World Peace Buddhists  

     Stanford University                           SGI-USA

* Wisdom of the Lotus Sutra

 

Surmounting the Absense of Philosophy in our age

 

Traveller,

 Where do you come from.

And where do you go ?

 The moon has set,

 and the sun has not yet risen

In the darkness before dawn

I advance

in search of light

To dispel the dark clouds in my mind

To seek a great tree unbowed by the storm

I spring from the earth.

(President Ikeda cited at his first encountering with Toda

 

 

1. Materialistically affluent, Spiritually empty. An age of Interregnum in philosophy

 

Today humanity remained locked up in a concentration camp

 

People cannot accept vacuum of idea, philosophical and ideological void drive people to seek their identity in their race

 

 

 

 

2. The Race of philosophy

 

- Racism/nationalism demands people to be sub-ordinate to the nation.

Communism demands people be in service to the majority. (Totalitarianism)

 

- Capitalism is the way that people seek the best of their own interest (individualism)

By Havel : The returned of freedom that was morally unhinged has produced an enormous and dazzling explosion of every imaginable human vice

 

We need a philosophy of neither totalitarianism nor individualism

 

- Religion may emphasis the subordination of human to higher beings,  demanding people for the religion Exmaple : Croatian Catholic soldier being forced to follow the orthodox tradition to sign their cross with three fingers instead of two during the Yugoslavian War last decade.

 

=> True religion should be for the people, empowering people with ability to seek happiness

 

*  Knowledge vs wisdom

 

It's better to have wisdom than knowledge, rather than with knowledge and no wisdom, just like it’s better to be rich rather than being a possessor of a mine without being rich. Wisdom can be acquired through daily experience

 

 

 

3. The Lotus Sutra

 

 

“The lotus sutra has drama of fighting for justice against evil.  It has a  warmth that comfort weary.It has a vibrant, pulsing courage that drives away fear, It has a chorus of joy at attaining absolute freedom throughout past present and future. It has the soaring fight for liberty, It has brilliant light flower greener, music paintings, vivid stories. It offers unsurpassed lesson on psychology, the working of the human heart; lessons on life; lessons

happiness; lessons on peace. It maps out the basic rules for good health. It awaken us to the universal truth that a change in one's heart can transform everything.”

 

* Some fact on the lotus sutra

 

- 28 chapters.

2^nd chapter : Expedient means chapter – declare t

16 chapter : Life span chapter – shakyamuni declare himself being

Buddha since the eternal past. It also predict that in the daimoku “Nam-Myo-ho-renge-kyo” be propagated in the latter day of the law

 

- The last eight years of Shakamuni’s teaching, concluding and revealing the essence of all the provisional teaching

 

- Declare that all human beings equally possess the Buddha nature

The essence “Three Thousand Realms in a single moment of Life”

 

The spread of the Lotus Sutra

- Tiantai : pinpointing the essence of “Three thousand Realms in a single moment of life”.  Translation of Lotus Sutra to Chinse

- Inherit the Tiantai sect of Buddhism in Japan

- Nichiren Daishonin : Reveal the Daimoku “Nam-Myo-ho-renge-kyo

- Today : It’s ALL OF US

 

 

"All books in this world

will not lead you to happiness

but they'll quietly lead you

 

There you'll find all you need

sun stars and moon

For the light for which you search

Dwells within you.

 

The wisdom that you so long sought

in books

will shine forth from page -

For now that wisdom has become you own"

back inside yourself”