, if these two contradict each other, you should accept the earlier sutras. Bodhisattva Ashvaghosha was the Buddha's eleventh successor, whose appearance had been foretold by the Buddha himself. Vasubandhu was the author of one thousand treatises and was numbered among the four ranks of bodhisattvas. How then can you believe the Great Teacher T'ien-t'ai, a lowly priest living far away from the birthplace of Buddhism who [interpreted the sutras but] did not write a single treatise? Still, I might be able to disregard the many and accept the few, if the Lotus Sutra said anything to prove this point. But where in the sutra can you find any passages that definitely verify the mutual possession of the Ten Worlds, the hundred worlds and thousand factors, and three thousand realms in a single moment of life?
In the Lotus Sutra we find the following passage: "He [the Buddha] has rooted out evil from among the phenomena (34)." Neither Bodhisattva Vasubandhu's Treatise on the Lotus Sutra nor Bodhisattva Saramati's Treatise on the Treasure Vehicle of Buddhahood makes any mention of the mutual possession of the Ten Worlds. Nor are there any writings by the great teachers of the northern and southern schools in China, or by the priests of the seven temples of Japan, that expound this principle. It is simply T'ien-t'ai's own biased view, and Dengyo made the mistake of transmitting it. That is what the Teacher of the Nation (35) Ch'ing-liang meant when he said, "This is an error of T'ien-t'ai's." The Dharma Teacher Hui-yüan said, "By defining Hinayana doctrines as the Tripitaka teachings, T'ien-t'ai has confused Hinayana and Mahayana, [for both contain the Tripitaka, or three divisions of (36) the canon]." Ryoko criticized him, saying, "T'ien-t'ai is the only one who did not understand the true meaning of the Flower Garland Sutra." Tokuitsu reproached him, saying, "See here, Chih-i, whose disciple are you? With a tongue less than three inches long you slander the teachings that come from the Buddha's long broad tongue that can cover even his face!" (37) The Great Teacher Kobo commented, "The Buddhist teachers of China vied with one another to steal the ghee [of the dharanis or True Word] and claim that it is (38) the possession of their own school." Thus, the doctrine of three thousand realms in a single moment of life is not mentioned in either the provisional or the true teaching of Shakyamuni Buddha. It did not appear in the writings of any of the four ranks of Indian scholars, and no Chinese or Japanese teacher has ever espoused it. How then do you dare to believe it?
Answer: Your criticisms are extremely harsh. Nonetheless, the differences between the Lotus Sutra and the other sutras are clear from the text of the sutras themselves. In them we find statements that the Buddha did not reveal the truth in the first forty-two years of his teaching, and that he will reveal it in the Lotus Sutra. Many Treasures Buddha and the Buddhas of the ten directions presented themselves to attest to the truth of the Lotus Sutra, something they did not do for any other sutra. With the Lotus Sutra Shakyamuni enabled the people of the two vehicles to attain Buddhahood, whereas with the earlier sutras he did not. In the earlier sutras he stated that he attained enlightenment for the first time in this world, but in the Lotus Sutra he revealed that his enlightenment actually (39) occurred in the remote past.
I will now address the problems posed by the scholars you mentioned above. The Great Teacher T'ien-t'ai comments: "Vasubandhu and Nagarjuna clearly perceived the truth in their hearts, but they did not teach it. Instead, they employed the provisional Mahayana teachings, which were suited to the times. The Buddhist teachers who came later, however, were biased in their understanding, and the scholars obstinately clung to their own views, until in the end they began to battle with one another. Each defended one small corner of the teachings and thereby completely departed from the (40) sacred way of the Buddha." The Great Teacher Chang-an says of T'ien-t'ai, "Even the great scholars of India were not in a class with him, and the Chinese teachers -well, one need hardly mention them. This is no idle boast - the doctrine he taught was indeed of such excellence."
In their hearts Vasubandhu, Nagarjuna, Ashvaghosha, Saramati, and other Buddhist scholars knew [the doctrine of three thousand realms in a single moment of life], but they did not reveal it to others because the time for it to be expounded had not yet come. As for the Buddhist teachers in China who preceded T'ien-t'ai, some kept this treasure in their hearts, and others knew nothing about it. Among those who came after him, some accepted this doctrine only after first trying to disprove it, and others never accepted it at all.
Concerning the passage in the Lotus Sutra that you quoted, "He [the Buddha] has rooted out evil from among the phenomena," here the Buddha is referring to a teaching from one of the earlier sutras. But when you take a closer look at the sutra, it is clear that the mutual possession of the Ten Worlds is being explained. For, in the same sutra, this passage is found: "The Buddhas wish to open the door of Buddha wisdom to all living beings."T'ien-t'ai comments on this passage as follows: "If people do not possess innate Buddha wisdom, how could the Buddha say he wanted to open it? One must understand that Buddha wisdom (41) is inherent in all human beings." The Great Teacher Chang-an concludes, "How could people open the door to and realize their Buddha wisdom if it did not exist within them? How could a person show the poor woman her treasure repository if the treasure repository did not exist?" (42)
It is, however, extremely difficult to convince you that Shakyamuni Buddha, the lord of teachings, exists within us [just as the other nine worlds do]. Therefore, he gives us this admonishment beforehand: "Among the sutras I have preached, now preach, and will preach, this Lotus Sutra is the most difficult to believe and the most difficult (43) to understand." The "six difficult and nine easy acts" he expounds in the next chapter explains how difficult it is. Hence the Great Teacher T'ien-t'ai states, "Because the theoretical and the essential teachings [of the Lotus Sutra] contradict all the earlier sutras, they are extremely difficult to believe and difficult to understand - no less difficult than facing an enemy who is armed with a spear." (44) The Great Teacher Chang-an comments, "The Buddha intended these as his ultimate teachings. How could they ever be easy to understand?" The Great Teacher Dengyo remarks, "The Lotus Sutra is the most difficult to believe and to understand because in it the Buddha directly revealed what he had attained."
In the more than eighteen hundred years after the Buddha's passing, only three persons throughout the three countries perceived this correct doctrine. They are Shakyamuni Buddha of India, the Great Teacher T'ien-t'ai Chih-che of China, and the Great Teacher Dengyo of Japan. These three men are all Buddhist sages.
Notes:
26. This stage refers to the first of the six stages of practice, when one has not yet heard the correct teaching and is ignorant of Buddhism. See also six stages of practice in Glossary.
27. Deities who wield weapons to protect Buddhism. Vajra (Skt) means diamond-pounder, a symbol for firmness or hardness.
28. In Hinayana Buddhism a bodhisattva is supposed to serve seventy-five thousand Buddhas for one asamkhya kalpas, seventy-six thousand Buddhas for another asamkhya kalpas, and seventy-seven thousand Buddhas for a third asamkhya kalpas.
29. The text has been augmented slightly here for clarity. The "four different ways" refers to the four different aspects Shakyamuni assumed when he preached the four kinds of teachings - the Tripitaka, connecting, specific, and perfect teachings.
30. The land of Vairochana Buddha, who appears in the Flower Garland Sutra, the first sutra Shakyamuni taught after attaining enlightenment.
31. Venerable Buddhas, bodhisattvas, and others inscribed on the two mandalas on the Diamond and Womb realms.
32. "A Buddha sixteen feet tall" indicates the inferior manifested body of the Buddha, and "a small or large body," the superior manifested body. Vairochana Buddha refers to a Buddha of the reward body, and "a body as vast as space," to a Buddha of the Dharma body.
33. Here the Buddha's teachings.
34. Lotus Sutra, chap. 2.
35. The Teacher of the Nation Ch'ing-liang was the honorary title given to Ch'eng-kuan (738-839), the fourth patriarch of the Chinese Flower Garland school. Hui-yüan (n.d.), who appears in the next sentence, was an eighth-century T'ang dynasty priest who studied the Flower Garland doctrines under Fa-tsang (643-712), the third patriarch and doctrinal systematizer of the Flower Garland school.
36. No documents about Ryoko are extant, but he is thought to have been a Japanese Flower Garland priest. Tokuitsu, who appears in the next sentence, was a Dharma Characteristics priest who disputed frequently with the Great Teacher Dengyo on doctrinal matters. Chih-i is an-other name for T'ien-t'ai.
37. An Essay on the Protection of the Nation. The "long broad tongue" is one of the thirty-two features of a Buddha; it is symbolic of the Buddha's honesty.
38. The essence of this statement is found in A Comparison of Exoteric and Esoteric Buddhism.
39. This paragraph has been expanded in translation for the sake of clarity.
40. Great Concentration and Insight.
41. Profound Meaning.
42. On "The Treatise on the Observation of the Mind."
43. Lotus Sutra, chap. 10.
44. Words and Phrases.
(to be continued from pg. 363)
The Object of Devotion for Observing the Mind / WND pg. 354 (continued)
Question: The passages from the Lotus Sutra and the explanations by T'ien-t'ai, Chang-an, and others that you have cited are free from obscurities and doubtful points. But you seem to be saying that fire is water, or that black is white. Although they are the teachings of the Buddha, I find it difficult to accept them. Now I look repeatedly at people's faces, but I see only the human world. I do not see the other worlds. And the same is true when I look at my own face. How am I to believe in the Ten Worlds?
Answer: When we look from time to time at a person's face, we find him or her sometimes joyful, sometimes enraged, and sometimes calm. At times greed appears in the person's face, at times foolishness, and at times perversity. Rage is the world of hell, greed is that of hungry spirits, foolishness is that of animals, perversity is that of asuras, joy is that of heaven, and calmness is that of human beings. These worlds, the six paths, are all present in the physical appearance of the person's face. The remaining four noble worlds are hidden and dormant and do not appear in the face, but if we search carefully, we can tell that they are there.
Question: Although I am not entirely certain about the six paths, it would appear from what you have said that we possess them. But what about the four noble worlds that cannot be seen at all?
Answer: Earlier you doubted that the six lower worlds exist within the human world, but when I illustrated the point through an analogy, you understood. Perhaps it will be the same with the four noble worlds. I will try to employ reasoning to explain a bit about the matter. The fact that all things in this world are transient is perfectly clear to us. Is this not because the worlds of the two vehicles are present in the human world? Even a heartless villain loves his wife and children. He too has a portion of the bodhisattva world within him. Buddhahood is the most difficult to demonstrate. But since you possess the other nine worlds, you should believe that you have Buddhahood as well. Do not permit yourself to have doubts. Expounding on the human world, the Lotus Sutra says, "The Buddhas wish to open the door of Buddha wisdom to all living beings." The Nirvana Sutra states, "Those who study the teachings of the great vehicle, though they have the eyes of ordinary beings, are said to have the eyes of the Buddha." That ordinary people born in the latter age can believe in the Lotus Sutra is due to the fact that the world of Buddhahood is present in the human world.
Question: The Buddha clearly explained that each of the Ten Worlds has the same Ten Worlds within itself. Nonetheless, I find it difficult to believe that our base hearts could be endowed with the world of Buddhahood. If I cannot believe it, I will become an icchantika. With your great compassion, please help me believe, and save me from the torture of the Avichi hell.
Answer: You have already seen and heard the sutra passage concerning "the one great reason" [why the Buddhas appear in the world]. If you still do not believe, then how can anyone - from Shakyamuni Buddha on down to the four ranks of bodhisattvas or we ordinary people of the latter age who are at the stage of being a Buddha (26) in theory - save you from disbelief ? Nevertheless, I will try to explain. After all, some could not attain enlightenment through the direct teaching of the Buddha, but were able to do so later through the preaching of Ananda and other disciples.
People can attain enlightenment in two ways: by meeting the Buddha and hearing the Lotus Sutra, or by believing in the sutra even though they do not meet the Buddha. Even before the advent of the Buddha, some Brahmans in India realized the correct view of life through the four Vedas. In China before the arrival of Buddhism, some realized the correct view through Tao-ism and Confucianism. Many bodhisattvas and ordinary people, endowed with keen faculties, perceived [even before they heard the Lotus Sutra] that Shakyamuni had planted the seeds of Buddhahood within them in the days of the Buddha Great Universal Wisdom Excellence or in the far more distant past [when he attained his original enlightenment]. They understood this by hearing the Mahayana sutras of the Flower Garland, Correct and Equal, and Wisdom periods. They were like the pratyekabuddhas [who could perceive the impermanence of life] at the sight of scattering blossoms or falling leaves. These, then, are the type of people who gained the way through teachings other than the Lotus Sutra.
