We all have Buddha’s nature, without exception. May we recognize it, and strive to realize that the Buddha world is the real world with Odaimoku. This is the faith of the Lotus Sutra. Please make the effort to chant Odaimoku everyday, for yourself and your neighbors.
Spring WritingsQuotes
In the Buddha Land
Another thing we can learn from the Simile of the Herbs is the notion that the Dharma is present everywhere. There is not a special place to attain enlightenment. The plants did not have to move or change location to benefit from the nourishing rain from the cloud. So too, we do not need to be in a different location, have a different set of neighbors, change jobs, or have different families, or even government. None of those things are factors in determining our ability to practice and receive benefit from the Lotus Sutra. The only limiting factor in our attaining enlightenment is simply our own self. If when you look around your life and you see some place that is not the land of the Buddha, it is simply because you are not viewing your life with the eyes of the Buddha. In other words if where you are is not the Buddha land then there is no Buddha present.
Lecture on the Lotus SutraThe Emptiness of Birth and Death
There is a deeper meaning to Emptiness than simply recognizing the impermanent nature of reality. Emptiness also means that things are without boundaries in terms of both time and space. Again, everything arises and ceases depending upon the coming together of many other elements or factors. But at what point can one say that something has begun or come to an end? For instance, do our lives begin at birth, or at conception, or at the time of our parent’s conception? At what point in the process that we call our lives can we definitely say that the process has begun? The same is true of our deaths. If our lives are carried on through our children or through the impact of our actions on the lives of others, at what point does our life really come to an end? In addition, the Buddha taught that some portion of our existence (composed of our intentions, habits, and to some extent an unconscious storehouse of memories) moves on from one life to another. So it is never entirely correct to say that someone has been born or has died. The reality of our lives defies such a simple description.
Lotus SeedsThe Jewel of Salvation
In his Treatise on Spiritual Insight and the Most Venerable One, Nichiren Shonin explained how the Buddha extends his salvation to us:
Awakening to the LotusFor those who are incapable of understanding the truth of ichinen sanzen, Lord Sakyamumi Buddha, with his great compassion, wraps this jewel with the five characters of myo, ho, ren, ge, and kyo and hangs it around the neck of the ignorant in the Declining Age of the Dharma. [Writings of Nichiren Shonin: Doctrine 2, p. 164]
Faith in the Three Treasures
Today, as in Shakyamuni’s time, being a Buddhist means having religious faith in the Three Treasures. The formula “I take refuge in Gautama, the World-honored One, in the Law, and in the Order of Monks. World-honored One, from this day to the end of my life, recognize me as a believer who has taken refuge” occurs time and again in the earliest Buddhist scriptures and means that even without theoretical understanding, a person who has faith in the Three Treasures is a true Buddhist.
Basic Buddhist ConceptsThe Practice of Buddhism
The practice of Buddhism isn’t so much about becoming someone different, as it is about becoming who we really are. We do not take on enlightenment from outside ourselves, but develop what we already have. We have the gem, we just need to take it out and use it, there is no need for us to continue our sufferings.
Practice Guide
The True Buddha
The True Buddha is that Sakyamuni who has been from immemorial times sufficiently enlightened to know the underlying sameness of all things, and the identity of his own person with the external world; he is that Buddha who identifies a pure act of thought with all existences in time and space; he is that state of mind in which the Truth and the Intellect, the perceived and the perceiver, cease to be two, and are recognized as radically and in essence One. And if this is the case with Sakyamuni, it cannot be otherwise with the people generally. Just as all things in time and space are no more than subjective 
in the consciousness of Sakyamuni, so are they in the consciousness of each individual man.
Understanding the Basics
I think one of the neat things about Buddhism is that while it can be confusing at times, there are usually many ways of understanding or explaining the teachings. But ultimately it is through our practice and faith that we can most deeply understand the teachings of the Lotus Sutra. Just as it is possible to travel to a strange country not speaking the language and have a good time, see a variety of things, and have wonderful experiences, it isn’t necessary to have a scholar’s understanding of the Lotus Sutra. We do not need to master theory, though we should try to understand the basics, where we need to excel is in our practice and faith.
Lotus Path: Practicing the Lotus Sutra Volume 1Suffering
Reducing suffering and avoiding suffering are not the same. Buddhism is not about avoiding. It is a teaching that enables us to manage better our responses to suffering.
Physician's Good MedicineThe True Person of Buddha
So long as the Buddhists regard their master as a man who achieved Buddhahood at a certain time, they fail to recognize the true person of Buddha, who in reality from eternity has been Buddha, the lord of the world. So long as the vision of Buddhists is thus limited, they are unaware of their own true being, which is as eternal as Buddha’s own primeval nature and attainment. The Truth is eternal, therefore the person who reveals it is also eternal, and the relation between master and disciples is nothing but an original and primeval kinship. This is the fundamental conception, which is further elucidated by showing visions reaching to the eternally past as well as to the everlasting future.
Nichiren, The Buddhist Prophet