[8:03 PM, 6/24/2018] Kwee! Chang: Wisdom of the lotus sutra
President Toda's enlightenment in prison is our eternal prime point. At that moment, the Lotus Sutra was revived and the sun of "human revolution" dawned on the modern age. Although in the deep darkness of the time no one realized it, dawn had already broken in President Toda's life.
Saito: President Toda left behind statements of various kinds about the enlightenment he experienced while imprisoned. It was during the early winter of 1944. At the time, he was continually pondering the Lotus Sutra while chanting earnest daimoku in an effort to grasp the sutra's essential principles.
Endo: He would walk about in his solitary cell saying to himself, "I have to know! I simply must understand!" Whether asleep or awake, he continued to seriously grapple with the sutra's text. That is how President Toda describes the process leading to his enlightenment in his novel The Human Revolution. He goes on to relate how one morning, as he was on the verge of reaching 1,800,000 daimoku since the start of the year, he had a mystic experience while chanting daimoku in quiet concentration that seemed to refresh him in both body and mind. As he describes it in the novel [in the third person]: It was neither a dream nor an illusion.... In terms of time, it may have lasted for several seconds or for several minutes, or even for several hours.... He [Toda] really had no way of knowing. He discovered himself at the Ceremony in the Air among a great multitude of beings incalculable in number, reverently bowing to the Dai-Gohonzon that shone before him with a brilliant golden hue.... When he tried to cry out, "This isn't a lie! I am here right now!" he found himself seated in a chair in his solitary cell. The morning sun shone fresh and bright.6 In other words, he perceived himself present in the realm of the Ceremony in the Air described in the "Emerging from the Earth" chapter.
[8:03 PM, 6/24/2018] Kwee! Chang: Ikeda: President Toda's enlightenment at that moment has become the prime point of world kosen-rufu. President Toda's great conviction, "I am a Bodhisattva of the Earth!" is the spring at the source of the great river of kosen-rufu.
Suda: He also wrote: The Lotus Sutra that I see now is the same Lotus Sutra that until recently I found impenetrable to my understanding no matter how I exerted myself. However, now I can read it and draw forth its meaning as easily and accurately as if I were looking at something in the palm of my hand. Sensing the wonder of this, I am filled with a sense of immense gratitude; it is as though I have recollected a teaching that I learned in the distant past.7 And he made this determination: "My future has been decided. I will devote the remainder of my existence to spreading this most exalted of teachings-the Lotus Sutra!"
[8:03 PM, 6/24/2018] Kwee! Chang: Suda: What is the relationship of President Toda's awakening to the fact that he is a Bodhisattva of the Earth to his earlier revelation that "the Buddha is life"? Saito: President Toda attained his revelation that the Buddha is life in early March 1944, at a time when he had been contemplating passages from the Sutra of Immeasurable Meanings (Muryogi Sutra). Specifically, he was pondering the matter of the actual nature of the Buddha that transcends the so-called thirty-four negations: "His body neither existing nor not existing, neither caused nor conditioned, neither self nor other...."10 He had his revelation as to his own identity as a Bodhisattva of the Earth in November of that same year, or about eight months later. During that interval, President Toda continued chanting daimoku and pondering the sutras.
Endo: It seems to me his realization that the Buddha is life has something of an intellectual flavor to it. His awakening to his identity as a Bodhisattva of the Earth seems to represent a deepening of this earlier revelation-such that he experienced it, not intellectually, but at the very core of his being. In that sense, I think we can see a link between his revelation that the Buddha is life and his revelation eight months later that he is a Bodhisattva of the Earth.
