Fundamentals (7)

Born as human beings, we inherit an obligation to lead active and productive lives. We must, however, practice a psychological renunciation of an egoistic attachment to self. Only when humanity makes this renunciation can it be saved from its sufferings.

Supreme enlightenment encompasses a path we can comprehend, a way by which we can understand the universe as it exists and by which we can live in harmony with all things in the universe.

The fundamentally compassionate nature of Buddhism: The Bodhisattva Siddhartha under the Bodhi tree, did not set out to vanquish Mara, the evil one, but wanted even him to attain a buddha’s enlightenment.

It is good for us to recall the example set by Shakyamuni who did not regard his enlightenment as unique to himself.

Buddhists remember always the Buddha’s resoluteness and great compassion for all living beings: the real concerns of all humankind. We must strive to accomplish the mission entrusted to us as ordinary people.

The Buddha: “Those who have attained enlightenment possess supernatural powers as a matter of course. You are mistaken to seek the power itself. You must first perceive the universal truth and free yourself from all illusions and meaningless attachments.”

Nikkyo Niwano: “What is the final, profound truth? In brief, it is finding the infinite life of humankind within the eternal life-force of the universe.

  “The true nature of humankind in its union with the eternal life-force of the universe, is called the buddha-nature. The Lotus Sutra teaches that all beings possess the buddha-nature (potential for enlightenment) equally; that we should respect this potential in one another and encourage one another to develop and fulfill this potential; and that the noblest form of practicing the Buddha’s teachings is the way of the bodhisattvas who always devote themselves to attaining enlightenment, not only for themselves, but for all sentient beings.”

University of Toronto

Thanksgiving Day. 2016 – a post from Canadian friend, Allan O’Mara:

I like to walk alone on country paths, rice plants and wild grasses on both sides, putting each foot down on the earth in mindfulness, knowing that I walk on the wondrous earth. In such moments, existence is a miraculous and mysterious reality. People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is to walk on earth . . . a miracle we don’t even recognize. ~Thich Nhat Hanh

Responding: Absolutely wondrous!!! One can't help but personalize this, and I'm reminded of how much "walking alone on country paths" (and often with others) has been part of my life. Yes, the real miracle is to walk on earth. This is celebrated at the beginning of the memoir, "Yet Still a Child" from "Stories Never Told." This is the most beautiful and inspiring post yet read this Thanksgiving Day. Reminding one how much we have to be thankful for – the miracle of being born as a human being, to discover the miracle of walking on earth, one with the great flow of life . . .

From “Stories Never Told” / “Yet still a child”

  Yet still a child, on his way to school through soggy cow pastures inhaling after-rain breezes full of sweet earth’s labor, lettuce farms nurtured by Japanese farmers; anticipating his first day in the last half of the seventh grade with Mrs. Sandusky. He’ll be twelve in April; he should be in the first half of the seventh grade but in Hawthorne it’s not offered in spring.

  Mrs. Sandusky, sitting large, matronly behind a cluttered desk, mutinously tossed reddish blonde hair, left arm bandaged in a sling from recent car accident, rasping voice, It simply happened, that’s all, no gory details, so now, class, let’s get on with it! and advise your parents to drive carefully. Prevailing hospital smells emanating from healing salves, overwhelming more favored smells—chalk and sharpened pencils.

  So he’ll skip half a grade, hoping next September to start B8 at Luther Burbank Junior High School in Highland Park, once more playing on hillsides, boys storming up slopes of vacant lots after winter rains calling him to pull up jade green clumps of grass, dark wet earth clinging to roots, tossing them at gophers to frighten them back into their shadowy holes. For now he must endure Hawthorne (flat country, his mother calls it), and cow pastures. . .

