Lotus Sutra FAQ
Frequently asked questions about the Lotus Sutra,
The Heritage of the Ultimate Law of Life,
The Three Kinds of Treasure,
and the SGI vs The Priesthood issue
What did the sutras preached before the Lotus Sutra teach?
That Ordinary people cannot attain Buddhahood in
this lifetime.
That Ordinary people stay in one of nine worlds other
than Buddhahood until they die and only then
move to another in rebirth as a man.
If ordinary people wish to attain Buddhahood
they have to carry out Buddhist practices
through numerous lifetimes until they eradicate
all of their earthly desires and purify their lives.
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What are the Six Difficult acts and the 9 Easy acts in the Lotus Sutra
The ‘Six Difficult acts’ described in the 11th Chapter of the Lotus Sutra are:
» To propagate the Lotus Sutra widely
» to copy it or cause someone else to copy it,
» to recite it even for a short while,
» to teach it even to one person,
» to hear of and accept it and enquire about its meaning,
» to maintain faith in it.
The nine easy acts include:
» ‘taking up Mount Sumeru and hurling it across countless Buddhalands’,
» ‘placing the earth on one’s toenail and ascending to the Brahma Heaven’,
» ‘walking across a burning prairie carrying a bundle of hay on one’s back without being burned’ and
» ‘preaching 84 thousand teachings’.
While the nine ‘easy’ acts appear impossibly difficult, they are to be considered easy when compared with the difficulty of the six acts connected with spreading the Lotus Sutra in the Latter Day of the Law.
The reason that propagating the Lotus Sutra is so difficult is that doing so invites very real hardships in the form of opposition and persecution.
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What are the 3 powerful enemies
Arrogant lay people — people who,ignorant of the Buddhist teachings, attack the practitioners of the Lotus Sutra. Because the Daishonin endeavoured to spread the Lotus Sutra, such people slandered him and attacked him with swords and staves, just as the sutra predicted.
Arrogant priests — members of the Buddhist clergy who persecute the Lotus Sutra’s practitioners. In the Daishonin’s time, Buddhist priests, clinging to their own shallow views and interpretations, slandered the sutra and persecuted him.
Arrogant false sages — high-ranking Buddhist priests who pass themselves off as sages or saints and use their status and influence to persecute the practitioners of the Lotus Sutra. During the Daishonin’s time, the priest Ryokan of Gokuraku-ji temple best fitted this description of an arrogant false sage.
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Why do Bodhisattvas of the Earth,
Emerge from the Earth?
Shakyamuni summons forth countless Bodhisattvas who are entrusted with the mission of propagation of his teachings,
they will emerge from the ground of fundamental truth, in the evil age after his passing known as The Latter day of the Law.
Because the sutra depicts them as emerging in vast numbers from beneath the ground, they are known as the Bodhisattvas of the Earth, and are considered to have been dwelling in the realm of fundamental truth.
The Bodhisattvas of the Earth are countless in number, each leading an entourage of followers as numerous as the sands of sixty thousand Ganges, the greatest and most venerated river in India.
These bodhisattvas had been constantly taught and instructed by Shakyamuni since the remote past, and had already come to uphold the fundamental teaching for attaining Buddhahood.
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What vow do the Bodhisattvas of the Earth make?
These Bodhisattvas of the Earth, possessing within them the same enlightened life‑state as
Shakyamuni, they are charged with the mission to widely spread the Mystic Law in the evil age known as the Latter Day of the Law.
In response to their vow, Shakyamuni entrusts them with propagating his teaching in the age after his passing, charging them with transmitting the great Law far into the future.
They take on the mission of their mentor (Shakyamuni) as their own as his disciple, lifetime after lifetime.
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Why do Bodhisattvas of the Earth emerge & break through the earth?
What does this mean for the individual and society?
Individual The Bodhisattvas of the Earth are eternal activists who base themselves on the Mystic Law;
theirs are lives of eternal advancement.
Our summoning forth the bounding energy of these bodhisattvas constitutes the ‘emergence of the Bodhisattvas of the Earth’
within our own being.
When we do this, we can break through the shell of the small self that has hitherto constrained our lives.
Bodhisattva is not a stage of completion (the effect of Buddhahood), but of incompleteness (the cause of Buddhahood),
while incomplete, cause their lives to overflow with the state of completion (doing not done).
A bodhisattva at the same time takes action to advance further ahead, to ascend ever higher,
and to lead still more people in Society to enlightenment. In other words, it is a state of ‘incomplete completeness’
SocietyIt comes down to people revolutionising their state of life.
From a broad perspective, our efforts to cause countless Bodhisattvas of the Earth to emerge – to help many people revolutionise their lives – amount to a struggle to change the state of life of society at large.
It is a struggle to elevate the state of all humankind.
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What does 'Casting off the transient and revealing the true' mean?
Shakyamuni Buddha and the Lotus Sutra —
• Previously (in the pre-Lotus Sutra teachings up through the theoretical teaching (the first half) of the Lotus Sutra) Shakyamuni is described as having attained enlightenment for the first time in this lifetime
• But in the essential teaching of the Lotus Sutra it is revealed that he actually attained enlightenment in the distant past.
• This explains that Buddhahood, along with other nine worlds, is permanently inherent in the lives of all people, and that they can manifest Buddhahood at any moment under the right conditions
The life of Nichiren Daishonin —
• He shed his transient identity (as an ordinary person burdened with karma and suffering)
When (On 12 September 1271) Nichiren Daishonin emerged victorious from the Tatsunokuchi Persecution and simultaneously opened and revealed his true identity (his original state of life as the Buddha of limitless joy from time without beginning).
The Daishonin then expressed this fundamental life‑state of Buddhahood in the form of the Gohonzon, which he modelled after the Ceremony in the Air in the Lotus Sutra, establishing it as the object of devotion that all people of the Latter Day of the Law should believe in and uphold in order to attain Buddhahood.
When we pray to this Gohonzon as an embodiment, or mirror, of our innate Buddhahood, chanting Nam-myoho-renge-kyo with the conviction that we ourselves are the Mystic Law, and strive to teach and share this teaching with others.
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The correct flow of the heritage of the ultimate Law of life and death
Oneness of mentor and disciple / The shared vow of mentor and disciple.
Bodhisattvas of the Earth are Eternal Activists who base themselves on The Mystic Law, their Lives of Eternal Advancement.
We break thru the Shell of the Small Self that has previously constrained our lives.
We help many people Revolutionize their Life State and so Society At Large thus Elevating Humanity as a whole.
Unity of Many in body, One in mind
Nichiren urges his followers to transcend all differences among themselves, to become as inseparable as fish and water, and to unite in the spirit of ‘many in body but one in mind’.
The heritage of the ultimate Law of life and death, he says, flows in the lives of those who chant Nam-myoho-renge-kyo – a practice for both oneself and others – based on this spirit of equality and unity.
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