my buddhist blog number 146

Hi Everybody,
had some real trouble getting here! Google Chrome seem to have made the old pathway I used via explorer no longer viable. I had to use the skills of my nerdy son Sebastian to get me to this familiar pro-forma that enables me to publish the blog. So much gratitude to him. And a new awareness that one can quite easily get mashed in the tech wars that clearly go on between these internet giants. Hmmm.
So where were we? We were trying to get a grip in Shakyamuni's enlightenment. To clear away some of that fog of  mysticism and mythology to understand it more clearly. And we ended the last passage with an image of a Ghandi type figure, immensely approachable, immensely compassionate, surrounded by a crowd listening intently as he taught about a new kind of hope and a new kind of possibility for their lives. But what precisely was that new hope and that new possibility? It is expressed most completely and most powerfully in a teaching or a sutra called The Lotus Sutra. This was the mainspring of Shakyamuni's mission during the final phase of his long teaching life. It represents if you like the summit of that staircase of understanding up which he was steadily taking his followers. It is described as the core and essence of his life's work. The Lotus Sutra is the central text of Mahayana Buddhism, which embraces Nichiren Buddhism. It is a long involved work full of stories and parables which stands alongside the Bible and the Koran as one of the great religious texts of human history. As Daisaku Ikeda, one of the greatest authorities on the Lotus Sutra describes it, at the very heart of the philosophy it teaches is the perception that ...' the inner determination of an individual can transform everything, it gives ultimate expression to the infinite potential and dignity inherent in every human life. '

And Daisaku Ikeda, in his account of Shakyamuni's life gives us a compelling image of Shakyamuni's ordinary humanity when  he writes, ' ...he was a man who, in almost astonishingly plain and unaffected language, employing anecdotes and analogies that could be comprehended by anyone, sought to awaken in each individual the spirit that dwells in the inner being of all people....When he speaks in his unassuming way to mankind, one catches within the clear and simple words echoes from another realm, that of the truly enlightened man who has contended with and overcome darkness in himself, and attained the final resolution of truth.'

It's a memorable image.
Enough for today.
Hope I don't have the same trouble navigating back here again for 147.
Best wishes,
William
The Case for Buddhism is available on Amazon and as a download on Kindle.