In the Lotus Sutra, the Buddha does not say, “You are a Buddha.” Instead, we are invited to open a gate and enter a wonderous path. Faith is the requisite of the Assurance of Future Buddhahood in Chapter 6 and elsewhere in the Lotus Sutra. Faith is the minimum qualification to unlock the gate.

In Buddhism for Today, Nikkyō Niwano explains it this way:

“ ‘Prediction’ means that the Buddha gives us the assurance, “You will surely become buddhas.” The term ‘prediction’ (juki) includes three meanings of great importance and subtlety, which it is essential that we understand. The first important point is that Sakyamuni Buddha says not ‘You are buddhas’ but ‘You will become buddhas.’ In the sight of the Buddha, all living beings have the buddha-nature, and any one of them can definitely become a buddha. But if the Buddha says merely, “You are buddhas,” this statement will be greatly misunderstood by ordinary people. They will be liable to take these words to mean that they are already perfected as buddhas while in a state of illusion and will have the idea that they can become buddhas without any effort, like riding an escalator.

“The prediction given by the Buddha is often compared to an admission permit to a school, and this comparison is quite just. It is not a diploma but only an admission permit. This assurance signifies, ‘You have passed the entrance examination of the highest university, which leads to the degree of buddhahood. If you study here for some years, you will surely graduate and will become buddhas.’ Having this assurance, ordinary people must hereafter practice all the more, and must make ever greater efforts to realize this goal.

“What a joyful thing it is for ordinary people to have obtained admission to the Buddha’s university — to have received the Buddha’s prediction, ‘You will become buddhas.’ ”

Just as we are certain to face obstacles to graduating from a university, as we practice and study the path to buddhahood we face many obstacles. In Misawa-shō, A Letter to Lord Misawa of Suruga, Nichiren warns of the three hindrances and four devils, the last of which is the King of Devils in the Sixth Heaven.

“Upon the sight of one within the reach of Buddhahood, the King of Devils in the Sixth Heaven would be stirred to say: ‘If one is an entity of this world, he (one) not only strives to depart from the illusion of life and death and become Buddha but also tries to lead as many as possible into Buddhism, controls this world, and transforms this defiled world into a paradise. What ought to be done?’”

Writings of Nichiren Shōnin, Doctrine 2, Page 239-240

We are fortunate to be attending the great university of the Lotus Sutra in this Latter Age for we have Namu-Myōhō-Renge-Kyō to drive back the henchmen of the King of Devils. With the Daimoku we can overcome their efforts to distract us from our goal.

The word faith does not appear in Chapter 6, Assurance of Future Buddhahood. In fact, when I first began my cycle of reading the Lotus Sutra, this chapter seemed to illustrate a lack of faith.

I was dismissive of the śrāvakas pleading to be given a prediction of future buddhahood. After all, these people were in this only for themselves. Influencing my interpretation were simplified definitions of śrāvaka and pratyekabuddha such as this one from the Introduction to the Lotus Sutra:

“Although ‘hearers’ and ‘private Buddhas’ are earnest seekers, they have one critical shortcoming. In pursuing their aim for individual emancipation, they tend to become self-absorbed and neglect the needs of other people. This weakness is the main reason why their teachings are called the ‘Lesser Vehicle’: They carry the driver but no passengers. Some Mahayana sutras are extremely critical of them, saying that followers of the Lesser Vehicle cannot possibly attain Buddhahood; they are too self-centered.”

Even though I realized the whole point of their prediction was to open the door to buddhahood for everyone, this constant pleading on their part just came across as self-serving. With each request for a prediction, I was reminded of the children in the Parable of the Burning House:

“Give us
The three kinds of jeweled carts
That you promised us!
You said:
‘Come out, and I will give you
The three kinds of carts as you like.’
Now is the time for that.
Give them to us now!”

In Buddhism for Today, Nikkyō Niwano makes the case for a different interpretation.

“At the end of the second verse portion of chapter 6, Maudgalyāyana, Subhūti, Kātyāyana, and others spoke in unison as follows:

“ ‘Great Hero, World-honored One!
Thou dost ever desire to pacify the world;
Be pleased to bestow our prediction.’

“What they are saying is: ‘The Buddha always desires to make all the people of the world feel at ease. We also desire to become buddhas and to make them live in peace. Please give us your assurance of becoming buddhas.’

“They do not mean that they alone be saved and become buddhas, or that they alone become buddhas and attain peace of mind. Their final purpose is to make all the people of the world happy. This is a most important point. We must understand that the real intention of these disciples in earnestly requesting that the Buddha give them his assurance of becoming buddhas lies in the fact that they wanted to obtain such freedom and power as to be capable of making others happy. If we do not realize this, we are likely to receive the mistaken impression that they asked the Buddha for only their own personal enlightenment and mental peace.”