But many who neither received the seeds of Buddhahood nor formed ties with the Buddha in past existences cling to Hinayana or provisional Mahayana teachings, and even if they are fortunate enough to encounter the Lotus Sutra, they cannot advance beyond their Hinayana or provisional Mahayana views. They are convinced that their own views are correct, and as a result they place the Lotus Sutra on the same level as the Hinayana sutras or [the provisional Mahayana sutras such as] the Flower Garland and the Mahavairochana. Some even regard the Lotus Sutra as subordinate to these. The Buddhist teachers who preach such views of the Lotus Sutra are inferior to the worthies and sages of Confucianism and Brahmanism. But let us set this matter aside for the moment.
The mutual possession of the Ten Worlds is as difficult to believe as fire existing in a stone or flowers within a tree. Yet under the right conditions such phenomena actually occur and are believable. To believe that Buddhahood exists within the human world is the most difficult thing of all - as difficult as believing that fire exists in water or water in fire. Nevertheless, the dragon is said to produce fire from water and water from fire, and although people do not understand why, they believe it when they see it occur. Since you now believe that the human world contains the other eight worlds, why are you still unable to include the world of Buddhahood? The Chinese sage kings Yao and Shun were impartial toward all people. They manifested one aspect of Buddhahood within the human world. Bodhisattva Never Disparaging saw the Buddha in everyone he met, and Prince Siddhartha was a human who became a Buddha. These examples should help you believe.
Note: The teaching that follows must be kept in the strictest secrecy.
Question: Shakyamuni, the lord of teachings, is the Buddha who has completely destroyed the three categories of illusion. He is the sovereign of all rulers, bodhisattvas, persons of the two vehicles, human and heavenly beings, and others in the ten directions. When ever the Buddha moves, Brahma attends him on the left and Shakra on the right. The four kinds of Buddhists and the eight kinds of nonhuman beings followbehind, while the vajra-bearing gods march in the vanguard. With his eighty thousand teachings he leads all living beings to emancipation. How could a Buddha such as this dwell in the hearts of us ordinary people?
Both the teachings before the Lotus Sutra and the theoretical teaching of the Lotus Sutra itself tell us that Shakyamuni Buddha attained enlightenment for the first time in this world. Searching for the cause of his enlightenment, we find that he practiced bodhisattva austerities in past existences as Prince Earnest Donor, Bodhisattva Learned Youth, King Shibi, and Prince Sattva. The Buddha practiced his austerities for three asamkhya kalpas or a hundred major kalpas, or for kalpas equal in number to countless dust particles, or for countless asamkhya kalpas, or from the time he first set his mind on enlightenment, or for as long as major world system dust particle kalpas. He served as many as seventy-five, seventy-six, or seventy-seven thousand (28) Buddhas, passed through innumerable kalpas and, having completed his practice, became, in this life, Shakyamuni Buddha, the lord of teachings. Are you saying that within each of us exists the world of the bodhisattva, which is endowed with all the blessings the Buddha attained as a result of his practice?
Looking into the results of his practice, we see that Shakyamuni Buddha, the lord of teachings, first attained enlightenment in this life. For more than forty years the Buddha revealed himself in four different ways in the four kinds (29) of teachings; thus, by expounding the pre-Lotus Sutra teachings, the theoretical teaching, and the Nirvana Sutra, he was able to benefit all living beings.
When he preached the Lotus Treasury (30) World [in the Flower Garland Sutra], Shakyamuni appeared as Vairochana Buddha seated on the lotus pedestal with other Buddhas surroundinghim in the ten directions. When he preached the Agama sutras, he appeared as a Buddha who had eliminated illusions and attained the way by practicing thirty-four kinds of spiritual purification. When he preached the Correct and Equal sutras, he was accompanied by a great multitude of Buddhas. One thousand Buddhas joined him when he preached the Wisdom sutras. In the Mahavairochana and Diamond Crown sutras, he made a dignified appearance as the twelve hundred and more honored (31) ones. In the "Treasure Tower" chapter of the theoretical teaching of the Lotus Sutra, the Buddha manifested himself in four different ways, corresponding to the four kinds of lands. When the Buddha preached the Nirvana Sutra, those assembled saw him variously as a Buddha sixteen feet tall, as having a small or large body, as Vairochana Buddha, or as a Buddha with a body as vast as space. Thus he manifested (32) four kinds of bodies. When the Buddha passed into extinction at the age (33) of eighty, he left his relics to benefit people in the Former, Middle, and Latter Days of the Law.
Now, the essential teaching of the Lotus Sutra says that Shakyamuni Buddha, the lord of teachings, attained Buddhahood numberless major world system dust particle kalpas ago, and that the cause that made this possible was the practice he had carried out at that time. Since then he has manifested emanation bodies throughout the worlds of the ten directions and preached all the sacred teachings of his lifetime to teach and convert people as numerous as the dust particles of the land. When we compare the number of disciples in the essential teaching with that of disciples in the theoretical teaching, the former is like the ocean, and the latter, like a drop of water, or the one, like a great mountain, and the other, like a speck of dust. What is more, a bodhisattva of the essential teaching is far superior to any bodhisattva of the theoretical teaching, including Manjushri, Perceiver of the World's Sounds, or any of the others who gathered from the worlds in the ten directions. The difference between them is even greater than that between Shakra and a monkey. Are you saying that besides these bodhisattvas, the persons of the two vehicles who obtained their enlightenment by destroying their illusions, Brahma, Shakra, the gods of the sun and moon, the four heavenly kings, the four wheel-turning kings, and the immense flames of the great citadel of the hell of incessant suffering - all beings and all things in the ten directions are inherent in the Ten Worlds and in the three thousand realms of our own lives? Even if you say that this is what the Buddha taught, I still cannot believe it.
When we consider the matter in this light, we see that the sutras that came before the Lotus Sutra are genuine in both substance and wording. The Flower Garland Sutra describes enlightenment [at the stage of security] as "ultimately perfect and free from all falsehood and defilement, like the empty sky." The Benevolent Kings Sutra reads, "[If one obtains the great wisdom of nirvana], one can penetrate the ultimate source of delusion and realize one's essential nature until nothing but wonderful wisdom remains." In the Diamond Wisdom Sutra it says, "[When one reaches enlightenment], nothing but pure goodness will remain." Bodhisattva Ashvaghosha states in The Awakening of Faith in the Mahayana, "Only pure blessings exist within the matrix of the Thus Come One." Bodhisattva Vasubandhu remarks in his Treatise on the Consciousness-Only Doctrine, "When adamantine meditation is achieved, other remaining defilements and a lesser form of non-defilement will draw forth the ultimate consciousness of perfect clarity and total purity.Then, being no longer necessary, they will be abandoned forever."
A careful comparison of the Lotus Sutra and the sutras taught before it shows that those sutras are innumerable, and that they have been taught over a long time. Therefore, although both are the Buddha's teachings, if these two contradict each other, you should accept the earlier sutras. Bodhisattva Ashvaghosha was the Buddha's eleventh successor, whose appearance had been foretold by the Buddha himself. Vasubandhu was the author of one thousand treatises and was numbered among the four ranks of bodhisattvas. How then can you believe the Great Teacher T'ien-t'ai, a lowly priest living far away from the birthplace of Buddhism who [interpreted the sutras but] did not write a single treatise? Still, I might be able to disregard the many and accept the few, if the Lotus Sutra said anything to prove this point. But where in the sutra can you find any passages that definitely verify the mutual possession of the Ten Worlds, the hundred worlds and thousand factors, and three thousand realms in a single moment of life?
In the Lotus Sutra we find the following passage: "He [the Buddha] has rooted out evil from among the phenomena (34)." Neither Bodhisattva Vasubandhu's Treatise on the Lotus Sutra nor Bodhisattva Saramati's Treatise on the Treasure Vehicle of Buddhahood makes any mention of the mutual possession of the Ten Worlds. Nor are there any writings by the great teachers of the northern and southern schools in China, or by the priests of the seven temples of Japan, that expound this principle. It is simply T'ien-t'ai's own biased view, and Dengyo made the mistake of transmitting it. That is what the Teacher of the Nation (35) Ch'ing-liang meant when he said, "This is an error of T'ien-t'ai's." The Dharma Teacher Hui-yüan said, "By defining Hinayana doctrines as the Tripitaka teachings, T'ien-t'ai has confused Hinayana and Mahayana, [for both contain the Tripitaka, or three divisions of (36) the canon]." Ryoko criticized him, saying, "T'ien-t'ai is the only one who did not understand the true meaning of the Flower Garland Sutra." Tokuitsu reproached him, saying, "See here, Chih-i, whose disciple are you? With a tongue less than three inches long you slander the teachings that come from the Buddha's long broad tongue that can cover even his face!" (37) The Great Teacher Kobo commented, "The Buddhist teachers of China vied with one another to steal the ghee [of the dharanis or True Word] and claim that it is (38) the possession of their own school." Thus, the doctrine of three thousand realms in a single moment of life is not mentioned in either the provisional or the true teaching of Shakyamuni Buddha. It did not appear in the writings of any of the four ranks of Indian scholars, and no Chinese or Japanese teacher has ever espoused it. How then do you dare to believe it?
Answer: Your criticisms are extremely harsh. Nonetheless, the differences between the Lotus Sutra and the other sutras are clear from the text of the sutras themselves. In them we find statements that the Buddha did not reveal the truth in the first forty-two years of his teaching, and that he will reveal it in the Lotus Sutra. Many Treasures Buddha and the Buddhas of the ten directions presented themselves to attest to the truth of the Lotus Sutra, something they did not do for any other sutra. With the Lotus Sutra Shakyamuni enabled the people of the two vehicles to attain Buddhahood, whereas with the earlier sutras he did not. In the earlier sutras he stated that he attained enlightenment for the first time in this world, but in the Lotus Sutra he revealed that his enlightenment actually (39) occurred in the remote past.
I will now address the problems posed by the scholars you mentioned above. The Great Teacher T'ien-t'ai comments: "Vasubandhu and Nagarjuna clearly perceived the truth in their hearts, but they did not teach it. Instead, they employed the provisional Mahayana teachings, which were suited to the times. The Buddhist teachers who came later, however, were biased in their understanding, and the scholars obstinately clung to their own views, until in the end they began to battle with one another. Each defended one small corner of the teachings and thereby completely departed from the (40) sacred way of the Buddha." The Great Teacher Chang-an says of T'ien-t'ai, "Even the great scholars of India were not in a class with him, and the Chinese teachers -well, one need hardly mention them. This is no idle boast - the doctrine he taught was indeed of such excellence."
In their hearts Vasubandhu, Nagarjuna, Ashvaghosha, Saramati, and other Buddhist scholars knew [the doctrine of three thousand realms in a single moment of life], but they did not reveal it to others because the time for it to be expounded had not yet come. As for the Buddhist teachers in China who preceded T'ien-t'ai, some kept this treasure in their hearts, and others knew nothing about it. Among those who came after him, some accepted this doctrine only after first trying to disprove it, and others never accepted it at all.
Concerning the passage in the Lotus Sutra that you quoted, "He [the Buddha] has rooted out evil from among the phenomena," here the Buddha is referring to a teaching from one of the earlier sutras. But when you take a closer look at the sutra, it is clear that the mutual possession of the Ten Worlds is being explained. For, in the same sutra, this passage is found: "The Buddhas wish to open the door of Buddha wisdom to all living beings."T'ien-t'ai comments on this passage as follows: "If people do not possess innate Buddha wisdom, how could the Buddha say he wanted to open it? One must understand that Buddha wisdom (41) is inherent in all human beings." The Great Teacher Chang-an concludes, "How could people open the door to and realize their Buddha wisdom if it did not exist within them? How could a person show the poor woman her treasure repository if the treasure repository did not exist?" (42)
It is, however, extremely difficult to convince you that Shakyamuni Buddha, the lord of teachings, exists within us [just as the other nine worlds do]. Therefore, he gives us this admonishment beforehand: "Among the sutras I have preached, now preach, and will preach, this Lotus Sutra is the most difficult to believe and the most difficult (43) to understand." The "six difficult and nine easy acts" he expounds in the next chapter explains how difficult it is. Hence the Great Teacher T'ien-t'ai states, "Because the theoretical and the essential teachings [of the Lotus Sutra] contradict all the earlier sutras, they are extremely difficult to believe and difficult to understand - no less difficult than facing an enemy who is armed with a spear." (44) The Great Teacher Chang-an comments, "The Buddha intended these as his ultimate teachings. How could they ever be easy to understand?" The Great Teacher Dengyo remarks, "The Lotus Sutra is the most difficult to believe and to understand because in it the Buddha directly revealed what he had attained."