  March winds blow, heavy rains soak cow pastures—no, not cow pastures! Marshlands, fens of Scotland, pirate coves along the coast of Cornwall. Watching dark, scudding clouds in the sky, sun low in the west, he’s John Masefield’s “Martin Hyde, the Duke’s Messenger,” and “Jim Davis” found among treasured romantic tales in the public library—exploring among musty smell of books in his hands, on library shelves. And the never-to-be-forgotten song from a time long before adolescent desires cluttered his life:  Leagues of sky, silent lie, blue and free, calling me . . .

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!! Once more to celebrate life and the miracle of existence

– November 24, 2016.

Fundamental Guideposts (6)

“Ananda! In the future, you should make yourself the light and depend upon your own self. You must not depend on other people. You should also make the Law your light and depend upon the Law. You must not depend upon others.”

make the self your light

make the law your light

The Law exists within and without us. It is the great life that permeates the entire universe and makes everything in this world exist and live.

firmly keep in mind this realization – our lives should be unified with the universal life – the Buddha.

nirvana is quiescence – the absolutely quiet stage in which we cling to nothing. Our awareness of being caused to live is our true salvation.

We devote ourselves to the Law – which causes us to live and unites us with it – taking refuge in the Law with our entire heart and mind.

The desire to live is a will to live and exists in everything in the universe. Everything, everyone, has the power of desiring to exist and to live.

Hopefully, we will advance to the state of mindfulness when we can give name to the power that makes everything live as the Original Buddha, and accept that this universal energy is everywhere present in 

the universe.

We can all come to realize the existence of the Original Buddha in some way. To do so is to see the Buddha. We must always try to view everything with a mental attitude based on the compassionate mind of the Buddha.

Fundamental Guideposts (5)

“Springing up out of the Earth”

The Buddha proclaims: once one awakens to his or her own buddha-nature, one becomes an eternal being like the Tathagata (the Buddha—“one who comes from the truth” and whose mission is to reveal it); one  who possesses supreme wisdom and  exercises infinite compassion.

For an enlightened person, this real world where we live is identical in essence with the Pure Land of Tranquil Light.

practice of the vow – to have a spirit of great compassion and to raise the mind of vowing to lead all people to the Lotus Sutra and to practice its spirit.

If a person realizes the wisdom of the Buddha, mental darkness will instantly disappear. We must realize fully that the wisdom of the Buddha is absolute.

To become pure to the depths of one’s mind, to become compassionate, always call on the name of the Buddha.

To truly understand and believe the sutra reveals one who is spiritually sensitive to the teaching and who is ripe to bear the fruit of the accumulated karma of one’s former lives—the unfinished business from past lives.

great bodhisattvas who spring up out of the earth – the Buddha entrusts the suffering world to the bodhisattvas who emerge from the earth (in ch. 15) – the world in which we live should be purified and made peaceful through our own efforts as dwellers in the world. Realize happiness in our lives through our own efforts. We are all responsible.

Bodhisattvas who spring out of the earth are people who have had much suffering during their lives; have accumulated virtues in such an unfavorable environment, and have attained enlightenment while leading ordinary lives—freed from illusions in their previous lives by means of the Buddha’s teachings.

Fundamental Guideposts (4)

Four vows of the Great Bodhisattva-Mahasattvas:

♦  I vow to save all living beings without limit.

♦  I vow to end the numberless distresses.

♦  I vow to know all laws without end.

♦  I vow to accomplish the supreme Buddha-way.

The sun reaches 10° Capricorn at the end of each calendar year.  Its astrological symbol in Dane Rudhyar’s Astrological Mandala is:

an albatross feeding from the hand of a sailor – “every living entity plays a role in the word’s ritual of existence – beyond these roles the communion of love and compassion can bring together the most disparate lives.”

This symbol also is the Original Intent of an astrological moment in my own life defined as “Promises Made in Past Lives.”

from the notebook continuing:  The Sutra of the Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Law – the supremely sacred truth that dwells in the minds of ordinary people living in this corrupt world but is untainted by it, just as the lotus is untainted by the mud in which it grows and which leads them to buddhahood.

