Today is the third day of Higan week, the three days before the equinox and the three days after. As explained in a Nichiren Shu brochure:

For Buddhists, this period is not just one characterized by days with almost equal portions of light and dark. Rather, it is a period in which we strive to consciously reflect upon ourselves and our deeds.

Today we consider the perfection of patience.

Modern Western thought has produced something closely related to the realization of “emptiness” – “historical consciousness,” the consciousness or awareness that everything is immersed in history, that everything becomes what it is through the shaping powers of historical conditioning and change whenever constitutive conditions change. The ability and willingness to understand ourselves historically is similar to the ability to see the “empty” character of all things—that is, its relational and always changing character.

In this insight, we realize that everything is a product of history, of dependence and time, including ourselves. Through it, we understand that all human thinking is subject to future doubt and revision, no matter how certain we may be about our knowledge. The upshot of historical awareness is not that we cannot know the truth, but that doubt and openness are essential ingredients to any quest for understanding. Similarly, realizing that all human knowledge is “empty” or “historical” does not in any way amount to saying that knowledge is not valid, or that it is pointless. It is rather a profound look into both the dependent character of everything and the reality of ongoing change that pervades the entire cosmos.