With confidence that we can overcome all of our obstacles through the power of faith in the Lotus Sutra, through the power of our upholding the Odaimoku, we can purify our world and travel over clear paths lived with golden ropes and jeweled trees. All of these we create through our practice.

The way to transform our lives is not by avoiding our tribulations but by going through them and making them the cause for our enlightenment.

It is easy, especially when we are in great difficulty, to seek to be rescued by some outside source. It is sometimes very easy to think we do not possess the resources within our own lives, and so are unable to call out the solution from the depths of our existence. When we do that, however, we are actually engaging in a distortion of the Buddha and a distortion of our inherent Buddha potential. It is important to always keep in mind that the fundamental aim of the Buddha in teaching the Lotus Sutra was to reveal not only his eternal nature but also the equality of all beings and the great desire to enable all beings, you and I included, to become Buddhas.

When I think about the difference between the actions of the original disciples of the Buddha who approached the Buddha asking for a prediction of their future enlightenment, and the actions of the Bodhisattvas from beneath the ground who approached the Buddha and only asked about the health of the Buddha, I am struck by the contrast. As Bodhisattvas practicing the Lotus Sutra we assume many different personalities. The variety among us is endless. There are also countless others who are not practicing the Lotus Sutra who have many different personalities as well and require our examples to inspire them to practice the Lotus Sutra.

One of attitudes toward our practice that Bodhisattvas try to cultivate is childlike. That is with an open-eyed pure eagerness to embrace Buddhism in our lives without all the filters and conditions that we impose upon things as we age. If we think of a puppy or a young child, someone who is eagerly and openly enjoying every experience then we can really begin to get to the depths of having the sutra expounded to ourselves.

Sometimes it is difficult to maintain our enthusiasm for practicing and studying the Lotus Sutra. There are some days when it may be all we can do to just chant Odaimoku three times. There will naturally be days like that, so do not be discouraged. But in our hearts if we can maintain and nourish the kind of eagerness to stay connected with the teachings of the Buddha, then even gradually our lives will undergo a significant change.

A while back I had a part-time job delivering pizza. My hours were mostly in the evening since that was the only time I had available to work. In the summer it wasn’t so bad making the deliveries at night because it didn’t become dark until almost the time I was scheduled to get off. However, in the fall and winter, when it got dark early, it was very challenging. The problem was folks would order pizza and their houses would either not have house numbers or numbers that were difficult to see from the street, or they would not turn on their house lights.

Our daily service in praise of the Lotus Sutra begins with preparing the altar for service. Then we engage in the practice of reciting the sutra and chanting the sacred title. It is like we are making sure our house numbers show clearly and our lights are turned on as we invite the protective deities of the universe into our lives.

Without the proper directions, markings, and lights it is difficult for the pizza to be delivered. So too, without opening up our lives, and calling upon the universe using the proper praise it is difficult for the protection to be available.

Because we seek the power to control things in our lives we fail to seek that which can ultimately give us the ability to end suffering. We seek mistakenly to eliminate suffering by clinging to mistaken views. We may think that if we only had just a little more money or a better house or a better job or a different spouse that all things would be well. We merely look at the surface and think that the conditions that surround us are the things we need to change, never looking at our lives and seeing what we need to change within ourselves. Seeing that we are fundamentally enlightened beings who are living lives of common people can allow us to see the heart of the cause for suffering and free our minds from the attachments that actually are the root of sufferings.

We have a lot of practice seeing the flaws in our lives. Sometimes we focus only on what is missing in our lives. Yet when we consider our lives from the perspective of the Lotus Sutra we can begin to see that our lives, no matter how seemingly flawed, are in fact the perfect life and present the perfect condition for the emergence of our Buddhahood.

Our lives are actually complete from the perspective of the practice of Buddhism. There is nothing missing. While there may be things in our lives that we can change or improve upon, we should also consider that each one of those things actually could represent strengths, something we can change into a positive.

It isn’t necessary to become someone else. It is only necessary to redirect our lives completely to enlightenment.

Sometimes uncovering or showing a small part of something enables us to see the potential of something even greater. Protecting something that is small or encouraging a fledgling effort can result in unimaginable outcomes. As our lives are slowly freed from illusions and then our eyes purified we are able to see the truth in the sutra, the truth in our lives and become Buddhas.

It might be eye opening for you to actually make a list of improvements in your life, both big and small, since you began practicing Buddhism.