my buddhist blog number 119

Hi Everybody,

We're charging on with the Approaching the Practice chapter, and we've reached the point where we dive into the meaning of the mantra itself, nam myoho renge kyo. So here goes.

Since the chanting of the phrase nam myoho renge kyo is central to the practice of Nichiren Buddhism, and the process of change we are seeking, where does it come from and what does it mean?

Most of the phrase comes from the Lotus Sutra itself. Myoho renge kyo is the title of the Lotus Sutra as written in classical Japanese. To be precise, it is written in the Chinese pictograms that the Japanese adopted as their own, in order to create their own written language. The five characters used to write this phrase mean literally, ' The Mystic Law of the Lotus Sutra.' The word mystic here carries with it the sense of the ultimate or the highest teaching that hasn't previously been revealed.

The key word Nam that is placed in front of the title is what you might call the committal word. It comes from the ancient language of Sanskrit and means, among other things, ' to devote one's life.'
So a straightforward literal trnaslation of Nam myoho renge kyo' might be ' I devote my life to the mystic law of the Lotus Sutra.'

But that is really just the beginning. Many volumes have been written to explain the depths of meaning locked up this simple sounding mantra. That is partly because in the Buddhist tradition, the title given to each sutra is seen not only to be immensely important but is seen to embody the entire teaching that it contains. As Nichiren Daishonin explains to us in one of his letters, using the analogy of the name of Japan;

' Included within the two characters representing Japan is all that is within the country's 66 provinces: the people and the animals, the rice paddies and the other fields, those of high and low status, the nobles and the commoners...similarly included within the title or daimoku of Nam myoho renge kyo is the entire sutra consisting of all eight volumes, twenty eight chapters, and 69,384 characters without the omission of a single character...'

Moreover, since Chinese is an incomparably concise language, in which each character can be used to express an immense range of different though related meanings, these 5 basic characters combine to convey a veritable universe of ideas. In much the same way that in the world of Physics for example, the simple-seeming equation e=mc2 sums up within its five characters the complex relationship between energy and matter, across the entire vastness of the Universe.

That's an interesting thought isnt it, the compression of vast meaning into such a small space.!
anyway that's it for today.
See you next week.
Best wishes,
william
PS hope you made some really strong determinations!!