Question

What the Buddha awakened to is described in the Virtuous Practices chapter of the Infinite Senses Sutra as follows:

"(...) His mind is in extinction, his consciousness annihilated, his thought too is stilled; he has forever cut off erratic reasoning like dreaming and will no longer know sensory elements, aggregates, realms and activities. His body is neither existent nor non-existent, neither caused nor conditioned, neither in itself nor for others, etc."

On the other hand, it is said that the ego is produced by fundamental darkness, and that practicing includes striving for the erasure of the ego. How can this be reconciled with "I practice" and with offering good to the egos of the deceased?

Answer

I think we first need to go back to basics by explaining what "non-self" or " Ego-lessness " is in Buddhism.

Ego-lessness is part of what are known as "the four seals of the Dharma" in Japanese Shi-hō-in)

The Dharma seal is the symbol that shows that a doctrine belongs to Buddhist law. In this way, the Dharma seal indicates a specificity of Buddhism and enables us to recognize conformity to orthodoxy. It enables us both to judge whether a statement corresponds to Buddhist thought and to summarize, in the form of axioms or maxims, the characteristic features of Buddhism. In a way, it's the ABC of Buddhism, its gateway.

The four seals of the Dharma are:

1.       movements are impermanent,

2.       dharmas are egoless,

3.       all are suffering

4.       Nirvana is serenity and purity.

We therefore have four easily memorized criteria for recognizing whether a theory or statement conforms to the whole body of Buddhist teachings.

The four seals of the Dharma are a constant throughout the Buddha's teachings. They are to be found from the earliest Agamas Sutras to the last, the Nirvana Sutra.

We're going to take a closer look at the second Dharma seal, the Ego-lessness, which interests us today.

Multiple dharmas are egoless (in Japanese Shōhō muga).

The wording already requires some explanation. The multiple dharmas refer to phenomena, including ourselves. The Japanese word we translate as "ego" is Ga, meaning "I" or "me", hence our choice of the Latin ego, which has been part of our language since modern times. In many translations, the expression mu-ga is rendered as "deprived of one's own nature" or "without one's own nature".

The Buddhist notion of "absence of one's own nature" is the natural development of the notion of "dependent origination", which is the first expression of what the Buddha awakened to.

This kind of principle seems difficult to understand for "Cartesian" minds, for whom "you have to call a spade a spade". However, Buddhism calls this kind of consideration "attachment", "the view of permanence", as illustrated by the following sentence from the "Great Sutra on Causality":

"My friends, when space is surrounded by wood, by ivy, by rice straw, by mud, we get the name house. Likewise, my friends, when space is surrounded by bones, by muscles, by flesh and by skin, we get the name of body".

Clearly, this sutra exposes dependent origination (in Japanese: engi). I think we should pay attention to the expression "one obtains the name". It means "an idea is born", or "a notion is conceptualized". It's important to understand that dependent origination exposes the creation of such subjective concepts.

When we see a space surrounded by planks of wood, bricks or a garden, we immediately have the idea of a "house". Similarly, when we see a space surrounded by flesh, muscle and hair, the concept "human body" springs to mind. Now, the wooden planks, the tiles and the garden are the objective causes, the reasons for our subjective conceptualization of the notion of "house"; the bones, muscles and skin are those of our notion of "body". So, our subjective concepts (house, body, Eiffel Tower) depend on objective causes, independently of which these notions cannot exist. In other words, our subjective notions of house and body, to which we attach ourselves, are in fact impermanent and devoid of self. Dependent origination doesn't consider the house, the body or all forms of existence as absolute elements, but as subjective, relative existences. "We get the name" means that the house, the body are subjective conceptualizations, whereas dependent origination teaches that "the objective", i.e. everything around us, is the cause that causes "the subjective", i.e. consciousness, which is the effect. All these subjective notions are provisional, changing phenomena. All are subject to the laws of dependent origination, impermanence, absence of self and transformation.

