July 31 2018
We live in the “saha world,” an impure land defiled by earthly desires and illusions, which is full of distress and suffering, though it too is itself a pure land, revealing either its pure aspect or impure aspect in response to the purity or impurity of the hearts and minds of those inhabiting it. We each have our own unique environment, i.e. our life constitutes a subjective self that experiences the effects of our past actions, and our environment is an objective realm where our karmic rewards find expression. Advancing along the right path to achieve enlightenment in this lifetime takes faith (in the Lotus Sutra), to distill what is infinitely profound and immeasurable wisdom (of the Buddha), which penetrates the true aspect of all phenomena. Though people often succumb to being carried away by prosperity, honor, praise, and pleasure, i.e. temporary forms of happiness, or by aversions to decline, disgrace, censure, and suffering, which prevent them from forging a solid self-impervious to these conditions. Phenomena have no existence or distinct nature of their own apart from other phenomena, but arise only by virtue of dependent origination, i.e. by their relationship to other phenomena. Interesting phenomena of the human mind can be found here. When the true nature of phenomena is non-substantial, and neither non-substantial, indefinable in terms of existence or nonexistence nor temporary, yet existing in a temporary reality, displaying attributes of both, i.e. the Middle Way, “Neither birth nor extinction, neither cessation nor permanence, neither uniformity nor diversity, neither coming nor going….” (Nāgārjuna’s Treatise on the Middle Way), Nichiren teaches us to “regard both suffering and joy as facts of life, and continue chanting Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, no matter what happens, i.e. rise above attachments to what are transient phenomena and to the ego, rather than suffer from inadequate wisdom for a lack of faith, to become happy.