Changing One's Karma Flashcards
24) Nichiren explains that slandering or disparaging the Lotus Sutra is the most fundamental negative cause a person can make. What does it mean to slander the Lotus Sutra? (See The Basics, p. 69)
Slandering the Lotus Sutra means disparaging or denying the true potential and dignity of human beings and represents the ultimate form of evil, giving rise to all kinds of bad causes.
25) In the general description of causality in Buddhism underlying the concept of karma, causes created in past lives determine the suffering and good fortune we experience in this life. According to this view, however, even if we understand the causes of our present suffering, there is little we can do to resolve it in this lifetime. Nichiren Buddhism, however, teaches us how to change our karma, or destiny, in this lifetime. What is core to this transformation? (See The Basics, p. 69)
By replacing the most evil cause with the greatest good cause, the corresponding result will also be transformed into good. Core to this transformation is chanting Nam-myoho-renge-kyo.
26) Nichiren teaches that encountering hardships and being able to change our karma is a benefit of Buddhist practice called “lessening one’s karmic retribution.” This concept teaches that the beneficial power of our Buddhist practice enables us to receive the effects of serious offenses in previous lifetimes in this single lifetime and in a much-diminished form. Not only that, we can also extinguish all of our negative karma from the unperceivable past. From this perspective, hardships become important opportunities to ____________. Please fill in the blank. (See The Basics, p. 71)
Hardships become important opportunities to rid ourselves of past negative karma and to forge our lives.
27) In contrast to the Lotus Sutra, Buddhism in general explains that bodhisattvas are born into the world out of a wish to fulfill their vow, while ordinary people are born into their present circumstances as a result of their past karma. However, the Lotus Sutra’s principle of “voluntarily assuming the appropriate karma” teaches that _______. Please fill in the blank. (See The Basics, p. 71)
The Lotus Sutra teaches that bodhisattvas who have accumulated great good fortune through their Buddhist practice in past lives voluntarily relinquish the rewards due them for their pure deeds and choose instead to be born into this impure world that is filled with evil. They do so because they feel compassion for living beings and wish to save them from suffering.
