Faith in Becoming Buddha

In East Asian Mahayana Buddhism two types of faith are often spoken of: the faith that one can become a Buddha, and the faith that one is already a Buddha.[1] Those with the first kind of faith have the conviction that they will someday attain buddhahood, after a lengthy process of spiritual cultivation. Those with the second kind of faith have the conviction that buddhahood is not a learned skill or a prize to be attained, but a sudden recognition of the original nature that has been there all along. The original awakened nature is none other than the selfless unconditioned true nature of reality, the unborn, the deathless. It is always present through rarely recognized because our ignorance, fears, and entanglements in mental and bodily conditioning keep it hidden from us. As we shall see, both types of faith can be found in the Lotus Sutra.

The significance of these two kinds of faith becomes clearer in the context of the overall Buddhist worldview. According to the Buddha, sentient beings are not fixed independent entities; we are all streams of causes and conditions that flow, change, and interact in the course of innumerable births and deaths in accord with the law of cause and effect. This is called samsara, the Sanksrit word for “flowing” or “wandering on.” This wandering takes place here, in the saha world. Saha means “endurance” and it refers to the many sufferings to be endured in this world. The saha world consists of six paths sentient beings travel according to their actions and inclinations.[2] The six paths lead to rebirth among (1) hell-dwellers obsessed with their own suffering and filled with impotent rage against themselves and all other beings; (2) hungry ghosts who are obsessed unquenchable cravings; (3) animals ruled by instinct and engrossed in the struggle for self-preservation; (4) fighting demons who are proud, ambitious, and quarrelsome; (5) human beings whose lives are a mixture of joy and suffering but are able to govern their lives by reason and higher aspirations; and (6) heavenly beings preoccupied by their own pleasure and success, enjoying for a while the fruits of their good deeds and the peaceful abiding of meditation.

These six paths should not seem all that strange to us. Obviously we are familiar with human beings and animals. Many of us assume that a being is born as either a human or an animal, lives its allotted lifespan, and then dies. There is nothing before or after. Many others believe that there is an afterlife for human beings wherein the good, or at least those with the correct beliefs, will go to heaven for eternity, while the evil, or those who disbelieved, will go to hell for eternity. Some believe that we can reincarnate as a human being or even an animal, with perhaps heavenly or hellish intervals between lives. Some people believe that it is possible to get stuck after death as a ghost, unable to proceed to whatever else may await in the afterlife. Even the idea that there are demons or devils that defy the heavenly powers and bear humanity ill will is common to our culture. The Buddhist view is that sentient beings transmigrate along these six paths depending upon the wholesome or unwholesome nature of their thoughts, words, and deeds, sometimes becoming one type of being and other times another as they reap what they have sown. Alongside this literal view of rebirth, transmigration among the six paths is also understood to be the moment-to-moment transmigration of our subjective experience of life.

In order to escape the sufferings inherent in wandering along the six paths the Buddha taught three different vehicles or ways of practice with three different goals.[3] The first vehicle he taught for the monks and nuns who would be called shravakas or “voice-hearers”, because they heard the Buddha’s voice and put his teachings into practice. In order to be liberated from samsara the Buddha taught them the four noble truths consisting of (I) the truth of suffering so they could recognize the universality of suffering within conditioned existence; (II) the truth of the origin of suffering so they would cut off the selfish craving which causes suffering; (III) the truth of the cessation of suffering so they could realize freedom from suffering; and (IV) the truth of the way to the cessation of suffering so they could cultivate the Middle Way that leads to and is freedom. The Middle Way is the eightfold path consisting of (1) right view, (2) right intention, (3) right speech, (4) right action, (5) right livelihood, (6) right effort, (7) right mindfulness, and (8) right concentration. By following this, voice-hearers become arhats or “worthy ones”, who attain nirvana, which is the extinguishing of the greed, hatred, and delusion that binds sentient beings to samsara.

The second vehicle the Buddha taught for the “cause-knowers” who wish to attain liberation by contemplating the causes and conditions of life on their own, like the pratyekabuddhas or “privately-awakened ones” who attain awakening by themselves when there is no buddha or even any Buddhist teachings available. For the cause-knowers, the Buddha taught the twelve-fold chain of dependent origination that details the process of birth and death. This chain consists of (1) ignorance that gives rise to (2) volitional formations that give rise to (3) consciousness that gives rise to (4) name & form (the psycho-physical personality) that gives rise to (5) the six sense bases (the five physical senses plus mind as the inner sense of thoughts and feelings) that give rise to (6) contact (between the senses and their objects) that gives rise to (7) feeling that gives rise to (8) craving that gives rise to (9) clinging that gives rise to (10) becoming that gives rise to (11) birth that gives rise to (12) aging & death. By contemplating the links that bind sentient beings to samsara, the cause-knowers or privately-awakened ones overcome ignorance and unbind themselves from the chain of dependent origination, thereby attaining nirvana.

The first two vehicles comprise the Hinayana or Lesser Vehicle because they only lead to liberation for the individual who practices them. For those who aspire to save all beings by attaining buddhahood, the Buddha taught a third vehicle, the Mahayana or Great Vehicle for the bodhisattvas. The bodhisattvas are those who are determined to attain unsurpassed perfect awakening, have made a vow to do so in the presence of a buddha, and have received that buddha’s prediction that they will attain buddhahood in the future. Unlike the voice-hearers and cause-knowers, the bodhisattvas do not seek to escape samsara on their own. Instead, motivated by selfless compassion, they are voluntarily reborn again and again among the six paths in order to accumulate the vast store of merit needed to attain buddhahood so they can help other sentient beings. Whereas a voice-hearer or cause-knower might be able to achieve liberation within their very lifetime, the bodhisattvas know that their vows require many ages to fulfill. For them the Buddha taught the cultivation of the six perfections of generosity, morality, patience, energy, meditation, and wisdom.

