THE MYÔHÔ RENGE KYO
"The Scripture of the Lotus Blossom of the Fine Dharma"
Lotus Sutra, Chapter 2
Part 2
At that time the World-Honored One, wishing to restate this meaning, proclaimed gathas, saying:Bhiksus and bhiksunis
Harboring arrogance,
Upasakas with pride,
And upasakas of no faith --
In the fourfold assembly,
The likes of these,
Five thousand in number,
Not seeing their own faults,
Having flaws in their discipline,
And jealously guarding their blemishes,
These of slight wisdom have already left:
The chaff of the multitude,
Thanks to the Buddha's imposing majesty,
Is gone.
These persons, ill-equipped with merit,
Are not worthy to receive this Dharma.
This multitude has neither branches nor leaves,
But has only firm fruits.
Shariputra, listen well:
The dharma that the Buddhas have gained
By resort to incalculable expedient powers
They preach to the beings.
The thoughts thought by the beings,
The sundry ways trodden by them,
The nature of their several desires,
The good and evil deeds in their former births --
The Buddha knows them thoroughly.
Knowing them, and
Resorting to various means and parables
And to their powers,
and to the powers of phrases and other expedients,
He causes all to rejoice.
Now he preaches sermons,
Gathas and former matters,
Former lives and things that have never been before.
Again, he preaches cause and condition,
Parables and verses repeating the prose,
And dialogue scriptures.
Those of dull faculties,
Who desire lesser dharmas,
Who out of sheer greed cling to birth and death,
Who in the presence of incalculable Buddhas
Still fail to tread the profound and subtle Path,
And who are tormented by multitudinous woes --
For these I preach nirvana.
Devising this expedient device,
I enable them to enter into the Buddha's wisdom.
I never told them, "You all
Shall be able to achieve the Path of the Buddha."
The reason I never told them
Is that the time to tell it had not yet come.
Now is precisely the time
To preach the Great Vehicle definitively.
This Dharma of mine, in nine divisions,
I preach by matching it to the beings,
Keeping the entry into the Great Vehicle as the basis:
This is why I expound this teaching.
There are sons of the Buddha
Whose thoughts are pure and supple,
And also whose faculties are keen,
Who in the presence of incalculable Buddhas
Have trodden the profound and subtle Path.
For these sons of the Buddha
I preach this sermon of the Great Vehicle.
I prophesy to such persons as these
That in a future age
They shall achieve the Buddha's Path,
Because with profound thought
They are mindful of the Buddha
And because they practice
And keep a pure discipline.
When they hear that they
Shall attain Buddhahood,
These persons have a great joy
That permeates their bodies.
The Buddha,
Knowing the course of their thoughts,
Therefore preaches the Great Vehicle to them.
A voice-hearer or a bodhisattva
Who hears of the Dharma I preach
So much as a single gatha
Shall in every case achieve Buddhahood,
Of that there is no doubt.
Within the Buddha-lands of the ten directions
There is the Dharma of only One Vehicle.
There are not two, nor are there yet three,
Save where the Buddha,
Preaching by resort to expedients
And by merely borrowing
Provisional names and words,
Draws the beings to him.
In order to preach Buddha-wisdom,
The Buddhas come into the world.
Only this one cause is true,
For the other two are unreal.
To the very end
He does not resort to the Lesser Vehicle
To ferry the beings across.
The Buddha himself dwells
In the Greater Vehicle;
Whatever dharmas he acquires,
Adorned with the strength
Of concentration and wisdom,
Through them does he rescue the beings.
He himself bears witness
To the Unexcelled Path,
To the undifferentiating Dharma
Of the Great Vehicle.
If by resort to the Lesser Vehicle
I were to convert
So much as one person,
I should have fallen victim to greed,
And this sort of thing would never do.
A man in faith takes refuge in the Buddha,
believing that the Thus Come One does not deceive,
Also that, having no thought of greed or malice,
He cuts off the evil in the dharmas;
It is for this reason
That the Buddhas in the ten directions
Alone are fearless.
I, with marks adorning my body,
Radiantly give light to the world.
Being venerated by incalculable multitudes,
For them I preach the seal of reality-marks.
Shariputra, be it known
That formerly I took a vow,
Wishing to cause all multitudes
To be just like me, no different.
In keeping with my former vow,
All is now fulfilled,
For I have converted all living beings,
Causing them all
To enter into the Buddha Path.
If, upon every encounter with the beings,
I had taught them all the Buddha Path,
The ignorant, confused and gone astray,
Would not have accepted my teaching.
