Compassion is a useful virtue, in that it can be effectively used by anyone. One of the most impressive things one can experience, as I have on many occasions, is the compassion that dying people often have for those around them. On many occasions I have seen dying people attempt to calm and cheer friends and relatives at their bedside. Of course, everyone can be wise to some degree as well, but there surely is a sense in which the way of compassionate action is more open to everyone than a way that emphasizes the acquisition of wisdom.

Compassion is best embodied in skill, in compassionate action. The tools in the hands of the Thousand-armed Kwan-yin symbolize the many means by which Kwan-yin can help living beings in need. This imagery is, I believe, revealing of the kind of wisdom embodied in Kwan-yin – not some kind of esoteric knowledge of the mind alone, but the practical wisdom found not only in minds but also in hands.

But skill is, after all, a kind of wisdom. So compassion should not be seen in contrast to wisdom but only in contrast to disembodied wisdom. To be compassionate is to embody compassion, not just to feel it or think about it or contemplate it. It is to actualize compassion in the world, wherever we are, and thus in our relationships with relatives, neighbors, friends, and even strangers. It is to be compassionate. This is to embody the Buddha, that is, to give life to the Buddha in the present world.

Though hardly unique to [Chapter 24] of the Lotus Sutra, one very clear message here is the one given by his buddha to Wonderful Voice Bodhisattva: Don’t make light of Shakyamuni’s world! Even though its ground is not made of gold or other precious materials but of dirt, even though it is not smooth but includes many high and low places and even rocks and mountains, even though its buddha and bodhisattvas are extremely short and unattractive compared with ours, one should never think that world is inferior.

We can only guess what is behind the concern contained in this statement. Obviously, the writers believed that someone was not taking this world seriously enough. Does it indicate a time and place where people thought some distant land, some faraway paradise, was to be preferred to this world? Does it indicate a reaction to a worldview that rejected the reality and importance of this world in favor of some ideal world? We cannot be sure. But it is very clear that both here and in many other places the Dharma Flower Sutra emphasizes the value and importance of life in this world, the home of Shakyamuni Buddha, in which the path of the bodhisattva can be taken, the land that is our only home and place of practice.