10 Billion Years Ago

On Paths Toward Awakening

(4)

The Journey Continues

Two More turning points

in new york in 1983, a “revolution” in n.s.a., largely against the Japanese leadership taking over Nichiren Shoshu of America, resulting in many of us, including friend Robert LuPone, quitting Theatre District; this, largely because of N.S.A.’s unfulfilled promise they would develop American leadership. Actually, other issues were afoot, but no need to explore them here; today with another name, the former N.S.A. is alive and well in the United States. Making the attempt (trusting this was not one of those fanatical, uncompromising periods) to gather certain members of our group, known as “Theatre District,” to encourage them not to give up on their devotion to the Lotus Sutra. It didn’t work.

  Drifting away from N.S.A., in the succeeding seven years, continuing to study and practice with   Nichiren daily rituals, chanting Nam Myoho-Renge kyo, and very limited parts of the sutra, a fragment of Chapter 2, “Tactfulness” and all of Chapter 16, “The Eternal Life of the Tathagata” in the ancient Japanese Shindoku.

  However, even before the “revolution” in New York, living in West Hollywood sometime in 1982, on the shelves of the Bodhi Tree bookstore, a title beckoned—The Threefold Lotus Sutra. An English translation!

  Unbelievable—is it possible? Now to discover just exactly what we had been chanting all these years. Before returning to New York in 1983, this English translation of The Threefold Lotus Sutra had been read and reread several times and some passages memorized. Oh, what we all had been missing!

enter science – the new frontier in physics

Also in 1982, more or less at the same time, another discovery: in the New York Times Sunday Supplement, September 26, “Beyond Newton and Einstein / on the New Frontier of Physics” by Timothy Ferris, visiting professor at the University of Southern California School of Journalism, the author of  “Galaxies.”

  No turning back now! Easily, one might have read Ferris’s astounding, eye-opening article and chucked the Lotus Sutra and the Buddha’s teachings altogether, declaring, “Science alone offers a true picture of the reality of existence.”

  Quite the contrary; the article, the sutra, and my own meager knowledge accumulated up to that moment, outlined above, aligned magnificently, and profoundly, with the Buddha’s teachings.

  From the second paragraph of the article [italic emphasis added] – “These [unified] theories which stand on the very frontier of physics, are most precisely not expressed in words, but as mathematical equations. They imply that all the known forces in nature are manifestations of one basic interaction, and that once, long ago, all were part of a single universal force or process.

  In tune with the Buddha’s “Profound Law of the Void” a few pages later in the article, Ferris continues: “Normally we think of virtual particles as restricted to the quantum world of the very small. But in the first moments of cosmic history, the universe was very small. Conceivably, the whole show could have begun as a speck of quantum foam in a vacuum. Nothingness contains all of being, writes the physicist, Heinz R. Pagels in his book “The Cosmic Code.” “All of physics – everything we hope to know – is waiting in the vacuum to be discovered.”

  And this from The Threefold Lotus Sutra, Sutra of Innumerable Meanings, Preaching: “Bodhisattvas, if they want to learn and master the doctrine of Innumerable Meanings, should observe that all laws were originally, will be, and are in themselves void in nature and form; they are neither great nor small, neither appearing nor disappearing, neither fixed nor movable, and neither advancing nor retreating; and they are nondualistic, just emptiness. . .”

  The subject of virtual particles appearing then disappearing suddenly in a vacuum, has been explored at length in several television documentaries.  Continuing with the quote from the Sutra of Innumerable Meanings we find: ”According to the nature of an existence, such an existence emerges. According to the nature of an existence, such an existence settles. According to the nature of an existence, such an existence changes. According to the nature of an existence, such an existence vanishes. . . . Settling, changing, and vanishing are also like this . . . none of these existences settles down even for a moment, but all emerge and vanish anew every moment; and observe that they emerge, settle, change, and vanish instantly. . .

  The Innumerable Meanings originate from one law. The one law is namely, nonform.  Such nonform is formless, and not form. Being not form and formless, it is called the real aspect of things . . .

  At the time, reading the Ferris article, I knew I had stumbled on something profound; not specifically, but certainly aligned with the Buddha’s teachings; the point being that through succeeding years, never would I find a single word or sentence or concept in the Buddha’s Mahayana teachings that were not in alignment with “Beyond Newton and Einstein” article, nor in other advances science was making in this “new frontier in physics.” In 1983, Timothy Ferris wrote, produced, and narrated the PBS special, “Creation of the Universe” which brought the article to life on screen, and introduced the idea of “vacuum genesis” – everything that exists could have come from a single spark of energy in a vacuum.

  The PBS special, “The Buddha” narrated by Richard Gere, brought to mind once more that sentence from the Timothy Ferris article, all the known forces in nature are manifestations of one basic interaction, and that once, long ago, all were part of a single universal force or process; a realization of Siddhartha sitting beneath the Bodhi tree at the time of his awakening; that we are, all of humanity and all living things, a fulfillment of  this universal force and process that began billions of years ago.

  “Siddhartha meditated throughout the night, and all his former lives passed before him. He remembers all his previous lives, numbers of previous lives, male and female, and every other race, and every other being in the vast ocean of life forms; and he remembered it viscerally, so that means his awareness expanded—so that all the moments of the past were present to him.”