The true Buddhist creates a paradise everywhere

Everyone who realizes the truth of the fundamental unity is a Buddha, and everyone who lives in accordance with this enlightenment and works to propagate the Lotus of Truth is the messenger of the primeval Tathāgata. To such a man, all that surrounds him preaches the truth, and the place of his abode is a paradise. This idea of the connection between the actual life and the primeval enlightenment inspired Nichiren to such a degree that he always regarded his abode as a Buddha land. He voiced this feeling like a lyric poet, glorifying, thus, the hills and waters of Minobu. In a note (as in several others), he gives utterance to these thoughts:

“When the autumn evening draws on, lonesomely, the surroundings of the thatched hermitage are bedewed, and the spiders’ webs hanging from the eaves are transformed into garlands of jewels. Noiselessly, deeply tinged maple leaves come floating on the water that pours from the bamboo pipes, and the water, colored in pattern, seems to stream forth from the fountain of Tatsuta, where the Brocade-weaving Lady is said to abide. Behind the hermitage, the steep peaks rear their heads aloft, where on the slopes the trees bear the fruits of ‘the Unique Truth,’ and the singing crickets are heard among the branches. In front, flow clear rivulets, making music like drums and flutes, and the pools reflect the moonlight of ‘reality as it is.’ When the limitless sky of ‘entity’ is cloudless and the moon shines bright, it seems as if the ‘darkness of the shrouding delusion’ was gone forever.

‘In the hermitage thus situated, throughout the day we converse, and discuss the truths of the Unique Scripture, while in the evening and late into the night is heard the gentle murmur of the recitation of passages from the sacred text. Thus, we deem that to this place has been transferred Vulture Peak, where Lord Śākya lived.

“When fog veils the valley, and even when a gale is blowing, we go to gather wood in the forest, or through the bedewed bushes down to the dells to pick parsley leaves. … Reflecting on these conditions of my present life, I often think, so it must have been with Buddha, when he was in search of truth and disciplining himself in expiation and in mortification. …

Thus thinking, I sit on the mat of meditation, and in vision I see every truth present to the mind, so that even the call of a deer to its mate helps me to utter the innermost voice of my heart. Here I realize why, being shrouded by the heavy clouds of illusion, we transmigrate through the nine, while the pure bright moonlight shines within me, the illumination of the threefold aspects of reality fused into one, and the light of the threefold introspection of one and the same soul. Thus, I put my thoughts into verse:

Masses of clouds and thickening fog,
Heaping upon me and shrouding the world –
Let them be dispelled by a freshening breeze,
The wind that perpetually blows from Vulture Peak,
Whence streams forth the air of the eternal Truth.

In short, everything in Nichiren’s surroundings suggested to him something related to his ideal, and to his present life in service to the Truth. The poet, however, was never content merely to cherish these thoughts, but interpreted his environment by the [Lotus Sutra]. Thus he writes about his abode in the language of the [Lotus Sutra], and describes his life there, as if it were illuminated by the glories of paradise. Not only Minobu, but every place connected with the life of the prophet, of the one who is living the life of the Lotus of Truth, was glorified by him. In a letter written before he left Sado, he says:  “I, Nichiren, am a native of Awa, a province of Japan where the Sun-goddess had her abode in the beginning and founded this nation. … She is indeed the loving mother of the people of this country. There must be some remote and mysterious connection with my life, that I, Nichiren, was born in that province.” In another letter, written after his retirement in Minobu, he repeats the same idea, and says: “Although Awa is a province far away from the center, it is somewhat like the center of Japan, because the Sun-goddess found there her first abode. … And I, Nichiren, began the propagation of the true religion by proclaiming it, for the first time, there in Awa.” Sometimes, he speaks more mystically about his spiritual presence everywhere. He wrote from Minobu to a nun in Sado who had served him during his days of exile there, saying in conclusion: “When you long to see Nichiren, look in reverence at the rising sun, or the moon rising in evening. My person is always reflected in the sun and moon. And moreover, hereafter I shall surely meet you in the Paradise of Vulture Peak.”

It is by mankind, in all kinds of existence, that the ideal perfection is to be achieved, and therefore the stage of its realization is this world, the abode of mankind. The Buddhist ideal of enlightenment is man’s awaking to the fundamental unity of his present existence with the primeval Buddhahood; while the key to make this world a hell or to transform it into a heaven is in our own hands. The use of the key consists in first calling forth the primeval Buddhahood in the innermost recess of our own soul, and in viewing this actual world as a heaven. This transfiguration means not merely imagining that earth is heaven, but living in conformity with the assumption, under the guidance of the enlightened mind. This ideal was realized by Buddha when he preached the Lotus of Truth on Vulture Peak, and the scene of the revelation was transfigured into a paradise. Nichiren had no doubt about the [Lotus Sutra] narrative, and now, in Minobu, he was himself experiencing such a transfiguration of his own abode. In expressing this conviction, he sometimes spoke, as we have seen, like a lyric poet; yet his poetry was never a mere play of fancy, but an earnest belief, founded on the authority of the [Lotus Sutra], as well as on his own experience. The union of poetic idealization and religious speculation can be clearly seen in the passages quoted above. Such was Nichiren’s thought about the paradise on earth, or rather on the proposition that this very world is paradise to those minds illumined by the truth of the primeval enlightenment.

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NICHIREN: THE BUDDHIST PROPHET

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