One of the things that I’ve always enjoyed about Buddhism is how it changes the binary concept of procreation to include an active role for the future child. It takes three to make a baby. This is famously illustrated in the story of Venerable Kāśyapa as told by Nichiren in his Kangyō Hachiman-shō [Writings of Nichiren Shōnin, Doctrine 1, Page 270-271].
In the story, a childless Brahman named Nyagrodha threatens to burn down a forest god’s shrine after the god fails to answer Nyagrodha’s prayer for the good luck of having a child. The difficulty turns out to be that the gods couldn’t find anyone worthy of being Nyagrodha’s child. Eventually the gods find a heavenly being in the Brahma Heaven who was about to die. That child became Venerable Kāśyapa.
Getting back to the topic of faith, the Sutra of Innumerable Meanings offers this explanation of how Bodhisattva children are created:
“O you of good intent! So it is also with one who keeps faith with this sutra. The convergence of the buddhas and this sutra – the union of ‘king’ and ‘queen’ – gives birth to this bodhisattva child.”
Without our faith and practice the Buddha and his teaching would be childless. This is emphasized in Chapter 2 of Nichiren: The Buddhist Prophet by Masaharu Anesaki:
“The revelation of the eternal past is thus followed by the assurance for the everlasting future. The past and the future are united in the oneness of the Truth, by the unity of purpose, methods, and power, in all the Buddhas of all ages – in short, in the Sole Road of Truth [One Vehicle]. This is the cardinal teaching of the Lotus, as in other Buddhist books or systems; but the special emphasis laid by the Lotus, particularly in the last twelve chapters, is upon the question, Who shall really be the one who will perpetuate and realize this truth of the Sole Road? The Truth abides eternally, but it is an abstraction, a dead law, without the person who perpetuates the life of the Truth. The Buddha Śākyamuni, in his human manifestation, was the one, the Tathāgata par excellence; but who shall be the one in the future, nay in the present, in these days of degeneration and vice? This was the question of Nichiren, who at last, as the result of his hard experience and perilous life, arrived at the conclusion that he himself was the man destined to achieve the task of the Tathāgata’s messenger.”
Each person of faith breathes life into the Truth.
As Anesaki writes in Chapter 7:
“Noble and sublime may be the conception of the Supreme Being, but it is but an idol or image, a dead abstraction, if we ourselves do not participate in its supreme existence and realize in ourselves its excellent qualities. Thus, worship or adoration means a realization of the Supreme Being, together with all its attributes and manifestations, first through our own spiritual introspection, and second in our life and deeds.”
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