What It Means to Hear the Buddha Vehicle for the First Time Chapter 2

Objection: Water does not come from fire, and grass does not grow from a stone. Evil causes produce evil effects, good causes call forth good responses—such is the fixed principle in the Buddhist teaching. If we inquire into our beginnings, we find that the seminal fluid and blood of the father and mother, the two fluids, one white, one red, come together to produce a single being. And this is the root of evil, the source of impurity. Though the great ocean itself should wash over us, it could not wash away this impurity.

And if we inquire into the root of the suffering that is inflicted upon our persons, we find that it derives from the three poisons of greed, anger, and foolishness. Through the two paths of earthly desires and suffering, karma is created. And this path of karma is none other than what binds us to the realm of birth and death. We are like birds shut up in a cage. How can these three paths of earthly desires, karma, and suffering be called three causes leading to Buddhahood? You may gather together turds and try to make sandalwood of them, but they will never have the aroma of sandalwood!

Answer: Your objection is quite reasonable. And rather than try to address it, I would like simply to quote the words of Bodhisattva Nāgārjuna, the thirteenth of the Buddha’s successors and founder of the Great Teacher T’ien-t’ai’s line, who in explaining the word myō, or “wonderful,” in the term myōhō says it is “like a great physician who can change poison into medicine.”⁸

What is the poison? It is the three paths of earthly desires, karma, and suffering that are our lot. What is the medicine? It is the Dharma body, wisdom, and emancipation. And what does it mean to change poison into medicine? It means to transform the three paths into the three virtues: the Dharma body, wisdom, and emancipation. T’ien-t’ai says, “The character myō is defined as being beyond ordinary comprehension.”⁹ And he also says, “Life at each moment . . . This is what we mean when we speak of the ‘region of the unfathomable.’”¹⁰

This is what the attainment of Buddhahood in one’s present form means. In recent times the Flower Garland and True Word schools, having stolen this doctrine, treat it as their own. They are outrageous thieves, the most outrageous in the world!

Question: Can ordinary people really understand the meaning of this secret doctrine?

Answer: My own answer would be of no use in this case. But Bodhisattva Nāgārjuna in the ninety-third volume of his Treatise on the Great Perfection of Wisdom states: “The fact that arhats who have eradicated illusions and earthly desires are now able to attain Buddhahood—this is something that only Buddhas can understand. If one is discoursing on doctrine, one ought to give a reasonable explanation, but in truth the matter goes beyond comprehension, and one should therefore not engage in idle theorizing. Once one has succeeded in attaining Buddhahood one will then be able to understand well enough. As for other people, they should have faith, knowing that they can not yet understand.”

This passage of commentary means that bodhisattvas who have cut off the first eleven of the twelve levels of ignorance in accordance with the specific teaching of the sutras preached prior to the Lotus Sutra, and great bodhisattvas who have cut off the first forty-one of the forty-two levels of ignorance in accordance with the perfect teaching—even such great bodhisattvas as Universal Worthy and Manjushrī cannot yet understand the meaning of the Lotus Sutra. How much more so is this the case, then, of people of the three vehicles of voice-hearer, cause-awakened one, and bodhisattva who follow the first two of the four teachings, the Tripitaka and the connecting teachings? And how much more is it the case of ordinary people in this latter age?

From this we can surmise that when the Lotus Sutra says that it “can only be understood and shared between Buddhas,”¹¹ it is referring to the fact that it teaches that even for people of the two vehicles, who are depicted in the sutras preached prior to the Lotus as having “reduced the body to ashes and annihilated consciousness,”¹² the three paths of earthly desires, karma, and suffering are in themselves the Dharma body, wisdom, and emancipation. We may also say that, since even people of the two vehicles can attain Buddhahood, this must also be true for bodhisattvas and for ordinary people.

That is why T’ien-t’ai states: “The sense organs of people of the two vehicles have become defective [and can never be restored to their proper function]. Therefore it is said that such people have been poisoned. But when the Lotus Sutra predicts that these people will eventually attain Buddhahood, the poison is changed into medicine. Therefore the treatise says that the various other sutras are not secret teachings, but the Lotus Sutra is secret.”¹³ Miao-lo notes that in this passage the word “treatise” refers to Great Perfection of Wisdom.

Question: What benefit do we gain by hearing this doctrine?

Answer: This is what it means to hear the Lotus Sutra for the first time. Miao-lo says: “If one has faith in the teaching that the three paths of earthly desires, karma, and suffering are none other than the three virtues of the Dharma body, wisdom, and emancipation, then one can cross the two rivers of transmigration, to say nothing of making one’s way in the threefold world.”¹⁴

And when ordinary people in the latter age hear this doctrine, not only will they themselves attain Buddhahood, but also their fathers and mothers will attain Buddhahood in their present forms. This is the highest expression of filial devotion.

As I am not well, I will not go into greater detail, but will write again another time.

Nichiren

The twenty-eighth day of the second month in the fourth year of Kenji [1278], cyclical sign tsuchinoe-tora

To Toki