Oral Exposition concerning the Transmission of the Essence of the Lotus Sutrato BodhisattvaSuperior Practices

Oral Exposition concerning the Transmission of the Essence of the Lotus Sutrato BodhisattvaSuperior Practices

Background

CHAPTER eleven of the Lotus Sutra of the Wonderful Law, the “Emergence of the Treasure Tower,” states, “At that time in the Buddha’s presence there was a tower adorned with the seven treasures.”

It further states: “Immediately Shakyamuni Buddha used his transcendental powers to lift all the members of the great assembly up into the air. And in a loud voice he addressed all the four kinds of believers, saying, ‘Who is capable of broadly preaching the Lotus Sutra of the Wonderful Law in this sahā world? Now is the time to do so, for before long the Thus Come One will enter nirvana. The Buddha wishes to entrust this Lotus Sutra of the Wonderful Law to someone so that it may be preserved.’”

It also says, “The other sutras number as many as Ganges sands.”

It further says, “So I say to the great assembly: After I have passed into extinction, who can guard and uphold, read and recite this sutra? Now in the presence of the Buddha let him come forward and speak his vow!”

And it further states, “This sutra is hard to uphold; if one can uphold it even for a short while I will surely rejoice and so will the other Buddhas. A person who can do this wins the admiration of the Buddhas.”

Chapter thirteen of the Lotus Sutra of the Wonderful Law, “Encouraging Devotion,” states: “At that time the bodhisattva mahāsattva Medicine King, along with the bodhisattva mahāsattva Great Joy of Preaching and twenty thousand bodhisattva followers who were accompanying them, all in the presence of the Buddha took this vow, saying: ‘We beg the World-Honored One to have no further worry. After the Buddha has entered extinction we will honor, embrace, read, recite, and preach this sutra. Living beings in the evil age to come will have fewer and fewer good roots. Many will be overbearingly arrogant and greedy for offerings and other forms of gain, increasing the roots that are not good and moving farther away than ever from emancipation. But although it will be difficult to teach and convert them, we will summon up the power of great patience and will read and recite this sutra, embrace, preach, and copy it, offering it many kinds of alms and never begrudging our bodies or lives.’

“At that time in the assembly there were five hundred arhats who received a prophecy of enlightenment. They said to the Buddha, ‘World-Honored One, we too will make a vow. In lands other than this one we will broadly preach this sutra.’

——————————————～（omitted)～———————————————

The world then entered upon the Middle Day of the Law. In India, the provisional teachings and the true teaching were all confused with one another and several hundred persons fell into hell as a result of doctrinal errors.

During the first hundred and more years of the Middle Day of the Law, the Taoist teachers of China disputed with the proponents of the Buddhist doctrines introduced from India, and neither side could win a clear victory. Therefore people did not have a profound faith in the Buddhist doctrines, nor, of course, did they distinguish between the provisional teachings and the true teaching. The Buddhist monks Kāshyapa Mātanga and Chu Fa-lan, though quite aware of such distinctions themselves, did not discuss the differences between Mahayana and Hinayana or attempt to distinguish between provisional and true teachings.

During the five dynasties that followed in China, the Wei, Chin, Sung, Ch’i, and Liang, it reached the point where people disputed over the differences between Mahayana and Hinayana, provisional and true, and exoteric and esoteric teachings in the Buddhist doctrine, but no one could determine the truth of the matter.

Buddhism thus became split into ten different schools, three in the south and seven in the north,19 each propagating the Buddhist teachings according to its own understanding. Generally speaking, however, among the various sutras, they rated the Flower Garland Sutra as first, the Nirvana Sutra as second, and the Lotus Sutra as third.

Some four hundred years after the beginning of the Middle Day of the Law, the Great Teacher T’ien-t’ai appeared in China and one by one utterly refuted the erroneous doctrines of the northern and southern schools.

This period corresponds to that described in the Great Collection Sutra as the age of reading, reciting, and listening.

During the latter five hundred years of the Middle Day of the Law, the Three Treatises, Dharma Characteristics, and True Word teachings were brought to China by various Tripitaka masters.

