By M. LaVora Perry
Lotus Sutra Buddhism is not affiliated with a Buddhist organization.
Read the Lotus Sutra, Nichiren’s writings, and a dictionary of Buddhism at NichirenLibrary.org.
Get the Lotus Sutra Study Guide at bit.ly/lotus-sutra-resources.
Listen to Nam Myoho Renge Kyo being chanted
Translation: “Devotion to the Wonderful Law of the Lotus Flower Teaching of the Buddha”
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M. LaVora Perry
When I was 14 years old, on Earth Day, April 22, 1976, I had a vivid dream about specific details in the Lotus Sutra. I grew up in the midwestern United States, in Cleveland, Ohio. My father was a Primitive Baptist preacher who moved north from Georgia in the 1940’s to escape Jim Crow. I’d never read heard the words “sutra,” “Buddha,” or “Buddhism”. My dream included a description of our present age, which is also described in the Lotus and other sutras (Buddhist teachings). A voice in my dream told me that, unless the people of the future learned to live in peace, they would destroy the world.
Various sutras describe our present time as an age of “fear and evil”. In the Lotus, some of the Buddha’s followers vowed to live during our age in order to create a peaceful world. I believe all of us alive today are those followers, known as the Bodhissatvas of the Earth.
Like you may be, I’m horrified by the devastation that Donald Trump is unleashing. His election win, along with personal problems and global events like Israel’s war on Gaza, caused me to fall into a bipolar 2 depression that lasted for weeks. Then I decided that one thing I can do about it all is strengthen my commitment to the vow I made in my dream as a Bodhisattva of the Earth. I created Lotus Sutra Buddhism to keep that vow.
In Lotus Sutra Buddhism, I write about Buddhist concepts and relate them to my life, our lives, and current events. I talk about how all of us can use our inherent and limitless power to turn suffering into joy and poison into medicine.
The Lotus Sutra and Nichiren
Since 1987, I’ve practiced Nichiren Buddhism by chanting Nam Myoho Renge Kyo—the title of the Lotus Sutra in Sanskrit and Japanese. Nam means “Devotion” in Sanskrit, and Myoho Renge Kyo means “Wonderful Law of the Lotus Flower Teaching of the Buddha” in Japanese. Nichiren, a 13th-century Japanese monk and scholar, propagated the practice of chanting devotion to the Lotus Sutra. Hear people chanting here.
The Lotus Sutra is the 3,000-year-old final teaching of the Buddha, the founder of Buddhism who lived in India. His given name was Siddhartha Gautama. He came to be known as Shakyamuni, which means Sage of the Shakya Clan. “Buddha” means “the awakened”. The Buddha called the Lotus Sutra his “foremost” teaching, the “king of sutras,” the teaching that all of the sutras he’d taught during the previous 40 years led to. In its chapter 16, “Life Span of the Thus Come One”, he said:
“There is no ebb and flow of birth and death, and there is no existing in this world and later entering extinction.”
The Buddha said we’re all eternal and limitlessly powerful and compassionate Buddhas, but we forget who we are. The purpose of Buddhist practice is to help us remember. When we do, this is called enlightenment or Buddhahood.
A common mortal is an entity of the three bodies, and a true Buddha. -Nichiren, “The True Aspect of All Phenomena”
The Dalai Lama’s publisher — Wisdom — published my children’s novel Taneesha Never Disparaging. It’s the world’s first book about an African-American Buddhist child. She’s being bullied like I was in middle school. Award-winning illustrator, the late Floyd Cooper, created the cover art. I wish I could delete mention of Daisaku Ikeda in it. But, I can’t until it goes into reprint. So just ignore that part. My other children’s book is about the eternity and inseparability of life told through an ancient Chinese Buddhist legend about the love and devotion of a father and son: Wu-lung and I-lung. Support independent booksellers by buying it on Alibris.com. Email me if you’d like an autographed copy: sutraofthelotusflower@gmail.com.
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