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Note, please read the Definition of the Three Powerful Enemies at this page: http://www.geocities.com/chris_holte/Buddhism/IssuesInBuddhism/TPEndI.htm and the general essay at http://www.geocities.com/chris_holte/Buddhism/IssuesInBuddhism/TPEndI.htm if anything on this page confuses or troubles you. This is not an easy subject and I don't want anyone being confused by it.
"If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere, insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?"
Most people, no matter how many times you tell them that the source of the three powerful enemies is fundamental darkness, have a poor understanding of what they really are and how they really work. They think that fundamental darkness is an affliction of "enemies" from without the organization. No matter how many times you try to tell them that the "enemy" just might not be the current "enemy of choice" they will insist that the organization is free from fundamental darkness and that criticism from outside of their organizaion is proof of the righteousness of what they are doing. If they accept that it is possible for there to be such a thing as the "Three Powerful Enemies" they reflexively see their power in "other people." If they agree they can appear from within, they reflexively think of traitors and those who have turned against the organization they are in. Such traitors are by definition either outside of their own organization or outside their circle of friends if within the organization.
Even when they concede that the three powerful Enemies" as being afflictions that can rise within our own group, in practice we can only think of our enemies and opponants. But the truth is, it just doesn't work like that. Buddhism is the most logical of religions and it's sages long ago noted that our best friends are often those who appear to be our opponants of the moment. We, ourselves, like to think that we ourselves cannot possibly be vessels of such a terrible thing, and so we rebel against this notion even if we teach it to others. We insist that we are fighting the "Nikken within" when in truth the enemy is the "Chris Holte" within.
We instinctively fear acknowledgeing that along with the world of Buddha, we possess the world of hell within our own hearts. Because of this fear to accept reality, someone lecturing about the influence of fundamental darkness will usually make it sound like a manichean thing, with angels of light on one side (always us) and angels of darkness on the other (always them). But hard experience has taught me that the source of our troubles is not outside, but within, defeat that enemy, and the enemy "without" is already defeated. When we face and defeat the "Three Powerful Enemies" coming from outside of our organizations and lives, it will only come about if we have first defeated them from within. In short the enemy we need to defeat is the one already present inside us. I learned this lesson the hard way, when I reflected on my own practice and efforts, wondering why others wouldn't follow this wonderful dharma that I embrace. Indeed why many of them were running away from it.(See The Three Powerful Enemies and I for my personal experience with this.
In the Gosho, Reply to Sairenbo1 Nichiren is quoted as saying:"When I look at the situation in Japan, I find that the Devil of the Sixth Heaven2 has entered into the bodies of people of wisdom, transforming correct teachers into heretical teachers, and good teachers into bad teachers. This is what the sutra means when it says, 'Evil demons will take possession of others.'"3
To me this states and restates the thesis of many of his writings, that fundamental darkness is the real enemy of people's happiness. To him, living in a day before modern scientific advances, this was more literally true. In his writings, he made the thesis, expecially in the Rissho Ankoku Ron 4 that incorrect religious teachings are the source of calamity, war and insurrection. He based these teachings on the apocalyptic style teachings of the Nirvana Sutra and Lotus, which warn of the consequences of "slander of the dharma". In the Rissho Ankoku Ron, where he takes to task the Pure Land School and it's founder Honen Daishi for having slandered the Lotus Sutra. For more on this see the General Essay on the Three Powerful Enemies, but in any case in the Rissho Ankoku Ron he makes these statements, and then finds his guest, who thinks that the teacher he has just berated is truly a sage person, completely enraged. He then says:
"Insects that live on smartweed forget how bitter it tastes; those who stay long in privies forget how foul the smell is. Here you listen to my good words and think them wicked, point to a slanderer of the Law and call him a sage, mistrust a correct teacher and take him for an evil monk. Your confusion is great indeed, and your offense anything but light. Listen to my explanation of how this confusion arose and let us discuss the matter in detail."5
The interesting thing about this discussion, is that in the midst of what looks like a very fundamentalist attack on this teacher, Honen Daishi, Nichiren uses the analogy of an insect that lives in smartweed. The "host", Nichiren then goes into considerable detail trying to explain to this Guest why it is that people can make mistakes of such consequence that they can cause earthquakes and wars. But the point here, is that analogy to the insect, because it shows how one can live in a nasty environment and not even be aware that it is so nasty.