In the more than eighteen hundred years after the Buddha's passing, only three persons throughout the three countries perceived this correct doctrine. They are Shakyamuni Buddha of India, the Great Teacher T'ien-t'ai Chih-che of China, and the Great Teacher Dengyo of Japan. These three men are all Buddhist sages.
Notes:
26. This stage refers to the first of the six stages of practice, when one has not yet heard the correct teaching and is ignorant of Buddhism. See also six stages of practice in Glossary.
27. Deities who wield weapons to protect Buddhism. Vajra (Skt) means diamond-pounder, a symbol for firmness or hardness.
28. In Hinayana Buddhism a bodhisattva is supposed to serve seventy-five thousand Buddhas for one asamkhya kalpas, seventy-six thousand Buddhas for another asamkhya kalpas, and seventy-seven thousand Buddhas for a third asamkhya kalpas.
29. The text has been augmented slightly here for clarity. The "four different ways" refers to the four different aspects Shakyamuni assumed when he preached the four kinds of teachings - the Tripitaka, connecting, specific, and perfect teachings.
30. The land of Vairochana Buddha, who appears in the Flower Garland Sutra, the first sutra Shakyamuni taught after attaining enlightenment.
31. Venerable Buddhas, bodhisattvas, and others inscribed on the two mandalas on the Diamond and Womb realms.
32. "A Buddha sixteen feet tall" indicates the inferior manifested body of the Buddha, and "a small or large body," the superior manifested body. Vairochana Buddha refers to a Buddha of the reward body, and "a body as vast as space," to a Buddha of the Dharma body.
33. Here the Buddha's teachings.
34. Lotus Sutra, chap. 2.
35. The Teacher of the Nation Ch'ing-liang was the honorary title given to Ch'eng-kuan (738-839), the fourth patriarch of the Chinese Flower Garland school. Hui-yüan (n.d.), who appears in the next sentence, was an eighth-century T'ang dynasty priest who studied the Flower Garland doctrines under Fa-tsang (643-712), the third patriarch and doctrinal systematizer of the Flower Garland school.
36. No documents about Ryoko are extant, but he is thought to have been a Japanese Flower Garland priest. Tokuitsu, who appears in the next sentence, was a Dharma Characteristics priest who disputed frequently with the Great Teacher Dengyo on doctrinal matters. Chih-i is an-other name for T'ien-t'ai.
37. An Essay on the Protection of the Nation. The "long broad tongue" is one of the thirty-two features of a Buddha; it is symbolic of the Buddha's honesty.
38. The essence of this statement is found in A Comparison of Exoteric and Esoteric Buddhism.
39. This paragraph has been expanded in translation for the sake of clarity.
40. Great Concentration and Insight.
41. Profound Meaning.
42. On "The Treatise on the Observation of the Mind."
43. Lotus Sutra, chap. 10.
44. Words and Phrases.
(to be continued from pg. 363)
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gp, I bow in obeisance to you!
gp, I bow in obeisance to you!
How sweet of you to think of the thread and make such a sincere gesture! You have made an offering to the Law, whether you are aware of it or not. As such, your intention is most respectworthy, and I wish to thank you from the bottom of my heart.
However, as a Buddhist, it would probably be inappropritae to assume a Tao-ist symbol for anything related to this thread. I am so sorry! Please don’t say anything apologetic. Your sincerity is what matters and you expressed that!
You have my deepest, warmest, gratitude!
Thomas
gp, I bow in obeisance to you!
How sweet of you to think of the thread and make such a sincere gesture! You have made an offering to the Law, whether you are aware of it or not. As such, your intention is most respectworthy, and I wish to thank you from the bottom of my heart.
However, as a Buddhist, it would probably be inappropritae to assume a Tao-ist symbol for anything related to this thread. I am so sorry! Please don’t say anything apologetic. Your sincerity is what matters and you expressed that!
You have my deepest, warmest, gratitude!
Thomas
The Object of Devotion for Observing the Mind / WND pg. 354 (continued)
The Object of Devotion for Observing the Mind / WND pg. 354 (continued)
Question: What about Nagarjuna and Vasubandhu?
Answer: Those sages knew, but did not expound it. They expounded part of the theoretical teaching, but did not expound either the essential teaching or the truth that the Buddha had observed in his mind. Perhaps the people in their age were capable of believing it, but the time was not ripe to expound it. Or perhaps neither the people's capacity nor the time was appropriate.
After the advent of T'ien-t'ai and Dengyo, many Buddhists learned of the doctrine of three thousand realms in a single moment of life through the wisdom of these two sages. They included Chia-hsiang of the Three Treatises school; more than one hundred priests of the three schools of the south and seven schools of the north in China; Fa-tsang and Ch'ing-liang of the Flower Garland school; the Tripitaka Master Hsüan-tsang and the Great Teacher Tz'u-en of the Dharma Characteristics school; the Tripitaka masters Shan-wu-wei, Chin-kang-chih, and Pu-k'ung of the True Word school; and Tao-hsüan of the Precepts school. At first they all opposed T'ien-t'ai, but later they totally accepted his teachings.
Now, to dispel the grave doubts you have about Buddhahood within the human world, I refer you to the Immeasurable Meanings Sutra, which states: "[Good men], such persons are like a prince newly born to the king of a country and his queen. When he is one day, two days, or seven days old; one month, two months, or seven months old; one year, two years, or seven years old, though he is not yet able to manage the affairs of state, already he is respected and looked up to by the ministers and the people. He is a companion to the sons of other great kings, and the king and queen love and dote on him and are forever talking with him. Why? Because he is still just a child.
"Good men, the person who upholds this sutra is like this. The Buddhas, who are the king, and the sutra, which is the queen, join together in harmony to give birth to this bodhisattva son. If the bodhisattva is able to hear this sutra, whether it is one line or one verse, one repetition, two repetitions, ten, a hundred, a thousand, ten thousand, or immeasurable, countless repetitions equal to the sands of a million ten thousand Ganges Rivers, though he cannot fully grasp the extent of its truth . . . already he is revered and looked up to by all the four kinds of Buddhists and the eight kinds of non-human beings, and he has the great bodhisattvas for his companions. . . . He is constantly guarded and kept in mind by the Buddhas, who pity and love him, favor and shelter him, because he is new in these studies."
The Universal Worthy Sutra says: "This great vehicle sutra is the treasure storehouse of the Buddhas, the eye of the Buddhas of the ten directions and the three existences, the seed from which spring the Thus Come Ones of the three existences. . . . You should practice the great vehicle and never let the seed of Buddhahood die out." It also declares: "This correct and equal sutra is the eye of the Buddhas. It is through this sutra that the Buddhas are able to acquire the five types of vision. A Buddha's three types of bodies are born from this correct and equal sutra, which is the great seal of the Law that assures entry into the sea of nirvana. It is from this sea that a Buddha's three types of pure bodies are born. These three types of bodies are fields of good fortune for human and heavenly beings."
Now we should go on to survey the entire range of the Thus Come One Shakyamuni's teachings, the exoteric and esoteric as well as Hinayana and Mahayana, and specifically the sutras on which each school, such as the Flower Garland and the True Word, depends for its doctrine. For example, the Flower Garland Sutra describes Vairochana Buddha seated on the lotus pedestal extending in the ten directions; the Great Collection Sutra, a cloud of Buddhas who had gathered together; the Wisdom Sutra, the emergence of one thousand Buddhas teaching the nonduality of pure and impure; and the Mahavairochana and Diamond Crown sutras, the more than twelve hundred honored ones. These sutras all explain the past practices of Shakyamuni Buddha and the Buddhahood he consequently attained in this life, but they do not reveal the original cause for his enlightenment in the remote past.
It is true that the immediate attainment of Buddhahood is revealed in the pre-Lotus Sutra teachings, but they do not mention Shakyamuni Buddha teaching his disciples since major world system dust particle kalpas ago or numberless major world system dust particle kalpas ago. Therefore, no revelation is made of when the Buddha started (45) teaching or when he finished. The Flower Garland Sutra seems to belong to the higher two and the Mahavairochana Sutra to all of the four teachings - the Tripitaka, connecting, specific, and perfect teachings - but these sutras actually fall into the category of the Tripitaka and connecting teachings, the two lower of the four, because they do not expound the three inherent potentials (46) of the Buddha nature. Then how can we define these sutras as the seeds of enlightenment?
The translators of the newer versions (47) of the sutras learned about T'ien-t'ai's doctrine of three thousand realms in a single moment of life when they came to China. When they translated Sanskrit sutras into Chinese, some put T'ien-t'ai's principle into their translations, and others claimed that the originals they had brought from India already contained it. Some of the scholars of the T'ien-t'ai school were simply pleased that other schools were expounding the same doctrine as theirs, while others praised the Buddhism of India and slighted that of China, or discarded their original doctrines and adopted new ones. These scholars yielded to their devilish nature and to foolishness. Ultimately, however, without the seed of Buddhahood, that is, the three thousand realms in a single moment of life, sentient beings cannot become Buddhas, and any statue or painting would be an object of devotion in name only.
Question: You have not yet fully answered my question about the Ten Worlds, Buddhahood in particular, being inherent in the human world.
Answer: The Immeasurable Meanings Sutra states, "Although they have not yet been able to practice the six paramitas, the six paramitas will of themselves appear before them." The Lotus Sutra says, "All wish to hear the teaching of perfect endowment." The (48) Nirvana Sutra states, "Sad indicates perfect endowment." Bodhisattva Nagarjuna (49) comments, "Sad signifies six." The Profound Meaning of the Four Mahayana (50) Treatises states, "Sad connotes six. In India the number six implies perfect endowment." In his commentary Chi-tsang writes, "Sad is translated as perfect (51) endowment." The Great Teacher T'ien-t'ai remarks, "Sad is a Sanskrit word, which is translated as myo, or (52) wonderful." If I add my own interpretation, it will be as if I had profaned these passages, but in essence they mean that Shakyamuni's practices and the virtues he consequently attained are all contained within the five characters of Myoho-renge-kyo. If we believe in these five characters, we will naturally be granted the same benefits as he was.
With full understanding of Shakyamuni's teachings, the four great voice-hearers said, "This cluster of unsurpassed (53) jewels has come to us unsought." They represent the world of the voice-hearer that is within ourselves. The Buddha stated, "At the start I took a vow, hoping to make all persons equal to me, without any distinction between us, and what I long ago hoped for has now been fulfilled. I have converted all living beings and caused them (54) all to enter the Buddha way." Shakyamuni Buddha, who has attained perfect enlightenment, is our own flesh and blood. His practices and the resulting virtues are our bones and marrow. The "Treasure Tower" chapter of the Lotus Sutra says, "He who is capable of guarding the Law of this sutra will thereby have offered alms to me and to Many Treasures. . . . One who guards this sutra will also have offered alms to the emanation Buddhas who have come here adorning and making brilliant all the various worlds." Shakyamuni, Many Treasures, and the Buddhas of the ten directions represent the world of Buddhahood within ourselves. By searching them out within us, we can receive the benefits of all these Buddhas. This is what is meant by the following passage: "If one listens to them [the preachers of the Law] for even a moment, one will immediately attain supreme perfect (55) enlightenment." The "Life Span" chapter reads, "It has been immeasurable, boundless hundreds, thousands, ten thousands, millions of nayutas of kalpas since I in fact attained Buddhahood." The Shakyamuni Buddha within our lives is the eternal Buddha since time without beginning, who obtained the three bodies more than numberless major world system dust particle kalpas ago. The "Life Span" chapter states, "Originally I practiced the bodhisattva way, and the life span that I acquired then has yet to come to an end but will last twice the number of years that have already passed." He was speaking of the world of the bodhisattva within ourselves. The bodhisattvas, as numerous as the dust particles of a thousand worlds,who emerged from beneath the earth, are the followers of the Shakyamuni Buddha present in our lives. They follow the Buddha just as T'ai-kung Wang (56) and Tan, the Duke of Chou, served as ministers to King Wu of the Chou dynasty and later assisted his son and successor, the infant King Ch'eng; or (57) just as the Chief Minister Takenouchi supported Empress Jingu and later her grandson Crown Prince Nintoku as a highly valued minister. The bodhisattvas Superior Practices, Boundless Practices, Pure Practices, and Firmly Established Practices represent the world of the bodhisattva within ourselves. The Great Teacher Miao-lo says: "You should understand that one's life and its environment at a single moment encompass the three thousand realms. Therefore, when one attains the Buddha way, one puts oneself in accord with this fundamental principle, and one's body and mind at a single moment pervade the (58) entire realm of phenomena."
