Water Matters
July 2008
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"This Is What I Heard"
"This is what I heard" is a conventional phrase found at the beginning of almost all Buddhist sutras. But in the case of the Lotus Sutra, the act of hearing has a deep significance, and it is emphasized throughout the scripture.
The first chapter ("Introduction") begins with the phrase "This is what I heard" and proceeds to describe the congregation of all sorts of sentient beings assembled on Mount Gridhrakuta or Eagle Peak in India to listen to the Buddha's teachings. Flowers rain from the heavens, and the earth shakes and trembles. The gathered beings are filled with delight.
It could seem that the Lotus Sutra is some kind of fairy tale, or a work of science fiction. Josei Toda, the second Soka Gakkai president, once discussed the "Introduction" chapter, saying: "The roughest calculation of those in attendance shows that hundreds of thousands must have attended the assembly at Eagle Peak. There were 80,000 bodhisattvas and 12,000 voice-hearers alone! How is it possible that, in an age without microphones, Shakyamuni could have assembled an audience of such huge proportions and spoken to them all? The Lotus Sutra tells us that indeed they did all gather and hear him preach. So does the sutra lie? No, it does not. Those who gathered were the voice-hearers and bodhisattvas who dwell within Shakyamuni's own life. Hence, there is nothing to hinder even tens of millions of such voice-hearers and bodhisattvas from assembling." Mr. Toda did not want to make the Lotus Sutra into some kind of abstraction. He knew that the Lotus Sutra was the Law of life existing in one's own being.
The Lotus Sutra is the teaching in which the Buddha reveals and makes accessible to all people the Law that he himself has become enlightened to, the Law for attaining Buddhahood, so that all may achieve true happiness and spiritual peace.
Nichiren spoke of the Lotus Sutra in terms of its comprehensive, abbreviated and essential forms. If we regard the 28-chapter version as the comprehensive form, the essential Lotus Sutra is Nichiren's own formulation in only seven characters, his distillation "Nam-myoho-renge-kyo."
Many scholars today support the theory that the Lotus Sutra was compiled in its present form around the first century CE, several hundred years after Shakyamuni's death. We are then faced with the question as to whether the Lotus Sutra actually contains the direct teaching of Shakyamuni himself, or is largely the creation of later editors and compilers. I believe we can say that Shakyamuni's thought constitutes the core of the sutra, but that it assumed a certain shape in response to the conditions of the time and the prevailing state of philosophical thought in society when the sutra was compiled.
Lotus leaf
[©Michael Steden/Dreamstime.com]
What we see at work here is the mutual response, or communion, between the people and the Buddha. This is how a universal philosophy comes into being. We could also describe it as the dynamism of a true philosophy. Though the philosophy may appear in a new form, it does so because that form articulates the truth of that philosophy better in that particular time and set of circumstances.
Thus, while the Lotus Sutra embodies the direct teaching of Shakyamuni, the form in which it finds expression inevitably reflects the historical circumstances of the period in which it was compiled.
Nichiren applies the principle of "text, meaning and intent" in reading the sutra. "Text" refers to the sutra's literal content. "Meaning" indicates the doctrine or principle to which the text refers. But no amount of discussion of the "text and meaning" of the Lotus Sutra will be truly valuable unless we get to its heart, to its true "intent." I can only conclude that the substance of the doctrine is the Buddha's wisdom itself, which courses through all the 28 chapters of the sutra.
From this perspective, in terms of the Lotus Sutra, the words "This is what I heard" mean to concentrate one's entire being on apprehending and making a personal connection with the Buddha's life. This is an activity that involves our entire being, which includes our "heart," not just our ears alone.
This is the meaning of "This is what I heard." We are not to read the sutra as something separate from ourselves. Instead, we should "hear" it "as it applies to our own self" and "as the very Law of our own life.
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