I don’t necessarily agree with Nikkyō Niwano, but I admit that my interpretation is unhelpful. These predictions are necessary. They allow everyone to develop the faith needed to defeat doubt and fear – to walk the path to buddhahood, the Bodhisattva path that puts the interests of others before self.

In my last essay I said flatly, “We cannot expect flowering herbs to become towering oak trees.” Before I leave Chapter 5 and the Simile of the Herbs I want to take one last bite out of this topic in answer to those who would argue that there are right and wrong practices and a need for practicers to adhere to proper actions, especially when new in faith.

When I was in high school, I joined the cross country running team. I chose cross country because that was the only team that accepted everyone. All the coach cared about was your willingness to complete the 2.1 mile course. With work and perseverance, I became good enough to co-captain the junior varsity team, but I never possessed the fluid ease displayed by the varsity team runners.

In the off season I was expected to run track. I hated track. I could run up hills and across streams and down into valleys and back up the hills, but eight times around the flat, quarter-mile track – that was unbearable.

One season of track was enough. When track season came around the next year, I told the coach I would just practice distance running on my own and join him for the next cross country season. The coach said if I didn’t run track, I couldn’t be on the cross country team. So I quit running, took up smoking and drinking and spent most of my senior year at the beach. I did so poorly in my first year of junior college that there was no way I could defer the draft board’s interest in me. I escaped the Army by joining the Navy and replaced a ground tour of Vietnam with an 11-month cruise in the Gulf of Tonkin.

In pushing one practice over another, in criticizing in any way the sincere intent of another, we smother the flame of faith, especially in those new to the Lotus Sutra. I would never suggest someone must practice as I do, especially my 32 Days of the Lotus Sutra practice. Rev. Igarashi at the Sacramento Nichiren Buddhist Church never urges others to emulate his practice of reciting a full fascicle of the Lotus Sutra at each of his three daily services.

Nichiren stressed the importance of the Daimoku for a reason. My hourlong morning service and hourlong evening service is no more important than a single, heartfelt Namu-Myoho-Renge-Kyo. Rather than attempting to force all of the round pegs into square ritual structures, we would be much more helpful encouraging sincere, good intentions and emulating the Buddha:

“I am not tired of giving
The rain of the Dharma to all living beings.
I have no partiality for them,
Whether they are noble or mean,
Whether they observe or violate the precepts,
Whether they live a monastic life or not,
Whether they have right or wrong views,
Whether they are clever or dull.

“Those who hear the Dharma from me
Will reach various stages
[Of enlightenment]
According to their capacities.”

With each reading of Chapter 5, The Simile of Herbs, I am encouraged by the sutra’s embrace of diversity. One Dharma rains on all manner of different species, and as we take faith in the Lotus Sutra and practice and grow, nourished by that universal rain, we obtain different flowers and fruits.

We are not all the same. There is no reason to expect uniformity in those who take faith in the Lotus Sutra. We cannot expect flowering herbs to become towering oak trees. That’s just not going to happen.

When I was still a member of Soka Gakkai I would frequently hear whispers about this or that leader’s practice or, more often, lack of practice. Such gossip undermined everyone’s faith. Today, I’ve moved so far in the other direction that I now argue that any sincere practice will have the same benefit as any formal ritual.

In Nichiren’s Gassui Gosho, A Letter on Menstruation, Nichiren explains:

“You may chant the whole twenty-eight chapters, one chapter, one paragraph, one sentence or even one character of the Lotus Sūtra a day. Or, you may chant the daimoku, ‘Namu Myōhō Renge Kyō,’ just once in a day or once in your whole life. Even if you may never chant the daimoku yourself, you may rejoice at hearing others chant it just once in your whole life. Or you may rejoice with others who rejoice at hearing a voice chanting the daimoku. The joy of the daimoku chanting transmitted 50 times this way from person to person, will grow weaker steadily until in the last fiftieth person it will be as uncertain as the mind of a two- or three-year-old baby or as unpredictable as a horse or a cow, which cannot tell the difference between head and tail. Nevertheless, the merit of such people is one hundred thousand billion times greater than that of those whose wisdom is as great as Śāriputra, Maudgalyāyana, Mañjuśrī, and Maitreya, but put faith in sūtras other than the Lotus Sūtra and memorize them all.”

Nyonin Gosho, Letters Addressed to Female Followers, p22-24

I know of more than one couple where one person practices formally and the other is supportive of the partner’s practice. In the verses at the end of Chapter 2 a lengthy list of such people are promised wonderful benefits.

“Those who bowed to the image of the Buddha,
Or just joined their hands together towards it,
Or raised only one hand towards it,
Or bent their head a little towards it
And offered the bending to it,
Became able to see innumerable Buddhas one after another.
They attained unsurpassed enlightenment,
Saved countless living beings,
And entered into the Nirvana-without-remainder
Just as fire dies out when wood is gone.”