First, at his place of enlightenment, Shakyamuni Buddha [preached the Flower Garland Sutra in which he] revealed the Lotus Treasury World. In the following fifty years, until he entered nirvana in the grove of sal trees, Shakyamuni preached about the lands of the various Buddhas, such as the Lotus Treasury World and the Land of Secret Solemnity [in the Secret Solemnity Sutra], revealed the three kinds of lands when he three times purified countless lands [in the theoretical teaching of the Lotus Sutra], and revealed the four kinds of lands according to the four different (59) views [in the Nirvana Sutra]. These lands - the Land of Transition, the Land of Actual Reward, and the Land of Tranquil Light; the Land of Peace and Sustenance, the Pure Emerald World, the Land of Secret Solemnity, and the lands of all the other Buddhas - are transient lands that change in the course of the kalpas of formation, [continuance, decline, and disintegration]. The Buddhas of these lands had been magically conjured by Shakyamuni Buddha, and when the lord of teachings entered nirvana, all these Buddhas likewise entered extinction. In the same way, their (60) lands also vanished.
The saha world Shakyamuni Buddha revealed in the "Life Span" chapter is the eternal pure land, impervious to the three calamities and to the cycle of the four kalpas. The Buddha neither has entered into extinction in the past nor will be born in the future. And the same is true of his disciples. This means that their lives are perfectly endowed with the three thousand worlds, that is, with the three realms of existence. The Buddha did not reveal this truth in the theoretical teaching, or the first fourteen chapters, of the Lotus Sutra because the time was not right and the people's capacity was not yet developed.
Shakyamuni Buddha did not transmit the five characters of Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, the heart of the essential teaching of the Lotus Sutra, even to the bodhisattvas Manjushri and Medicine King, let alone to any lesser disciples. He summoned from beneath the earth the great bodhisattvas as numerous as the dust particles of a thousand worlds and, as he preached the eight chapters (61), transferred it solely to them.
The true object of devotion is described as follows:
The treasure tower sits in the air above the saha world that the Buddha of the essential teaching [identified as the pure and eternal land]; Myoho-renge-kyo appears in the center of the tower with the Buddhas Shakyamuni and Many Treasures seated to the right and left, and, flanking them, the four bodhisattvas, followers of Shakyamuni, led by Superior Practices. Manjushri, Maitreya, and the other bodhisattvas, who are all followers of the four bodhisattvas, are seated below. All the other major and minor bodhisattvas,whether they are disciples of the Buddha in his transient status or of the Buddhas of the other worlds, are like commoners kneeling on the ground in the presence of nobles and high-ranking court officials. The Buddhas who gathered from the other worlds in the ten directions all remain on the ground, showing that they are only temporary manifestations of the eternal Buddha and that their lands are transient, not eternal and unchanging.
During the entire fifty years of Shakyamuni's teaching, only in the last eight years did he preach the twenty-eight chapters of the Lotus Sutra. Again, of all these chapters, only in the eight chapters did he reveal and transfer the object of devotion to the Bodhisattvas (62) of the Earth. During the two millennia of the Former and Middle Days of the Law, statues were made showing Mahakashyapa and Ananda flanking the Shakyamuni Buddha of Hinayana, and Manjushri and Universal Worthy flanking the Shakyamuni Buddha of the provisional Mahayana, the Nirvana Sutra, and the theoretical teaching of the Lotus Sutra.
Even though statues and paintings were made of these Shakyamuni Buddhas during the two millennia, no image or statue was made of the Buddha (63) of the "Life Span" chapter. Only in the Latter Day of the Law will the representation of that Buddha appear.
Notes:
45. The language of the text both here and in the preceding paragraph is highly condensed and technical; it has been expanded in translation for clarity.
46. Innate Buddhahood, the wisdom to perceive it, and the deeds that cause the Buddha nature to develop.
47. The reference here is to the translations of Indian scriptures by Hsüan-tsang (602-664) and by later translators such as Shan-wu-wei.
48. Sad corresponds to sad of Saddharma-pundarika-sutra, the Sanskrit name of the Lotus Sutra.
49. The Treatise on the Great Perfection of Wisdom. It is said that the number six was the base of the ancient numerical system in India.
50. A work by Chün-cheng, a T'ang-dynasty scholar of the Three Treatises school.
51. The quotation has not been identified.
52. Profound Meaning.
53. Lotus Sutra, chap. 4.
54. Ibid., chap. 2.
55. Ibid., chap. 10.
56. When King Wu of the Chou dynasty did battle with King Chou of the Yin dynasty, T'ai-kung Wang, as supreme commander, defeated the armies of Yin. Tan, the Duke of Chou, was the younger brother of King Wu. King Wu's son, Ch'eng, was still a child when his father Wu passed away, so his uncle, Tan, acted as a regent and administered the affairs of state on his behalf.
57. A legendary general and statesman who appears in the ancient chronicles of Japan. Takenouchi is said to have served five emperors.
58. On "Great Concentration and Insight."
59. According to the Sutra on Resolving Doubts about the Middle Day of the Law, those present in the grove of sal trees at the time of the Buddha's entry into nirvana perceived the scene in four different ways in accordance with their capacity and state of life: (1) as a grove composed of earth, trees, plants, and stone walls; (2) as a place adorned with the seven kinds of treasures, including gold and silver; (3) as a place where all Buddhas carry out their practices; and (4) as the inconceivable realm that all Buddhas attain. These four views are interpreted as corresponding to the four kinds of lands (see Glossary).
60. The wording of the Japanese text has been expanded here for clarity.
61. "Eight chapters" here refers to the chapters from "Emerging from the Earth" through "Entrustment," which describe the Ceremony in the Air (see Glossary).
62. The wording of the Japanese text has been expanded here for clarity.
63. Here the Buddha of the "Life Span" chapter indicates Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, or the Law implicit in the depths of the "Life Span" chapter.
(to be continued from pg. 367)
The Object of Devotion for Observing the Mind / WND pg. 354 (continued)
Question: What about Nagarjuna and Vasubandhu?
Answer: Those sages knew, but did not expound it. They expounded part of the theoretical teaching, but did not expound either the essential teaching or the truth that the Buddha had observed in his mind. Perhaps the people in their age were capable of believing it, but the time was not ripe to expound it. Or perhaps neither the people's capacity nor the time was appropriate.
After the advent of T'ien-t'ai and Dengyo, many Buddhists learned of the doctrine of three thousand realms in a single moment of life through the wisdom of these two sages. They included Chia-hsiang of the Three Treatises school; more than one hundred priests of the three schools of the south and seven schools of the north in China; Fa-tsang and Ch'ing-liang of the Flower Garland school; the Tripitaka Master Hsüan-tsang and the Great Teacher Tz'u-en of the Dharma Characteristics school; the Tripitaka masters Shan-wu-wei, Chin-kang-chih, and Pu-k'ung of the True Word school; and Tao-hsüan of the Precepts school. At first they all opposed T'ien-t'ai, but later they totally accepted his teachings.
Now, to dispel the grave doubts you have about Buddhahood within the human world, I refer you to the Immeasurable Meanings Sutra, which states: "[Good men], such persons are like a prince newly born to the king of a country and his queen. When he is one day, two days, or seven days old; one month, two months, or seven months old; one year, two years, or seven years old, though he is not yet able to manage the affairs of state, already he is respected and looked up to by the ministers and the people. He is a companion to the sons of other great kings, and the king and queen love and dote on him and are forever talking with him. Why? Because he is still just a child.
"Good men, the person who upholds this sutra is like this. The Buddhas, who are the king, and the sutra, which is the queen, join together in harmony to give birth to this bodhisattva son. If the bodhisattva is able to hear this sutra, whether it is one line or one verse, one repetition, two repetitions, ten, a hundred, a thousand, ten thousand, or immeasurable, countless repetitions equal to the sands of a million ten thousand Ganges Rivers, though he cannot fully grasp the extent of its truth . . . already he is revered and looked up to by all the four kinds of Buddhists and the eight kinds of non-human beings, and he has the great bodhisattvas for his companions. . . . He is constantly guarded and kept in mind by the Buddhas, who pity and love him, favor and shelter him, because he is new in these studies."
The Universal Worthy Sutra says: "This great vehicle sutra is the treasure storehouse of the Buddhas, the eye of the Buddhas of the ten directions and the three existences, the seed from which spring the Thus Come Ones of the three existences. . . . You should practice the great vehicle and never let the seed of Buddhahood die out." It also declares: "This correct and equal sutra is the eye of the Buddhas. It is through this sutra that the Buddhas are able to acquire the five types of vision. A Buddha's three types of bodies are born from this correct and equal sutra, which is the great seal of the Law that assures entry into the sea of nirvana. It is from this sea that a Buddha's three types of pure bodies are born. These three types of bodies are fields of good fortune for human and heavenly beings."
Now we should go on to survey the entire range of the Thus Come One Shakyamuni's teachings, the exoteric and esoteric as well as Hinayana and Mahayana, and specifically the sutras on which each school, such as the Flower Garland and the True Word, depends for its doctrine. For example, the Flower Garland Sutra describes Vairochana Buddha seated on the lotus pedestal extending in the ten directions; the Great Collection Sutra, a cloud of Buddhas who had gathered together; the Wisdom Sutra, the emergence of one thousand Buddhas teaching the nonduality of pure and impure; and the Mahavairochana and Diamond Crown sutras, the more than twelve hundred honored ones. These sutras all explain the past practices of Shakyamuni Buddha and the Buddhahood he consequently attained in this life, but they do not reveal the original cause for his enlightenment in the remote past.
It is true that the immediate attainment of Buddhahood is revealed in the pre-Lotus Sutra teachings, but they do not mention Shakyamuni Buddha teaching his disciples since major world system dust particle kalpas ago or numberless major world system dust particle kalpas ago. Therefore, no revelation is made of when the Buddha started (45) teaching or when he finished. The Flower Garland Sutra seems to belong to the higher two and the Mahavairochana Sutra to all of the four teachings - the Tripitaka, connecting, specific, and perfect teachings - but these sutras actually fall into the category of the Tripitaka and connecting teachings, the two lower of the four, because they do not expound the three inherent potentials (46) of the Buddha nature. Then how can we define these sutras as the seeds of enlightenment?
The translators of the newer versions (47) of the sutras learned about T'ien-t'ai's doctrine of three thousand realms in a single moment of life when they came to China. When they translated Sanskrit sutras into Chinese, some put T'ien-t'ai's principle into their translations, and others claimed that the originals they had brought from India already contained it. Some of the scholars of the T'ien-t'ai school were simply pleased that other schools were expounding the same doctrine as theirs, while others praised the Buddhism of India and slighted that of China, or discarded their original doctrines and adopted new ones. These scholars yielded to their devilish nature and to foolishness. Ultimately, however, without the seed of Buddhahood, that is, the three thousand realms in a single moment of life, sentient beings cannot become Buddhas, and any statue or painting would be an object of devotion in name only.
Question: You have not yet fully answered my question about the Ten Worlds, Buddhahood in particular, being inherent in the human world.
Answer: The Immeasurable Meanings Sutra states, "Although they have not yet been able to practice the six paramitas, the six paramitas will of themselves appear before them." The Lotus Sutra says, "All wish to hear the teaching of perfect endowment." The (48) Nirvana Sutra states, "Sad indicates perfect endowment." Bodhisattva Nagarjuna (49) comments, "Sad signifies six." The Profound Meaning of the Four Mahayana (50) Treatises states, "Sad connotes six. In India the number six implies perfect endowment." In his commentary Chi-tsang writes, "Sad is translated as perfect (51) endowment." The Great Teacher T'ien-t'ai remarks, "Sad is a Sanskrit word, which is translated as myo, or (52) wonderful." If I add my own interpretation, it will be as if I had profaned these passages, but in essence they mean that Shakyamuni's practices and the virtues he consequently attained are all contained within the five characters of Myoho-renge-kyo. If we believe in these five characters, we will naturally be granted the same benefits as he was.
