Day 25

Day 25 covers all of Chapter 20, Never-Despising Bodhisattva, and opens Chapter 21, The Supernatural Powers of the Tathāgatas.

Having last month concluded the story of Never-Despising Bodhisattva, we move on to the Supernatural Powers of the Tathāgatas.

Thereupon the Bodhisattva-mahāsattvas as many as the particles of dust of one thousand worlds, who had sprung up from underground, joined their hands together towards the Buddha with all their hearts, looked up at his honorable face, and said to him:

“World-Honored One! After your extinction, we will expound this sūtra in the worlds of the Buddhas of your replicas and also in the place from which you will pass away. Why is that? It is because we also wish to obtain this true, pure and great Dharma, to keep, read, recite, expound and copy [this sūtra], and to make offerings to it.”

I’ve been rereading Nichiren’s writings, and I came upon this quote today in the Shinkoku-ō Gosho (Doctrine 1):

Of the spotless mirrors of the holy teachings preached in His lifetime, the Lotus Sutra is the special divine mirror. A copper mirror can show the figure of a man but not his mind. The divine mirror of the Lotus Sutra shows not only a man’s figure but also his mind. Not only the current mind of a man but also his karma in the previous life and his reward and retribution in the future can clearly be spotlighted.

I, too, wish to “obtain this true, pure and great Dharma.”