Lotus Sutra

Tadematsu thus joined the Soka Gakkai in 1954.

Three months later, he participated in a Tokyo University Lotus Sutra Study Group lecture with President Toda.

He found the content of the lecture somewhat difficult to grasp, but having been moved by Toda's great conviction, he strengthened his resolve to devote his life to his Buddhist practice.

Later, he also suffered from tuberculosis, but overcame it through faith and eventually became active as a young men's division leader in the Yokohama and Yokosuka area of Kanagawa Prefecture.

Instead, she had to sit by and watch as other members she had practiced with joined the study department one after another.

Feeling as though she was being left behind, she was sad and frustrated.

but she read again and again the Gosho passage, regard your service to your Lord as the practice of the Lotus Sutra, and threw herself into her work, determined to become the best employee.

At the same time, she prayed earnestly that someday she would be able to engage in Soka Gakkai activities freely, to her heart's content.

Since disparaging seems to be a cultural pastime these days, I think he's a bodhisattva for our times.

Here's the story about him in the Lotus Sutra, and it's told in the voice of the historical Buddha, Shakyamuni Buddha, telling about this bodhisattva.

goes something like this.

Long, long ago, immeasurable ages ago, there lived a Buddha called Awesome Sound King Thus Come One, who was an unexcelled teacher of the Dharma to heavenly and human beings.

But even as he ran away and took up his stance at a distance, he continued to call out in a loud voice, I would never dare disparage you, for you are all certain to attain Buddhahood.

And because he always spoke these words, the overbearing, arrogant monks, nuns, laymen, and laywomen gave him the name Never Disparaging.

The Lotus Sutra story continues like this.

When this monk was on the point of death, he heard up in the sky 20,000, 10,000, a million verses of the Lotus Sutra that had been previously preached by the Buddha Awesome Sound King, and he was able to accept and uphold them all.

Second, it gives us a fresh way into Ichinen Sanzen, the 3000 realms in a single moment of life, as long as we read it the way Zhiyi insisted.

And third, the place where everything comes together in her physics is the sky, which is exactly where the Lotus Sutra stages its most important teaching.

Pastersky has said, Nobody will be another Einstein, because science is collective and cumulative.

Nobody will be another Buddha either.

It's the place where the whole universe arrives.

The ceremony in the air.

Why the Lotus Sutra happens in the sky.

This is where it gets fun for those of us who practice with the Lotus Sutra, because its heart takes place in the sky.

Offering robes to the statues, offering robes to the, the dress to the statues, scriptures, scriptures and stupa, the stupas there, the canopy around, all the umbrella on top, things like that.

However, uh those are those are cause those are been cause of great success uh there's an uh there's um benefits much much benefit explained in the uh in the commentary of the shindig yeah uh shindig was teaching the lab too So, also I think the White Lotus Sutra.

White Lotus Sutra.

White Lotus Sutra.

So, the first, I think, mentioned...

I think maybe the first word, I don't remember exactly what my word, I think the last two words is .

I just, I just love his presence and the way he teaches.

And we studied the Lotus Sutra, you know, at one point, you know, he had a whole series of classes during the pandemic.

And this idea of interbeing or interdependence and the emptiness of all things, right, like the impermanence and the interconnectedness and the ever-changing nature of reality, right? That is, you know, in the...

So the way Nataraja Guru talked about it and, you know, was... you know, he would say the horizontal and the vertical, right? So in the horizontal plane of all, uh, all transactional things, right? Like all, all things that all the 10,000 things, you know, it's all that the appearances in awareness are all along the horizontal plane.

Because skill in means may mean these wild and mystical and fantastical things that we've seen in some of the Mahayana sutras.

changing the sky into a firmament of mystical umbrellas, which is something that happens in the Lotus Sutra.

But it could also just mean being able to explain things well, or being able to lead by example, or being able to really just have a dialogue with somebody and make that dialogue be educational, make it advance them on the path in some small way.

It's also a matter of understanding your student and understanding where they are in the process.