Original vow of Buddhists:  for the particular aim of benefiting others . . . entertained for the purpose of saving others from their sufferings.

To see the Buddha is to realize that “the Buddha” is never extinct and that the Buddha Shakyamuni was the perfect human being who left us his precious teachings and the “Eternal Original Buddha,” the Law preached by him.

Interpreting “Beholding the Precious Stupa” – ch. 11, the Lotus Sutra, in which a magnificent stupa “splendidly adorned” rises from the earth and abodes in the sky – very much like the mother ship which appears in “Close Encounters of a Third Kind,” only that ship came out of the sky.  The “Precious Stupa,” significantly, rises from the earth.

(Nikkyo Niwano): The absolute truth realized by the Tathagata Shakyamuni and symbolized by the Tathagata Abundant Treasures [who appears in the precious stupa to confirm Shakyamuni’s teaching of the Lotus Sutra] never changes and has existed throughout the universe forever, is revealed in the form of the various teachings of the Buddha and guides people everywhere; symbolized by buddhas who have emanated from the Buddha and who are preaching the Law in worlds in all directions.

Buddha-nature, the Precious Stupa springing from the earth, symbolizes unexpectedly discovering one’s buddha-nature in oneself (the earth) which one had been predisposed to regard as impure.

If people discover their buddha-nature for themselves, they will be able immediately to make their abode in the world of buddhas, the world of enlightened ones.

Enlightenment and salvation of the buddhas who spring from within ourselves are truly valuable and powerful.

Fundamental Guideposts (2)

Practicing the Lotus Sutra

First, rejoicing over the Lotus Sutra / receiving and reciting it / teaching it to others / concurrently practicing the six paramitas (six determinations/virtues of persons of compassion – the bodhisattvas).  The World of the Bodhisattvas is the 9^th world of compassion – the only threshold through which one may reach the 10^th world – Perfect Enlightenment.

Intensely practicing the six paramitas:

donation (dhyana paramita) – to render service to others – spiritual, material, physical, without any thought of reward.

keeping the precepts (sila paramita) – to remove illusions from one’s own mind in accordance with precepts taught by the Buddha; leading a right life (the middle way between extremes) and gaining the power to save others by endeavoring to perfect oneself. (The Eightfold Path)

perseverance (shanti paramita) – always to assume a generous attitude toward others, enduring any difficulty and maintaining a tranquil mind without arrogance.

assiduity (virya paramita) – to proceed straight toward an important goal without being sidetracked by trivial things. . . to intend

meditation (dhyana paramita) – to maintain a cool and unagitated mind under all circumstances.

wisdom (Prajñaparamita) – to have the power of discerning the real aspect of all things—the ability to realize that anyone can become an enlightened one—a buddha; the ability to discern the differences among all things and to see the truth common to them.

The Buddha’s teaching stress that we cannot discern all things in the world correctly until we are completely endowed with the ability to know both distinction and equality.

What better way to instill the six paramitas in our minds than to begin each day with the Lotus Sutra, celebrating the life of the Buddha and his teachings—the celebration of life itself.

Fundamental Guideposts (3)

. . . salvation means the full manifestation and complete development of life essential to each form of life according to its true nature. . .

The actual foundation of all phenomena is a great, unchanging power that is manifested in various ways.

The teaching of “Innumerable Meanings” ( the first sutra of The Threefold Lotus Sutra) originates from one Law – from the truth.  What is this truth?  It is nonform, which transcends the discriminations of all things.

Things are equal in having the buddha-nature (the cause to live). This fact is the truth and the real aspect of all things.

. . . abandon the small self and find the self that lives as the whole. . .

Nonself is the only way that we can realize the idea that “all the universe is our domain.” If we can attain this mental state, our minds will have perfect freedom.

We will be free from everything . . . everything we do will result in enhancing others’ lives.

