”…when you chant the Mystic Law and recite the Lotus Sutra, you must summon up deep conviction that Myoho-renge-kyo is your life itself.”

“You must summon up deep conviction…” This means that it must be in your ichinen that Myoho-renge-kyo is your life itself. Or you must consciously establish this in your ichinen that Myoho-renge-kyo is your life itself. Because it is not easy to just sit in front of the Gohonzon and believe without reservation. But if you consciously determine to believe that that is the case, then this expands to mean that you really believe that you are Buddha. And that you really believe that this Gohonzon, that you are chanting to, is the perfect expression of Buddhahood. That this Gohonzon, that you are chanting to, has limitless power. And that you yourself have limitless power. And to achieve Buddhahood you must determine to believe this.

In the Gosho called ‘On the treasure tower’, Nichiren Daishonin said this again. He said:
“The treasure tower indicates that the three groups of Shakyamuni’s disciples attained enlightenment only when they heard the Lotus Sutra and perceived the treasure tower within their own lives.”

It says the same, you must summon up deep conviction that Myoho-renge-kyo is your life itself, Buddhahood is your life itself. Summoning up deep conviction is your ichinen to perceive your Buddha nature within your own life. That’s why ichinen is so important, because if your ichinen is to perceive your Buddha nature in your life, if your ichinen is to believe that this Gohonzon is so incredibly limitlessly powerful and that you yourself are so incredibly limitlessly powerful, that effects your mind, your body, your environment, effects this universe. All from this idea of ichinen.

Now, I’ve chanted a lot of daimoku to find exactly the right words to use to make every single person understand what I mean by strong ichinen. To perceive the treasure tower within your life, to see your own Buddhahood. Because I don’t necessarily believe it is the easiest thing to do. I found a tape, which was a Gosho lecture, that president Ikeda gave at This is what inspired me so much, the exact words about how we can believe this:

“Let me emphatically say that it is necessary for you to have passionate faith, in order to establish the true entity of life as an expression of the simultaneity of cause and effect, and live a life of eternity, happiness, true self and purity. Only through this kind of faith are we able to continually develop ever growing conviction of faith from the inner most depths of our lives.”

You have to have passionate faith is what he’s saying. But actually, what he’s saying in the most simple way is, that we have to establish passionate faith as the cause and the effect will be the qualities of Buddhahood, as described through the natural law of cause and effect. To continually have this sort of faith will open up the inner most depths of our Buddha lives. I hope you will really consider this paragraph deeply, to be able to understand what this means and to put it into practice.

If you consciously establish passionate faith, quite simply the effect is Buddhahood. And if you consciously and continually declare your passionate faith, it’s your ichinen and you then are able to reveal the limitless power of the Gohonzon. And this is the very cause to show your Buddhahood. It almost seems too simple to be true. But if you can say to the Gohonzon, I absolutely believe in your power, I absolutely believe in my own powers of Buddhahood.

We tend to be sitting in front of the Gohonzon, chanting daimoku, ‘well I’ve got this enormous problem Gohonzon’, etc. We’re not declaring our passionate faith to the Gohonzon.

I’d like to refer to an experience of Barbara Cahill, when she decided to go on Tozan. She decides to chant a certain amount of daimoku about a man buying her prints. And for the first three days, she chants passionately that this man will buy her prints. After three days she thinks, ‘this is ridiculous, he’ll never buy my prints’. And she is chanting, ‘he’ll never buy my prints, he’ll never buy my prints’. When she reviewed it, she saw the difference between her chanting, ‘he will buy my prints’ and ‘oh, he’ll never buy my prints’, as to her attitude, her life at each moment. And she realised that she had to make this conscious thing. Whether she could totally believe he would, she was determined to chant he would. That is the difference between chanting ‘this Gohonzon is useless, it never answers my prayers’ than chanting ‘I absolutely believe in the limitless power of the Gohonzon and my limitless ability to show my Buddhahood’. They’re just two different ends of the scale, aren’t they?

Now it is very easy, as I just described how Barbara chanted, for us to have doubts. But if they cloud our vision about the power of the Gohonzon, then we are limiting the power of our daimoku. And this is in another quote from Sensei’s speech, he said:
“Even if you embrace the Gohonzon of the three great Secret Laws, unless you devote yourself to it with correct attitude towards faith, you cannot enjoy its full benefits. This is because you cannot become one with the Gohonzon if you have doubts about it. If you slander those who embrace it, or if you hinder the progress of kosen rufu in any way.”

So it says, you can’t enjoy the benefits of the Gohonzon if you have doubts about it. So why don’t we just get rid of all our doubts and enjoy the benefits of the Gohonzon? So, if you’re sitting in front of the Gohonzon chanting daimoku, in whatever way you express yourself, whether you do have doubts about the power of the Gohonzon, or doubts about your own ability to do a certain thing, your ichinen, your life at that moment, is that of doubt. And that doubt is expressed in your body, in your environment by the thing not happening, is expressed outwards to the whole universe. Your universe is filled with doubt.

Whereas the opposite end of the scale, if you sit in front of the Gohonzon expressing, in whatever way is natural to you, your limitless believe in its power, your limitless believe in your own Buddha nature, your ichinen at that moment, then have to effect your life, your health, your work, whatever. We have to consciously change our way of thinking. We have to determine to continue to practice in this way from now on. We have to use the great power of our ichinen towards revealing Buddhahood more and more in our lives.

In the Gosho ‘The opening of the eyes’, it says: “If you want to understand the causes that existed in the past, look at the results as they are manifested in the present. If you want to understand the results, what results will be manifested in the future, look at causes that exist in the present.”

