Originally posted by lil bitchiness
Buddhism is very difficult to practice - properly at least.
Traditional Buddhism, indeed, involved difficult practices and austerities to attain one's goal of supreme enlightenment. However, my Buddhism taught by Nichiren, 13th century buddhist reformist monk, is very practical, and widely accesible to anyone who practice it.
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The Road to Enlightenment
Today there are many schools of Buddhism, perhaps even thousands. The British scholar Christmas Humphreys once wrote: "To describe [Buddhism] is as difficult as describing London. Is it Mayfair, Bloomsbury, or the Old Kent Road? Or is it the lowest common multiple of all these parts, or all of them and something more?"
As the Buddhist philosophy gently flowed from India - north through China and Tibet, south into Thailand and Southeast Asia - it tended to absorb and be influenced by local religious customs and beliefs. The Buddhism that spread to Tibet and China and eventually to Korea and Japan was called Mahayana, meaning "greater vehicle." That which spread southward, to Southeast Asia and Sri Lanka was called Hinayana, for "lesser vehicle," a pejorative term applied to it by the Mahayanists. The Hinayana schools, based on the earlier teachings of Shakyamuni, typically emphasized a strict and highly detailed code of personal conduct geared toward one's personal salvation. The Mahayana schools emphasized the need for Buddhism to be a compassionate means for common people to attain enlightenment - to search for a practical method that could serve as a vehicle for greater numbers (the greater vehicle) to make the journey to Buddhahood. The profusion of different Buddhist sutras and theories came to be a source of great confusion, particularly in China in the first and second centuries. At that time, Chinese scholars were confronted with the random introduction of the various sutras of the many Hinayana schools as well as the Mahayana scriptures. Perplexed by these diverse teachings, Chinese Buddhists attempted to compare and classify the sutras.
By the fifth century A.D., the systematizing of the Buddhist canon had become very advanced. In particular, a priest named Chih-i, later known as the Great Teacher T'ien-t'ai, developed the definitive standard known as "the five periods and eight teachings." Based on his own enlightenment, which may have rivaled Shakyamuni's, T'ien-t'ai's system classified the sutras chronologically as well as from the standpoint of profundity. He determined that the Lotus Sutra, the penultimate teaching of Shakyamuni expounded toward the end of his life, contained the ultimate truth. T'ien-t'ai formulated this truth as the principle of "three thousand realms in a single moment of life." It employs a phenomenological approach, describing all the kaleidoscopic emotions and mental states that human beings are subject to at any given moment. The theory of three thousand realms in a single moment of life holds that all the innumerable phenomena of the universe are encompassed in a single moment of a common mortal's life. Thus the macrocosm is contained within the microcosm.
The vast dimension of life to which Shakyamuni awoke under the Bodhi tree was beyond the reach of ordinary human consciousness. T'ien-t'ai described this ultimate truth as three thousand realms in a single moment of life, recognizing that the Lotus Sutra was the only sutra to assert that all people - men and women, good and evil, intellectuals and common laborers - had the potential to attain Buddhahood within their lifetimes.
A crucial question remained: How could common people apply this to their lives? Toward that end, T'ien-t'ai advocated a rigorous practice of observing the mind through meditation, delving deeper and deeper until the ultimate truth of three thousand realms in a single moment of life was grasped. Unfortunately, this type of practice was feasible only for monks, who could spend indefinite periods of time contemplating the message implicit in the Lotus Sutra. It was almost impossible for people who worked for a living and had other things on their minds. The full flowering of Buddhism was not to be accomplished until it migrated along trading routes to Japan. It would not be widely practiced and revered today without the incredible courage and insight of a thirteenth-century Japanese monk named Nichiren, who brought the Lotus Sutra into sharp focus in a way that had a direct impact on people and their daily lives.
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Modern-Day Buddhism
Nichiren, born in Japan in 1222, gave concrete and practical expression to the Buddhist philosophy of life that Shakyamuni taught and T'ien-t'ai illuminated. He expressed the heart of the Lotus Sutra, and therefore the Buddha's enlightenment, in a form that all people could practice. He defined this as the invocation Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, based on the characters of the title of the Lotus Sutra.
His achievement was akin to translating a complex scientific theory into a practical technique. Just as Benjamin Franklin's discovery of electricity was not harnessed for practical use until many years later when Thomas Edison invented the light bulb, Shakyamuni's enlightenment was inaccessible until Nichiren taught the fundamental practice by which all people could call forth the law of life from within themselves. His realization of this principle had the power to directly affect and move the people who encountered it, heralding a new epoch in the history of Buddhism.
He had revealed the ultimate Mahayana teaching - the greater vehicle - by which all people could journey to Buddhahood. In Nichiren's own words, "A blue fly, if it clings to the tail of a thoroughbred horse, can travel ten thousand miles, and the green ivy that twines around the tall pine can grow to a thousand feet." For the first time, ordinary people could take a journey previously possible only for saints and sages.
Nichiren's Buddhism has proved itself to be of profound value to millions of people. It was Nichiren who expressed the essence of the Lotus Sutra in a way that enables all people, regardless of their level of knowledge, to enter the gateway to enlightenment. This was a revolutionary development in the history of religion.
While Buddhism began with the teaching of one human being who awoke to the law of life within himself, it has come to include the interpretations of that teaching by subsequent scholars and prophets. As we have said, the word Buddha originally meant "enlightened one," one who is awakened to the eternal truth or law of life (dharma). This truth is eternal and boundless. It is present always and everywhere. In this sense, the law of life is not the exclusive property of Shakyamuni Buddha or of Buddhist monks.
The truth is open equally to everyone. In the Buddhism described on these pages, there are no priests or gurus, no ultimate authority that decides what is correct or incorrect, what is right or wrong. In this Buddhism, the wall between priesthood and laity has been torn down, leading to a complete democratization of the practice. Because it is essentially nondogmatic, it suits the skeptics among us. The ultimate and all-abiding law that the Buddha perceived may be another name for some people's concept of God. On the other hand, a person who cannot believe in an anthropomorphic God can see an underlying energy to the universe. The breadth of Buddhism encompasses both views and focuses on the individual.
There is no one to blame - and no one to implore for salvation. In Buddhism, no God or supernatural entity plans and shapes our fates. In Western religion, you can bring yourself closer to God through your faith, but you can never become God. In Buddhism, one could never be separate from the wisdom of God, because the ultimate wisdom already exists in the heart of every person. Through Buddhist practice, we seek to call forth that portion of the universal life force existing originally and eternally within - what we call Buddhahood - and manifest it by becoming a Buddha. Buddhists become aware of the existence, in their innermost depths, of the eternal law that permeates both the universe and the individual human being. They aim to live every day in accordance with that law. In so doing, they discover a way of living that redirects all things toward hope, value and harmony. It is the discovery of this objective law itself, as it manifests within the individual, that creates spiritual value, not some exterior power or being. As Nichiren stated in a famous letter titled "On Attaining Buddhahood In This Lifetime":
Your practice of the Buddhist teachings will not relieve you of the sufferings of birth and death in the least unless you perceive the true nature of your life. If you seek enlightenment outside yourself, then your performing even ten thousand practices and ten thousand good deeds will be in vain. It is like the case of a poor man who spends night and day counting his neighbor's wealth but gains not even half a coin.
This idea that the power to achieve happiness lies totally within can be disconcerting. It entails a radical sense of responsibility. As Daisaku Ikeda has written: "Society is complex and harsh, demanding that you struggle hard to survive. No one can make you happy. Everything depends on you as to whether or not you attain happiness·. A human being is destined to a life of great suffering if he is weak and vulnerable to his external surroundings."......................