A Buddhist Take On This Time

There is always a pattern and a cycle.

Recently, the renowned billionaire and businessman Ray Dalio has been looking at the economic cycles. He coined the term 'one of those' when he saw a pattern emerging and sitting on a cycle surfaced from the data he had been researching.

The cliche ‘history repeats itself’ verifies that we have known and identified this cyclic development and recognisable patterns in its flow since ancient history.

While Dalio has been doing insightful work on the economic cycles, historians have done the same with different ages and areas of human behaviour. In the western context, we have, for example, art periods like Renaissance (1495–1527), Mannerism (1520–1600), Baroque (1600–1725) and Rococo (1720–1760), etc.

We all know about prehistoric times like the stone age, the bronze age, etc. Humans attempted to identify, classify, and structure the past to inform us about the current and teach us what to do with the future. The recorded history is roughly 5,000 years starting from the Sumerian script.

What is the Buddhist take on the periods we learn, live, and expect to come?

In Nichiren Buddhism, everything has been based on three main periods describing how the Buddhist philosophy and religious practices have evolved. These eras are called the Former, the Middle and the Latter Day of The Law.

The Law indicates that the world functions based on universal and applicable principles regardless of the time, culture, or schools of thought. It is not a fabrication of airy-fairy opinions but needs to be grounded in reality, current science and common sense. In many of his writings, Nichiren Daishonin (1222–1282) emphasised Buddhism as Reason.

Even if the era is different, the Law of universal life works similarly, and there is no exception. We cannot cut corners but understand this Law and its manifestation as the karma we create. I wrote more about karma in one of my previous articles.

The Former Day of the Law

The first era in the history of Buddhism started when the first historical Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama, was alive in India (c. 563 BCE or 480 BCE — c. 483 or 400 BCE). He was originally a prince of the Shakya clan and the son of King Śuddhodana and Queen Maya Devi. People gave him his name Shakyamuni meaning the Sage of Shakyas.

Shakyamuni had a long life, and he was travelling around India, teaching and gathering a huge following. His followers collected the last eight years of his teachings as the Lotus Sutra. According to Buddhist scholars, it is the epitome of his philosophy and wisdom.

During the Former Day of the Law, people still shared a connection to Shakyamuni as a teacher and enlightened human. They wanted to be faithful to Shakyamuni’s ideas’ original meaning, intent, and content without adding their interpretations or opinions.

The teachings travelled as an orally transmitted tradition until the disciples started to record his teachings as sutras. Each sutra begins with the phrase “Thus I have heard “ to verify that it is Shakyamuni’s teaching and not an edited version.

According to Nāgārjuna’s (c. 150–250) work “The Treatise on the Middle Way”, The Former Day of the Law lasted one thousand years. The teachings were practical, some profoundly philosophical, but constantly connected to the daily realities of the people. The practice was able to bring happiness, wisdom and benefits to ordinary people.

The Middle Day of the Law

After spreading the original teachings of Shakyamuni wide and far, they started to lose connection to the originator and his intent.

Some sutras travelled to Southeast Asia, forming monastic and rigid Buddhist traditions. We see those forms still today as yellow-robed monks and splendid temples. They belong to this Theravada or Hinayana tradition that was orthodox and strictly followed the Sutras to the letter.

Lay believers couldn’t practice Theravada, but they handed alms and religious practices to the monks who were there to do the prayers, etc., on behalf of the people.

Another stream of Buddhist tradition, Mahayana, travelled through the Himalayas to China, Korea and later Japan. Mahayana tradition was more interested in the intent of the Shakyamuni’s teachings than blindly following the ancient rules and rituals set for people of a different era. This intent was to help people to become happy, free and prosperous.

Mahayana Buddhists were also very interested in translating the Sanskrit language Sutras into Chinese. The scholar of that tradition created classic works, and the Buddhist philosophy flourished as a school of thought.

One of this era’s most famous and elaborate philosophers was T’ien-T’ai (538–597) in China. His classification of the sutras and brilliant work on their meanings is still researched and referred to today.

However, according to the predictions of the sutras, the Middle Day of the Law was also an era when the beautiful philosophical constructs and profound wisdom of the sutras lost their power to help ordinary people. They could not apply those complicated practices to their lives to become happy and benefit from the Buddhist tradition.

According to the various sutras and other scriptures, the Middle Day of the Law lasted 500 to 1000 years.

The Latter Day of the Law

The era that we are living in now started around 1000 AD. The Latter Day of the Law is the current Buddhist cycle of philosophical, religious and practical traditions. According to the sutras, the Latter Day of the Law lasts for ten thousand years and more.

Unprecedented crises, conflicts and challenges characterise this era. The vast majority of people have lost their connections to any spiritual truths, and the world is in free fall to its destruction.

In one of his most well-known writings, Nichiren Daishonin described the situation of the Latter Day of the Law in Japan:

“In recent years, there have been unusual disturbances in the heavens, strange occurrences on earth, famine and pestilence, all affecting every corner of the empire and spreading throughout the land. Oxen and horses lie dead in the streets, and the bones of the stricken crowd the highways. Over half the population has already been carried off by death, and there is hardly a single person who does not grieve…

…Famine and epidemics rage more fiercely than ever, beggars are everywhere in sight, and scenes of death fill our eyes. Corpses pile up in mounds like observation platforms, and dead bodies lie side by side like planks on a bridge.” (WND vol 1, pp. 1 and 6).

Sounds familiar. Today’s world has not changed much from medieval Japan. We have a pandemic, famines, warfare, global economic crisis after crisis, and looming climate change on top of the dystopic picture. What Daishonin described some 760 years ago is like today’s CNN report from different parts of the world.

Is all then lost?

When people lose their hope and spirituality, the decline is rapid and terrible. Greed, anger and ignorance win the race, causing suffering and horrible pain.

However, there is a way out. In his letter On Establishing the Correct Teaching for the Peace of the Land, Daishonin wrote to the regent that the cause of all these problems and horrors is people’s way of trusting erroneous teachings.

In the Daishonin days in Japan, the Buddhist and Shinto temples were corrupted, and military rulers used them to keep people under their ironclad rule. There was no respect for life, and people were abused and slaved to provide for the ruling clan’s luxurious circumstances and the priesthood’s easy living. A similar development was everywhere in the world.

The correct teaching that Daishonin wanted the ruler of Japan to embrace was equality of all and respect for life and its sanctity.

We have seen how external changes, revolutions, wars and suppression never bring any benefits. Putting our faith in them will accelerate the catastrophe.

Only if people change their attitudes will society and the world change. Behaviours change only if an inner change in our minds and hearts occurs. It gives hope.

We don’t need to pray for external forces keys to unlock the positive potential of our lives. If we put respect for life as the driving force of our goals, mission statements and strategies, the world will change.

Where from here?

In Buddhism, life is the Buddha and worthy of respect.

We need to understand that our life is more valuable than anything else, and so are the lives of others. It is nothing outside of our reach; it is us. We are the answer to the question: how can we get out of this shit?

As Ray Dalio and many others have shown us, everything goes in cycles. It is up to us to decide if the current one is vicious or the cycle of success.