Because I knew that these beings
Had never cultivated wholesome roots;
That they were firmly
Attached to the five desires;
That, through delusion and greed,
They were subject to agony;
That, by reason of their desires,
They fell into the three evil destinies;
That they spun like wheels
In the six destinies,
Receiving all manner of woe and harm;
That, receiving the frail form of a foetus,
For generation after generation
They would constantly grow;
That men of slight virtue and little merit
Were attacked by multitudinous woes;
That, entering into
The luxuriant forest of wrong views,
Whether of existence,
Or of nonexistence, or the like,
And relying on these views,
They fulfill sixty-two of them;
That, profoundly attached
To vain and arbitrary dharmas,
They firmly seize upon them
And cannot cast them aside;
That their pride and arrogance are lofty,
Their sycophantic, crooked hearts insincere;
That for a thousand myriads of millions of kalpas
They neither hear the Buddha's name
Nor hear the right Dharma;
That men the likes of these are hard to save;
For these reasons, Shariputra,
For their sakes I established
An expedient device,
Preaching ways that put an end to woe
And showing them nirvana.
Though I preach nirvana,
This is no true extinction.
The dharmas from their very origin
Are themselves eternally characterized
By the marks of quiet extinction.
The Buddha's son, having trodden the Path,
In an age to come shall be able to become a Buddha.
I, having the power to devise expedients,
Set forth the dharma of the three vehicles.
All the World-Honored Ones,
All of them, preach the Way of the One Vehicle.
Now these great multitudes
Are all to purge their doubts and uncertainties.
The Buddhas say without differing
That there is only One Vehicle, not two.
For numberless kalpas in the past,
Incalculable Buddhas, since passed into extinction,
Of a hundred thousand myriads of millions of kinds,
Their number not to be reckoned
World-Honored Ones in this manner,
By resort to various means and parables,
To the power of these and numberless other devices,
Expound the marks of the dharmas.
These World-Honored Ones,
All preaching the Dharma of the One Vehicle,
Convert incalculable beings
And cause them to enter into the Buddha Path.
Also, the Chiefs of the Great Saints,
Knowing all the worlds,
All the varieties of their gods, their men,
And their living creatures,
The wishes in the deepest thoughts of all these beings,
By resort to yet other devices
Help to clarify the Prime Meaning.
If there are varieties of living beings
Who, having encountered Buddhas in the past,
Have heard the Dharma or dispensed gifts,
Or else kept the discipline or endured ignominy,
Or advanced with vigor,
or cultivated dhyana or wisdom,
Who, in short, have in various ways
cultivated merit and wisdom,
Persons like these
Have all achieved the Buddha Path.
When the Buddhas have passed into extinction,
If a person is of good and gentle thought,
Living beings like him
Have all achieved the Buddha Path.
When the Buddhas have passed into extinction,
Persons who make offerings to their sharira
Shall erect myriads of millions of kinds of stupas,
Using gold and silver and crystal,
Giant clam shell and agate,
Gems of carnelian and vaidiirya,
With which they brightly and extensively adorn and
With dignity accouter the stupas.
Or there are those who erect stone mausoleums
Of sandalwood and aloeswood,
Of hovenia and other timbers,
Of brick, tile, clay, and the like.
Or there are those who in open fields,
Heaping up earth, make Buddha-shrines.
There are even children who in play
Gather sand and make it into Buddha-stupas.
Persons like these
Have all achieved the Buddha Path.
If any persons
For the Buddha's sake
Erect images, with carvings
Perfecting the multitudinous marks, they
Have all achieved the Buddha Path.
Some fashion them completely with the seven jewels,
Or with nickel, or copper, or bronze,
Or with white tin, or with alloys of lead and tin,
Or with iron, or wood, or, again, with clay.
Some coat them with resin and lacquer,
With art creating Buddha images.
Persons like these
Have all achieved the Buddha Path.
Those who with many-colored designs
create Buddha images,
Adorning them
With the marks of hundredfold merit,
Making them themselves
Or having them done by others,
Have all achieved the Buddha Path.
Even children in play,
With grass, sticks, and brushes
Or with their fingernails,
Draw Buddha images.
Persons like these,
Gradually accumulating merit
And perfecting thoughts of great compassion,
Have all achieved the Buddha Path.
Or, merely converting bodhisattvas,
They may save incalculable multitudes.
If any persons, in stupas and mausoleums,
To jeweled images and painted images.
With flowered and perfumed banners and canopies
And with deferential thoughts make offerings,
Or if they cause others to make music,
Beating drums and blowing horns and conchs,
Or sounding flutes, of many reeds or of only one,
And lyres, mounted on stands or not,
And lutes and cymbals,
Producing many fine sounds like these
And holding them all up as offerings;
Or if with joyful thought
They sing hymns of praise
To the excellences of the Buddha,
Producing so much as one tiny sound, they
Have all achieved the Buddha Path.