Parasites within
Anyone who lived through the cold war will remember the paranoia engendered by Communism. During the fifties people were convinced that there were "parasites" under every log and behind every tree. The late Senator McCarthy sought to find them all. In the process he ruined many a decent person's life. The term for this is "McCarthyism". It is an ancient madness, that we have seen in persecutions of Jews, in Witch-hunts, and in places and times as varied as those of Medieval England to Communist Russia, to China, to Tokugawa Japan. But looking for such traitors is always a kind of madness. Because whatever damage they can do usually pales with the destruction visited on the minds and hearts of those searching for such enemies within. The movie "A Beautiful mind" well captures the madness of such thinking. Even though it was about a certifiably crazy person, the times he lived in served to reinforce his already paranoid tendancies.
Nichiren writes about this subject in Letter from Sado:
Now, twenty-six years since the Battle of Hoji, the Kamakura government is again plagued by internal strife. Rebellions have already broken out twice on the eleventh and the seventeenth day of the second month of this year. Neither non-Buddhists nor the enemies of Buddhism can destroy the Buddha's True Law, but the Buddha's disciples definitely can. As the sutra says, a parasite in the lion's bowels will devour the lion. A man of great fortune cannot be ruined by his enemies but only by those close to him. The current rebellion is what the Yakushi Sutra means by "the disaster of internal strife." The Ninno Sutra states, "When the sage departs, the seven types of calamity will invariably arise." The Konkomyo Sutra states, "The thirty-three heavenly gods become furious because the king permits evil to run rampant." Although Nichiren is not a sage, he is equal to one, for he embraces the Lotus Sutra exactly as the Buddha taught. Furthermore, since he has long understood the ways of the world, all the prophecies he wrote have come true without exception. Therefore you should not doubt what he has told you concerning your future existence....6
He says something similar in one of his personal letters written to Lord Ueno. The point is that the cause of the misfortunes in Japan weren't the "enemies abroad" but were within the Buddhist Sangha. "Parasites" are always within an organism. They are never without.
Continuing to draw from the Gosho, "Letter from Sado"7 Nichiren is very clear about this subject. He says:
...It is impossible to fathom one's karma. Iron, when heated in the flames and pounded, becomes a fine sword. Wise men and saints are tested by abuse. My present exile is not because of any crime. It is solely so that I may expiate in this lifetime my past heavy slanders and be freed from the three evil paths in the next.
The Hatsunaion Sutra states,
"In the coming age, there will be those who enter the priesthood, don surplices and make a show of studying my teachings. However, being neither diligent nor serious about their practice, they will slander the Mahayana sutras. You should be aware that these people are the ones who are following the heretical religions of today."Those who read this passage should reflect deeply on their own practice. The Buddha is saying that those of our contemporary priests who are lazy and remiss were disciples of the six non-Buddhist teachers in Shakyamuni's day.
Now Nichiren was applying the above quote mostly to the followers of Honen, but it is important that this letter was addressed to his disciples, so when he says "Those who read this passage should reflect deeply on their own practice" he is talking to them, and as their inheritors, us. There is no other way to read that passage. He is telling us that people are "tested by abuse" and that whether or not we are disciples of the Buddha or the six non-Buddhist teachers, is entirely a matter of our own "practice." When he says It is impossible to fathom one's Karma" he is also talking about the imminence of both the worlds of Buddha, and the lower levels. It is entirely up to our practice which life condition we are displaying at a given moment.
Later Nichiren says:
According to the Nirvana Sutra, the Buddha had enabled everyone to attain enlightenment by teaching the Juryo chapter of the Lotus Sutra. Yet, alas, when he illuminated the hundred and thirty-six hells underground, instead of finding them empty, he saw that the slanderers of Buddhism who were people of incorrigible disbelief were still being confined there by the guards of hell. They proliferated until they became the people of Japan today.
