The Unanimous Declaration by the Buddhas of the Three Existencesregarding the Classification of the Teachings and Which Are to Be Abandoned and Which Upheld Chapter16
Written by Nichiren
The “Peaceful Practices” chapter of the Lotus Sutra has described how, after the world has entered the Latter Day of the Law, ordinary people who have just set their minds on the attainment of the way can, by practicing the Lotus Sutra, gain Buddhahood. That is, by carrying out three types of activities for their own benefit, namely, peaceful practices of the body, peaceful practices of the mouth, and peaceful practices of the mind, and by carrying out practices intended for the conversion of others, peaceful practices based on the vow of compassion—doing so, as the chapter says, “in the latter age hereafter, when the Law is about to perish.”
The reference here is to the present time. In the “Peaceful Practices” chapter just cited, there are four passages that refer to the latter age. In the “Medicine King” chapter, there are two such passages, and in the “Encouragements” chapter, the latter age is three times referred to.
All these passages refer to our present age and represent instructions handed down from the Buddha. But now if one fails to heed the correct instructions contained in these passages and instead follows the words of some ordinary person or gives way to one’s own ignorant mind, turning one’s back on the declaration handed down from the Buddhas of the three existences and spurning for all time the Law of the Buddhas, what regret, what distress of mind, what pity and grief one will inflict upon the Buddhas of the three existences!
The Nirvana Sutra says, “Rely on the Law and not upon persons.” How deplorable, how pitiful, that scholars of this latter age, believing that they are studying and applying the Law of the Buddha, should on the contrary bring about the destruction of that Law!
On “Great Concentration and Insight” expresses grief over this fact when it says: “The reason that people hear of this teaching of perfect and immediate enlightenment but fail to respect it is that in recent times there is much confusion and misunderstanding among those who practice the Mahayana doctrines. And the situation is even worse because in the Middle and Latter Days of the Law people have little feeling and little faith. Though the teaching of perfect and immediate enlightenment may overflow the storehouses and its scrolls more than fill the sutra boxes, people give it not a moment’s consideration but rather turn away with closed eyes. How painful it is to think of them, being born in vain, dying in vain!”
And in volume four of the same work we read: “The teaching of perfect and immediate enlightenment was from the beginning directed at ordinary people. If it was not intended to bring benefit to ordinary people, then why, instead of electing to dwell in a land where the essential nature of phenomena is manifest and, with a body marked by that essential nature, expounding this teaching of perfect and immediate enlightenment to the various bodhisattvas there, did the Buddha, for the sake of bodhisattvas who have just begun to manifest the essential nature of phenomena, take on the body of an ordinary person and make his advent in this threefold world? . . . He did so to show that the one mind of the Buddha nature is present within ordinary people and therefore can be cultivated by religious practice.”