If anyone, even with distracted thought,
And with so much as a single flower,
Makes offering to a painted image,
He shall at length see numberless Buddhas.
There will be some
who prostrate themselves ceremoniously;
Others, again, who merely join palms;
Others yet who do no more than raise one hand,
Others yet again who incline their heads but slightly
All, in these several ways, honoring the images.
They shall at length see incalculable Buddhas,
Themselves achieve the Unexcelled Path,
Broadly rescue numberless multitudes,
And enter into nirvana without residue,
As, when the kindling wood is exhausted,
the fire goes out.
If any, even with distracted thought,
Shall enter a stupa or mausoleum
And recite Namo Buddhaya
[Homage to the Buddha] but once, they
Have all achieved the Buddha Path.
Under the tutelage of the Buddhas of the past,
Whether while they were in the world
Or after their extinction,
If any heard this Dharma, they
Have all achieved the Buddha Path.
The World-Honored Ones of the future
Shall be of number incalculable.
These Thus Come Ones
By resort to expedient devices
Also shall preach the Dharma.
All the Thus Come Ones,
By resort to incalculable expedient devices,
Save the living beings,
That they may enter into the
Buddha's knowledge free of outflows.
Of any who hear the Dharma,
None shall fail to achieve Buddhahood.
Every Buddha's former vow [is as follows]:
"Whatever Buddha Path I may have trodden,
I wish universally to cause the beings
All alike to attain this Path as well."
The Buddhas of ages to come,
Though they shall preach
Hundreds of thousands of millions
Of numberless gateways to the Dharma,
Shall, in fact, be doing it
For the sake of the One Vehicle.
The Buddhas,
Fhe Most Venerable of Two-Legged Beings,
Know that the dharmas are ever
Without a nature of their own.
By virtue of conditions
Is the Buddha-seed realized:
For this reason they preach the One Vehicle.
The endurance of the dharmas,
The secure position of the dharmas,
In the world ever abiding --
Having come to know these
On the Platform of the Way,
The Guide-Teacher preaches them
By resort to expedient devices.
Recipients of offerings of gods and men,
The Buddhas of the present in the ten directions,
In number like to Ganges' sands,
Having appeared in the world
To put the beings at their ease,
Also preach a Dharma such as this.
They know the prime Quiet Extinction;
By resort to expedient devices
They may demonstrate various paths, but
They do so, in fact,
For the sake of the Buddha Vehicle.
I know the acts of the multitudinous beings,
That which they are mindful of
In their deepest thoughts,
The deeds they have done repeatedly in the past,
The nature of their desires,
Their power of vigorous exertion,
And the keenness or dullness of their faculties.
By the use of a variety of causes and conditions,
Parables, also words and phrases,
And by resort to expedient devices,
I preach in accord with what is appropriate.
Now I, too, am like them:
To put the beings at their ease,
By resort to various Dharma-gateways,
I proclaim the Buddha Path.
With the power of wisdom,
Knowing the natures and desires of the beings;
By resort to expedient devices I preach the dharmas,
Causing them all to gain joy.
Shariputra, let these things be known --
I, with the eye of a Buddha,
See the beings on the six courses
Reduced to poverty's extreme,
Having neither merit nor wisdom;
Entered upon the steep highway of birth and death;
Their woes, in constant succession,
Knowing no interruption;
Profoundly attached to the five desires,
Like a long-tailed ox in love with its own tail;
Covering themselves with lust and greed;
Blind and seeing nothing;
Seeking neither a Buddha of great might
Nor ways of cutting off woe;
Profoundly entered into wrong views;
By the use of woe wishing to cast off woe:
For the sake of these beings
I evince thoughts of great compassion.
When I first sat on the Platform of the Way,
Whether beholding the Tree or walking about,
Throughout three weeks
I thought such thoughts as these:
"The wisdom I have gained
Is the first among subtle things.
The beings, their faculties dull,
Are attached to pleasure and blinded by delusion.
Being of such sort as this,
How can they be saved?"
At that time the Brahma kings
And the chiefs of the gods, the Shakras,
The four god kings who protect the world
And the great gods who are their own masters,
As well as the other multitudes of gods and their retinues,
In the hundreds of thousands of myriads,
Reverently joining palms and doing obeisance,
Begged me to turn the Dharma-wheel.
I then thought to myself:
"If I merely praise the Buddha Vehicle,
The beings, sunk in woe,
Shall not be able to believe this Dharma.
Reviling the Dharma and not believing it,
They shall fall into the three evil courses.
I had rather not preach the Dharma,
But enter speedily into nirvana.
