This is the second installment in a six-part series focusing on the importance of revering buddha nature in Rissho Kosei-kai. Inspired by Never Disrespectful Bodhisattva, members emulate his practice daily. Unlike traditional Buddhist rituals focused on nature or deities, Rissho Kosei-kai’s practice uniquely centers on revering other people. This social practice awakens awareness of the inherent dignity of human life and aims to transform both oneself and others toward the realization of buddhahood.
Buddha Nature in the Lotus Sutra
Before we consider the place of buddha nature in Rissho Kosei-kai practice, we must also address the commonly heard assertion that the teaching of buddha nature does not appear in the Lotus Sutra. In purely philological terms, this assertion is accurate. Although the Lotus Sutra’s depictions of the One Vehicle appear to use word imagery and allegory to infer universal buddha nature as a correlate or synonym of the One Vehicle, the Chinese word for buddha nature (foxing) does not appear in either Dharmarakṣa’s (286 CE) nor Kumārajīva’s (406 CE) translations.
On the other hand, related or similar terms can be found in the text, most famously seeds of buddhahood (Chn., fozhong), which appears only in Kumārajīva’s translation. Generally speaking, fozhong was a translation of buddha vaṃśa. Vaṃśa can carry the meaning of a pedigree, lineage, descent, or clan, similar to gotra and kula, and so on the face of it, Kumārajīva’s translation would seem to contain a reference to buddha nature. However, we are reasonably sure now that the Sanskrit behind this term was actually not the usual word buddha-vaṃśa but instead two different terms: dharma-netrī, often translated as “Dharma eye,” and buddha-netrī, usually translated as “Buddha way” or “guidance of the Buddha.” The most common terms associated with the idea of an inherent buddhaness, including gotra, kula, and vaṃśa, do not appear in extant Sanskrit manuscripts of the Lotus Sutra (Fujii 1996, 343).
So, where does the tradition of understanding the Lotus Sutra’s teaching of universal buddhahood to indicate buddha nature? The authoritative basis for the traditional understanding of the Lotus Sutra as a buddha nature teaching is the highly influential Commentary on the Lotus Sutra, attributed to the fourth-century Indian scholar-monk Vasubandhu. This text interprets several of the sutra’s parables and allegories of the One Vehicle using the concept of buddha nature. The earliest extant framing of Never Disrespectful Bodhisattva’s practice of obeisance as revering universal buddha nature appears in this commentary’s section on assurances of buddhahood. This is one of several passages that came to have important roles in the doctrinal systems of influential Lotus Sutra votaries such as the Chinese exegete monks Zhiyi (538–97) and Jizang (549–623). Jizang, in particular, makes an argument that is still compelling today when he takes on the issue of the Lotus Sutra’s “missing buddha nature” in Fahua xuanlun, one of several commentaries he authored on the Lotus Sutra. Jizang writes that although the exact term buddha nature is not found in the Lotus Sutra, Vasubandhu identified seven passages revealing the presence of buddha nature in the text, and for that reason, the Lotus Sutra’s One Vehicle is arguably a synonym for buddha nature. Jizang also pillories those who would quibble over semantics. “Words can be different but essentially the same in meaning,” he writes, and chides doubters, continuing: “those of shallow knowledge are confused by the words and lose the truth of those words. Because they hear different words they think the truth of those words differ, and so they say that the ‘One Vehicle’ of the Lotus Sutra is not buddha nature” (Okuno 2002, 58).
Echoing Jizang, contemporary Japanese scholar Masatoshi Ueki (2012, 317) also concludes that while the term buddha nature does not appear in the Lotus Sutra, the general notion of the equivalence of the Buddha and sentient beings as having the capacity for attaining buddhahood is present implicitly in the text. As Ueki and Zuiei Itō (1985, 352) before him pointed out, the Lotus Sutra locates many of the qualities that are associated with buddha nature/tathāgata-garbha within ordinary unenlightened living beings, such as the aforementioned buddha insight (tathāgata-jñāna-darśana). The teaching of buddha nature that appears in later sutras can be thought of as a development of what was already implied in the Lotus Sutra. Zimmerman (1999, 166) observes that whereas the Lotus Sutra declares that all sentient beings can become buddhas, the Tathāgatagarbha Sūtra explains how all sentient beings can become buddhas. There is reason to think that Kumārajīva translated buddha-netrī as “seeds of buddhahood” precisely to reveal the Lotus Sutra’s “implicit teaching of buddha nature” to Chinese readers of the text (Fujii 1996, 343). Instead of thinking of Kumārajīva’s choice as a mistranslation, then, we could see it as his attempt to prioritize the truth of the text as he understood it over and above a literal interpretation.
Revering Buddha Nature: Intersubjective Practice
The buddhas, the most honored of people, know that nothing exists independently, and that buddha-seeds arise interdependently. This is why they teach the One Vehicle.
Lotus Sutra, chap. 2
In the final analysis, embarking on the path to buddha insight is nothing other than day in and day out keeping our eyes fixed on others’ buddha nature to reveal our own buddha nature. This is truly the meaning of the sutra’s line that says: “meeting buddhas in age after age.”
