The Dharma Never Fades

The First Person and the Fiftieth Person

A person meditating on a mountain watching their ancestors through time

I’ve been struggling to make sense of what, on the surface, seemed to me to be a contradiction in chapter eighteen of the Lotus Sutra, where it says the merits of a teaching passed from person to person all the way to a figurative fiftieth listener are beyond measure. Then the very next sentence says the first person in the chain, the one who heard it in the assembly, gains merit “far greater still.” I’ve always read that and thought the ranking of merits was a distinction without significance. Here’s what I’ve come to see: we’re the fiftieth person and the first hearer at the same time, and that’s why the Dharma never fades.

The sutra describes the fiftieth person’s merit as immeasurable, boundless, and manifold. Then it calls the first hearer’s merit greater. Greater than boundless? Once something is immeasurable, there’s nothing left to measure. Do I need a calculator?

There’s another riddle in the Lotus Sutra. Chapter eighteen sets its scene after the Buddha has passed away, yet in chapter sixteen the Buddha reveals he never passes away. He only appears to leave so we’ll value the medicine and take it ourselves. So how does this jibe with a chapter set after the Buddha is gone?

What’s the point of these rhetorical flourishes? Understanding requires us to be nimble and flexible in our thinking. It begins by accepting the sutra is describing the indescribable using riddles and metaphors.

It helps to remember that chapter eighteen wasn’t preached on the ground. The Buddha raised the entire assembly up into the air surrounding the treasure tower. This is the Ceremony in the Air, the scene Nichiren inscribed on the calligraphic mandala, the Gohonzon. And since the Buddha never left, there’s no “after.” The assembly is still in session. When we chant Namu Myoho Renge Kyo in front of the Gohonzon, we’re participating along with the Buddha and the entire assembly gathered there.

Unpacking these riddles, we learn we’re the fiftieth person and the first hearer at the same time. On one level, we’re the figurative fiftieth. The sutra reached us through translators, teachers, and books, a long way from Vulture Peak. On another, when we sit before the Gohonzon, we’re also the first hearer.

The middle way doesn’t make us choose between them. It holds both at once, in the same moment of mind. So when the sutra ranks the first hearer above the fiftieth, it’s telling us something about ourselves. While we may live twenty-five centuries after the historical Buddha, we can share the same moment of awakening with him.

The first hearer’s seat isn’t 2,500 years away. Read through the Ceremony in the Air, it’s wherever we sit down to practice. Read through the middle way, we’re both hearers at once. So we read the sutra twice. The plain reading keeps us anchored in the provisional world, and reading it as a picture of ourselves shows us the Buddha Dharma right there within it. Every hearer in the sutra is someone we already are, and every assembly in it is one we’re already sitting in. That’s why the Dharma never fades.

Namu Myoho Renge Kyo

Namu Myoho Renge Kyo

Namu Myoho Renge Kyo