Ikeda: While the total content of President Toda's enlightenment is beyond words, it is a fact that he was thrown into prison on account of his belief in the Lotus Sutra, and that he maintained his belief while enduring persecution. This in itself amounts to reading the Lotus Sutra with one's life-with the totality of one's being. Enduring hardships on account of faith equals attaining Buddhahood. Because he struggled against extreme difficulties based on faith in the Mystic Law, a great transformation occurred in his life. This is just as the Daishonin indicates where he says, "Although I and my disciples may encounter various difficulties, if we do not harbor doubts in our hearts, we will as a matter of course attain Buddhahood" (MW-2, 180 [205]).
Enlightenment is not simply a matter of recognition or awareness of eternal life. This is very important. The eternity of life is not something to be recognized intellectually; it is something that we have to experience with our own lives. And only if we practice a correct teaching can we do so. The difficulty is that even if one consciously makes an effort to become aware of the eternity of life, ultimately it is life that supports the self that is trying to achieve this awareness. One cannot comprehend what is large with what is small; by analogy, a wave cannot comprehend the ocean over whose surface it passes. What, then, are we to do? The only way to awaken to life's eternity is to cause the greater, eternal self to "emerge" in the small self. And to do this, we need to undertake the task of self-purification wholeheartedly, with our entire being. This is the purpose of Buddhist practice. Originally our lives are in harmony with the Mystic Law. However, because we live in a striferidden w…
[8:03 PM, 6/24/2018] Kwee! Chang: President Makiguchi said: Although it is said that particles of dust collect to form mountains, there are in fact no mountains that are made of accumulated particles of dust. At the most all they can form is a small hill. Real mountains are formed by great shifts in the earth's crust. By the same token, no matter how much minor good you accumulate, it will never amount to major good.11 The bodhisattvas of the provisional teachings are like those who are trying to attain Buddhahood by accumulating minor good. By contrast, the bodhisattvas of the essential teaching cause the great vitality of Buddhahood to issue forth from the depths of their livesfrom the fundamental nature of the Law, which is to say the very wellspring of their being-with explosive force like that of a volcanic eruption. The Bodhisattvas of the Earth are bodhisattvas who constantly practice the Mystic Law and who at each moment live in harmony with eternal life. While bodhisattvas in their appearance as practitioners, in terms of their state of life they are Buddhas. President Toda's experience of having attended the Ceremony in the Air as a Bodhisattva of the Earth signifies his entry into the realm of eternal life, the world of truth of the original Buddha.
[8:03 PM, 6/24/2018] Kwee! Chang: Ikeda: Based on the Ceremony in the Air described in the Lotus Sutra, Nichiren Daishonin manifested his "eternal self" in the form of the Gohonzon. The Daishonin's "eternal self," needless to say, is Nam-myoho-renge-kyo; accordingly, down the middle of the Gohonzon are inscribed the characters "Nam-myoho-renge-kyo Nichiren."
Saito: In a Gosho he says, "I, Nichiren, have inscribed my life in sumi15 ... the soul of Nichiren is nothing other than Nam-myoho-renge-kyo" (MW-1, 120).
Ikeda: We can think of President Toda's enlightenment in prison as the moment in which he connected with his "eternal self" as the leader of the movement to propagate the Mystic Law. That was the meaning of his experience of being present at the Ceremony in the Air. What he awakened to in that instant was the unmistakable truth of life, the fundamental transcendent reality. Therefore, President Toda talked about the Ceremony in the Air as a fact. And he said that the members of the Soka Gakkai were also all present there.
Endo: He once humorously remarked that those who have difficulty grasping Buddhist concepts are the ones who, during the Ceremony in the Air, were dozing off in spite of themselves at the back of the crowd.16
Saito: Again, President Toda once said, "The Gohonzon exists within our own lives. The quintessence of faith in the Daishonin's Buddhism is to believe that our own lives and the Gohonzon enshrined in the altar are one and the same."17 I think this was his way of expressing what he had realized while in prison. Suda: President Toda stated that the vision of the Ceremony in the Air he had while in prison did not differ in the least from the appearance of the Gohonzon that the Daishonin inscribed. This seems to me evidence that President Toda truly entered the Gohonzon.