Nikkyō Niwano,
Bodai no me wo okosashimu, 168
The doctrinal exegesis of the Buddhist commentarial tradition refined the concept of buddha nature in intellectually challenging ways, but at heart the purpose of the teaching is soteriological: to affirm the capacity of people to attain buddhahood and increase their confidence to do so by telling them that even as ordinary unenlightened beings they already have a buddhaness about them. The Lotus Sutra’s Never Disrespectful Bodhisattva provides an example of how to put this abstract principle of universal buddhahood into concrete practice. Taking their cues from Vasubandhu, who explained that Never Disrespectful revered others because all sentient beings possess buddha nature, East Asian Buddhist traditions, including Rissho Kosei-kai, understand Never Disrespectful’s practice as the act of revering buddha nature. Rissho Kosei-kai also understands the Lotus Sutra to be telling us that revering buddha nature is something that is done between people, in other words, that revering buddha nature is an intersubjective practice. Many Rissho Kosei-kai members associate Never Disrespectful’s spiritual discipline with the sutra’s counsel that “the buddha seeds arise interdependently,” meaning that buddha nature is discovered and developed through encounters between people. For lay Buddhists in particular, the most accessible practice is daily life itself, and for Rissho Kosei-kai it entails availing oneself of one’s interactions with others to make the buddha seeds of both self and other arise interdependently, developing our own buddha nature by “revealing the buddha nature of others,” manifesting it by revering it (busshō wo ogamidasu).
But why should this be so?
Let’s answer this by beginning from the basic Buddhist tenet of nonself. This Buddhist teaching tells us that nothing exists independently, that nobody lives solely through their own power. Instead, all living beings come into existence through dependence upon a myriad of things, and because of this all of us are interdependent and sustain one another. We are, in Rissho Kosei-kai’s language, “given the gift of life.” It would be impossible for any one of us to make it through a single day without the contribution of innumerable others, and this goes not only for our bodies but for our minds as well. We cannot even retain our own sanity if we are isolated from other people for too long. This is the truth of our existence. The same can be said for achieving liberation and attaining enlightenment. Because our lives are so inseparably bound up with others, there can be no true liberation of self that does not also include the liberation of others. Put in simple terms, we cannot find happiness if everyone around us is still unhappy. It goes without saying, then, that we can’t truly realize and develop our own buddha nature without seeing the buddha nature of others.
Universal buddha nature is also a call to respect and revere others because they also have the Buddha woven into their very existence. Ultimately, when we face another person, it is always the Buddha looking back at us. As Shakyamuni Buddha explains in chapter16 of the Lotus Sutra, “Sometimes I appear as myself, sometimes as someone else; sometimes I appear in my own actions, sometimes in the actions of others; but all that I say is true and not empty” (Reeves 2008, 293). Because the other is the Buddha looking back at us, it leads us to continually ask ourselves, “What is the Buddha teaching me through this experience?” “What is the message of the Buddha coming to me through the other person?” Grasping buddha nature means that all of our interactions are “true and not empty” in that they all have something to teach us.
Developing our Own Buddha Nature and Manifesting the Buddha Nature of Others in Everyday Life
“Making the most of your encounters” means renewing your hearts and minds through the conditions of every encounter, which is also becoming a “good condition” for the other person. When it comes to specifics, first make every person you encounter important, exerting your very best for them. As Never Disrespectful Bodhisattva, press your palms together in reverence towards every single person that you meet, revealing the other person’s buddha nature. This is what it means to make the best of your encounters.
Nikkyō Niwano, Bodai no me wo okosashimu, 162
One account of revering the buddha nature of others in daily life goes something like this: Imagine that someone’s buddha nature is a hidden inner light, “under a bushel,” to use a Biblical idiom. When we interact with others, we search for expressions of their buddha nature, seeking out their abilities, good points, excellent qualities, and other potentials for praise. We can think of these aspects of a person’s personality or behavior as evidence of their veiled buddha nature, visible through small openings, like light escaping through cracks in a wall. When we spot these traces that enable us to discover an opening exposing the light within, we should keep encouraging the other person and nurture those qualities, which is a way of enlarging those cracks, widening them until they become windows through which the light of the person’s buddha nature shines forth to illuminate themselves and the people around them (Rissho Kosei-kai 1963, 364).
To be honest, sometimes these sources of the light within another person can be hard to find. It might be someone who rubs you the wrong way, or a person whom you find hard to be positive about. However, revering the person’s buddha nature necessitates this work on our part. It demands that we change how we look at others, working to see the positive in them, the best in them, instead of getting stuck on the negative, which often appears to us most conspicuously. In other words, working to revere the buddha nature of others makes us more buddha-like, enhancing our own buddha nature. Rev. Niwano taught that “the Buddha is hidden behind people who grind you with angry faces and nasty remarks, because such people refine you like a whetstone sharpens a knife” (Niwano 1997b, 137). This is not to say that we should put ourselves in danger or simply allow ourselves to be abused. As Rev. Niwano pointed out, when people threw rocks and sticks at Never Disrespectful Bodhisattva, he responded by retreating a safe distance, but from there he continued his practice of reverence. The difficult people in our lives provide us the opportunity to really practice the “three guidelines” by which we can become emissaries of the Tathāgata and spread his teaching: compassion, having gentle patience, and viewing the world around us impartially by seeing the emptiness of all things. These are precisely the qualities that Never Disrespectful Bodhisattva embodies, and revering the buddha nature of others is the most effective way to nurture these qualities in ourselves.
To be continued
Dominick Scarangello, PhD, specializes in early-modern and modern Japanese religions. He has taught at the University of Virginia and was the Postdoctoral Scholar in Japanese Buddhism at the Center for Japanese Studies, University of California, Berkeley (2013–14). Currently, he is an international advisor to Rissho Kosei-kai and coordinator of the International Lotus Sutra Seminar, a Rissho Kosei-kai-sponsored series of academic conferences exploring the Lotus Sutra and the religious traditions associated with it.
