Left-home People Should Recite the Three Sutras

If you can intuitively comprehend the state of these three sutras,
then you will not have been a Buddhist in vain.

What are the three sutras? They are the Flower Adornment (Avatamsaka) Sutra, the Shurangama Sutra, and the Dharma Flower Sutra. These three sutras are the invaluable words of Shakyamuni Buddha, recounted by Venerable Ananda, and later recorded on palm leaves and circulated throughout the world. These are the sutras that every Buddhist should study and recite.

At the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas, all the left-home people and laypeople must be able to recite these three sutras from memory. At the very least, they must be able to recite the Shurangama Sutra from memory. They may memorize two of the sutras, or all three sutras, which would be ideal. But you must understand the sutras’ meaning. Do not “swallow the date whole,” that is, recite without understanding. If you don’t seek to gain a clear understanding, it’s useless. If you can intuitively comprehend the state of these three sutras, then you will not have been a Buddhist in vain.

At the age of thirty, the Buddha sat under the Bodhi Tree and attained Proper Enlightenment. For twenty-one days, he remained in samadhi and spoke The Great Means Expansive Buddha Flower Adornment Sutra for the Great Knights of the Dharma-body (Bodhisattvas). This sutra encompasses the three treasuries and twelve divisions of the canon. It explains the perfectly fused and unobstructed state of the myriad phenomena of the universe, which is the state of the “One True Dharma Realm.”

Venerable Ananda valued only erudition and neglected cultivation. Because of this, he was snared by Matangi’s mantra from the ancient Brahma Heaven, and he was on the verge of destroying the substance of his precepts. At that time, Shakyamuni Buddha was sixty-two years of age. He used the Shurangama Mantra to rescue Venerable Ananda from the woman’s artifice, and then spoke for him the Sutra of the Foremost Shurangama of the Great Buddha’s Summit. This is the sutra which activates our wisdom and reveals the principles. If we can take these principles and expound them, expanding their scope and making inferences from them, our wisdom will certainly become as vast as the sea.

At the age of seventy-two, for the great Arhats and great Bodhisattvas in the Dharma Flower Assembly on Spiritual Mountain (Vulture Peak), the Buddha spoke the doctrine of the One Buddha Vehicle, which is the doctrine for becoming a Buddha. At that point, those of the small vehicle turned from the small towards the great, and the Buddha bestowed predictions of future Buddhahood upon them. That’s why the Wonderful Dharma Lotus Flower Sutra is considered the sutra for becoming a Buddha.

If left-home people were to study the sutras the way students study in school, it would be easy for them to memorize the three treasuries and the twelve divisions of the canon. Conversely, after becoming monastics, they think that’s enough. They may recite the Buddha’s name, investigate Chan meditation, study the teachings, uphold the precepts, or learn esoteric dharmas. Eventually, they don’t study the sutras. Since they overlook the importance of studying the sutras, each generation doesn’t measure up to the prior one, and they become good-for-nothing, lazy gluttons. This is an unfortunate situation in Buddhism. If we don’t rectify this wrong concept immediately, the future of Buddhism is unimaginable.