I am the master of only myself. Your practice is yours. Mine is mine. I encourage everyone to bathe in the rain of the Dharma and allow the seed of enlightenment to sprout and grow and eventually bear its unique fruit.

When the rain of the Dharma falls in Chapter 5, we are told that the “roots, stems, branches and leaves” were watered. This is more than a botany lesson. As Nikkyō Niwano explains in Buddhism for Today:

“Roots, stalks, twigs, and leaves indicate faith, precepts, meditation, and wisdom. Roots are the most important part of plants. Without roots, they cannot grow stalks, twigs, or leaves. Therefore ‘roots’ means faith. One cannot keep the precepts without faith. Because of keeping the precepts, one can enter into the mental state of meditation and can also obtain wisdom.

“Conversely, however strong the roots may be, they will eventually die if the twigs and leaves wither or if the stalks are cut. In the same way, if man does not have wisdom, his faith will become corrupt. In short, in believing in a religion, man begins with faith and attains wisdom through the precepts and meditation. However, these four steps of his religious practice are always interrelated and exist together. When any one of the four steps is lacking, his religious practice cannot be perfect, and it will not progress to the next stage. Just as a tree may be big or little, superior, middle, or low, so different people are large- or small-minded, wise or ignorant.”

When the roots, stems, branches and leaves work together the plants bear fruit and this helps nourish others. Gene Reeves offers this explanation in Stories from the Lotus Sutra:

“From the point of view of the Sutra, this earth is the buddha land of Shakyamuni Buddha. This world, and especially this world, is Shakyamuni Buddha’s world. But the Buddha is not some sort of all-powerful God ruling the universe. The Buddha is embodied, made real, in the Buddha-deeds of ordinary living beings. The Buddha invites us to be partners with him in transforming this world into a pure buddha land, where there is a kind of harmony of beauty enabling living beings to flourish together in many different healthy ways, all equally depending on the Dharma and on one another.

“[Chapter 5] of the Lotus Sutra encourages us to think of the large picture and to be grateful that we are nourished by the Dharma raining on us. But it is also important to recognize that the Dharma can be rained down by us. In Zen and Western Thought the famous Zen scholar Masao Abe wrote that ‘the greatest debt without doubt is to my three teachers. … Without the Dharma rain they poured upon me, a rain which nourished me for many years, even this humble bunch of flowers could not have been gathered.’

“In other words, to follow the Buddha Way, the Dharma, is to be nourished by the Dharma, but it is also to nourish others – many kinds of others. In still other words, to follow the Buddha Way of transforming living beings and purifying buddha lands is to become a buddha oneself, at least in small but very important ways.”

The goal of faith in the Lotus Sutra is to approach an understanding of the equality and differences of all things. This is especially true of Chapter 5, The Simile of Herbs.

As the Buddha explains at the beginning of the chapter:

“I, the Tathāgata, am the King of the Dharma. Nothing I say is false. I expound all teachings with expedients by my wisdom in order to lead all living beings to the stage of knowing all things.”

But as the Buddha later explains, a single teaching won’t fulfill his goal:

“The various teachings I expound are of the same content, of the same taste. Those who emancipate themselves from the bonds of existence, from illusions, and from birth and death, will finally obtain the knowledge of the equality and differences of all things. But those who hear or keep my teachings or read or recite the sutras in which my teachings are expounded, or act according to my teachings, do not know the merits that they will be able to obtain by these practices. Why is that? It is because only I know their capacities, appearances, entities and natures.”

The goal, we learn, is to inspire the faith needed to open the gate to the Buddha’s wisdom. As the Buddha explains in gāthās:

“I am honorable, and my wisdom is profound.
Therefore, I have been reticent on this truth,
That is, the reality of all things, for a long time.
I did not make haste to expound it to all living beings.

“If they had heard it without expedients,
Men of ignorance would have had doubts,
And lost their way [to enlightenment] forever,
Though men of wisdom would have understood it by faith.”

And once we enter that gate, we are promised that our faith will be rewarded:

“Those who hear the Dharma from me
Will reach various stages
Of enlightenment
According to their capacities.”

Rev. Ryusho Jeffus’ Lecture on the Lotus Sutra offers an interesting take on the equality and differences of all things and variations that result according to our capacities:

“No longer is there a fundamental difference between the enlightenment of people and the enlightenment of Buddhas. The Buddha is showing us the path to an enlightenment that is exactly like that of all Buddhas. This is really what I think is remarkable. There is a way for us as common mortals to become enlightened just as the Buddha was, though I think it is also important to realize that our own individual manifestation of that enlightenment will perhaps look different than the Buddha’s. In other words, my enlightenment will not be an enlightenment of sitting under a tree, it might be an enlightenment of working with sick people. … It can manifest in any number of ways, not dependent upon our occupation or unique skills, but on our innate capacity, on the truth of the condition of Buddhahood being always present in our lives.”