This section features Ikeda Sensei’s seminal guidance to the members of the United States. The following is an excerpt of his speech given at a U.S.-Japan Exchange Training Meeting, held at Soka University Los Angeles, Calabasas, California, September 23, 1991. The full speech can be found in My Dear Friends in America, fourth edition, pp. 113–25.
The Importance of Continuing in Faith
The Mystic Law’s fundamental beneficial power is inconspicuous. When you pray for something, even though signs of your prayers being fulfilled may not be immediately apparent, the result will definitely appear in time. Underground water eventually comes to the surface. A seed that is planted waits until springtime to produce flowers.
A certain time is required for a sapling to develop into a great tree.
By the same token, continuing Buddhist practice is very impor-
tant. Buddhism is reason, after all. Even though people might have practiced faith with a fiery, almost fanatical fervor at one time, if they fail to continue, they cannot savor the true benefit of the Mystic Law.
On the other hand, even if, for instance, there are days when it is just not possible for you to do gongyo, you need not feel that you have been remiss in your practice. So long as you cherish the mind of faith, your good fortune will stay with you. Even chanting just one daimoku yields great benefit. The impor-tant thing is that you practice with strong and tenacious faith throughout your entire life.
I believe that those who continue to study throughout their entire lives can continually advance and realize victory in life. If you lose the spirit to advance and improve yourselves, you will stagnate, backslide and ultimately experience failure in life.
The Place Where You Are Is the Land of Tranquil Light
Bryan Wilson of the University of Oxford, a world-renowned sociologist of religion with whom I have published a dialogue (Human Values in a Changing World), cites the quality of “being practically applicable in any place” as one of the prerequisites for a world religion. He points out that if one must go to some distant place to practice a teaching, then ultimately only a limited number of people will be able to take faith in it.
Nichiren Buddhism teaches that “‘Holy Peak’ [Holy Eagle Peak] refers to the Gohonzon. It also refers to the place where Nichiren and his followers, who chant Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, dwell” (The Record of the Orally Transmitted Teachings, p. 135). Since wherever the Daishonin and his followers who embrace the Mystic Law live is the Land of Tranquil Light, the Daishonin teaches, “It is not that he [a practitioner of the Lotus Sutra] leaves his present place and goes to some other place” (OTT, 192).
You can accumulate good fortune here in this land of the United States. Confident that the area where you live and make your home is itself the Land of Tranquil Light, you should strive to make it shine as such. This is the correct way of practicing Nichiren Buddhism, which is truly a world religion.
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To Deny Equality Is to Deny the Lotus Sutra
The great desire of Nichiren Daishonin, the Buddha of the Latter Day, is to enable all people, without any favoritism or discrimination, to attain Buddhahood equally.
“Nichiren declares that the varied sufferings that all living beings undergo—all these are Nichiren’s own sufferings” (OTT, 138). Every time I read this passage, I am moved by the infinitely vast and immeasurable compassion of the Buddha of the Latter Day, who sought to save all people from life’s numerous sufferings. I am filled with a profound sense of appreciation.
The purpose of Buddhism is to bring out the Buddha nature that all people inherently possess, to awaken people to it, and to enable them to attain Buddhahood. Moreover, the Lotus Sutra does not allow for any discrimination; all people are equally entitled to salvation. Thus, to deny equality is to deny the Lotus Sutra.
The Daishonin writes, “There should be no discrimination among those who propagate the five characters of Myoho-renge-kyo in the Latter Day of the Law, be they men or women” (“The True Aspect of All Phenomena,” The Writings of Nichiren Daishonin, vol. 1, p. 385).
The letter in which this passage appears was written 718 years ago, in May 1273. In the feudal era of the Middle Ages, the Daishonin was already expounding the equality of the sexes based on the Law.
Looking at gender equality on a worldwide scale, though, it is not until the 17th and 18th centuries that the concept of the equality of the sexes gained prominence, while it is only in the 19th century that women’s suffrage movements began to emerge. And it is much later that women actually obtained equal voting rights on par with men in national elections. Women’s suffrage was first won in New Zealand in 1893. It was won by the United Kingdom in 1918, the United States in 1920 and Japan in 1945.
This history only serves to bring home again how far ahead of his time the Daishonin was. As early as the 13th century, he expounded the equality of the sexes, revealing the profound nature of the egalitarian and humanistic principles of Buddhism.
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