Nichiren on the Jiga-ge

Nichiren on the Jiga-ge

All the Buddhas in the universe attained Buddhahood with Jigage as their teacher. They are as parents of mankind. Those who now profess the Juryo Chapter of the Lotus Sutras will find the lives of all these Buddhas in their own. Can there be any Buddhas who will forsake believers in the Sutra, the Sutra which led them to Buddhahood?  If the Buddhas forsake them, then they in turn are discarding their own lives. Suppose there is a woman who bore and bred 3,000 strong warriors. A person who is inimical to her will be the common enemy of all her sons. Likewise, those who are opposed to Jigage of the Lotus Sutra will be the enemy of all the Buddhas.

All of the characters inscribed in the Lotus Sutra function as so many Buddhas. We common mortals, however, find them to be nothing but Chinese Characters. For example, hungry spirits, obsessed by the illusion that a large river is fire, can never assuage their thirst, common mortals see the river as the flow of water, while those in heaven regard it as celestial dew-drops. Water is one but appears in different ways according to the viewers.  Similarly, the blind cannot see the written characters of the Lotus Sutra, ordinary people see them as black, Bodhisattvas in a variety of colors, Arhats regard them merely as empty space, and those with the full-grown seed of Buddhahood see them as so many Buddhas. Then the Sutra reads, `One who embraces [this sutra] has the life of the Buddha."