With full understanding of Shakyamuni's teachings, the four great voice-hearers said, "This cluster of unsurpassed (53) jewels has come to us unsought." They represent the world of the voice-hearer that is within ourselves. The Buddha stated, "At the start I took a vow, hoping to make all persons equal to me, without any distinction between us, and what I long ago hoped for has now been fulfilled. I have converted all living beings and caused them (54) all to enter the Buddha way." Shakyamuni Buddha, who has attained perfect enlightenment, is our own flesh and blood. His practices and the resulting virtues are our bones and marrow. The "Treasure Tower" chapter of the Lotus Sutra says, "He who is capable of guarding the Law of this sutra will thereby have offered alms to me and to Many Treasures. . . . One who guards this sutra will also have offered alms to the emanation Buddhas who have come here adorning and making brilliant all the various worlds." Shakyamuni, Many Treasures, and the Buddhas of the ten directions represent the world of Buddhahood within ourselves. By searching them out within us, we can receive the benefits of all these Buddhas. This is what is meant by the following passage: "If one listens to them [the preachers of the Law] for even a moment, one will immediately attain supreme perfect (55) enlightenment." The "Life Span" chapter reads, "It has been immeasurable, boundless hundreds, thousands, ten thousands, millions of nayutas of kalpas since I in fact attained Buddhahood." The Shakyamuni Buddha within our lives is the eternal Buddha since time without beginning, who obtained the three bodies more than numberless major world system dust particle kalpas ago. The "Life Span" chapter states, "Originally I practiced the bodhisattva way, and the life span that I acquired then has yet to come to an end but will last twice the number of years that have already passed." He was speaking of the world of the bodhisattva within ourselves. The bodhisattvas, as numerous as the dust particles of a thousand worlds,who emerged from beneath the earth, are the followers of the Shakyamuni Buddha present in our lives. They follow the Buddha just as T'ai-kung Wang (56) and Tan, the Duke of Chou, served as ministers to King Wu of the Chou dynasty and later assisted his son and successor, the infant King Ch'eng; or (57) just as the Chief Minister Takenouchi supported Empress Jingu and later her grandson Crown Prince Nintoku as a highly valued minister. The bodhisattvas Superior Practices, Boundless Practices, Pure Practices, and Firmly Established Practices represent the world of the bodhisattva within ourselves. The Great Teacher Miao-lo says: "You should understand that one's life and its environment at a single moment encompass the three thousand realms. Therefore, when one attains the Buddha way, one puts oneself in accord with this fundamental principle, and one's body and mind at a single moment pervade the (58) entire realm of phenomena."
First, at his place of enlightenment, Shakyamuni Buddha [preached the Flower Garland Sutra in which he] revealed the Lotus Treasury World. In the following fifty years, until he entered nirvana in the grove of sal trees, Shakyamuni preached about the lands of the various Buddhas, such as the Lotus Treasury World and the Land of Secret Solemnity [in the Secret Solemnity Sutra], revealed the three kinds of lands when he three times purified countless lands [in the theoretical teaching of the Lotus Sutra], and revealed the four kinds of lands according to the four different (59) views [in the Nirvana Sutra]. These lands - the Land of Transition, the Land of Actual Reward, and the Land of Tranquil Light; the Land of Peace and Sustenance, the Pure Emerald World, the Land of Secret Solemnity, and the lands of all the other Buddhas - are transient lands that change in the course of the kalpas of formation, [continuance, decline, and disintegration]. The Buddhas of these lands had been magically conjured by Shakyamuni Buddha, and when the lord of teachings entered nirvana, all these Buddhas likewise entered extinction. In the same way, their (60) lands also vanished.
The saha world Shakyamuni Buddha revealed in the "Life Span" chapter is the eternal pure land, impervious to the three calamities and to the cycle of the four kalpas. The Buddha neither has entered into extinction in the past nor will be born in the future. And the same is true of his disciples. This means that their lives are perfectly endowed with the three thousand worlds, that is, with the three realms of existence. The Buddha did not reveal this truth in the theoretical teaching, or the first fourteen chapters, of the Lotus Sutra because the time was not right and the people's capacity was not yet developed.
Shakyamuni Buddha did not transmit the five characters of Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, the heart of the essential teaching of the Lotus Sutra, even to the bodhisattvas Manjushri and Medicine King, let alone to any lesser disciples. He summoned from beneath the earth the great bodhisattvas as numerous as the dust particles of a thousand worlds and, as he preached the eight chapters (61), transferred it solely to them.
The true object of devotion is described as follows:
The treasure tower sits in the air above the saha world that the Buddha of the essential teaching [identified as the pure and eternal land]; Myoho-renge-kyo appears in the center of the tower with the Buddhas Shakyamuni and Many Treasures seated to the right and left, and, flanking them, the four bodhisattvas, followers of Shakyamuni, led by Superior Practices. Manjushri, Maitreya, and the other bodhisattvas, who are all followers of the four bodhisattvas, are seated below. All the other major and minor bodhisattvas,whether they are disciples of the Buddha in his transient status or of the Buddhas of the other worlds, are like commoners kneeling on the ground in the presence of nobles and high-ranking court officials. The Buddhas who gathered from the other worlds in the ten directions all remain on the ground, showing that they are only temporary manifestations of the eternal Buddha and that their lands are transient, not eternal and unchanging.
During the entire fifty years of Shakyamuni's teaching, only in the last eight years did he preach the twenty-eight chapters of the Lotus Sutra. Again, of all these chapters, only in the eight chapters did he reveal and transfer the object of devotion to the Bodhisattvas (62) of the Earth. During the two millennia of the Former and Middle Days of the Law, statues were made showing Mahakashyapa and Ananda flanking the Shakyamuni Buddha of Hinayana, and Manjushri and Universal Worthy flanking the Shakyamuni Buddha of the provisional Mahayana, the Nirvana Sutra, and the theoretical teaching of the Lotus Sutra.
Even though statues and paintings were made of these Shakyamuni Buddhas during the two millennia, no image or statue was made of the Buddha (63) of the "Life Span" chapter. Only in the Latter Day of the Law will the representation of that Buddha appear.
Notes:
45. The language of the text both here and in the preceding paragraph is highly condensed and technical; it has been expanded in translation for clarity.
46. Innate Buddhahood, the wisdom to perceive it, and the deeds that cause the Buddha nature to develop.
47. The reference here is to the translations of Indian scriptures by Hsüan-tsang (602-664) and by later translators such as Shan-wu-wei.
48. Sad corresponds to sad of Saddharma-pundarika-sutra, the Sanskrit name of the Lotus Sutra.
49. The Treatise on the Great Perfection of Wisdom. It is said that the number six was the base of the ancient numerical system in India.
50. A work by Chün-cheng, a T'ang-dynasty scholar of the Three Treatises school.
51. The quotation has not been identified.
52. Profound Meaning.
53. Lotus Sutra, chap. 4.
54. Ibid., chap. 2.
55. Ibid., chap. 10.
56. When King Wu of the Chou dynasty did battle with King Chou of the Yin dynasty, T'ai-kung Wang, as supreme commander, defeated the armies of Yin. Tan, the Duke of Chou, was the younger brother of King Wu. King Wu's son, Ch'eng, was still a child when his father Wu passed away, so his uncle, Tan, acted as a regent and administered the affairs of state on his behalf.
57. A legendary general and statesman who appears in the ancient chronicles of Japan. Takenouchi is said to have served five emperors.
58. On "Great Concentration and Insight."
59. According to the Sutra on Resolving Doubts about the Middle Day of the Law, those present in the grove of sal trees at the time of the Buddha's entry into nirvana perceived the scene in four different ways in accordance with their capacity and state of life: (1) as a grove composed of earth, trees, plants, and stone walls; (2) as a place adorned with the seven kinds of treasures, including gold and silver; (3) as a place where all Buddhas carry out their practices; and (4) as the inconceivable realm that all Buddhas attain. These four views are interpreted as corresponding to the four kinds of lands (see Glossary).
60. The wording of the Japanese text has been expanded here for clarity.
61. "Eight chapters" here refers to the chapters from "Emerging from the Earth" through "Entrustment," which describe the Ceremony in the Air (see Glossary).
62. The wording of the Japanese text has been expanded here for clarity.
63. Here the Buddha of the "Life Span" chapter indicates Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, or the Law implicit in the depths of the "Life Span" chapter.
(to be continued from pg. 367)
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always2theLeft
Member
Doobie, what would you say if i told you the Mara in me is so powerful its taken over all my Buddha nature and is working with it to become a more even eviler force, and no matter how much i chant there is nothing to free it, or even give me evidence theres something there to be freed.
I would say that according to the sutras, what you are saying is an impossibility. The “Mara” (devil) in you cannot “take over” your Buddha nature and thereby make itself more powerful. It can only obscure your ability to perceive your Buddha nature, as evidenced by your comment, “no matter how much i chant there is nothing to free it, or even give me evidence theres something there to be freed.”
In Buddhism, this is what we refer to as delusion. The way to eliminate delusion is to continue to chant Nam-myoho-renge-kyo. Based on your posts, I assume you have only recently begun to chant. However, whether you just began chanting, or have been chanting for some time—to make the comment that you have made is an indication of your need to continue.
Nam-myoho-renge-kyo is the fundamental reality of life, according to the teachings of the Daishonin. It is not expressed as being magic. If you are looking for something magical rather than mystic, you are seeking the wrong thing. Please keep chanting, and I am sure you will see your understanding grow with your faith. Your “mara” will be diminished, and your Buddha nature will become visible to you.
It is only due to the fact that your Buddha nature exists and is active, that you are able to perceive your “mara” in the first place.
Keep chanting!
T
In Buddhism, this is what we refer to as delusion. The way to eliminate delusion is to continue to chant Nam-myoho-renge-kyo. Based on your posts, I assume you have only recently begun to chant. However, whether you just began chanting, or have been chanting for some time—to make the comment that you have made is an indication of your need to continue.
Nam-myoho-renge-kyo is the fundamental reality of life, according to the teachings of the Daishonin. It is not expressed as being magic. If you are looking for something magical rather than mystic, you are seeking the wrong thing. Please keep chanting, and I am sure you will see your understanding grow with your faith. Your “mara” will be diminished, and your Buddha nature will become visible to you.
It is only due to the fact that your Buddha nature exists and is active, that you are able to perceive your “mara” in the first place.
Keep chanting!
T
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Even though statues and paintings were made of these Shakyamuni Buddhas during the two millennia, no image or statue was made of the Buddha (63) of the "Life Span" chapter. Only in the Latter Day of the Law will the representation of that Buddha appear.
63. Here the Buddha of the "Life Span" chapter indicates Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, or the Law implicit in the depths of the "Life Span" chapter.
63. Here the Buddha of the "Life Span" chapter indicates Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, or the Law implicit in the depths of the "Life Span" chapter.
The Shakyamuni Buddha within our lives is the eternal Buddha since time without beginning, who obtained the three bodies more than numberless major world system dust particle kalpas ago.
As a point of understanding on where I am always coming from in what I say here in this thread: It is my opinion and has been the basis of my faith since the VERY beginning of my practice (as it was revealed to me by the first Buddha I was honored to know), that all references to the Shakyamuni Buddha as referenced above (and in many other places in the teachings of Nichiren Daishonin) is in truth, referring to Nichiren himself.
He never had to call out who he is, because the Buddha nature which he has freed within us, by giving of himself freely in "this cluster of unsurpassed jewels [which] has come to us unsought"--the Three Great Secret Laws--will eventually perceive the True Entity of all Phenomena correctly at some point during our journey toward anuttara-samyak-sambodhi anyway.
As a point of understanding on where I am always coming from in what I say here in this thread: It is my opinion and has been the basis of my faith since the VERY beginning of my practice (as it was revealed to me by the first Buddha I was honored to know), that all references to the Shakyamuni Buddha as referenced above (and in many other places in the teachings of Nichiren Daishonin) is in truth, referring to Nichiren himself.
He never had to call out who he is, because the Buddha nature which he has freed within us, by giving of himself freely in "this cluster of unsurpassed jewels [which] has come to us unsought"--the Three Great Secret Laws--will eventually perceive the True Entity of all Phenomena correctly at some point during our journey toward anuttara-samyak-sambodhi anyway.
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Nichiren
[日[]
(1222-1282) The founder of the Buddhist tradition, that is based on the Lotus Sutra and urges chanting the phrase Nam-myoho-renge-kyo as a daily practice. Nichiren revealed that Nam-myoho-renge-kyo (Myoho-renge-kyo being the title of the Lotus Sutra) represents the essence of the Lotus's teaching. He embodied it in a mandala called the Gohonzon and taught that chanting that phrase with faith in the Gohonzon is the practice that enables people in the present age, the Latter Day of the Law, to attain Buddhahood.
Nichiren was born on the sixteenth day of the second month, 1222, in Tojo Village of Awa Province, Japan. His father was Mikuni no Taifu, and his mother, Umegiku-nyo. His childhood name was Zennichi-maro (also called Zennichi-maru). In 1233 he entered a nearby temple of the Tendai school called Seicho-ji, where he studied both Buddhist and secular teachings under the senior priest Dozen-bo. According to Nichiren's Letter to the Priests of Seicho-ji, written in 1276, Zennichi-maro prayed before a statue of Bodhisattva Space Treasury at Seicho-ji to become the wisest person in Japan. As a result, the letter says, he obtained "a great jewel," or a jewel of wisdom that later enabled him to grasp the essence of all the sutras.
