Connections

The Lotus Sutra reveals a revolutionary principle: all of the Buddha’s teachings—every doctrine, practice, and realization—are skillful means (upaya) leading to a single destination. The One Vehicle (Skt. ekayana) does not invalidate the provisional teachings that preceded it; rather, it recontextualizes them, revealing their true purpose and illuminating them as aspects of a complete whole. As the Lotus Sutra declares in the “Expedient Means” chapter: “The Buddhas, the World

When I look at the landscape of contemporary Western Buddhism, I keep returning to a single, uncomfortable observation: much of what passes for "advanced insight," "authentic practice," or "real meditation" is saturated with a quiet but persistent elitism. It is rarely named, but it shapes the culture—who feels welcome, who feels competent, who feels legitimate, and who feels shut out before they even begin. And nowhere is this more visible than in the mythology that has grow

A good friend recently sent me the Tendai transmission text attributed to Saicho - The Bloodline for the Sublime Dharma of the Lotus Flower Sūtra , with a postscript by the Tendai patriarch Ryogen. I wasn’t looking for it directly, as my original question to my friend was about Zhiyi’s comments on the word Sutra (Kyo / 経) for another project I am working on. If anything, the text found me. And as I read it, slowly and with the instinctive pause that comes when something is b

It’s funny how teachings that once seemed clear can become perplexing in the middle of the night. At oh-dark-thirty in the morning, insomnia and imagination conspire to reveal our own Great Doubt . For me, these are the hours when life and decay, rebirth and extinction, swirl together into uneasy questions. The Buddha’s own death—his so-called final nirvana —can suddenly feel closer, and more mysterious, than ever. When I first read Chapter 21 of the Lotus Sutra , I was struc

When a Zen practitioner once described Nichiren Buddhism to me as “folksy,” I wasn’t sure how to take it. The word hung between us, dragging into an uncomfortable silence. The pause clearly unsettled our conversation. I didn’t know how to read what they meant. My first reaction was taking it as a criticism, or perhaps as something mildly condescending. “Folksy” seemed to imply unrefined, sentimental, or even performative. The kind of backhanded compliment one might give when

Language, like life itself, is always in motion. It evolves, breathes, and reshapes itself through centuries of human expression. When I first learned that a modern English speaker would barely understand a word of 13th-century English, it made me wonder: what about Japanese? More specifically, what about Nichiren himself—the 13th-century Buddhist reformer who advocated the chanting of the sacred title of the Lotus Sutra, Namu Myōhō Renge Kyō ? Would his chanting sound like

Nichiryu Mark Herrick October 9, 2025 It's puzzling to me how often the collapse of a theistic frame sends a brilliant mind not toward a new spiritual discipline but toward a complete rejection of their instinctual sense of awe and connection which drove their original spiritual seeking. I've watched it happen in colleagues, friends, and public thinkers: the old proofs fail, theodicies ring hollow, and the desire for intellectual integrity demands an exit. My own rejection of

There is a popular phrase in modern nondual spirituality: “Let go of all methods.” It sounds pure, liberating, even prophetic, an announcement from the mountaintop that effort is over, the journey complete. Teachers drawing from Zen and Advaita sometimes express this conviction in poetic clarity: that awakening is our natural state that methods merely perpetuate the illusion of seeking, and that the highest realization is to rest as awareness itself. I understand the appeal.

There is a kind of magical thinking that sometimes passes as Buddhist wisdom, the belief that the Buddha’s only thought was nonviolence, and that gentle passivity is the single answer to every human conflict. This view, however noble in sentiment, flattens the Dharma into a naïve idealism and denies the subtle discernment ( prajña ) that lies at the heart of the Buddha’s teaching. The sutras reveal a far more nuanced vision: compassion is not weakness, and nonviolence is not

The Buddha's Approach to the Ultimate Question From the earliest days of human reflection, one question has burned brighter than nearly all others: What happens after we die? No exploration of life's meaning can avoid its most sobering counterpart—what happens when life ends? If we are to understand why we are here, we must also ask where we are going. For many spiritual traditions, this is a central question. In Buddhism, the answer is not about a final destination but a rad

