Category: Awakening to the Lotus

We can truly change the world for good. This is the bodhisattva ideal: to save all living beings as we walk our own path to enlightenment. By following the teachings of Nichiren Shonin and the Lotus Sutra, we can walk the Bodhisattva Path and transform this world into the Buddha’s Pure Land.

The Lotus Sutra was not simply stories and metaphors for Nichiren Shonin. It was a model for Buddhist life and a prophecy of what a Buddhist would experience in applying it’s teachings.

The teachings which had come before Buddhism, Confucianism and Brahmanism, provided a basic moral framework for society. Hinayana Buddhism had introduced the beginning of Buddhist philosophy. Pre-Lotus Sutra Mahāyāna Buddhism had introduced the selfless ethics of the Bodhisattva. However, though Nichiren Shonin’s ethics were based on these systems, Open Your Eyes to the Lotus Teaching also provided a means of comparison between all of the systems. Each of the previous teachings showed only a portion of the truth; they were incomplete in themselves. Only the Lotus Sutra is complete; we can find ethical truths in other systems only when they are viewed through the lens of the Lotus Sutra.

Because Nichiren Shonin has had the great compassion to teach the Lotus Sutra in the Declining Age of the Dharma, the transmission of the Three Great Hidden Dharmas will extend beyond the Declining Age of the Dharma into the endless future.

The merits of the Lotus Sutra are so profound that it can open the eyes of those who do not believe so that they can also share in its merits.

The merits of spreading the Odaimoku itself during the Declining Latter Day of the Dharma is immeasurably deeper than upholding it at any other time, or of upholding any other teaching at any time.

This Buddha had sixteen sons, who upon hearing of their father’s enlightenment, renounced their positions and joined him as disciples. They along with all of the heavenly kings asked that Buddha to expound the Dharma and bring peace to all suffering beings. They said, “May the merits we have accumulated by this offering be distributed among all living beings, may we and all living beings together attain the enlightenment of the Buddha.” This teaches the core of the Great Vehicle, that enlightenment is not individual but universal salvation.

Each of us possesses a gem of priceless value. We have the wisdom of the Buddha within our hearts, but we are not aware of it. This wisdom is the Buddha-nature, the potential to become a Buddha. Because of our deluded state we are unaware of our Buddha-nature and fail to make any effort to develop it.