Bodhi Day Sermon
Today we commemorate the awakening of Shakyamuni Buddha. Shakyamuni
means the “Sage of the Shakya Clan.” Buddha is
a title which means “Awakened One.” Out of all the
millions and millions of people who have lived upon this earth,
we believe that he, at least, awoke from the dream of life’s
all too frequent sufferings and all too fragile joys and saw the
Truth for himself. This Truth that he awakened to was the Truth
which resolved all his previous concerns about the meaning of
life and death. This Truth was the solution to the problem of
suffering that he had been seeking. All of his subsequent
teachings and all the efforts of the 2,500 year old community
that has passed on those teachings to the present day are all for
the purpose of helping us to see the Truth for ourselves as well,
the very same Truth that the Buddha realized.
We should not think that this awakening is something that we must
revere from afar. It is not that this Buddha is somehow set apart
from us that makes him worth remembering. Instead, we should
realize that the Buddha is important precisely because he was one
of us, a human being who could and did wake up to a new vision of
life and a new way of living in the world. What he did, we can do
as well. The Flower Garland Sutra teaches that upon his
awakening the Buddha thought, “I now see all sentient beings
everywhere fully possess the wisdom and virtues of the
enlightened ones, but because of false conceptions and
attachments they do not realize it.”
It also says, “Then the Buddha observed all the beings of
the cosmos with his pure unobstructed eye of wisdom and said,
‘How wonderful! How is it that these beings all have the
wisdom of the enlightened ones, yet in their folly and delusions
do not know or see it? I should teach them the right path to make
them abandon illusion and attachment forever, so that they can
perceive the vast wisdom of the enlightened ones within their own
bodies and be no different from the Buddhas.’”
In the Lotus Sutra, it is taught that the Buddha’s
awakened life actually precedes the temporal awakening beneath
the Bodhi Tree 2,500 years ago. Yet, this Eternal Buddha
expressed this timeless awakening through his activities as a
seeker of awakening over uncountable lifetimes. In one of those
lifetimes, according to chapter 20 of the Lotus Sutra,
he was a bodhisattva, or awakening being, named Never Despise.
Bodhisattva Never Despise had one simple practice, which was to
bow before everyone he met saying, “I respect you deeply. I
do not despise you. Why is that? It is because you will be able
to practice the Way of the Bodhisattvas and become Buddhas.”
Even in the face of intolerance and persecution by those who did
not want to hear the teaching of universal awakening, he never
ceased to practise this deep recognition and respect for the
Buddha-nature, the potential for awakening, within all beings.
This kind of practice over innumerable lifetimes is what
culminated in the Buddha’s recognition of all beings
Buddha-nature and subsequent intention to help all beings realize
this for themselves as he sat beneath the Bodhi Tree on the
morning of his own awakening.
This is a very marvelous but also mystifying teaching. The Budha
is saying that all of the answers to life’s mysteries and
all of the virtues, love and power to do good that we admire in
our heroes and saints are already within us. Yet somehow we have
forgotten our own secret treasury and have misplaced the key to
unlock it. Without the Buddha to remind us through his teaching
and example we might never recall what is already in our hearts.
Though awakened from the beginningless past, the Buddha’s
awakening is expressed as the seeking and discovery of awakening,
so that we too can seek and discover our own beginningless
awakening. The key, for the Buddha and for ourselves, is to have
confidence in the Buddha-nature which is the universal potential
for awakening as well as being the Truth to which all beings
awaken.
With this in mind, Nichiren wrote, “The heart of the
Buddha’s lifetime of teachings is the Lotus Sutra,
and the heart of the practice of the Lotus Sutra is
found in the “Never Desparaging” chapter. What does
Bodhisattva Never Disparaging’s profound respect for people
signify? The purpose of the appearance in this world of
Shakyamuni Buddha, the lord of the teachings, lies in his
behavior as a human being.”
This means that all of the many teachings, analogies, parables
and methods of practice taught by Shakyamuni Buddha all come down
to one essential point: all of us can awaken to the Truth just as
Shakyamuni Buddha did 2,500 years ago. In awakening we change how
we see ourselves, how we see others and how we see all of life.
In awakening we are able to express Buddha-nature through every
thought, word and deed in every moment of our lives. This is the
direct practice of awakening, embracing all of life in every
moment. It is the Wonderful Truth of the Lotus Flower
Teaching which, with great confidence and joy, we bring to
mind and express as Namu Myoho Renge Kyo. The forms and
expressions may change, but the essential Truth is recognition of
universal awakening. Referring to the 24 character greeting of
Bodhisattva Never Despise, Nichiren wrote:
“He sowed the seeds of Buddhahood with the
twenty-four characters, while I do so with only the five
characters [of Myoho Renge Kyo]. Although the ages
are different, the process of attaining Buddhahood is exactly
the same.”
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