We should not forget that as a householder, businessman, computer programmer, maintenance technician, clerk, no matter what, we are indeed playing a role. We have chosen to manifest ourselves in this life as common ordinary people who are in fact Buddhas. At the core of our life is the truth that, no matter what, we are Buddhas who have assumed a role in order to lead others to enlightenment.
Lotus Path: Practicing the Lotus Sutra Volume 1Quotes
The Ideal World, the Pure Land and Heaven
The foundation of the Lotus Sutra gives us a new concept of religion. It was expounded 2,500 years ago that, “This world can be a pure land or an ideal world.” We tend to complain about this world, seeing it as a corrupted human world. People want to give up the real world, and expect a pure land in another world after death. However, the Lotus Sutra teaches us that the pure land is neither another world, nor a place to go to after death. “Here is the ideal world, the pure land and heaven.”
Spring WritingsAlong the Path to Our Ultimate Destination
Sometimes I’ll use the idea of Magic City as an explanation to the benefits we see in our lives as a result of our practice. As humans we naturally have difficulties arise in our lives that we wish to address. Sometimes these are material in nature and we achieve our desired goal. Yet all of those benefits are in a sense our Magic City along the path toward our ultimate destination of Buddhahood. They are necessary to our ultimate spiritual development, just as the Magic City was essential to the travelers. The Magic City, though an illusion, actually did provide benefit to the travelers because they could rest and become refreshed. So too the accomplishment of overcoming our difficult circumstances are necessary to our practice, but it is not the final objective.
Lecture on the Lotus SutraAwakening to the Truth
The One Vehicle is the teaching that there are no permanent barriers to attaining Buddhahood. Even the worst evil-doers have the ability to awaken to the truth about themselves, repent of their wrong-doing, and begin to follow the way to Buddhahood if they take faith in the One Vehicle. Those who are looked down upon by others for any reason also have the ability to awaken to the incomparable dignity of Buddhahood if they take faith in the One Vehicle. There is no discrimination in the One Vehicle. People may be different based on race, class, ethnicity, culture, gender, sexual orientation, intelligence, personal habits, interests, spiritual maturity, and many other factors, but in the end all people have the same capacity to attain Buddhahood.
Lotus SeedsThe Three Seals
Fundamental to the law of dependent origination are the seals (or marks) of the Law. Seal is used in the sense of a brand that guarantees the validity of a document and serves as a person’s mark. Thus the seals of the Law are simultaneously its characteristics and its proof. Any theory that conforms to these characteristics is true; any theory that fails to do so is false. The three seals state that all things are impermanent, nothing has a persisting self, and nirvana is tranquility. Sometimes a fourth, all existence is suffering, is added to make the four seals of the Law.
Basic Buddhist ConceptsExperiencing 10 Realms
Human beings can experience the heart of compassion like a Buddha or a Bodhisattva. We also experience anger (asura), greed (hungry spirit), or mercilessness (animal), or sink into the bottom of sufferings (hell).
“Anger represents hells; greed—hungry spirits; ignorance—beasts; flattery—asura demons; delight—gods; and calm—men.” (Kanjin Honzon- Shö, WNS2, p. 134)
“The ‘mutual possession of ten realms’ doctrine is as difficult to maintain as it is to see fire in a rock and flowers in wood. However, it is not totally impossible because rocks spark when struck together and a tree blooms in spring.” (Kanjin Honzon-Shö, WNS2, p. 136)
Buddha Seed: Understanding the OdaimokuThe Changes We Make in Ourselves
Our goal is to become enlightened as we are in this life. What is necessary is to find out what within our own life needs to fundamentally change in order to manifest enlightenment. The answer to that search is found only within us and not in the life of another. It is the changes we make in ourselves that will bring forth enlightenment.
Lotus Path: Practicing the Lotus Sutra Volume 1Come One and All, and Let Us Believe in the Good Law!
The inhabitants of the world are destined eventually to receive this blessing, in accordance with the Buddha’s words. But meanwhile they have contracted the fatal habits of illusion and confusion, which pursue them until they find themselves enmeshed in the inextricable tangles of absurd imaginations and false ideas. And they groan in the nets from which, alas, they cannot easily escape. If, on the other hand, a man unfolds his Buddha-intellect, the world displays itself before him in its true aspect; those, therefore, who wish to follow this wise course and experience true spiritual joy, should at once believe in the Good Law, discard the false and temporary theories taught by other sects, and embrace the true and eternal doctrines contained in the [Lotus Sutra]. Then both heaven and earth will be peaceful and prosperous forever; the order of things will be preserved in harmony; climate and temperature will accommodate themselves to the health of man and the fertility of the soil; the world will appear as the Paradise of Buddhas and of Glorious Light; nation will be at peace with nation as though they were brethren; and there will not be a single unhappy or dissatisfied person in the universe. Such is the result believing in the Good Law. Don’t doubt its merits; experience them to begin with, and inquire about them afterwards if you wish. Come one and all, and let us believe in the Good Law!
Doctrines of Nichiren (1893)The Influence of Buddhism
Buddhism is usually known in the Occident as a religion of ascetic practice and atheistic ideas. Whatever the Western critics may say, the influence Buddhism exerted everywhere lay in its practice of love and equality, which was an outcome of its fundamental teaching of the unity of all beings, and of its ideal of supreme enlightenment (Bodhi) to be attained by all. This Bodhi amounts to realizing, in the spirit and in life, the basic unity of existence, the spiritual communion pervading the whole universe. This was exemplified by the person of Buddha, not only in his teaching of all-oneness but in his life of all-embracing charity. Those united in the faith in Buddha and his teaching form a close community of spiritual fellowship, in which the truth of oneness is embodied and the life of charity is practised. In short, the principle of the Buddhist religion amounts to faith and life in the Three Treasures (Rama-traya), which means oneness of the Perfect Person (Buddha), the Truth (Dharma), and the Community (Sangha).
History of Japanese ReligionThe True Nature of the Buddha’s Enlightened Life
Based upon his understanding of the Ceremony in the Air, Nichiren taught that we should take refuge in the Eternal Shakyamuni Buddha revealed in the Lotus Sutra as the unity of the historical, ideal, and universal aspects of Buddhahood. These are fully manifested by Shakyamuni Buddha and are also the potential that lies within all of us. The Eternal Shakyamuni Buddha, therefore, should be our focus of devotion if we want to realize for ourselves the true nature of the Buddha’s enlightened life and our own.
Lotus World: An Illustrated Guide to the Gohonzon