Again Nichiren wasn't exempting either himself or his disciples. What he is basically saying is that because the people of Japan rejected the Lotus Sutra, fundamental darkness still ruled the land. Nichiren reaffirms this point with his next words:
Since Nichiren himself committed slander in the past, he became a Nembutsu priest in this lifetime, and for several years he also laughed at those who practiced the Lotus Sutra, saying,
"Not a single person has ever attained Buddhahood through that sutra"or
"Not one person in a thousand can reach enlightenment through its teachings."Awakening from my slanderous condition, I feel like a drunken son, who, in his stupor, strikes his parents but thinks nothing of it. When he returns to his senses, he regrets it bitterly but to no avail. His offense is extremely difficult to erase. Even more so are past slanders of the Law, which stain the depth of one's heart. A sutra states that both the crow's blackness and the heron's whiteness are actually the deep stains of their past karma. The Brahmans and other non-Buddhists refused to recognize this causality and claimed it was the work of nature, and today, when I expose people's slanders in an effort to save them, they deny it with every excuse possible and argue back with Honen's words about barring the gates to the Lotus Sutra
One of the theories of the Fuji School is this notion of "Kuon Soku Mappo." It's an interesting theory because it reverses some time/causal relationships. It is based on Nichiren's observations recorded here in this Gosho (among others). If we lived in a time of "finished Buddhas" we would already be so pure inside that we'd be understanding Buddhism the moment we are born. But we live in a time of ignorance of causality and of incorrect notions. How does one explain such a thing. Well, in a strait line causality, one would say that people simply don't know these things yet. That is certainly our state. But if one is seeking to transmit a better and more comprehensive understanding of life and ones role in it, then one sees that another way of looking at it, is that in "past lives" we ignored or forgot the truth. This seems to presupposes that in past lives people actually knew the truth, but if one is looking at it from outside of strait line causality, a time when the truth has been lost is pretty much also a time to start over again. Hence, a moment when people are completely ignorant of "true teachings" is also equivalent to the moment when everything is beginning. Both "creation" (Kuon Ganjo) and destruction (slander of the Dharma) are imminent in every moment.
The effect of being born in an ignorant, conflictive, "dark" time is the same as being the reincarnation of the causes of such darkness, which has to be slander of or "ignorance" of the true Dharma! Thus, when you "fall to the ground" you have to get back up and start all over again. It may be phenomenally a "work of nature" that we live in such a present moment, but fundamentally, fundamental darkness is a condition that requires people to turn away from lies, attachments, and mistaken teachings and seek the truth. And in the process we have to fight the "blackness" in our own lives. The hermaneutics of us being the "reincarnations of dharma slanderers" is not so we will feel guilty for our past behavior, but so that we will take responsibility for the present state of affairs and "start from scratch" by embracing something better -- by doing something about it. That something better is found in the "Single moment of belief" in the Lotus Sutra. Honen's followers wanted to turn away from this world and seek salvation from a mythical Buddha in the East, but as Nichiren says, our lives are stained dark, they aren't going to come unstained without considerable transformation. The "past Karma" is the present condition of ignorance, anger, stupidity, fear and conflict.
Nichiren didn't invent the calamities of his times. He noted them and sought their causes in interpreting scriptures. We are still undergoing calamities in this day. Now it is even harder for us to accept the notion that such calamities are our responsibility. After all, earthquakes are natural phenomena, droughts are el-nino, war is caused by economic theories, and fires are lightening. Yet if we look more deeply at the situation, we see that the cause of present suffering is tied to human behavior even so. The Sutras describe Earthquakes as heralding great events, yet they kill millions. If houses are built properly and away from active faults, they and the people living in them live longer. Human behavior (or lack of behavior) exacerbates natural phenomena. There is evidence that mans activities have turned much of the Middle East and North Africa to desert, and that natural disasters have played a role in the destruction of peoples from the Aztecs, to the Mayans, to the Xuni indians.
- Gosho:, Reply to Sairenbo16
- King Devil of the Sixth Heaven. Fundamental Darkness, Gampon No Mumyo, usually described allegorically as a Devil living in a pallace built over top of suffering beings.
- Gosho:, Reply to Sairenbo16
- Rissho Ankoku Ron
- Rissho Ankoku Ron
- http://www.sgi-usa.org/buddhism/library/Nichiren/Gosho/LetterFromSado.htm
- Ibid: http://www.sgi-usa.org/buddhism/library/Nichiren/Gosho/LetterFromSado.htm