My purpose for writing this study of Senji Sho by Nichiren Shonin is to try to share my thoughts on this important writing. There are many wonderful commentaries available that may do a better job at explaining all the details of this work. My intent however is to lay out what I feel are important points and present them as I understand them.
It has been my experience that for many who approach some of Nichiren’s more doctrinal writings they can seem overwhelming. Nichiren is very thorough when he outlines his reasoning and how he has arrived at a particular conclusion. As many people read through these detailed exegeses they can become confused and miss the reasons behind what he is doing. It is my hope that as I break it down some it may be more approachable by modern Western readers. In today’s age when people are looking for fast succinct brief explanations Nichiren can seem too detailed. Of course he has to be and he should be, so do not take this as a criticism of those details. As I have given lectures on his more detailed writings it has seemed most helpful to others if I group things into smaller sections and extract out some of the details and sometimes even re-order items.
Nichiren’s logic is flawless and I would not presume to try to improve upon it. I would however present things in a simpler fashion for the understanding of the average person. By doing this I hope that it will encourage people to try to get deeper into the doctrine presented and study it deeper, even perhaps reading through the writings that they have been overwhelmed by in the past.
With that being said this is how I will lay out this presentation. First I would like to talk about why timing is so important. I will try to gather all the points made throughout the Senji Sho that pertain to time and try to lay them out in a vernacular that is easy to understand without purposefully omitting important points. I’ll reference things using footnotes that can be read as independent items but won’t clutter the points explained. This way hopefully I can make the flow somewhat easier for folks.
On the matter of footnotes I think it would be helpful for people, as they read Nichiren’s writings, to remember that these old works reference scrolls and not bound paginated volumes as we are so accustomed too, so the entire scroll or fascicle must be referenced. Also the convention of footnotes was not used so when something was quoted it was customary to site the entire work or occasionally narrowing it down to a scroll of that work. Another item is that not every one had access to many of the volumes Nichiren cites in his writings. Folks couldn’t just go on the internet and look it up so it was absolutely necessary for Nichiren to provided very accurate references to what he claimed. I suspect he assumed that people who were reading his writings either during his lifetime or later would not have easy access to the important writings he quotes so he goes into a lot of details with quotes and titles and so forth.
All of this contributes to a certain amount of ‘clutter’ in the middle of a writing that many folks are not used to. And this ‘clutter’ I suspect contributes to a certain discomfort when reading these well thought out and well referenced writings of Nichiren.
The next point I wish to cover will be the spread of the Lotus Sutra over the various ages of Buddhism beginning first with it’s teaching by the Buddha and finally ending with Nichiren in Japan.
The third point I’ll talk about will be the ideas surrounding capacity of people and how this ties in to the correct teaching and the time.
Finally I’ll briefly summarize Nichiren’s critique of the various major Buddhist denominations and the teachers during his lifetime. Also I’ll include Nichiren’s predictions or his revealing of the predictions found in various Buddhist Sutras for people who ignore the teaching of the Lotus Sutra. From this section alone we can see Nichiren’s unwavering conviction and his returning to his sincere belief in the Rissho Ankoku Ron.
The reader of course will be the final judge of how well I achieve my aim, but my most ardent wish is that after reading this they will be more inclined to approach a study of this important writing in a way they may not have before. That will be the measure of my success more than any praise or criticism. For even if in disagreement a persons picks up the Senji Sho for themselves to complain about what I have written then have I not caused them to study for themselves. How great that would be.
