What is penitence in the Lotus Sutra? The first thing you should do is be calm and obedient before the Buddha, and recognize your immaturity by yourself. It does not matter whether you feel a sense of guilt or not, but have penitence to the Buddha and pray to extinguish your bad karma with the Odaimoku. It is said that a penitence or repentance service was held by the Buddha for his disciples or congregation regularly when He was still alive. The echo of penitence with Odaimoku enters into our body through our ears and sinks deeply into the Alaya-shiki, extinguishing the nested bad karmas one after another, and Odaimoku is stored in your Alaya-shiki as good karma.

Nichiren Shonin says: “Even if the bad karma is small, if you don’t have penitence, you will surely have to reap the gravest. Even if you have deep bad karma, through your penitence to the Buddha, the karma will disappear.” (Konichi-bo Gosho)