In 1237 he was formally ordained and took the name Zesho-bo Rencho. Soon after, he left for Kamakura, the seat of the shogunate, to further his studies. Thereafter he returned briefly to Seicho-ji and then set out again for such major centers of Buddhist learning as Mount Hiei, Mount Koya, Onjo-ji temple, and other temples in the Kyoto and Nara areas. During these years he studied all of the available sutras and commentaries, as well as the teachings of the different Buddhist schools. He became firmly convinced that the highest of Shakyamuni's teachings is the Lotus Sutra, and that the great pure Law that leads directly to enlightenment in the Latter Day of the Law is implicit in that sutra. He was also convinced that his was the mission of Bodhisattva Superior Practices, who, according to the Lotus Sutra, was entrusted with the task of propagating that Law in the Latter Day. He resolved to declare the sutra's supremacy and point out the misconceptions of the prevailing Buddhist schools, though he knew that the Lotus Sutra predicts its votary will experience severe persecutions.
In 1253 he returned to Seicho-ji. There at noon on the twenty-eighth day of the fourth month, he preached to an assembly of priests and villagers who had gathered to hear the results of his studies. In that first sermon, he declared that the Lotus Sutra is the true teaching of Shakyamuni Buddha, and that its essence, Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, is the very teaching in the Latter Day of the Law that enables all people to attain Buddhahood in this lifetime. On this occasion he renamed himself Nichiren (Sun Lotus). He also severely criticized the widespread Nembutsu (or Pure Land) doctrine as one that drives people into the hell of incessant suffering. Tojo Kagenobu, the steward of the area and an ardent Nembutsu believer, became furious on hearing this. He ordered his warriors to seize Nichiren, who narrowly managed to escape with the help of the priests, Joken-bo and Gijo-bo, who were his seniors when they were desciples together at Seicho-ji. After converting his parents and giving the Buddhist name Myonichi (Wonderful Sun) to his father and Myoren (Wonderful Lotus) to his mother, he headed for Kamakura to launch his efforts to spread his teaching. In Kamakura he lived in a dwelling at a place called Matsubagayatsu in Nagoe. He devoted the next several years primarily to converting individuals, eventually gaining a number of followers. Among the first priests to become his disciples were Nissho and Nichiro. Laypersons who converted were mostly samurai, including Toki Jonin, Shijo Kingo, Kudo Yoshitaka, and the Ikegami brothers.
Japan at that time was experiencing a succession of unusually severe storms, earthquakes, drought, famine, epidemics, and other disasters. Corpses littered the streets. Government relief measures and the prayers offered by shrines and temples were no help. An earthquake that struck Kamakura in the eighth month of 1257 destroyed the greater part of the city. Nichiren, determined to clarify a solution to these calamities based on Buddhist principles, went to Jisso-ji temple in Suruga Province to do research in its sutra library. During his stay there, Nikko, then a boy of thirteen studying at the nearby Shijuku-in temple, became Nichiren's disciple. He would later become his successor. On the sixteenth day of the seventh month, 1260, Nichiren submitted a treatise titled On Establishing the Correct Teaching for the Peace of the Land to Hojo Tokiyori, the retired regent who was nevertheless the most influential man in the Kamakura shogunate. In that work, he attributed the disasters ravaging the country to slander of the correct teaching and belief in false teachings. In particular, he criticized the dominant Nembutsu school. Of the three calamities and seven disasters described in the sutras, he predicted that the two disasters that had yet to occur-internal strife and foreign invasion-would befall the nation without fail if it persisted in supporting misleading schools. He urged that the one vehicle teaching of the Lotus Sutra be embraced immediately. The submission of On Establishing the Correct Teaching is regarded as the first of his several remonstrations with Japan's rulers.
There was no official response to this document, but a crowd of Nembutsu believers, incited by priests and high government officials, attacked Nichiren's dwelling on the night of the twenty-seventh day of the eighth month. He narrowly escaped with a few disciples and stayed briefly with Toki Jonin in Shimosa Province. His sense of mission, however, would not allow him to remain there long. The next spring Nichiren returned to Kamakura. This time leaders of the Nembutsu priests accused him of defamation, and the shogunate, without trial or further investigation, sentenced him to exile in Ito on the Izu Peninsula.
The boatmen charged with his transport did not take him to Ito, but abandoned him on a beach called Kawana to the mercy of the local inhabitants, many of whom were Nembutsu believers and were in any case hostile to exiles. Nichiren was sheltered for a time by a fisherman named Funamori Yasaburo and his wife. Later Nichiren won the favor of the steward of Ito when he successfully prayed for the steward's recovery from a serious illness. Nichiren was pardoned and returned to Kamakura in the second month of 1263. Concerned about his aged mother (his father had died in 1258), Nichiren returned to his native Awa in the autumn of 1264. He found his mother critically ill. He prayed for her, and she recovered and lived four more years. He stayed in Awa for awhile to conduct propagation activities.
On the eleventh day of the eleventh month, while still in Awa, he set out with a group of followers to visit Kudo Yoshitaka, one of his samurai believers, at Yoshitaka's invitation. En route, Nichiren and his party were ambushed by TojoKagenobu and his men at a place called Komatsubara. Nichiren's disciple Kyonin-bo was killed, and Kudo Yoshitaka, who came rushing to the scene, died of wounds he suffered in the fight. Nichiren sustained a sword cut on his forehead and a broken hand. This incident is called the Komatsubara Persecution.
During the next three years or so, Nichiren devoted himself to propagation in Awa, Kazusa, Shimosa, and Hitachi provinces, and then returned to Kamakura. Early in 1268, an official letter from the Mongol Empire arrived in Japan with a demand that Japan acknowledge fealty to it or prepare to be invaded. The arrival of the letter from the Mongols substantiated Nichiren's earlier prophecy of foreign invasion.
In the fourth month Nichiren sent his newly written rationale for having completed the treatise On Establishing the Correct Teaching to a government official named Hogan, pointing out that the prediction made in the treatise was beginning to come true and urging the shogunate to heed his admonitions. On the eleventh day of the tenth month, he sent eleven letters to influential political and religious leaders, including the regent Hojo Tokimune, urging them to abandon their faith in erroneous teachings and demanding the opportunity for a public religious debate. There was no response.
In 1271 the country was troubled by persistent drought, and the shogunate ordered Ryokan of Gokuraku-ji temple to pray for rain. Hearing of this, Nichiren sent Ryokan a written challenge, offering to become his disciple if Ryokan succeeded; on the other hand, if Ryokan failed, he should become Nichiren's disciple. Ryokan readily agreed, but despite his prayers and those of hundreds of attendant priests, no rain fell. Far from keeping his promise, he vindictively began to spread false rumors about Nichiren, using his influence among the wives and widows of shogunate officials. On the tenth day of the ninth month, Nichiren was summoned to court and interrogated by Hei no Saemon, the deputy chief of the Office of Military and Police Affairs (the chief being the regent himself ). He reemphasized the errors of the True Word (Shigon), Zen, and Nembutsu schools and repeated his prediction that the country would face ruin if it continued to reject the correct teaching.
On the evening of the twelfth day of the ninth month, Hei no Saemon, with a large group of his soldiers, attacked and arrested Nichiren. As he later wrote, Nichiren said to Hei no Saemon at the time: "Nichiren is the pillar and beam of Japan. Doing away with me is toppling the pillar of Japan!" (579). Hei no Saemon then maneuvered to have Nichiren beheaded and had him taken late that night to the execution grounds at Tatsunokuchi. Just as the executioner had raised his sword to strike, a brilliant object shot across the sky, illuminating everyone like bright moonlight. Nichiren wrote later: "The executioner fell on his face, his eyes blinded. The soldiers were filled with panic" (767). In the end, they abandoned the execution. Nichiren wrote about this incident, called the Tatsunokuchi Persecution, in The Opening of the Eyes: "On the twelfth day of the ninth month of last year [1271], between the hours of the rat and the ox [11:00 P.M. to 3:00 A.M.], this person named Nichiren was beheaded. It is his soul that has come to this island of Sado and, in the second month of the following year, snowbound, is writing this to send to his close disciples" (269). Nichikan (1665-1726), the twenty-sixth chief priest of Taiseki-ji temple, interpreted this passage to mean that the ordinary person Nichiren died at Tatsunokuchi, but the Buddha of the Latter Day of the Law Nichiren survived. This is called "casting off the transient [status] and revealing the true [identity] (Jpn hosshaku-kem-pon)." After this, Nichiren began to inscribe the object of devotion known as the Gohonzon.
On the tenth day of the tenth month, after an almost one-month stay in Echi in Sagami Province, Nichiren left under escort for Sado Island, his designated place of exile, and arrived at Tsukahara on Sado on the first day of the eleventh month. There he was assigned as his dwelling a dilapidated hut in a graveyard, exposed to the wind and snow. On the sixteenth day of the first month in the following year, several hundred priests from Sado and the mainland came to confront him in religious debate. In what is known as the Tsukahara Debate, Nichiren refuted those priests and won converts. In the second month of that year, Nichiren's prediction of internal strife came true when Hojo Tokisuke, an elder half brother of Regent Hojo Tokimune, made an abortive attempt to seize power. In the fourth month Nichiren was transferred from Tsukahara to the more comfortable residence of the lay priest Ichinosawa. While on Sado he wrote many of his most important works, including The Opening of the Eyes, The Object of Devotion for Observing the Mind, The Heritage of the Ultimate Law of Life, The True Aspect of All Phenomena, The Entity of the Mystic Law, On the Buddha's Prophecy, and On Practicing the Buddha's Teachings.
In the second month of 1274, the shogunate issued a pardon for Nichiren, and he returned to Kamakura the next month. On the eighth day of the fourth month, Hei no Saemon summoned Nichiren and, in a deferential manner, asked his opinion regarding the impending Mongol invasion. Nichiren said that it would occur within the year and reiterated that this calamity was the result of slandering the correct teaching. On this occasion the shogunate offered to build him a large temple and establish him on an equal footing with all the other Buddhist schools, but Nichiren refused. He instead again refuted the errors of the shogunate.
The shogunate continued its support of the True Word and other schools. Convinced that he had done all he could to warn the nation's leaders of their religious errors and of what would ensue as a result, Nichiren now turned his efforts to ensuring the correct transmission of his teachings to posterity. In keeping with an old maxim that a worthy man who warns his sovereign three times and still is not heeded should withdraw to a mountain forest, he left Kamakura on the twelfth day of the fifth month, and went to take up residence at the foot of Mount Minobu in Kai Province. There he gave lectures on the Lotus Sutra and devoted himself to training his disciples. He also continued to write, producing such important documents as One Taking the Essence of the Lotus Sutra, The Selection of the Time, and On Repaying Debts of Gratitude.
In the tenth month of 1274, the Mongols launched a massive attack against the southern Japanese islands of Iki and Tsushima and advanced to Kyushu. Japanese losses were staggering, but one night when the Mongol forces returned to their battleships, an unexpected storm arose and heavily damaged the Mongol fleet, which then withdrew. In the fourth month of the next year, however, the Mongols sent an envoy relaying a threat of another invasion if the Japanese government did not acknowledge fealty to their empire. During this period, Nichiren was busy at Minobu writing letters, training his disciples, and lecturing on the Lotus Sutra. Nikko assumed active leadership in disseminating Nichiren's teachings, concentrating his efforts in Kai, Izu, and Suruga provinces. These activities led to an increase in converts among both the priesthood and laity, and eventually to more oppression. In Atsuhara Village of the Fuji area, in particular, believers were repeatedly threatened and harassed, and some were finally executed. In what later became known as the Atsuhara Persecution, twenty believers, all farmers, were arrested on false charges on the twenty-first day of the ninth month, 1279. Though tortured to force them to recant their beliefs, not one of the twenty farmers yielded. Three of them were beheaded on the fifteenth day of the tenth month (another account, the eighth day of the fourth month, 1280). Nichiren, seeing that his followers now had the strength to uphold their faith even at the cost of their lives, determined that the time had come to fulfill the ultimate purpose of his life. On the twelfth day of the tenth month, 1279, he inscribed the object of devotion (known as the Dai-Gohonzon) and dedicated it for the attainment of Buddhahood by all humanity.
