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.