Stories of the Lotus Sutra - Chapter 14: The Great Stupa of Abundant Treasures Buddha

[Tenryu]

I think Reeves did a good job grounding things here.

Some loose thoughts of my own:

The countless buddhas in all directions did not really feel supernatural to me. More like countless beings and countless “worlds of experience,” if that makes any sense.

And the idea that Shakyamuni Buddha died long ago and is still somehow alive reminded me a little of my grandmother. She died years ago, but when I cook one of her recipes, something of her is still there. Not literally, but not entirely gone either.

So my first feeling here is that if we keep “cooking the Dharma” by actually living it, as Reeves suggests, then Shakyamuni is, in a way, right there with us.

That was the feeling I was left with while reading.

Gasshō,
Tenryū
sat&lah

[Dachi]

I’m unfortunate going to miss today’s meeting. I look forward to watching the replay. I find the conversations so much better than the readings

gassho, Dachi
satlah

[Chiko]

This chapter for me is less about the spectacle of flying saucers and floating Buddhas (kudos for scooping Space Odyssey 2001 by 1,700 years), and more about confirming the dharma’s timelessness. I especially appreciate that a “former” Buddha visits to laud and validate Shakyamuni Buddha’s teaching. It’s a kind of de-emphasis of the historical Buddha, and a longer view at how the dharma has permeated the eons by revealing itself through Buddhas of the distant past. (Edit: and in each one of us!)

Gassho,
Chiko
st/lah

[Shinkon]

Might I drop in the section of my book, Zen Master's Dance, which looks at Dogen's marvelous play with this section ...

~~~

Like [John] Coltrane working from the standard songbook, Dogen was working from the “classics,” the basic Buddhist and Mahayana Zen teachings, and rarely left them far behind despite all his creative expression. Dogen’s jazz was not the chaos and cacophony of anarchic free jazz, and he did not throw away the standard Mahayana “songbook” or the basic structure of music theory. Dogen, master of “word jazz” and expresser of the Wordless in words (he believed that a well-chosen phrase could hold Truths of both sound and silence), would take off bending and re-enlivening those old dusty tunes in ways felt in the skin, flesh, bones, and marrow, yet he never forgot the fundamental tune he was playing.

Dogen, for example, frequently wilded and re-wilded passages from the already fantastically wild “Lotus Sutra” into something even more wild-tastical! In one such example, he worked from a famous scene of that Sutra in which a stupa (a traditional pavilion or tower containing the ashes or other relics and treasures of a Buddha or other great Ancestor), in this case thousands of kilometers tall, appears from the ground and rests in the air. Buddha Shakyamuni sees that another Buddha (named Abundant Treasures) is sitting inside, and the two Buddhas share a seat within the tower and preach together. All this is depicted in the Sutra as occurring in the sky over Vulture Peak, the sacred site in India said to be where the Lotus Sutra was being preached (a preaching of the Sutra that amazingly includes, in a logical loop, this very scene of the Sutra being preached). It is already a pretty wild vision before Dogen even sets to work on it. The Lotus Sutra describes the sacred happening like this:

At that time, before the Buddha, a Stupa of the Seven Treasures [gold, silver, pearl, etc.], five hundred yojanas in height, and two hundred and fifty yojanas in length and breadth, sprang out from the earth and abode in the sky… When that Buddha [Abundant Treasures] was practicing the Bodhisattva way in the past, he had made a great vow: “After I have realized [the state of] Buddha and died, if in the lands of the ten directions there is any place where the Lotus Sutra is preached, my Stupa shall spring up and appear before that place so that I may hear the Sutra.”

In a Shobogenzo essay called Hokke-Ten-Hokke (“The Flower of Dharma Turns the Flower of Dharma”), Dogen takes this scene, flips it around, stirs it up, and brings it home to his fans. The expression “turning the flower of Dharma” can mean a Buddha’s preaching of the Dharma, the Buddhist Truth, and it also can mean that the whole beautiful universe is like a flower turning. At the end, the reference to “non-thinking” (hi-shiryo) is the same one that Dogen often employs to describe the state of mind in Zazen which is “thinking-not-thinking” that is “non-thinking”:

[Dogen says:] There is turning the Flower of Dharma in the presence “before the Buddha” of a “Treasure Stupa,” whose “height is five hundred yojanas.” There is turning the Flower of Dharma in the “Buddha sitting inside the Stupa,” whose extent is “two hundred and fifty yojanas.” There is turning the Flower of Dharma in springing out from the earth and abiding in the earth, [in which state] mind is without restriction and matter is without restriction. There is turning the Flower of Dharma in springing out from the sky and abiding in the earth, which is restricted by the eyes and restricted by the body. Vulture Peak exists inside the Stupa, and the Treasure Stupa exists on Vulture Peak. The Treasure Stupa is a Treasure Stupa in space, and space makes space for the Treasure Stupa. The eternal Buddha inside the Stupa takes his seat alongside the Buddha of Vulture Peak, and the Buddha of Vulture Peak experiences the state of experience as the Buddha inside the stupa. When the Buddha of Vulture Peak enters the state of experience inside the Stupa, while object and subject on Vulture Peak [remain] just as they are, he enters into the turning of the Flower of Dharma. […] “Inside the stupa,” “before the Buddha,” “the Treasure Stupa,” and “space” are not of Vulture Peak; they are not of the world of Dharma; they are not a halfway stage; and they are not of the whole world. Nor are they concerned with only a “concrete place in the Dharma.” They are simply “non-thinking.” (based upon the Nishijima-Cross translation)

The sacred, all so thoroughly interconnected and inter-flowing, every bit pouring in and out of every bit, is the turning of the flower of the Buddha’s teaching, the whole universe turning, sometimes experienced in the world of restrictions and sometimes unrestricted, which is all the “non-thinking” of Zazen!

Dig it!

~~~

Gassho, J
stlah

I'll throw in a deep jazz track "The End Of The World." Improv at its best and most cacophonous.

After I typed out a post, I went back to pull a quote, and my entry disappeared. Lesson learned!
Embodiment is a key term here. The teachings live through our words, practice, and daily lives. It keeps the Dharma, and dharma, living.
Christianity developed this way after Buddhism in its concept of the living Christ. For an ideology to remain contemporary, this helps its teachings keep up with the times.
There is an odor of anthropocentrism here, but I will not dwell on it. I'll leave that for today.

Gassho,
Shinkon
satlah

[Maro]

Yesterday I was so tired that I thought of taking a nap before our meeting. I didn't set an alarm clock because I didn't foresee that I will sleep like a log. So I overslept :-)

Good thing that the discussions are recorded - thank you Bion

Gassho
Maro
satlah

[Maro]

I found the discussion very rich!
Thanks all
Gassho
Maro
satlah

[Bion]

I found the discussion very rich!
Thanks all
Gassho
Maro
satlah

Ah, fantastic! Thanks for taking the time to catch up

gassho
sat lah