In the past, the Buddha, wishing to repay his debt to his mother Māyā, ascended to the Trāyastriṃsá Heaven on the fifteenth day of the fourth month. While he was there, everyone in the five regions of India from the rulers and their great vassals down to the ordinary men and women, sobbed with grief and lamented that they had lost the Buddha, like parents who had lost a child or a child who had lost his parents. For a man to be separated from a beloved wife or a woman from her beloved husband is unbearable. How much more unbearable a separation from the World Honored One of Great Enlightenment with the thirty-two marks and eighty signs, whose color is a beautiful purple-gold, and whose voice is that of the kalaviṅka bird, and who teaches that all sentient beings will attain Buddhahood. Because of the Buddha’s deep loving-kindness and compassion, their longing and grief for Him is indescribable. It exceeded the grief of the beautiful lady imprisoned in the Shang-yang Palace; it exceeded the grief of the two daughters of Emperor Yao, O-huang and Nu-ying, when they were parted from Emperor Shun; and it exceeded the longing of Su Wu, banished for nineteen years to live amidst the snow in a foreign land.
A man who longed to see the Buddha took wood to make an image of Him, but he was unable to carve the likeness of even one of the thirty-two marks of the Buddha. At that time the great King Udayāna summoned Viśvakarman, the Carpenter, down from the Trāyastriṃsá Heaven and had a statue carved from red sandalwood. That statue went to meet the original Buddha in the Trāyastriṃsá Heaven, because of King Udayāna’s deep faith. This was the first statue of the Buddha carved in Jambudvipa.
Again, there was a wealthy man called Sudatta. When the Buddha was to descend to India from the Trāyastriṃsá Heaven on the fifteenth of the seventh month, Sudatta wished to build a monastery, but he had no land on which to build. Prince Jeta, a son of King Prasenajit, owned a park called Jetavana, which was about 40 li wide. This park was such a sacred and peaceful place that if one were to bring in swords or knives, the weapons would suddenly break apart. When the wealthy man Sudatta asked for the park in which to build his monastery, the prince told him he would only sell it for the amount of gold it would take to cover the park 4 inches thick. Sudatta agreed to the terms, but the prince then said, “I was only joking. The park is not for sale.” Sudatta insisted, “The Son of Heaven can never be double-tongued. How could you lie, even for a moment?” and he told King Prasenajit what had happened. “Prince Jeta is the heir to the throne. How could he lie even in jest,” wondered the king. Prince Jeta had no choice but to sell the park. Then, when the wealthy man Sudatta paid for the park with gold piled four inches thick as promised and joyfully prepared to build the monastery, Śāriputra appeared with a rope to demarcate the grounds of the park. Then he looked up into the sky and laughed. Sudatta remarked, “A great sage always has a dignified bearing and maintains self-control. What strange thing have you seen to cause you to laugh?” Śāriputra replied, “Because of this monastery you are building the six heavens of the realm of desire are each raising armies to contend for you. Each of the gods wants the person who is cultivating such a tremendously good deed in his own heaven. I am laughing at them for fighting. When your life-span is over, you will be born in the Tuṣita Heaven.” Thus the monastery was built and named the Jeta Grove Monastery.
On the night of the fifteenth of the seventh month when the Buddha was about to enter the temple, Indra and the King of the Brahma Heaven built three bridges made of gold, silver, and crystal from the Trāyastriṃsá Heaven. The Buddha entered by the middle bridge, while Indra on his left and the King of the Brahma Heaven on his right held a canopy over the Buddha. Behind the Buddha came the four categories of Buddhists (monks, nuns, laymen, and laywomen); the eight kinds of supernatural beings (gods, asura, dragons, gandharva, kiṃnara, garuda, mahoraga, and yakṣa); twelve hundred arhats led by Kāśyapa, Kātyāyana, Maudgalyāyana, and Subhūti; twelve thousand hearers; and eighty thousand bodhisattvas.
All the people of the five regions of India gathered together to collect oil to offer lamps. Some lit ten thousand lamps, some lit one thousand lamps, some lit one hundred lamps, and some could only light one lamp. Among them was an impoverished woman, incomparably poor. She had no clothes except a mat woven of wisteria vines even coarser than a rush mat. She ran about in all four directions but was not able to get enough money to buy enough oil for even a single lamp. She looked up to the sky and cried, thinking that if her tears had been oil they could have fueled one hundred or one thousand or ten thousand lamps or more.
After much thought, she cut off her own hair, and braided it into a wig that she sold to buy oil for a single lamp. Perhaps because her devotion was accepted by the Buddha and gods, the three treasures, the heavenly deities, and the terrestrial deities, her lamp alone was not extinguished by the fierce winds that blow at the destruction of the world and the beginning of a new world cycle, and it lit the way as the Buddha entered the Jeta Grove Monastery.
As you see, even if people are rich and give great treasures as alms, if their faith is weak they cannot attain Buddhahood. Even though people are poor, if they have strong faith and deep determination they will attain Buddhahood without fail.
Minobu-san Gosho, Mt. Minobu Letter, Writings of Nichiren Shōnin, Volume 5, Pages 129-131
I apologize for the length of this excerpt but I couldn’t bring myself to chop such a beautiful story into pithy greeting-card quotes.
100 Days of Study