Subsequently, his health began to fail. Sensing that death was near, Nichiren designated Nikko as his successor in a transfer document dated the ninth month of 1282. On the eighth day of the ninth month, he left Minobu at the urging of his followers to visit a hot spring in Hitachi. When he reached the residence of Ikegami Munenaka at Ikegami in Musashi Province, he realized that his death was imminent. There he lectured for his followers on On Establishing the Correct Teaching. On the eighth day of the tenth month, he named six senior priests and entrusted them with the responsibility for propagation after his death. Early on the morning of the thirteenth day of the tenth month, he appointed Nikko as the chief priest of Kuon-ji temple in Minobu, directing all believers to follow him. He died that morning, in the company of his disciples, both priests and laity. His lay followers conducted his funeral.
Three Great Secret Laws
[三大秘法] (Jpn.: sandai-hiho)
The core principles of Nichiren's teaching. They are the object of devotion of the essential teaching, the daimoku of the essential teaching, and the sanctuary of the essential teaching. Here, "essential teaching" refers to the teaching of Nam-myoho-renge-kyo and not to the essential teaching, or the latter fourteen chapters, of the Lotus Sutra. Nichiren (1222-1282) established these three essential principles to enable people in the Latter Day of the Law to attain Buddhahood. They are called secret because they are implicit in the text of the "Life Span" (sixteenth) chapter of the Lotus Sutra and remained hidden or unknown until Nichiren revealed them. Nichiren regarded them as the vital teaching that Shakyamuni Buddha transferred to Bodhisattva Superior Practices in the "Supernatural Powers" (twenty-first) chapter of the sutra. He regarded his mission as one with that of Bodhisattva Superior Practices.
The Three Great Secret Laws represent Nichiren's embodiment of the Mystic Law, to which he was enlightened, in a form that all people can practice and thereby gain access to that Law within their own lives. He associated the Three Great Secret Laws with the three types of learning set forth in Buddhism-precepts, meditation, and wisdom. Specifically, the object of devotion corresponds to meditation, the sanctuary to precepts, and the daimoku to wisdom. Concerning the three types of learning based on the Lotus Sutra, Dengyo (767-822), in his Questions and Answers on Regulations for Students of the Tendai Lotus School, states, "The spacelike immovable precept, the spacelike immovable meditation, and the spacelike immovable wisdom-these three all together are transmitted under the name 'Wonderful Law.'" The three types of learning based on the Lotus Sutra are called "spacelike" and "immovable" because, like space, which represents the ultimate truth, they are immovable, or imperturbable. Nikko, Nichiren's successor, stated that in Nichiren's teachings the object of devotion corresponds to the spacelike immovable meditation, the sanctuary to the spacelike immovable precept, and the daimoku to the spacelike immovable wisdom.
Nichiren mentions the Three Great Secret Laws in several of his writings (all dated after his near execution at Tatsunokuchi and subsequent exile to Sado Island in 1271), and in a work known as On the Three Great Secret Laws, he offers a detailed definition.
At the core of the Three Great Secret Laws is the One Great Secret Law. This is the object of devotion of the essential teaching, or Nichiren's embodiment in the form of a mandala of the eternal Law of Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, which he fully realized and manifested in his life. He writes in The Person and the Law, "Deep in this mortal flesh I preserve the ultimate secret Law inherited from Shakyamuni Buddha, the lord of teachings, at Eagle Peak" (1097). Because embracing this object of devotion called the Gohonzon is the only precept in Nichiren's teaching, the place where it is enshrined corresponds to the place where one vows to observe the Buddhist precepts-the ordination platform, or sanctuary, of the essential teaching. The term precept in Buddhism implies preventing error and putting an end to evil. The daimoku of the essential teaching indicates the invocation or chanting of Nam-myoho-renge-kyo with faith in the object of devotion; it includes chanting the daimoku for oneself and teaching it to others. Thus, both the sanctuary and the daimoku derive from the object of devotion.
Later Nichikan (1665-1726), the twenty-sixth chief priest of Taiseki-ji temple, classified the Three Great Secret Laws into Six Great Secret Laws. First, the object of devotion is viewed in terms of both Person and Law. The Person indicates Nichiren himself, who achieved the enlightenment and virtues of the eternal Buddha and who established the Buddhism of sowing for all people in the Latter Day of the Law. The object of devotion in terms of the Law is the Gohonzon, which embodies Nam-myoho-renge-kyo. Second, the sanctuary also has two aspects, the specified sanctuary and the general sanctuary. The former is the sanctuary to be built at the time of kosen-rufu, or wide propagation, in accordance with Nichiren's instruction. This is the place where the object of devotion Nichiren inscribed for all humanity (commonly known as the Dai-Gohonzon) is to be enshrined when his teaching has been widely spread and established. The general sanctuary is any place where one enshrines the object of devotion and engages in practice. Third, the daimoku of the essential teaching also has two aspects: the daimoku of faith and the daimoku of practice. The former means to believe in the Gohonzon, and the latter means to chant the daimoku and spread it.
According to Nichikan's "Interpreting the Text Based upon Its Essential Meaning," the Six Great Secret Laws are considered a crystallization of the Buddha's eighty-four thousand teachings, the Three Great Secret Laws a crystallization of the Six Great Secret Laws, and the One Great Secret Law a crystallization of the Three Great Secret Laws.
From source: The Soka Gakkai Dictionary of Buddhism
[日[]
(1222-1282) The founder of the Buddhist tradition, that is based on the Lotus Sutra and urges chanting the phrase Nam-myoho-renge-kyo as a daily practice. Nichiren revealed that Nam-myoho-renge-kyo (Myoho-renge-kyo being the title of the Lotus Sutra) represents the essence of the Lotus's teaching. He embodied it in a mandala called the Gohonzon and taught that chanting that phrase with faith in the Gohonzon is the practice that enables people in the present age, the Latter Day of the Law, to attain Buddhahood.
Nichiren was born on the sixteenth day of the second month, 1222, in Tojo Village of Awa Province, Japan. His father was Mikuni no Taifu, and his mother, Umegiku-nyo. His childhood name was Zennichi-maro (also called Zennichi-maru). In 1233 he entered a nearby temple of the Tendai school called Seicho-ji, where he studied both Buddhist and secular teachings under the senior priest Dozen-bo. According to Nichiren's Letter to the Priests of Seicho-ji, written in 1276, Zennichi-maro prayed before a statue of Bodhisattva Space Treasury at Seicho-ji to become the wisest person in Japan. As a result, the letter says, he obtained "a great jewel," or a jewel of wisdom that later enabled him to grasp the essence of all the sutras.
In 1237 he was formally ordained and took the name Zesho-bo Rencho. Soon after, he left for Kamakura, the seat of the shogunate, to further his studies. Thereafter he returned briefly to Seicho-ji and then set out again for such major centers of Buddhist learning as Mount Hiei, Mount Koya, Onjo-ji temple, and other temples in the Kyoto and Nara areas. During these years he studied all of the available sutras and commentaries, as well as the teachings of the different Buddhist schools. He became firmly convinced that the highest of Shakyamuni's teachings is the Lotus Sutra, and that the great pure Law that leads directly to enlightenment in the Latter Day of the Law is implicit in that sutra. He was also convinced that his was the mission of Bodhisattva Superior Practices, who, according to the Lotus Sutra, was entrusted with the task of propagating that Law in the Latter Day. He resolved to declare the sutra's supremacy and point out the misconceptions of the prevailing Buddhist schools, though he knew that the Lotus Sutra predicts its votary will experience severe persecutions.
In 1253 he returned to Seicho-ji. There at noon on the twenty-eighth day of the fourth month, he preached to an assembly of priests and villagers who had gathered to hear the results of his studies. In that first sermon, he declared that the Lotus Sutra is the true teaching of Shakyamuni Buddha, and that its essence, Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, is the very teaching in the Latter Day of the Law that enables all people to attain Buddhahood in this lifetime. On this occasion he renamed himself Nichiren (Sun Lotus). He also severely criticized the widespread Nembutsu (or Pure Land) doctrine as one that drives people into the hell of incessant suffering. Tojo Kagenobu, the steward of the area and an ardent Nembutsu believer, became furious on hearing this. He ordered his warriors to seize Nichiren, who narrowly managed to escape with the help of the priests, Joken-bo and Gijo-bo, who were his seniors when they were desciples together at Seicho-ji. After converting his parents and giving the Buddhist name Myonichi (Wonderful Sun) to his father and Myoren (Wonderful Lotus) to his mother, he headed for Kamakura to launch his efforts to spread his teaching. In Kamakura he lived in a dwelling at a place called Matsubagayatsu in Nagoe. He devoted the next several years primarily to converting individuals, eventually gaining a number of followers. Among the first priests to become his disciples were Nissho and Nichiro. Laypersons who converted were mostly samurai, including Toki Jonin, Shijo Kingo, Kudo Yoshitaka, and the Ikegami brothers.
Japan at that time was experiencing a succession of unusually severe storms, earthquakes, drought, famine, epidemics, and other disasters. Corpses littered the streets. Government relief measures and the prayers offered by shrines and temples were no help. An earthquake that struck Kamakura in the eighth month of 1257 destroyed the greater part of the city. Nichiren, determined to clarify a solution to these calamities based on Buddhist principles, went to Jisso-ji temple in Suruga Province to do research in its sutra library. During his stay there, Nikko, then a boy of thirteen studying at the nearby Shijuku-in temple, became Nichiren's disciple. He would later become his successor. On the sixteenth day of the seventh month, 1260, Nichiren submitted a treatise titled On Establishing the Correct Teaching for the Peace of the Land to Hojo Tokiyori, the retired regent who was nevertheless the most influential man in the Kamakura shogunate. In that work, he attributed the disasters ravaging the country to slander of the correct teaching and belief in false teachings. In particular, he criticized the dominant Nembutsu school. Of the three calamities and seven disasters described in the sutras, he predicted that the two disasters that had yet to occur-internal strife and foreign invasion-would befall the nation without fail if it persisted in supporting misleading schools. He urged that the one vehicle teaching of the Lotus Sutra be embraced immediately. The submission of On Establishing the Correct Teaching is regarded as the first of his several remonstrations with Japan's rulers.
There was no official response to this document, but a crowd of Nembutsu believers, incited by priests and high government officials, attacked Nichiren's dwelling on the night of the twenty-seventh day of the eighth month. He narrowly escaped with a few disciples and stayed briefly with Toki Jonin in Shimosa Province. His sense of mission, however, would not allow him to remain there long. The next spring Nichiren returned to Kamakura. This time leaders of the Nembutsu priests accused him of defamation, and the shogunate, without trial or further investigation, sentenced him to exile in Ito on the Izu Peninsula.
The boatmen charged with his transport did not take him to Ito, but abandoned him on a beach called Kawana to the mercy of the local inhabitants, many of whom were Nembutsu believers and were in any case hostile to exiles. Nichiren was sheltered for a time by a fisherman named Funamori Yasaburo and his wife. Later Nichiren won the favor of the steward of Ito when he successfully prayed for the steward's recovery from a serious illness. Nichiren was pardoned and returned to Kamakura in the second month of 1263. Concerned about his aged mother (his father had died in 1258), Nichiren returned to his native Awa in the autumn of 1264. He found his mother critically ill. He prayed for her, and she recovered and lived four more years. He stayed in Awa for awhile to conduct propagation activities.
On the eleventh day of the eleventh month, while still in Awa, he set out with a group of followers to visit Kudo Yoshitaka, one of his samurai believers, at Yoshitaka's invitation. En route, Nichiren and his party were ambushed by TojoKagenobu and his men at a place called Komatsubara. Nichiren's disciple Kyonin-bo was killed, and Kudo Yoshitaka, who came rushing to the scene, died of wounds he suffered in the fight. Nichiren sustained a sword cut on his forehead and a broken hand. This incident is called the Komatsubara Persecution.
During the next three years or so, Nichiren devoted himself to propagation in Awa, Kazusa, Shimosa, and Hitachi provinces, and then returned to Kamakura. Early in 1268, an official letter from the Mongol Empire arrived in Japan with a demand that Japan acknowledge fealty to it or prepare to be invaded. The arrival of the letter from the Mongols substantiated Nichiren's earlier prophecy of foreign invasion.
In the fourth month Nichiren sent his newly written rationale for having completed the treatise On Establishing the Correct Teaching to a government official named Hogan, pointing out that the prediction made in the treatise was beginning to come true and urging the shogunate to heed his admonitions. On the eleventh day of the tenth month, he sent eleven letters to influential political and religious leaders, including the regent Hojo Tokimune, urging them to abandon their faith in erroneous teachings and demanding the opportunity for a public religious debate. There was no response.
