This story of Never-Despising Bodhisattva shows the spirit which lies at the heart of the Lotus Sutra: respect for all human beings.

Human history and culture have long sought an ideal society composed of ideal persons. The Buddha, who is revealed in Buddhism, expresses this image of an ideal human being—omniscient, omnipotent, and magnanimous to all. The ideal society is his Pure Land. Not only Buddhism, but all religions seek such an ideal.

In our modern age, however, many people think that revolutions in politics and economics, instead of religion, are the best ways to realize such an ideal. “Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity,” acclaimed in the French Revolution, express this spirit, although it soon came to mean liberty, equality, and fraternity for us, but not for you. In the twentieth century, the Communist Revolution tried to realize the same ideal, also by brute force.

However, no such attempt can succeed without the spirit of Never-Despising Bodhisattva—venerating all living beings just as they are. This has been demonstrated by the recent collapse of communist countries in the former Soviet Union and eastern Europe. Although they had high ideals, their revolution, which ignored the value of human beings, was doomed to fail. Never-Despising Bodhisattva teaches the most basic revolution of all: profound respect for each and every living person.