According to the view taught in many sutras, and left unchallenged in many others, of the innumerable sentient beings wandering along the six paths, only a very few can ever hope to attain liberation from suffering, let alone the more altruistic goal of buddhahood. To begin with, it is very rare to meet a buddha. Shakyamuni Buddha had taught that only one buddha ever appears on any given world at a time to awaken and teach the Dharma, and very long intervals of time pass between their appearances.[4] Even when they do appear, only a few people become voice-hearers and attain nirvana as arhats free of the six paths. After a buddha’s passing, the Dharma is upheld for a time but eventually is corrupted and lost, and so the window of opportunity closes for those wishing to attain nirvana.[5] The privately-awakened ones who appear in-between the appearances of the buddhas are also few and far between, and in any case they neither learn from nor teach others but live as hermits both before and after attaining nirvana. Those who do attain nirvana, as either voice-hearers or privately-awakened ones, cannot ever become bodhisattvas and attain buddhahood because they have left samsara and its suffering beings never to return. Those who do take up the bodhisattva path after first meeting a buddha, making a vow, and receiving a prediction, must be reborn among the six paths for countless lifetimes over astronomical periods of time so they can accumulate the requisite merit and contemplative insight to attain buddhahood, and occasions for backsliding abound. In any case, tradition stipulates that only a human male of high social status can attain buddhahood. Unless a bodhisattva is born into the right circumstances as the right kind of person, the best they can do is continue their practice so they can attain buddhahood in a future lifetime. Worst of all, there may even be some benighted beings that just do not have and will not ever have what it takes to attain any kind of liberation or awakening beyond worldly consolation in the human realm and periods of respite in the heavens. In this view, liberation from samsara is a rare and precious possibility for a small monastic elite, and buddhahood is a remote and all but unattainable goal.

The Lotus Sutra challenges these assumptions and ultimately breaks them. The Buddha states forthrightly that the one great purpose for which the buddhas appear in the worlds is to lead all living beings to buddhahood:

The buddhas, the world honored ones, appear in the worlds in order to cause all living beings to open the gate to the insight of the Buddha, and to cause them to purify themselves. They appear in the worlds in order to show the insight of the Buddha to all living beings. They appear in the worlds in order to cause all living beings to obtain the insight of the Buddha. They appear in the worlds in order to cause all living beings to enter the way to the insight of the Buddha. Shariputra! This is the one great purpose for which the buddhas appear in the world.[6]

This means that all beings without exception are able to attain buddhahood. In fact, the Buddha states that the three vehicles are actually only the One Vehicle that leads to buddhahood. As the Buddha says: “There is only one teaching, that is, the One Vehicle in the buddha-worlds of the ten quarters. There is not a second or third vehicle.”[7] The Buddha explains that he only taught three vehicles so that his disciples would not feel overwhelmed or intimidated:

I led all living beings at first with the teaching of the three vehicles. Now I will save them by the Great Vehicle only. Why is that? It is because, if I had given them the teaching of the Great Vehicle at first directly from my store of the Dharma in which my immeasurable wisdom, powers and fearlessness are housed, they would not have received all of the Dharma.[8]

The greater part of the first half of the Lotus Sutra involves the Buddha’s replacement of the three vehicles with the One Vehicle. The Buddha conveys this by direct statements, parables, and even stories of past lives. Along with this teaching, the Buddha gives predictions to his major voice-hearer disciples as to their future attainment of buddhahood. The Buddha even predicts that his evil cousin, Devadatta, the archetypal hell-dweller, will someday attain buddhahood; thus assuring all those in the lower realms that buddhahood is within reach. The Buddha and the assembly then witness the transformation of an eight-year-old dragon girl into a buddha; thus confounding the assumptions of those who believed that buddhahood could only be attained by those of a particular race, gender, or status. The Buddha even gives a blanket prediction that all who hear and rejoice in even a small part of the Lotus Sutra are assured of buddhahood:

If after my extinction anyone rejoices, even on a moment’s thought, at hearing even a verse or a phrase of the Wonderful Dharma of the Lotus Flower Sutra, I will also assure him of his future attainment of unsurpassed perfect awakening.[9]

The Lotus Sutra thereby establishes the faith that all beings without exception can become buddhas, even by a momentary act of rejoicing in the Wonderful Dharma of the Lotus Flower Sutra. When we chant Namu Myoho Renge Kyo, we are calling to mind and celebrating the Lotus Sutra’s affirmation of the universality of the attainment of buddhahood and expressing the moment of rejoicing that brings it about.

[1] Buddhist Faith and Sudden Enlightenment, p. 19

[2] Lotus Sutra, pp. 5-6

[3] Ibid, p. 14

[4] Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha, p. 929  (MN 115:14)

[5] Buddhist Texts Through the Ages, pp. 45-50; The Life of the Buddha, pp. 106-107

[6] Lotus Sutra, p. 32

[7] Ibid, p. 36

[8] Ibid, p. 66

[9] Ibid, p. 171