In 1271 the country was troubled by persistent drought, and the shogunate ordered Ryokan of Gokuraku-ji temple to pray for rain. Hearing of this, Nichiren sent Ryokan a written challenge, offering to become his disciple if Ryokan succeeded; on the other hand, if Ryokan failed, he should become Nichiren's disciple. Ryokan readily agreed, but despite his prayers and those of hundreds of attendant priests, no rain fell. Far from keeping his promise, he vindictively began to spread false rumors about Nichiren, using his influence among the wives and widows of shogunate officials. On the tenth day of the ninth month, Nichiren was summoned to court and interrogated by Hei no Saemon, the deputy chief of the Office of Military and Police Affairs (the chief being the regent himself ). He reemphasized the errors of the True Word (Shigon), Zen, and Nembutsu schools and repeated his prediction that the country would face ruin if it continued to reject the correct teaching.
On the evening of the twelfth day of the ninth month, Hei no Saemon, with a large group of his soldiers, attacked and arrested Nichiren. As he later wrote, Nichiren said to Hei no Saemon at the time: "Nichiren is the pillar and beam of Japan. Doing away with me is toppling the pillar of Japan!" (579). Hei no Saemon then maneuvered to have Nichiren beheaded and had him taken late that night to the execution grounds at Tatsunokuchi. Just as the executioner had raised his sword to strike, a brilliant object shot across the sky, illuminating everyone like bright moonlight. Nichiren wrote later: "The executioner fell on his face, his eyes blinded. The soldiers were filled with panic" (767). In the end, they abandoned the execution. Nichiren wrote about this incident, called the Tatsunokuchi Persecution, in The Opening of the Eyes: "On the twelfth day of the ninth month of last year [1271], between the hours of the rat and the ox [11:00 P.M. to 3:00 A.M.], this person named Nichiren was beheaded. It is his soul that has come to this island of Sado and, in the second month of the following year, snowbound, is writing this to send to his close disciples" (269). Nichikan (1665-1726), the twenty-sixth chief priest of Taiseki-ji temple, interpreted this passage to mean that the ordinary person Nichiren died at Tatsunokuchi, but the Buddha of the Latter Day of the Law Nichiren survived. This is called "casting off the transient [status] and revealing the true [identity] (Jpn hosshaku-kem-pon)." After this, Nichiren began to inscribe the object of devotion known as the Gohonzon.
On the tenth day of the tenth month, after an almost one-month stay in Echi in Sagami Province, Nichiren left under escort for Sado Island, his designated place of exile, and arrived at Tsukahara on Sado on the first day of the eleventh month. There he was assigned as his dwelling a dilapidated hut in a graveyard, exposed to the wind and snow. On the sixteenth day of the first month in the following year, several hundred priests from Sado and the mainland came to confront him in religious debate. In what is known as the Tsukahara Debate, Nichiren refuted those priests and won converts. In the second month of that year, Nichiren's prediction of internal strife came true when Hojo Tokisuke, an elder half brother of Regent Hojo Tokimune, made an abortive attempt to seize power. In the fourth month Nichiren was transferred from Tsukahara to the more comfortable residence of the lay priest Ichinosawa. While on Sado he wrote many of his most important works, including The Opening of the Eyes, The Object of Devotion for Observing the Mind, The Heritage of the Ultimate Law of Life, The True Aspect of All Phenomena, The Entity of the Mystic Law, On the Buddha's Prophecy, and On Practicing the Buddha's Teachings.
In the second month of 1274, the shogunate issued a pardon for Nichiren, and he returned to Kamakura the next month. On the eighth day of the fourth month, Hei no Saemon summoned Nichiren and, in a deferential manner, asked his opinion regarding the impending Mongol invasion. Nichiren said that it would occur within the year and reiterated that this calamity was the result of slandering the correct teaching. On this occasion the shogunate offered to build him a large temple and establish him on an equal footing with all the other Buddhist schools, but Nichiren refused. He instead again refuted the errors of the shogunate.
The shogunate continued its support of the True Word and other schools. Convinced that he had done all he could to warn the nation's leaders of their religious errors and of what would ensue as a result, Nichiren now turned his efforts to ensuring the correct transmission of his teachings to posterity. In keeping with an old maxim that a worthy man who warns his sovereign three times and still is not heeded should withdraw to a mountain forest, he left Kamakura on the twelfth day of the fifth month, and went to take up residence at the foot of Mount Minobu in Kai Province. There he gave lectures on the Lotus Sutra and devoted himself to training his disciples. He also continued to write, producing such important documents as One Taking the Essence of the Lotus Sutra, The Selection of the Time, and On Repaying Debts of Gratitude.
In the tenth month of 1274, the Mongols launched a massive attack against the southern Japanese islands of Iki and Tsushima and advanced to Kyushu. Japanese losses were staggering, but one night when the Mongol forces returned to their battleships, an unexpected storm arose and heavily damaged the Mongol fleet, which then withdrew. In the fourth month of the next year, however, the Mongols sent an envoy relaying a threat of another invasion if the Japanese government did not acknowledge fealty to their empire. During this period, Nichiren was busy at Minobu writing letters, training his disciples, and lecturing on the Lotus Sutra. Nikko assumed active leadership in disseminating Nichiren's teachings, concentrating his efforts in Kai, Izu, and Suruga provinces. These activities led to an increase in converts among both the priesthood and laity, and eventually to more oppression. In Atsuhara Village of the Fuji area, in particular, believers were repeatedly threatened and harassed, and some were finally executed. In what later became known as the Atsuhara Persecution, twenty believers, all farmers, were arrested on false charges on the twenty-first day of the ninth month, 1279. Though tortured to force them to recant their beliefs, not one of the twenty farmers yielded. Three of them were beheaded on the fifteenth day of the tenth month (another account, the eighth day of the fourth month, 1280). Nichiren, seeing that his followers now had the strength to uphold their faith even at the cost of their lives, determined that the time had come to fulfill the ultimate purpose of his life. On the twelfth day of the tenth month, 1279, he inscribed the object of devotion (known as the Dai-Gohonzon) and dedicated it for the attainment of Buddhahood by all humanity.
Subsequently, his health began to fail. Sensing that death was near, Nichiren designated Nikko as his successor in a transfer document dated the ninth month of 1282. On the eighth day of the ninth month, he left Minobu at the urging of his followers to visit a hot spring in Hitachi. When he reached the residence of Ikegami Munenaka at Ikegami in Musashi Province, he realized that his death was imminent. There he lectured for his followers on On Establishing the Correct Teaching. On the eighth day of the tenth month, he named six senior priests and entrusted them with the responsibility for propagation after his death. Early on the morning of the thirteenth day of the tenth month, he appointed Nikko as the chief priest of Kuon-ji temple in Minobu, directing all believers to follow him. He died that morning, in the company of his disciples, both priests and laity. His lay followers conducted his funeral.
Three Great Secret Laws
[三大秘法] (Jpn.: sandai-hiho)
The core principles of Nichiren's teaching. They are the object of devotion of the essential teaching, the daimoku of the essential teaching, and the sanctuary of the essential teaching. Here, "essential teaching" refers to the teaching of Nam-myoho-renge-kyo and not to the essential teaching, or the latter fourteen chapters, of the Lotus Sutra. Nichiren (1222-1282) established these three essential principles to enable people in the Latter Day of the Law to attain Buddhahood. They are called secret because they are implicit in the text of the "Life Span" (sixteenth) chapter of the Lotus Sutra and remained hidden or unknown until Nichiren revealed them. Nichiren regarded them as the vital teaching that Shakyamuni Buddha transferred to Bodhisattva Superior Practices in the "Supernatural Powers" (twenty-first) chapter of the sutra. He regarded his mission as one with that of Bodhisattva Superior Practices.
The Three Great Secret Laws represent Nichiren's embodiment of the Mystic Law, to which he was enlightened, in a form that all people can practice and thereby gain access to that Law within their own lives. He associated the Three Great Secret Laws with the three types of learning set forth in Buddhism-precepts, meditation, and wisdom. Specifically, the object of devotion corresponds to meditation, the sanctuary to precepts, and the daimoku to wisdom. Concerning the three types of learning based on the Lotus Sutra, Dengyo (767-822), in his Questions and Answers on Regulations for Students of the Tendai Lotus School, states, "The spacelike immovable precept, the spacelike immovable meditation, and the spacelike immovable wisdom-these three all together are transmitted under the name 'Wonderful Law.'" The three types of learning based on the Lotus Sutra are called "spacelike" and "immovable" because, like space, which represents the ultimate truth, they are immovable, or imperturbable. Nikko, Nichiren's successor, stated that in Nichiren's teachings the object of devotion corresponds to the spacelike immovable meditation, the sanctuary to the spacelike immovable precept, and the daimoku to the spacelike immovable wisdom.
Nichiren mentions the Three Great Secret Laws in several of his writings (all dated after his near execution at Tatsunokuchi and subsequent exile to Sado Island in 1271), and in a work known as On the Three Great Secret Laws, he offers a detailed definition.
At the core of the Three Great Secret Laws is the One Great Secret Law. This is the object of devotion of the essential teaching, or Nichiren's embodiment in the form of a mandala of the eternal Law of Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, which he fully realized and manifested in his life. He writes in The Person and the Law, "Deep in this mortal flesh I preserve the ultimate secret Law inherited from Shakyamuni Buddha, the lord of teachings, at Eagle Peak" (1097). Because embracing this object of devotion called the Gohonzon is the only precept in Nichiren's teaching, the place where it is enshrined corresponds to the place where one vows to observe the Buddhist precepts-the ordination platform, or sanctuary, of the essential teaching. The term precept in Buddhism implies preventing error and putting an end to evil. The daimoku of the essential teaching indicates the invocation or chanting of Nam-myoho-renge-kyo with faith in the object of devotion; it includes chanting the daimoku for oneself and teaching it to others. Thus, both the sanctuary and the daimoku derive from the object of devotion.
Later Nichikan (1665-1726), the twenty-sixth chief priest of Taiseki-ji temple, classified the Three Great Secret Laws into Six Great Secret Laws. First, the object of devotion is viewed in terms of both Person and Law. The Person indicates Nichiren himself, who achieved the enlightenment and virtues of the eternal Buddha and who established the Buddhism of sowing for all people in the Latter Day of the Law. The object of devotion in terms of the Law is the Gohonzon, which embodies Nam-myoho-renge-kyo. Second, the sanctuary also has two aspects, the specified sanctuary and the general sanctuary. The former is the sanctuary to be built at the time of kosen-rufu, or wide propagation, in accordance with Nichiren's instruction. This is the place where the object of devotion Nichiren inscribed for all humanity (commonly known as the Dai-Gohonzon) is to be enshrined when his teaching has been widely spread and established. The general sanctuary is any place where one enshrines the object of devotion and engages in practice. Third, the daimoku of the essential teaching also has two aspects: the daimoku of faith and the daimoku of practice. The former means to believe in the Gohonzon, and the latter means to chant the daimoku and spread it.
According to Nichikan's "Interpreting the Text Based upon Its Essential Meaning," the Six Great Secret Laws are considered a crystallization of the Buddha's eighty-four thousand teachings, the Three Great Secret Laws a crystallization of the Six Great Secret Laws, and the One Great Secret Law a crystallization of the Three Great Secret Laws.
From source: The Soka Gakkai Dictionary of Buddhism
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"In one of his letters, the Daishonin presents his youthful disciple Nanjo Tokimitsu with this passage from the 'Parable of the Phantom City' (7th) chapter of the Lotus Sutra: 'We beg that the merit gained through these gifts [we have made as an offering to the Buddha] may be spread far and wide to everyone, so that we and other living beings all together may attain the Buddha way' (LS7, 130; WND, 1003). This refers to the Brahma kings making a gift of their palaces to Buddha Great Universal Wisdom Excellence. These lines resonate with the true spirit of Buddhism—that is, to wish that one’s personal benefit may contribute not only to one’s own enlightenment but to that of all living beings. This is the spirit of genuine practitioners of Buddhism, a spirit that enables them to exhibit unlimited strength."
SGI Newsletter No. 6657, The Victory of Soka Is the Victory of Human Rights, Oct. 26th, 2005, translated Dec. 2nd, 2005
SGI Newsletter No. 6657, The Victory of Soka Is the Victory of Human Rights, Oct. 26th, 2005, translated Dec. 2nd, 2005
Marley
Member
Can someone explain to me, why so many people have bad mind? man ive been cing this so much since i started trying to find good mind from any problem no matter how bad. I have found throw doing this we can c so much more, it was like wow what the fuck is happening. Im off for 2 weeks at xmas and i be mediating and chanting as much as pos. Ill let u no how the hoilday was, im giong to egypt.
Cant say why i wanted to pass by and say this, by this is a place of peace.
one love
Cant say why i wanted to pass by and say this, by this is a place of peace.
one love
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12/1 lighting--Any truth or banana in the tail pipe?
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