evolution and transmission of Buddhist teachings to the modern world, was born in 1222, in a little fishing village on the Southern coast of Japan. He lived for 60 years. He spent virtually all of his life, almost from his boyhood, immersed in study and teaching, and yet reaching out in exactly the same way as shakyamuni had, to ordinary people. He also had the courage to take on the military junta, the military dictatorship that ruled in Japan at the time, over the abuse of power and neglect of the common people of Japan. He became known as the great Sage, or Nichiren Dashonin.
Nichiren went to a monastery when he was 12, essentially because a monastery was about the only place at the time where a boy could learn to read and write.Apart from this, he was an ordinary boy who had an ordinary up bringing.Early on in his life he became strongly aware of two things he believed to be closely linked. One was the scale of conflict and the depths of sufferiings that dominated the lives of ordinary people in 13th century Japan.The second was the confusion of teachings that was represented by the sheer range of Buddhist schools.Ordinary people had no idea what to believe in or how to practice. Since at the time, religions practices played a dominate role in everyone's life, the inner confusions was reflected in the wide spread levels of pain and suffering and conflicts in ordinary people's lives.
As young as he was he was, Nichiren Daishonin essentially committed his life at that point, to sort out this confusion, a situtation that is strangely reminiscent of the decision taken so many centuries earlier by Shakyamuni.That early vow led to his becoming the most persistent and out spoken religious and social reformer of his day.He was fearless. No threats, no promises of punishment by authorities deterred him.He became a priest at the age of 16 and devoted the next 15 years, his entire youth, to a personal quest to reveal the confusion in Buddhist teachings, travelling round the leading monasteries in Japan, which were repositories of ancient transcripts of Buddhist texts.He painstakingly traced the golden threads of Buddhist thought back through Japanese and Chinese and Indian writinigs to Shakyamuni himself...and to the LOTUS SUTRA...
The results of Nichiren Dishonin's quest essentually launched the modern revolution in Mahayana Buddhism...(to be continued at a later date) (C&E)
Posted By: Nichiren Daishonin
Wednesday, April 16th 2014 at 10:39PM
You can also
click
here to view all posts by this author...
