Chapter 21: The Supernatural Powers of the Tathāgatas

“Wishing that spirit of the messages of this Lotus Sutra will be handed down from generation to generation forever, I, the Buddha, state the main points of teachings carried in the Odaimoku.

“The Odaimoku includes all the merits of the Buddha’s enlightenment.

“The Odaimoku contains all the supernatural powers of the Buddha to save all people.

“The Odaimoku is the crystallization of the Buddha’s boundless wisdom necessary to teach and lead all beings.

“The Odaimoku expresses all merits the Buddha has practiced.

“These four things showing the Buddha’s real image and spirit are explicitly revealed in the Lotus Sutra; the Buddha’s true mind is the Odaimoku.

“Especially after the Buddha’s extinction, you must keep in mind that you should believe, from the bottom of your heart, in the Lotus Sutra and the Odaimoku in which the entire mind of the Buddha is clearly explained, and that you should recite and study the Lotus Sutra and chant the Odaimoku in order to practice the Buddha’s teachings as instructed by the Buddha.

“Wherever the place might be, at the place where the teachings of the Lotus Sutra have spread and the faith in the Odaimoku is practiced in correct and proper ways, you must set up a place of prayer and spend a life with faith in the Sutra, be it in a village or countryside with farms, woods or groves, or in a monastery, or in the house of ordinary people, or a residence of higher status people, or in a mountain village or a vast plain.

“The reason for this is that nowhere else but a place where the Odaimoku is believed in and its teachings are expounded is the true place of prayer.

“It is this place of prayer to the Odaimoku where all Buddhas have become enlightened.

“Here, the Buddhas expound their teachings.

“In other words, this Sahā world in which we live, believing in the Odaimoku, is the very place where the Buddha’s true world lies.”

Easy Readings of the Lotus Sutra