Let's take an example from everyday life. A bottle of Coca-Cola sits on the table. If it's empty and you put water in it, it becomes a water bottle; if you put a flower in it, it becomes a vase; if you put a candle in it, it becomes a candleholder. If, then, we say to ourselves "it's a Coke bottle with water in it, a Coke bottle with a flower in it or a Coke bottle with a candle stuck in the neck, we're still in the mistaken view of the permanence of things, we're still sailing along the outer path, and so we can't obtain the "Dharma seal" of ego-lessness.

In Great Vehicle texts, the expression "emptiness" is used more often than "ego lessness". The two meanings are very close, as emptiness (in Sanskrit sunyata and in Japanese kū) designates the quality of that which is empty (sunia) of its own nature.

The concept of "ego lessness" is far removed from Western perception, and particularly from the classical French philosophical conception. To consider that the individual, for example, has no ego of his own, no personality, is not at the level of ordinary conventions. Of course, the individual has a personality, tastes or inclinations, and this is recognized by common sense. But these attributes depend on a variety of circumstances, and are therefore liable to vary if these conditions change. Contrary to the common view, the individual is not just the personality he believes himself to be, and which, until he constructs it, is merely the product of diverse circumstances.

Moreover, the word "muga", which has been translated as "without ego", can also be translated as "which is not ego". This meaning is very interesting, as it underlines the fact that we are under the illusion that our ego represents who we are. Everyone has an ego whose seat is the 7th consciousness, and with the Dharma's End sinking deeper and deeper, and with technological advances, more and more people feel the need to manifest their ego in some form. Social networks are an excellent medium for this display. People who truly have talent, knowledge, something to show, do so through art or even sport, while those who have nothing but still want to shout "I exist! Look at me", do so through urban rodeos, wall tagging, Abaya and Black-Blocks.

But this little me, born of 7th consciousness, is not the real me. The real me, the real ego, is the ego of the Buddha. In the 16th chapter of the Sutra, which we read every morning and evening as part of our daily practice, we find the ideogram "ga" 37 times, meaning "me", "I". But this self, this "I" is the absolute, universal and eternal self of the Buddha, born of the 9th consciousness which, through the energy of our faith and our practice towards the Dai-Gohonzon grows stronger day after day thanks to the powers of the Dharma and the Gohonzon. This 9th consciousness grows daily and progressively covers our 8th consciousness, the seat of our karma, which it erases, as well as our 7th consciousness, our first 6 consciousnesses and finally our 6 roots, which it purifies, enabling us to become Buddha from this body onwards, for at this point there is no longer any distinction between the objective and the subjective, and we perceive the true aspect of the dharmas.

It will certainly have escaped no one's notice that the "Jiga" stanzas in the 16th chapter of the Lotus Sutra begin with the ideogram "Ji" and end with the ideogram "Shin". It so happens that if we put these two ideograms together, we obtain the word "jishin", meaning "myself". In other words, in these stanzas, the Buddha is talking about himself. When we read these stanzas as part of our practice, we take up his words, which end with "I keep thinking, 'How can I lead people to enter the path without a superior and realize the Buddha body?

The Buddha body in question is subdivided into the "Dharma body", the "Wisdom (or Retribution) body" and the "Communication body".

The "Dharma body" is the true aspect of things to which the Buddha awakened: it is neither existent nor non-existent, neither caused nor conditioned, neither in itself nor for others, and so on. This "ultimate principle has no name".

The "wisdom body" is the reward of Buddhahood. It is manifested by the fact that "his mind is in extinction, his consciousness annihilated, his thought also pacified; he has forever cut short erratic reasoning like dreaming and will no longer know the elements, aggregates, domains and sensory activities".

The " Communication body " through which the Buddha teaches beings is manifested in the fact that "When the wise man, observing the principle, gave a name to everything, it was the unique, inconceivable Dharma of the simultaneity of cause and effect. Giving it a name, it was Myōhōrenge".