When I think back on the Buddhas of the past,
On the power of the expedient devices
Put into practice by them,
I know that in the Way I have now gained
I, too, must preach three vehicles."
When I had had these thoughts,
The Buddhas of the ten directions all appeared,
Comforting and instructing me with Brahma chant:
"Good, Shakyamuni!
You, the First of Guide-Teachers,
Having gained this unsurpassed Dharma,
Follow all the Buddhas
In using the power of expedient devices.
All of us, too, having gained
This most subtle prime Dharma,
For the sake of the varieties of living beings
Discriminated, preaching three vehicles.
Those of slight wisdom, desiring lesser dharmas,
Would not believe they could achieve Buddhahood.
For this reason, by resort to expedient devices,
We discriminated, preaching various fruits.
But, even though we preached three vehicles,
This was only for the purpose of teaching bodhisattvas."
Shariputra, be it known
That, when I heard the Saintly Lions'
Deep, pure, and subtle voices,
Joyfully I proclaimed "Namo Buddhebhyah!"
[Homage to the Buddhas]
And that then I had this thought:
"Having come into a defiled and evil world,
As the Buddhas preach,
So must I, too, in obedience, act."
When I had had these thoughts,
Straightway I went to Varanasi.
Since the quiet and extinct marks of the dharmas
Were not to be proclaimed in words,
By resort to the power of expedient devices
I preached to five bhikshus.
This is called "turning the Dharma-wheel.
Then there was the sound "Nirvana,"
As well as "Arhant,"
"Dharma," and "Sangha"--
Several and distinct names such as these.
Since remote kalpas
I have set forth with praise the Dharma of Nirvana:
'The woes of birth and death
Are forever terminated!'
It is thus that I ever preached.
Shariputra, be it known:
I see the Buddhas' sons,
Those who aspire to the Buddha Path,
In the incalculable thousands of myriads of millions,
All with deferential thought,
All coming before the Buddha,
Having formerly heard from the Buddhas
Dharmas preached by resort to expedient devices.
Then I had this thought:
"The reason a Buddha emerges
Is to preach Buddha-wisdom.
Now is the very time for it!"
Shariputra, be it known that
Men of dull faculties and slight wisdom,
They who cling proudly to signs,
Cannot believe in this Dharma.
Now I, joyfully and fearlessly,
In the midst of the bodhisattvas
Frankly casting aside my expedient devices,
Merely preach the Unexcelled Path.
When the bodhisattvas hear this Dharma,
The network of their doubts is all cleared away:
[I have said] "A thousand two hundred arhants
Shall also become Buddhas, every one of them.
As has been, for the Buddhas of the three ages,
The manner in which they preach the Dharma,
So I, too, now preach a Dharma without distinctions.
Buddhas emerge into the world
At remote intervals,
And to encounter them is difficult.
Even when they do emerge in the world,
To preach this Dharma is also difficult.
Throughout incalculable and countless kalpas,
To hear this Dharma is no less difficult.
And, as for one who can listen to this Dharma,
Such a person, too, is rare.
The udumbara flower, for example,
Is loved and desired by all,
Regarded as rare by both gods and men,
Appearing only once at great intervals of time.
One who, hearing the Dharma,
In joy and praise
Utters so much as a single word
Has already made offerings
To all the Buddhas in the three ages.
Such a person is very rare,
Rarer even than the udumbara flower.
Have no doubts:
I, being King of the Dharma,
Universally address the great multitudes,
Having recourse only to the Path of the One Vehicle,
Teaching and converting bodhisattvas,
And having no voice-hearing disciples.
All of you, Shariputra,
Voice-hearers and bodhisattvas alike,
Are to know that this subtle Dharma
Is the secret essential to the Buddhas.
Since the beings of the age of the five defilements
Long for and cling to their desires alone;
Since beings the likes of these
Shall never seek the Buddha Path,
And since wicked men in ages to come —
Hearing the Buddha preach the One Vehicle
But having gone astray
Neither believing nor accepting it —
Shall malign the Dharma
And fall into evil destinies;
Since there shall be those who disgrace
The pure aspirants to the Buddha Path;
I must for the likes of these
Broadly praise the Path of the One Vehicle.
Shariputra, be it known that
The Buddhas' Dharma is like this:
By resort to myriads of millions
Of expedient devices, and in accord
With what is appropriate for the situation,
They preach the Dharma;
But they who have not practiced it
Cannot understand this.
All of you —
Knowing now that the Buddhas,
The Teachers of the Ages,
In accord with what is peculiarly appropriate,
Have recourse to expedient devices —
Need have no more doubts or uncertainties.
Your hearts shall give rise to great joy,
Since you know that you yourselves
Shall become Buddhas.
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