When we use a word in any language it is marker for an idea, it isn’t itself the thing it marks it stands for the thing. When I write ‘car’ I am assembling letters according to conventions of language to represent the concept we know as car. I can not drive to the store in the letters c-a-r so those letters are themselves not the thing they represent.
There is more to consider though. When I write the word ‘car’ I am not simply describing a physical object identified commonly as car. Also wishing that word are the processes, materials, and people who designed and created the object car. We may not consciously think about the bending of metal, the fastening of bolts, the placement of widgets, dials, hoses, caps, handles, pedals, and so forth yet the object car does not exist without those things.
A car is not an independent arisen object. A car does not exist outside of a cause for its presence and use. We can not drive the letters, the letters do not exist independently from other actions, processes, and materials. The letter c-a-r are not nearly descriptive enough to contain individual variations of cars yet they embrace all of the potentialities of car. By writing car I have not excluded any particular car and I have not described any particular car. A car can be blue, it can be long, it can be short, it can be one brand or another, it can be any number of a variety of ways cars can be.
Also contained in the car is all of the potential ways in which cars can be used and the things cars can accomplish yet the word itself can do none of those things.
The word car can be both expansive and limiting.
When I speak of the space in words this is what I am referring to. Not simply the space between words but the space the word exists in, the causes for the word to come into existence, and the potentials of the existence of the word. Just as no effect occurs without a preceding cause so to no word exists independently or arises without a context or condition for arising.
Even the action of creating the word or recording the word requires an operator to complete the operation. There is an I or me who has written the word car. There is also the reader who reads the word car. The word car does not come into existence outside of any environmental cause and it is not consumed or understood or translated without a being to do so and then the being is affected by the cause within the word car.
The letters composing the word c-a-r have little value separate from each other. We can assemble the constituent letters of our alphabet in any number of ways to represent a potentially infinite ideas. They are not the ideas themselves yet they contain all of those ideas.
Going back to my previous remarks on the equality of Myoho Renge Kyo and the entire text of the book we refer to as Lotus Sutra perhaps it might be possible for you now to see that each word of the text and each word of Myoho Renge Kyo contains everything spoken about, even Buddhist theory contained in the Lotus Sutra, every aspect of the Buddha, every potential of the Buddha and so forth. The words also contain every potential, every aspect, every understanding of the person who is reading or practicing the Lotus Sutra.
Nichiren says that every character in the Lotus Sutra is a Golden Buddha. Because the Lotus Sutra represents the teaching of the mind and heart of the Buddha then every character is a representation of every aspect of the mind, heart, and body of the teacher who is in this care the Buddha.
Just as when I write the word ‘car’ I am writing every potential way a car can exist, I am also including all of the ways cars come into existence going all the way back in time to the creation of communication. My ability to write the word car contains all of the history of communication from the beginning of human life on this planet.
The Lotus Sutra being the teaching of all Buddhas thought time and space also contains all of those teachings and Buddhas who taught them and practitioners who recorded and preserved them. Each character of the Lotus Sutra makes it possible to communicate all of the infinite aspects and benefits of the Buddha, or what we term Eternal Buddha.
So the Eternal Buddha is a term which has been adopted to try to capture the infinite complexity, meanings, teachings, causes, conditions, and so forth of all the characters, the spaces, the manifestations of the Truth of Buddha and Heart of Buddha throughout time. These are conveniently recorded and communicated through the text of the Lotus Sutra, and their equivalent in the Myoho Renge Kyo.
It is important for us to not fall into the trap of thinking on words in the Lotus Sutra as being thoughts or ideas or words existing outside of any origin or cause or effect. The words assist in relationship to their neighbor words, the concepts exist in relationship to other concepts. The word act upon the reader or partitioner according to the condition of that individual. The words exist as a potential containing all possible potentials of existence.
This may seem either quite obvious or it may seem pointless and obscure. Regardless it is important for us to begin to understand for a deeper faith and practice of Myoho Renge Kyo. There is nothing in Buddhism that resides outside of Myoho Renge Kyo. There is no teaching or Buddha existing outside of Myoho Renge Kyo. There is not potential affect not contained within Myoho Renge Kyo.
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