In the “Weight of Glory”, C.S. Lewis tells the story of a woman who gave birth to a son while confined as a prisoner in a dungeon. Since the boy had never seen the outside world, his mother tried to describe it by making pencil drawings. Later when they were released from prison, the simple pencil sketches were replaced by the actual images of the beautiful world.

In some ways we may think of our selves, our sufferings as being in a dungeon. In fact in Chapter 16 of the Lotus Sutra it says: “The perverted people think this world is in a great fire. The end of the kalpa of destruction is coming.’”

In other words we all too easily see the suffering and refuse to see the Buddha land that surrounds us.