In reality, in the sutras prior to the Lotus Sutra and even in the first half of the Lotus Sutra, the ephemeral doctrine, beings, in order to become Buddha must pass from the nine worlds to the world of the Buddha, which indicates a transformation. However, true Buddhahood, the Buddhahood revealed in the profound of the sentences taught by NichIren Daishōnin, is awakening in this body, just as we are.

In this case, the Buddha's three bodies are called the triple body without artifice.

In other words, the revelation of the Buddha's original nature set out in the Lifespan chapter means that all beings, sentient and non-sentient alike, are all the Buddha with the triple artifice-free body at original awakening.

This triple body without artifice is the Buddha in accordance with reason. If we examine the matter in detail, the course of natural things expresses the functions of the Buddha. For example, the substance of plants is the body of Dharma at the original awakening. Their wisdom in ripening fruit and blossoming flowers at the same season is the body of retribution. The fact that they nourish sentient beings when they reach maturity is the body of communication.

The same applies to sentient beings. Their physical body manifests a small part of the substance of wonderful Dharma, which is the expression of the Dharma body without artifice. Their small parcel of wisdom is the manifestation of the body of retribution without artifice. Each of them has its own action, which manifests the body of communication without artifice.

Now, this is only from the theoretical point of view, but does not directly represent the threefold artifice-free body of the Dharma End. More profoundly, what has been established on the basis of manifest evidence, is Nam Myōhōrengekyō of seeding, the fundamental source of Buddhism, through the true practice of the wonder of the original cause.

In the Oral Transmission of the Doctrine, NichIren Daishōnin states:

"From the general point of view, the Thus-Coming designates all beings, but from the particular point of view, it refers to NichIren, his disciples and his followers. Also, the triple body without artifice is the practitioner of the Lotus Sutra in the End of Dharma. The honorific name of the triple body without artifice is Nam Myōhōrengekyō".

He goes on to say:

"This triple body without artifice is obtained with the help of a single word; that word is "faith".

Faith in the Dai-Gohonzon is sowing. Practicing with faith in the Dai-Gohonzon is the ripening, which enables us to immediately obtain the harvest, that is to say liberation through the fusion of our wisdom (replaced by faith) with the object that is the Gohonzon.

It is only in conviction in the doctrines of the NichIren Shōshū, which reveres NichIren Daishōnin as the fundamental Buddha, that we can realize awakening from this body and it is through practice that the true attainment of Buddhahood can manifest.

I'd now like to answer the second part of the question, which concerns the offering of good to the ancestors.

Firstly, the deceased no longer have an ego, since the 7th consciousness is formed at birth and ends with death. What remains after death is the 8th consciousness. At that point, either the 9th consciousness has replaced the 8th consciousness and we are Buddha, or it hasn't, and we sail into the next life at the whim of the 8th consciousness, also known as "karma".

That's the first point. Next, I'd like to tell an anecdote about offering good to the ancestors and their salvation.

Following a Gosho course on a letter from NichIren Daishōnin to Shijō Kingo, in which He wrote, in essence: "what a pity that your brothers have stopped practicing, because as a result, they no longer have the possibility of saving your parents", I put a question to the priest at the time: Shijō Kingo was practicing, so he had the possibility of saving his parents. But his brothers were no longer practicing, so they could no longer save their parents. What happens to the parents in this case? Are they saved or not?

The priest replied: "That's not the way to look at it. Simply, Shijō Kingo had the cause to save his parents, while his brothers no longer had the cause.

Indeed! We had to think in terms of cause, not effect.

We who practice generate the cause of our parents' salvation, independently of other family members who may practice something else and, as another priest told me when I lived in Japan, add fuel to the fire. Our relatives, living or dead, are part of our world of dharmas. So, if we become Buddhas, they become Buddhas too.

That's all I can say on the subject.