Some four hundred years or more after the beginning of the Middle Day of the Law, the scriptures of Buddhism were brought to Japan from the Korean kingdom of Paekche, along with a wooden statue of Shakyamuni Buddha and priests and nuns. At this time the Liang dynasty in China was coming to an end, to be replaced by the Ch’en dynasty, while in Japan, Emperor Kimmei, the thirtieth sovereign since Emperor Jimmu, was on the throne.20

In the latter five hundred years of the Middle Day of the Law, the Three Treatises, Dharma Characteristics, and other schools, six schools in all, preached various different doctrines, but all of these were erroneous in nature.

Eight hundred years after the beginning of the Middle Day of the Law, the Great Teacher Dengyō appeared in Japan and attacked and refuted all these doctrines of the six schools. But after the time of Dengyō, Tō-ji, Onjō-ji, and other temples throughout Japan joined in declaring that the True Word school was superior to the Tendai school. This period corresponds to that described in the Great Collection Sutra as the age of building temples and stupas.

And now we have entered the Latter Day of the Law, 2,220 or more years since the Buddha’s passing, and the time has come for a sage to appear. This is the period described in the Great Collection Sutra as the age when “quarrels and disputes will arise among the adherents to the Buddha’s teachings, and the pure Law will become obscured and lost.”

Shakyamuni Buddha appeared in the world in the kalpa of continuance, in the ninth period of decrease, when the life span of human beings was a hundred years in length. While the human life span is diminishing from a hundred years to ten years, [there are periods in which Buddhism will be spread, namely] during the fifty years of the Buddha’s preaching life, and after his passing, during the two thousand years of the Former and Middle Days of the Law and the ten thousand years of the Latter Day of the Law. During these periods, the Lotus Sutra will be spread on two occasions. The first was the last eight years of the Buddha’s preaching life [when he preached the Lotus Sutra], and the second is the five hundred years at the beginning of the Latter Day of the Law.

In studying the teachings of Buddhism, one must by all means understand the time. In the past, when the Buddha Great Universal Wisdom Excellence appeared in the world, he remained for a period of ten small kalpas without ever expounding a single verse. As the sutra says, “having taken his seat, ten small kalpas pass.”21 And it also says, “The Buddha knew that the time had not yet come, and though they entreated, he sat in silence.”22

And now Shakyamuni Buddha, the lord of teachings, likewise passed the first forty and more years of his preaching life without expounding the Lotus Sutra. For, as the sutra states, “the time to preach so had not yet come.”23

Lao Tzu remained in his mother’s womb for eighty years,24 and Bodhisattva Maitreya waits in the inner court of the Tushita heaven for 5,670 million years [till he will make his advent in the world]. How, then, can persons who practice the Buddhist teachings fail to understand matters pertaining to time?

Therefore, even if one does not understand that now, at the beginning of the Latter Day of the Law, is the time to propagate the teaching of the single truth that is pure and perfect,25 one has only to trust in the sutra passage that says: “After I have passed into extinction, in the last five-hundred-year period you must spread it abroad widely throughout Jambudvīpa and never allow it to be cut off.”26 This makes the matter perfectly clear.

Back to Top

Background

This work is thought to have been produced in 1275 while Nichiren Daishonin was residing at Minobu. However, the specific date, the recipient, and other details surrounding it are unknown.

Though the title suggests it is a record of the Daishonin’s oral teachings, it was written by the Daishonin. Because the work consists mainly of passages from the Lotus Sutra and T’ien-t’ai’s works, both of which were orally preached and later committed to writing, it was later entitled “Oral Exposition.” The essence referred to in the title, which was entrusted to Superior Practices, the leader of the Bodhisattvas of the Earth, is the fundamental Law to be spread after the Buddha’s passing, in the Latter Day of the Law.

That entrustment is described in The Record of the Orally Transmitted Teachings, the record of the Daishonin’s lectures on the Lotus Sutra, as follows: “Generally speaking, regarding this entrustment of Myoho-renge-kyo to the bodhisattva [Superior Practices], the ceremony for entrustment begins in the ‘Treasure Tower’ [eleventh] chapter, the entity to be entrusted becomes apparent in the ‘Life Span’ [sixteenth] chapter, and the ceremony comes to an end in the ‘Supernatural Powers’ [twenty-first] and ‘Entrustment’ [twenty-second] chapters.”

