The Lotus Sutra and the Four Noble Truths
Dr. Dominick Scarangello
International Advisor to Rissho Kosei-kai
Practicing the Truth of the Path
Last month we considered the Truth of the Cause of suffering, or second Noble Truth. This time, we’ll explore the Truth of the Path to the extinguishment of suffering, usually considered the fourth and final Noble Truth. We’ll take up the Truth of the Path next because, from the practical standpoint of everyday life, once we begin to understand the causes of our anxiety and distress, our next task is to identify the steps and practices we can pursue to free ourselves from that suffering.
In September, I shared a simple example of suffering—the distress of things not going as I wished when I was caught in a traffic jam. Through the practice of the Truth of the Cause, I investigated that suffering’s chain of causation.
The steps I can take to free myself from such suffering—the practice of the path—are, just like suffering’s causation, multilayered. The most obvious thing I can do is to stop acting out of anger toward other people. The Sutra of Innumerable Meanings provides important guidance: I need to undertake practices that “make one who is angry [me!] aspire to forbearance” (The Threefold Lotus Sutra 23). If I can catch myself when I am about to act out, I should be able to stop such angry outbursts. Holding back expressions of anger and frustration could prevent conflicts with others and thus spare me and those around me much trouble.
But in the long term, if I do not deal with those feelings and just continually suppress them, they may become stronger and eventually explode with even more ferocity. In other words, this kind of self-control, while helpful and at times necessary, is at best like applying first aid, and not the bodhisattva’s forbearance in a real sense. As Founder Niwano observed, when we force ourselves to “bite the bullet” and suppress anger and resentment, “we are still novices” (Buddhism for Today 220).
Chapter 10 of the Lotus Sutra tells us that forbearance comes along with two things: compassion for everyone and realizing the equality of all things. If I can expand my capacity for compassion and see people through the eyes of equality, then when caught in a traffic jam or similarly inconvenient situations, I will naturally empathize with those who are stuck along with me rather than seeing them as my enemies.
What are some examples of concrete practices to nurture compassion and equanimity? I can develop both by following the Closing Sutra’s instructions to “look upon all people as though they were buddhas, and living beings as if they were [my] parents” (The Threefold Lotus Sutra 390). Praying for others by including many suffering people in my transfer of merit at the end of daily sutra recitation, wishing for their happiness and an end to their suffering, is another way of cultivating compassion. Transferring this wish into concrete action by doing things for the benefit of others, which is usually considered the practice of generosity, can also help nurture compassion and equanimity by fostering a feeling of oneness with others.
These practices are part of the bodhisattva path and necessary antidotes to anger, but I must not get too focussed on eliminating it because such a preoccupation can keep me in a cycle of reactivity with that anger. As Founder Niwano cautions, “As long as we are fixated on our delusions, thinking ‘I want to be free from my delusions, I want to be free from them,’ our minds remain caught on the idea of delusion, making it impossible to free ourselves from them” (Shinshaku hokke sanbukyo 1:307).
Furthermore, looking at my anger as a kind of enemy that I want to eliminate will prevent me from seeing the compassion already present within the anger itself—discovering the realm of bodhisattvas within the realm of hells. My anger, while unskillful, is at the same time a dimension of compassion for myself, as it arises from my deepest wish to avoid the kind of suffering that I incurred as a child for my tardiness. Recognizing and affirming this deepest wish can help heal the old wound underlying my anger.
Going one step further, I found that I also needed to discover the compassion (realm of bodhisattvas) within the anger (realm of hells) of those who harshly reprimanded me for many things, including my tardiness. At heart, they were concerned with my happiness, even if because of their own suffering, they were decidedly unskillful in trying to guide me. This is forgiveness from a Buddhist perspective.
Practicing the Truth of the Path entails embracing an ecology of practices that deal with the causes of suffering in multiple ways. If I am mindful in daily life, I can stop outbursts of anger when they are about to erupt. But beyond this kind of stopgap measure, I must also undertake practices that work as antidotes to anger to gradually overcome it by increasing my capacity for compassion and equanimity. Finally, I can look deeply into my anger to discover the bodhisattva aspiration within it, which is a way of embracing the anger as my “good friend”—my own personal Devadatta. Instead of suppressing my anger or opposing it, this approach transforms it by revealing the compassion that is its original nature, buddha nature.
Next time, we’ll conclude by considering the Truth of Extinguishment from the perspective of practicing the Dharma in the here and now.