John Petry and Dave Cole debate

NSIC = Nichiren Shoshu International Center

NONA = Nichiren Shu of North America

Dave Cole: No actually that is Major Writings I quoted. Your translation sucks.

John Petry: Citation please? When did you become an expert?

DC: I became an expert when I promised, you became a empty shell when you abandoned faith.

JP: Never mind the chest puffing. Let's have the citations for your opinion.

DC: The citations? I already said twice, it is from the Major Writings here it is again, you know Watson et. all. MW-5, 207, Letter of Petition from Yorimoto"

"The Lotus Sutra states, 'Now this threefold world is all my domain. The living beings in it are all my children.' If this scriptural statement is correct, then Lord Shakyamuni is the father and mother, teacher and sovereign of all the people in Japan. Amida Buddha does not possess these three virtues. However, you ignore the Buddha of the three virtues and invoke the name of another Buddha [Amida] day and night, morning and evening, sixty or eighty thousand times a day. Is this not an unfilial deed? It was Shakyamuni Buddha himself who originally taught that Amida had vowed to save all people; but in the end he regretted it and said, 'I alone can save them.' After that, he never again taught that there are two or three Buddhas who can save the people. No one has two fathers or two mothers. What sutra says that Amida is the father of this country? What treatise indicates him as its mother? [NSIC version, page 225]

"So I listened to the sermons of various priests and inquired into which teaching leads to Buddhahood. And I came to believe that, according to the teaching of the Lotus Sutra, the sage Nichiren is the sovereign of the threefold world, the father and mother of all people, and the emissary of Shakyamuni Buddha - Bodhisattva Jogyo." [NSIC version, page 227]

"When the sage Nichiren, the envoy of Shakyamuni Buddha, was exiled because of the false charges leveled against him by the priest Ryokan, fighting broke out within one hundred days, just as he had predicted - and a great number of warriors perished." [NSIC version, page 231]

JP: The wonderful thing about the NSIC translations is that they try hard to fiddle with the wording to make it conform to NST/SGI doctrine. But they often then have glaring inconsistencies in them which show the errors. A comparison of the English in the above shows that the NONA version is a more exact translation and the NSIC version has fiddled with the language.

The Japanese version shows that it should read:

"As a result I have come to believe in the Lotus Sutra in which it is expounded that Nichiren Shonin is the Bodhisattva Jogyo [Superior Conduct] commanded by Sakyamuni Buddha, Lord of the Saha World and parent of all living beings, to appear in the Latter Days of the Degeneration as a messenger of the Buddha with the duty of propagating the Lotus Sutra. NONA translation, page 206 [the Japanese language version is on page 207].

If we look at the NSIC version we see that the changing of the language to make Nichiren "the sovereign of the threefold world, the father and mother of all people" [NSIC version, page 227] is inarticulate and contradictory to other statements in the Gosho itself. The most immediate conflict arise in the next phrase: "and the emissary of Shakyamuni Buddha - Bodhisattva Jogyo." [NSIC version, page 227] Were this language to be read as Dave would like, namely that it makes Nichiren the "true" Buddha, it would then make the "true" Buddha subordinate to Sakyamuni Buddha [Sakyamuni the Honbutsu or the Eternal Original Buddha of the 16th Chapter] since Nichiren is his [Sakyamuni's] emissary, the Bodhisattva Jogyo.

The NONA translation is further reinforced simply by looking at other language in the Gosho as translated by the NSIC:

"The Lotus Sutra states, 'Now this threefold world is all my domain. The living beings in it are all my children.' If this scriptural statement is correct, then Lord Shakyamuni is the father and mother, teacher and sovereign of all the people in Japan."

The writer clearly believes this statement about Sakyamuni being the parent teacher and sovereign as true as he immediately states:

"Amida Buddha does not possess these three virtues. However, you ignore the Buddha of the three virtues and invoke the name of another Buddha [Amida] day and night, morning and evening, sixty or eighty thousand times a day. Is this not an unfilial deed? It was Shakyamuni Buddha himself who originally taught that Amida had vowed to save all people; but in the end he regretted it and said, "I alone can save them.' After that, he never again taught that there are two or three Buddhas who can save the people. No one has two fathers or two mothers. What sutra says that Amida is the father of this country? What treatise indicates him as its mother?"

Similarly if Sakyamuni is the parent, teacher and sovereign, then Nichiren cannot be for the same question arises as posed by Nichiren in the above passage. What person can have two mothers?; two fathers?; two sovereigns?; two teachers?

[in the Japanese sense of a sensei]. The correctness of the NONA translation is confirmed later in the NSIC version when it states the following:

"When the sage Nichiren, the envoy of Shakyamuni Buddha, was exiled because of the false charges leveled against him by the priest Ryokan, fighting broke out within one hundred days, just as he had predicted - and a great number of warriors perished." NSIC version page 231.

Note that the above quote is very similar to the NONA translation:

"In the eighth year of the Bun'ei Era [1271] when Nichiren Shonin, messenger of Sakyamuni Buddha, was exiled because of the slander of Ryokan-bo, a civil war broke out within one hundred days, as Nichiren predicted, and not a few warriors lost their lives." NONA translation, page 214.

