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Beautiful passage from Bassui.
I would just add that it’s also wrong to misunderstand this to mean: “first get enlightened, then read the Sutras” – , since the Sutras contain what is needed for awakening. It is the Sutras that open the eye that allow one to read the Sutras. No Guru is needed, just the Sutra. This is Sutrayana.
Yes, mere “lip service” and formalized reading is no good. But I would still recommend it. It still plants seeds in one’s mind, seeds that can one day grow to true understanding. Even if one learns just a few verses of the Lotus Sutra by heart, without understanding, it’s still in his mind, as a latent seed that can one day flower into a wonderful lotus blossom.
This is why the Lotus Sutra incessantly insists that just reading a few lines of the Sutra is such an immense merit, or telling a few lines of the Sutra to other people… in some passages it even says it’s superior to aeons of sitting meditation. This sounds quite slanderous to a Theravadin. But the logic behind it is sound! (Seed of enlightenment; inherent Buddha-nature vs gradual “self-improvement”…)
Of course if one just reads the sentences of the Lotus Sutra as if it was some philosophical treatise or some normal religious book, then one misses the Entity of the Lotus. The Heart of the Lotus is to be found within the Lotus Sutra. It is the Wonderful Dharma of the Lotus within the Lotus Sutra that one has to find. ( – Just like Tozen taught that one has to find the Word within the Lankavatara Sutra.)
Hui-neng received awakening directly from the Sutra. In the records, he actually recommends everyone to study the Diamond Sutra, which he says contains everything that is needed for awakening.
Hakuin Ekaku in the letter to the Nichiren nun states, I paraphrase: “There is no Mind outside of the Lotus Sutra; there is not Lotus Sutra outside of the Mind.”
Hakuin first read the LS and thought it’s not profound enough (as a young Zennist). But later as a 40+ year old man, he read it again, and it he got his final and greatest satori.
The beautiful thing about Sutras is that they don’t have the flaws of humans. A text will not try to sexually abuse you, like it often happens in the Guru Yoga and Zen traditions. If you stake your karmic destiny on a person, then there’s always a risk involved.
“Rely on the Dharma, not on persons.”
Tiantai Master Zhiyi said:
“How could the coarse thinkable be different from the marvelous unthinkable? Without leaving words and letters we can thus speak the meaning of liberation. The crux is just to realize how the thinkable is identical to the unthinkable.”
Moreover, in the Procedure for the Lotus Samādhi
Repentance, he claims that the highest form of realization is accessible through “mere ritual recitation of the Lotus Sūtra, without entering into samādhi.” (T46.843b15-18)
The latter seems to be at odds with Bassui’s statement. But actually it is not! Why can ritual recitation, too, be a vessel of the highest enlightenment?
Bassui speaks from his enlightened perspective, that frogs and rain and rocks and mountains are giving Dharma lectures. This is truly an advanced stage of realization.
Now Zhiyi speaks from the same point of view, but he includes the Sutra itself. The mere sounds and letters of the Sutra, too, like frogs and the sound of the wind, contain realization.
This is why the imageless word of the Lotus Sutra is its title, which contains the whole Sutra within it: popularly rendered in the Japanese reading, “Myoho-Renge-Kyo”.
Once this is realized, everything becomes an instance of the Lotus Entity, all the universe speaks the Lotus Sutra.
In this age of Dharma decline when so many people are thirsty for True Dharma teaching, and there are so many wolves in monk’s robes out there, – today Sutrayana is more relevant than ever.
Like Tozen said: “You have roof over your head, you’re not born into starvation, you’re living in a peaceful country, and you have good Sutras. What else do you need?”
The Sutras contain the key that unlocks the Sutras.
“The Sutras contain the key that unlocks the Sutras”
Right. Now how is the key ever first put into use?
I suggest your quote from Hakuin is still not sinking in for you…
What is this “Thing” called enlightenment? You are still far from Bassui’s Light.
“Enlightenment” means different things in different contexts. In most contexts, it implies somebody’s ego-trip.
As for the one who is commenting here, he is not claiming to be either enlightened, nor is he claiming to be especially ignorant.
Yet, when you say I am far from it – what is this “Thing” you think I’m far away from?