When I think about the question of whether consciousness is nonlocal, as some researchers in neuroscience and noetic studies propose, I find myself drawn back to the old debates between the Yogacara and Madhyamaka schools of Buddhism. Contemplating the noetic theory of nonlocal consciousness, I’s reminded of the Lotus Sutra speaking across the centuries. The sutra doesn’t argue in the abstract about whether mind is local or nonlocal, it points to something deeper: that the tr

I was born in 2035, ten years after the First Validation. By then, the debates had ended. The data had piled high enough, replicated across continents and laboratories, until even the most stubborn materialists relented. The announcement had been broadcast with a calm gravitas usually reserved for wars or pandemics: consciousness is not confined to the brain. I was too young to remember that day, but my mother used to tell me about the silence that followed, a hush that desce

When Zhiyi of the Tiantai school articulated the Threefold Truth —the truth of emptiness, the truth of provisional existence, and the truth of the middle he was not offering three separate realities, but one reality seen from three perspectives. Emptiness ( sunyata ) reveals that all things lack any fixed, independent essence; they arise only in interdependence. Provisional existence affirms that, despite their emptiness, things do appear and function provisionally in the wor

Lately I've been listening for a certain musical sonic rhythm inside practice. A rise and fall of experience that feels like storm-tide more than straight line. Joshua Schrei’s Emerald Podcast calls this an "apocalyptic cycle," the swell of gestation and birth, rupture and release, an unveiling that keeps happening within and around us. In the language of my personal practice’s Lotus Sutra I've practiced for over fifty years this is called: defilements are awakening [Bonno so

I've been practicing Buddhism for fifty years, and I still feel broken. This admission surfaces regularly in therapy sessions, usually accompanied by a familiar shame. After five decades of meditation, study, and sincere effort, shouldn't I be fixed by now? Shouldn't the anxiety have dissolved, the depression lifted, the reactive patterns transformed into wisdom? Instead, I find myself caught in what feels like spiritual quicksand; one step forward, two steps back, still gra

A Journey Through the Stages of Buddhist Practice There's a fascinating pattern that emerges when we examine the spiritual journey across Buddhist traditions—a progression that resembles a bell curve, beginning and ending with simplicity, but passing through a necessary phase of complexity and deep study. This isn't just theoretical speculation; it's a pattern that appears repeatedly in Buddhist literature, from classical texts to contemporary practice. The Pattern Emerges Th

Abstract This essay examines the benefits and risks of personal sharing within Buddhist sangha communities, exploring how these spiritual communities can support personal growth while maintaining appropriate boundaries with formal therapeutic practice. Drawing on academic research in Buddhist psychology, group dynamics, and clinical ethics, this analysis addresses the complex interplay between Buddhist dharma teachings and psychological healing, with particular attention to t

Abstract This paper argues that a central factor in the historical and contemporary fragmentation of Nichiren Buddhism stems from fundamental misinterpretations of Nichiren's writings that erroneously suggest he considered the traditional Buddhist Precepts and Paramitas obsolete in the age of Mappo. Through careful textual analysis and historical contextualization, this study demonstrates that Nichiren never rejected these foundational Buddhist practices but rather sought to

Introduction Nichiren Buddhism occupies a unique place in the landscape of global Buddhism. Rooted in the thirteenth century teachings of the fiery reformer Nichiren (1222–1282), it offers a bold promise: by chanting Namu Myoho Renge Kyo [Daimoku] ordinary people can directly awaken to the deepest truth of life itself. This is a tradition that proclaims, with confidence, that enlightenment is available “here and now,” not in distant lifetimes or esoteric retreats. And yet, fo

In the Jissho‑sho ( Treatise on All Phenomena as Ultimate Reality ), Nichiren reinterprets the Tendai tradition of Shikan —calm ( śamatha ) and insight ( vipaśyana )— making it accessible and relevant to the lives of ordinary people. Tiantai’s Great Concentration and Insight ( Maka Shikan ) required arduous and lengthy structured meditative stages in a monastery setting to realize the Three Thousand Realms in a Single Thought‑Moment ( ichinen sanzen ). Nichiren believed this