Since one of the sixteen practices is making offerings to the Sutra, a kind of worship, it may be useful to discuss the difference between worshiping an idol (or statue) and worshiping with the help of an image, or worshiping through or before an image. Among many Protestant Christians, as in the Bible, idolatry is vigorously condemned. It is understood to be worship of a false god, something that is not God. Virtually all Buddhists, on the other hand, make a great deal of use of physical objects in both personal and public worship. Most prominent among these, of course, are buddha statues and, in Mahayana Buddhism, statues of famous bodhisattvas, especially Kwan-yin/Kannon, Maitreya, Manjushri, and Samantabhadra – all of whom are prominent in the Lotus Sutra – and Kshitigarbha/Ti-tsang/Jizo (who does not appear in the Lotus Sutra). But it is not only such statues and paintings that are used in worship – the Lotus Sutra itself, in physical form, has often been treated as an object of worship in East Asia.

To worship an idol itself is to confuse one’s ultimate object of worship or devotion with some physical thing. One morning my wife and I went to the Great Sacred Hall of Rissho Kosei-kai in Tokyo. As Rissho Kosei-kai’s main object of worship and devotion, a wonderful statue of the universal or eternal Shakyamuni Buddha dominates the main hall. Inside of this statue is a copy of the Threefold Lotus Sutra in calligraphy inscribed by Founder Niwano. But we did not worship either the statue or its contents. Before, through, and with the help of the statue that was in front of us, we paid our respects to the Buddha who is everywhere. This does not make the statue any less important, indeed it makes it truly more important, for it can lead us to the truth – something that worshiping the statue itself could never do.