Similarly the language for the first passage is almost identical:

"The chapter on the 'Parable' of the Lotus Sutra states: 'Now this Saha World is all my domain, where all living beings are my children.' If this is true, Lord Sakyamuni Buddha is the father, the master and the lord of all the people in Japan. Amida Buddha has no such three virtues as Sakyamuni Buddha. Never the less, people put aside this Buddha with three virtues, enshrine Amida Buddha and chant 'Namu Amida Butsu' 60,000 or 80,000 times every morning and evening. How can it not be an unfilial act?

Amida Buddha's original vow was originally expounded by Sakyamuni Buddha. As it was, however, an expedient teaching, it was stated later in the Lotus Sutra: 'I, Sakyamuni, alone can save all living beings.' The only Buddha who can save us, therefore is the very Sakyamuni Buddha. Sakyamuni never seems to have appointed two or three saviors; we do not have two father or two mothers, do we? Is there any sutra in the world that asserts Amida Buddha is the father of this country? Is there any commentary that mentions Amida Buddha is the mother of this country?"

Dave's theory falls yet again when the Gosho states:

"In your official letter you also state, "I revere the elder of Gokuraku-ji temple as the World-Honored One reborn," but this I cannot accept. The reason is: if what the sutra states is true, the sage Nichiren is the envoy of the Buddha who attained enlightenment in the remote past, the provisional manifestation of Bodhisattva Jogyo, the votary of the essential teaching of the Lotus Sutra, and the great leader in the fifth five-hundred-year period [following the Buddha's passing]. [NSIC version, page 217]

The differences here are subtle but it still supports the NONA translation:

"It is also stated in your lordship's letter that your lordship reveres Ryokan-bo, Chief Priest of the Gokurakuji Temple, as if he were an incarnation of Sakyamuni Buddha. However this is hard for me to accept for if the teaching of the sutras is correct, Nichiren is a reincarnation of Bodhisattva Visistacarita [Superior Practice], a practitioner of the Lotus Sutra and a direct disciple of the Original and Eternal Sakyamuni Buddha who attained Buddhahood in the remotest past, according to the essential part of the Lotus Sutra. Nichiren Shonin is a great leading master in the beginning of the fifth 500 year period after the Buddha's extinction." NONA translation, page 184.

The NSIC version seeks to perpetuate a meaningless and unsubstantiated distinction between the remote past and the remotest past based upon a very strained reading of the 16th chapter of the Latest Sutra. One that even the simplest reader can see is incorrect. In fact Prof. Burton who did the NSA translation of the Lotus Sutra indicates that the NONA version "the remotest" [or infinite] past is the correct interpretation.

"But as Ananda proceeds to describe the staggering number and variety of human, non human and heavenly beings who have gathered to listen to the Buddha's discourse, we realize that we have left the world of factual reality behind. This is the first point to keep in mind in reading the Lotus Sutra. Its setting, its vast assembly of listeners, its dramatic occurrences in the end belong to a realm that totally transcends our ordinary concepts of time, space and possibility.

Again and again we are told of events that took place countless, indescribable numbers of kalpas or eons in the past, or of beings or worlds that are as numerous as the sands of million and billions of Ganges rivers. Such "numbers" are in fact no more than pseudo-numbers or non-numbers, intended to impress on us the impossibility of measuring the immeasurable. They are not meant to convey any statistical data but simply to boggle the mind and jar it lose from its conventional concepts of time and space. For in the realm of Emptiness, time and space as we conceive them are meaningless; anywhere is the same as everywhere, and now, then, never, forever are all one."

On page xix: " In chapter sixteen Sakyamuni reveals the answer to this riddle. The Buddha he says is an eternal being, ever present in the world, ever concerned for the salvation of all living beings. He attained Buddhahood an incalculably distant time in the past and has never ceased to abide in the world since then. ... From this we see that in the Lotus Sutra the Buddha who had earlier been viewed as a historical personality, is now conceived as a being who transcends all boundaries of time and space, an ever abiding principle of truth and compassion that exists everywhere and within all beings." [Watson preface to the Lotus Sutra]

This shoots down the meaningless claim that the 16th chapter refers to a remote as opposed to remotest time, the language is clearly intended to mean an infinitely long time period, extending into the past and forward into the future. From here the attempt to then build the distinction between Nichiren as a true Buddha which is not supported by this gosho although it does try to make reference to a "provisional" manifestation of Bodhisattva Jogyo. The entire concept collapses like a house of cards. The passage in the NSIC version also reinforces the NONA version of "Sakyamuni Buddha, Lord of the Saha World and parent of all living beings" as opposed to the tortured NSIC translation of "the sage Nichiren is the sovereign of the threefold world, the father and mother of all people, and the emissary of Shakyamuni Buddha - Bodhisattva Jogyo." A claim at odds with the rest of the same Gosho as well as other Gosho and the Lotus Sutra."