If a believer in the teachings of our sect, sitting in front of the Mandala, recognises the identity of his own body with the real state of the Ten Worlds – if he annihilates in his consciousness all distinction between his own self and all others; if he frees himself from the passions of love and hatred – it is then certain that he will be able to exercise complete control over pleasure, cheerfulness, anger, sorrow and so forth whenever they arise, and to act justly and impartially to all with whom he may come in contact. His person will have already partly entered the region of Buddhas, even in this present life. How, then, can he doubt that he will attain to complete Buddhahood in the hereafter? Therefore Nichiren says, “The doctrines of our sect stand far above those of the other eight sects. They teach us that we can become Buddhas immediately. If one only sees that the mind, the Buddha, and all living beings are one and all embodied in his own thought, and are not to be found elsewhere, he can certainly attain to enlightenment in his earthly life however low his intellect may be. And if the man of low intellect can do so, how much more a man of higher intellectual status? He, surely, need stand in no doubt about the matter. A fortiori, then, must this be the case with those whose intellects are of the highest order of all. Since the doctrines taught by Sakyamuni all his life long are those which take the nature of a living being as the basis on which they stand, anyone who understands his own nature is called a Buddha, while those unable to do so are justly termed ‘the vulgar.’ ”