The Great Life

Strengthened practice in 1984, discovering

Nikkyo Niwano’s “Buddhism for Today”

Chapter 16, The Eternal Life of the Tathagata

The Great Life (1)

What then should we depend upon for our salvation? We must here remember the Buddha’s teaching: “Make the self the light. Make the Law your light,” the words Shakyamuni, before dying, spoke to Ananda, one of his ten great disciples. In response to Ananda’s anxiety, the Buddha taught him as follows: “Ananda, in the future you should make the Law your light and depend on your own self. You must not depend on other people.”

  There is no better teaching than this to sum up the essence of a right religion in a few words. The Buddha first taught, “You can depend on your own self.” If we depend upon other people, we do not know what to do if we are forsaken by them, or they disappear. Therefore the Buddha admonished us to depend upon ourselves and walk the Way through our own efforts
. But on what should we depend in living our lives? The Buddha taught that this is nothing other than the Law, namely, the truth, that we must not depend absolutely on others. Here “others” means “gods,” beings who are considered to be outside ourselves and to be our masters. The Buddha taught emphatically that we must not depend upon such gods but only upon the Law, the truth.

  Indeed, his words carry great weight. A single word of the teaching “Make the self your light, make the Law your light” is more valuable than all the innumerable teachings concerning human life and religion that have been promulgated by the many great men and women of past ages.

  Through this teaching we understand that what we depend on, the Law, exists both within and outside us. It is the truth that permeates the entire universe, not establishing a distinction between outside and inside. Our body is produced by this truth and is caused to live by it. Our mind also is produced by it and caused to work by it. All things, including society, heaven, earth, plants, birds and beasts are produced by this truth and caused to live by it.

  A person who feels the word, “truth,” is somewhat cold and abstract can replace it with the term, “the great life,” which makes everything in this world exist and live. When we are fully aware in the depths of our mind that we are given life by this great life that permeates the universe, we can attain the true mental peace that is not diminished by anything.