Founder’s Birthday Celebration - Deliberately Entering This world

Today we celebrate the birthday of the founder of Nichiren Buddhism, Nichiren Shonin. He is said to have been born on February 16, the day after the commemoration of the final nirvana or passing of Shakyamuni Buddha. We have no records from Nichiren’s lifetime as to the date of his birth. So we can only wonder whether this was actually the date of his birth or if it was chosen to signify that with the passing of the historical Shakyamuni Buddha the messenger of that Buddha, Nichiren Shonin, was due to arrive to promulgate the true intent of the Buddha’s teaching.

In a statue of Nichiren Shonin in the founder’s hall of Tanjoji Temple a prayer sheet was found written by a Nichijo, the fourth abbot of the temple 81 years after Nichiren Shonin passed away. This prayer sheet recorded when and where Nichiren was born. It is the oldest record we have regarding the timing of his birth.

Nichiren never says when he was born, but he did write about his birthplace. In Honzon Mondo-sho (Questions and Answers on the Focus of Devotion) he wrote:

I, Nichiren, am the child of a fisherman at the edge of the sea in the Tojo District of Nagasa, in Awa Province, which is the 12th of the 15 provinces in the circuit of Tokaido. At the age of 12 I went to Kiyosumidera Temple in the same Tojo District to study. However, since this was a remote place, even though it was called a temple, there were no scholars there. That’s why I visited other provinces as part of my training and study. Because I was a nobody and had no one who could teach me, it was difficult to learn about the origin of the ten schools and the comparative superiority among them; so I earnestly prayed, beseeching buddhas and bodhisattvas for assistance, and pondered the teachings in all the sutras. (WNS2, p. 267)

As Nichiren says, from a very early age he was a very inquisitive child. In Myoho-ama Gozen Gohenji (A Reply to My Lady, the Nun Myoho) he wrote about his childhood contemplation:

As I contemplate my own life, I, Nichiren, have studied Buddhism ever since I was a child. Our life is uncertain, as exhaling one’s breath one moment does not guarantee drawing it the next; it is as transient as dew before the wind and its end occurs suddenly to everyone, the wise and the ignorant, the aged and the young. I thought that I should study the matter of the last moment of life first of all, before studying anything else. (WNS4, p. 141)

As we now know, Nichiren came to believe that he had found the true intention of Shakyamuni Buddha’s lifetime of teaching expressed in the depths of the Lotus Sutra. He also came to believe that it was his personal mission to propagate this teaching and denounce all that stood in the way of people being able to appreciate and practice it. He even came to identify his mission with that of Superior Practice Bodhisattva, the leader of the Bodhisattvas who Emerge from the Earth who appear in chapter 15 of the Lotus Sutra as the original disciples of the Original and Eternal Shakyamuni Buddha. In chapter 21, these bodhisattvas led by Superior Practice receive the special transmission to propagate the Lotus Sutra in the Latter Age after the Buddha’s passing, at the time when the true spirit of the Buddha’s teachings will have been lost. They appear to sow the seed of buddhahood in the lives of all sentient beings in that time. In Shoho Jisso-sho (Treatise on All Phenomena as Ultimate Reality) he wrote:

Born in the Latter Age of Degeneration, I, Nichiren, was the first to spread the outline of the Wonderful Dharma reserved for Bodhisattva Superior Practice. I was also the first to inscribe the Great Mandala with Shakyamuni Buddha appearing in the “Life Span of the Buddha” chapter of the Original Gate of the Lotus Sutra, the Buddha of Many Treasures who emerged in the “Stupa of Treasures” chapter of the Trace Gate, and the bodhisattvas from the earth in the “Emerging from the Earth” chapter. (WNS4, p. 77)

Nichiren equivocates as to whether he is Superior Practice Bodhisattva, but he considers that this may be the case. If that is so, then all those who follow him must also be bodhisattvas of the earth charged with the same mission. He wrote:

I, Nichiren, am the lone forerunner of the bodhisattvas who emerged from the earth. I may even be one of them. If I am counted as one of the bodhisattvas that emerged from the earth, my disciples and followers too are among the ranks of those bodhisattvas from the earth, are they not? The “Teacher of the Dharma” chapter states, “If someone expounds even a phrase of the Lotus Sutra even to one person in secret, then you should know that such a person is my messenger, dispatched by me to carry out my work.” This refers to none other than us. (WNS, p. 77)

Continuing his thoughts about this, Nichiren comes to see that his life’s sense of mission must have gone back to the distant past and originated nowhere and nowhere else but the Assembly in Space of the Lotus Sutra, the very place where the Original Buddha reveals the unborn and deathless nature of his life and transmits this Wonderful Dharma to his original disciples, the bodhisattvas of the earth. Nichiren insists upon a continuity of past, present, and future in terms of the flow of his mission, and of course the mission of all who take up the practice of the Lotus Sutra. He wrote:

[The Assembly in Space] was a meeting to help us living beings achieve buddhahood. Although I was not at the scene, I have no doubt about it when I read the sutra. However, I may have been there, but I don’t remember it simply because I am an ordinary man. And yet I can see clearly in the present time that I am a practitioner of the Lotus Sutra. Moreover it is determined that I will surely visit the practice place of the Buddha in the future. Considering the past according to these things, I may have been at the Assembly in Space because the past, present, and future are not separated from one another. (WNS4, p. 79)

One might dismiss this as fanciful thinking, and yet I think it is marvelous that Nichiren sees his life and the life of his followers as embodying the events of the Lotus Sutra. If not for Nichiren, his followers during his lifetime, and those who follow him today, the Assembly in Space would be a purely visionary event without any real-world effects. Connecting his life to the living out of the Lotus Sutra, we may almost say that when Nichiren was born the Lotus Sutra was also able to once more be born into the world. By continuing Nichiren’s mission of upholding, living by, and sharing the Lotus Sutra, we continue to allow the Lotus Sutra to be born into the world through us and our practice and lives.

In celebrating Nichiren Shonin’s birthday, the birthday of the founder of Nichiren Buddhism, we are celebrating the coming into the world of the one who manifested the function of Superior Practice Bodhisattva. For that reason, we consider Nichiren Shonin an emanation into this world of that bodhisattva. We should not forget, however, that if Nichiren is an emanation of the leader of the bodhisattvas who emerged from the earth, then we too, as his followers, must have been born into the world sharing his mission. Bearing that in mind, let us live as messengers of the Eternal Buddha and birth the Lotus Sutra into the world for the sake of all beings who so desperately need a world in which all people recognize and treat each other as buddhas-becoming-buddhas.