So this Gosho particularly says, look at what your ichinen is today, that is to the future. It’s yours to change nobody else. By saying this to you, I’m not trying to insinuate that none of us have ever revealed Buddhahood, not at all. Because all of us, every day, reveal our Buddhahood. But we tend to only dig a small sort of thin pipeline down to it and only a little bit of it surfaces. But with strong ichinen, we can have the biggest and the widest pipeline to this force in our life of Buddhahood. Just down to us.

If from tonight onwards, we all determine to experience the effects of passionate faith and continue such practice of passionate faith, really assiduously for the next three months, I’m without doubt that it will transform all our lives. Because this is absolutely the way to do it. Nichiren Daishonin is saying it in this Gosho: “Your ichinen at one moment touches the universe. Believe that Myoho-renge-kyo is your life itself.”

In challenging you to practice this way, I’m not saying that our lives in the next three months are going to be without problems. Because problems and Buddhahood are not the same thing. There are always problems, but it is our Buddhahood, which helps us solve these problems. So we can open up more and more our Buddhahood to solve the problems.

What Mr. Tsuji said about Buddhahood:
“Whatever your problem is, it can be defined as a condition of life in which your Buddhahood is hidden and covered up by your weakness. The Buddhahood of Nam-myoho-renge-kyo is the treasure which everyone has inherently within their life.”

So you know, just get your Buddhahood out and solve those problems. I’m quite sure we going to have some amazing experiences. It says in the next paragraph of the Gosho:

“You must never seek any of Shakyamuni’s teachings, or the Buddhas and boddhisattvas of the universe, outside yourself. Your mastery of the Buddha’s teachings will not relieve you of mortal sufferings in the least unless you perceive the nature of your own life.”

You must not seek outside to see the cause of your sufferings. In gongyo every day we say noyze- in, noyze-en. We’re always looking at noyze-en, that thing outside. We are never looking at the dirty water that’s in our life that the spoon noyze-in has stirred up. It’s always noyze-en’s fault. So, if you think that something outside yourself is going to solve this problem, this is just not true. It says, “to perceive the nature of your own life.” This really means, to see what is your ichinen at this moment. What is this dirt in the glass of water? What is your ichinen, of ichinen sanzen?

But most of all, this sentence means, to see the possibility that we can change that ichinen. That we can change that reality of our life. And we can change that through this conscious revolution. Because a conscious revolution is a conscious desire to actually change yourself. And it is very important that we make such a conscious revolution. Because otherwise, if we think we cannot change, if we think there is no hope for us to change a certain part of us, as it says here; “Our practice becomes an endless and painful austerity”.

There are times, I’m sure that all of us have felt that our practice is an endless and painful austerity. And that is when we are chanting doubting daimoku. “I can’t change this, I can’t change this Gohonzon.” “You are absolutely right, you can’t.” It has to be the fact that you believe you can. We feel like that actually when we feel we can’t change, or we actually don’t want to change. Or we don’t believe we can change, or that we don’t believe Nam-myoho-renge-kyo is in the depths of our life itself.
The next paragraph of the Gosho says:

“Whether you chant the Buddha’s name, recite the Sutra, or merely offer flowers and incense, all your virtuous acts will implant benefits and good fortune in your life. With this conviction you should put your faith into practice.”

If you practice with passionate faith, if your ichinen is to have passionate faith, you express it in your attitude when you’re chanting, you express it in your gratitude toward your offerings towards the Gohonzon and you seek to express it in your everyday actions. If it is your strong ichinen to show your Buddhahood. It’s as if your Buddhahood is looking for places to express itself, outwardly in our work, in our families, in our districts, in our society, wherever. It’s looking for it when we have that as our ichinen. In a way you can consciously place it.

“The difference lies solely in the good or evil of our minds. It’s the same with the Buddha or a common mortal, while deluded one is called a common mortal, but once one is enlightened one is called a Buddha.”

Somebody who doesn’t know about the great power of Nam-myoho-renge-kyo remains a common mortal, who doesn’t understand about the truth of life. Yet, someone who chants Nam-myoho-renge-kyo with passionate faith reveals himself or herself to be a Buddha.

“A mind which presently is clouded by illusions originating from the innate darkness of life, is like a tarnished mirror. But once it is polished, it will become clear, reflecting the enlightenment of immutable truth. Arouse deep faith and polish your mirror night and day. How should you polish it? Only by chanting Nam-myoho-renge-kyo.”

To be totally convinced of the great power of the Gohonzon actually is the greatest feeling. That itself is Buddhahood itself. It’s like being in love with the Gohonzon. When you are in love with somebody, that person in your eyes can do no wrong. That is how you feel about them. They are just wonderful. The Gohonzon is just wonderful. That’s how we must come to feel about it. Because if we feel about it that way, it is the way to continually open up the vast and limitless resources of our own potential as human beings.

Another piece of Sensei’s guidance reads:
“I hope that each one of you will deepen and widen the scope of your faith three times, or even five times more than before. So that you can display the great power of faith.”

So, if you believe the Gohonzon has only a certain amount of power that’s all the effect you are going to get. If you can believe that the Gohonzon is three times more powerful than you at this moment believe, you can have three times more Buddhahood, three times more benefits. If you can believe it is five times more powerful, then you can have five times more benefits. That is displaying the great power of faith.

Strong and deep faith, a conscious determination to have passionate faith in the Gohonzon and thereby reveal the effect in your life. Tonight we’ve just theorised on the subject, so now it’s just up to you and to me.

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This page was last modified on Sunday, August 20, 2006.