At the beginning of this work, the Daishonin introduces passages from the Lotus Sutra and from the commentaries of T’ien-t’ai and Miao-lo that attest to the transmission of the Lotus Sutra’s essence to Bodhisattva Superior Practices, illustrating events as they unfold in the sutra text. They are introduced in the following order: First, five passages from the “Treasure Tower” chapter, in which the Buddha calls upon his listeners to propagate the Lotus Sutra after his death; second, two passages from the “Encouraging Devotion” (13th) chapter, expressing the vow by the disciples and the assembled bodhisattvas to spread the sutra in response to the Buddha’s call to do so, and a passage from Miao-lo’s Annotations on “The Words and Phrases of the Lotus Sutra.” Third, one passage from the “Emerging from the Earth” (15th) chapter, in which the Buddha declines the offer, made by the bodhisattvas he taught in his present life and the bodhisattvas gathered from other lands, to spread the sutra and instead calls forth his original disciples whom he had taught from the time of his original enlightenment and who will spread the Law after the Buddha’s death. They are known as the Bodhisattvas of the Earth.

Fourth, one passage from the “Entrustment” chapter, which concludes the ceremony of entrustment, and in which Shakyamuni transfers the sutra to both his original disciples who have emerged from the earth and his other disciples who had already assembled. Fifth, to clarify the reason why Shakyamuni at first declined to entrust the sutra to his disciples he taught in his present life and the bodhisattvas from other lands, and instead chose to bequeath it to the Bodhisattvas of the Earth, the Daishonin quotes passages from T’ien-t’ai’s Words and Phrases of the Lotus Sutra, and Miao-lo’s annotations on them.

Sixth, a chart is presented outlining the transmission of the essence of the Lotus Sutra to Superior Practices, and quotes are introduced from the commentaries of T’ien-t’ai and others to show that the essence that is transmitted is expressed in four phrases from the “Supernatural Powers” chapter, and that the person to whom this essence is transmitted is one who had been the Buddha’s disciple from countless kalpas in the past. Seventh, the flow and significance of events depicted in the “Entrustment” chapter are explained using quotes from Words and Phrases.

Next, the Daishonin cites passages from the Great Collection Sutra that categorize the time after the passing of Shakyamuni Buddha into five five-hundred-year periods. He then classifies these five periods into the three periods of the Former, Middle, and Latter Days of the Law, describing the development of the Buddha’s teachings after his death. He indicates that in the Latter Day of the Law, an age characterized by “quarrels and disputes,” in which “the pure Law will be obscured and lost,” a “sage” is certain to emerge. And citing a passage from the “Medicine King” (23rd) chapter of the Lotus Sutra, which describes the Buddha’s prophecy of the spread of the sutra, he explains that, in the period of his lifetime and thereafter in the Latter Day of the Law, the teaching of the single truth that is pure and perfect, namely, Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, is to be widely spread.

Back to Top

Notes

20. According to The Chronicles of Japan, Buddhism was introduced to Japan during the reign of Emperor Kimmei, in the tenth month of the thirteenth year of his reign, a year with the cyclical sign mizunoe-saru (552), by King Syŏngmyŏng of the kingdom of Paekche.

21. Lotus Sutra, chap. 7.

22. Ibid.

23. Ibid., chap. 2.

24. According to Records of the Historian and other works, Lao Tzu, regarded as the founder of Taoism, was white-haired at birth and had the appearance of an old man.

25. “The teaching of the single truth that is pure and perfect” refers to the teaching of Nam-myoho-renge-kyo. The Object of Devotion for Observing the Mind says, “The essential teaching of Shakyamuni’s lifetime and that revealed at the beginning of the Latter Day are both pure and perfect [in that both lead directly to Buddhahood]. Shakyamuni’s, however, is the Buddhism of the harvest, and this is the Buddhism of sowing. The core of his teaching is one chapter and two halves, and the core of mine is the five characters of the daimoku alone” (I, p. 370).

26. Lotus Sutra, chap. 23.

Home
Copied title and URL