It is our mind that enables us to ignore time and space and to reach out everywhere.

Practice of abandoning the self:  to recite-read the sutras / to listen to the preaching / to think calmly / to serve others in the spirit of harmony.

The Buddha is completely selfless.  When one has attained the same state of mind as the Buddha, they are truly free from the idea of self because they realize that everything in the universe is united with them.

In attaining this mental state they feel that everything in the universe exists in their mind, and they perceive everything clearly. . . illusion is like a dark cloud that covers our intrinsic buddha-nature.

All the universe is our domain

Canadian Geese
Barnaby Lake, British Columbia

Fundamental Guideposts (1)

  Followers of Ancestral Well, however frequently or infrequently, will have taken note that the basic intention of the blog is to acquaint readers with the teachings of the Buddha in The Threefold Lotus Sutra (the Lotus Sutra), a Buddhist scripture of pivotal importance and one of the world’s great religious classics, representing the culmination of the Buddha’s ageless teaching of wisdom, compassion, and liberation.

  Recently, in the midst of “cry havoc” in the world, I ran across a notebook – “a book of meditation” written in this century. All ruminations therein accruing from a long period of study and “connection” with The Threefold Lotus Sutra through daily morning meditation. One might say, the notes taken from various writings resonating with the Lotus Sutra, add to a “tapestry of faith” in a fundamental belief in the sanctity of life and the possibility that one may reach a mental state of being no longer influenced by change or circumstances or things, consider all things equally, unmoved by whatever happens; abandonment of self-righteousness which causes us to lose the feeling of kinship with people; extinction of false discriminations between oneself and others—to feel the unity of oneself and all creatures in the universe, reaching out spontaneously to embrace them; attainment of Perfect Knowledge, the wisdom that unites the ability both to see the equality of things (emptiness/void in nature and form) and to discern the differences among things.

  These are some of the “promises” from “awakening to, reciting, copying, and keeping the Lotus Sutra—the Sutra of the Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Law.

  Please note, “fundamental guideposts” such as these are part of a larger whole – not intended as “memes” or “quotes” one can pull out of the drawer to make one feel better for a moment, a day . . . after which . . .?

  In Nikkyo Niwano’s Buddhism for Today: a modern interpretation of The Threefold Lotus Sutra, concludes with the following story:

  From the Sutra of a Hundred Parables:  “. . . Once there was a very stupid man. As he was parched with thirst, he roamed here and there looking for water. While walking about he luckily arrived at the Sindh River. For some reason, however, he just stood on the riverbank instead of drinking. A friend nearby wondered at his behavior and asked him, “Why don’t you drink the water in the river?” The man answered, “I am dying for a drink! But the river has so much water that I cannot possibly drink it all. So I am hesitating whether I should drink or not.”

  “I sincerely hope that no one will harbor such a foolish idea toward the teaching of The Threefold Lotus Sutra.”

from the notebook:

A goal to reach for (Lotus Sutra):

“Great! The Great Enlightened, the Great Holy Lord,
in him there is no defilement, no contamination, no attachment.
The trainer of gods and living beings, elephants and horses,
his moral breeze and virtuous fragrance deeply permeate all.
Serene is his wisdom, calm his emotion, and stable his prudence.
His thought is settled, his consciousness is extinct,
and thus his mind is quiet.
Long since, he removed false thoughts
and conquered all the laws of existence.

  (Lotus Sutra): Why is it called a bodhisattva-mahasattva’s sphere of action? – “if he abides in a state of patience, is gentle and agreeable, is neither hasty nor overbearing, and his mind is unperturbed . . . has no laws by which to act [not conceited or boastful about his/her good works] . . . sees all things in their reality [acts toward all people with the same compassion, never making a show of it], nor proceeds along the uninvited way.

Absolute truth, the true form of things – reality – that which makes all beings live . . . can take any form because the eternal original life-force/energy of the universe is the only real thing existing in the world.

to be continued . . .