Celebrating Life

Stories from The Threefold Lotus Sutra

  human kind, born from earth and sea on a planet formed from an exploding star in a galaxy called the milky way, emerged late in the earth’s four-to-five billion year history as a result of the same conditions which in the beginning, created the universe. The Buddha’s teachings propose that this remarkable, even mystical chain of cause and effect, was inevitable and necessary.

  Progressing from the beginning of the universe to the formation of planet earth, to the dawn of human beings five to six million years ago, thus did the flow of time lead to the birth of us all, and in the 6^th Century before the Christian Era, the birth of Prince Siddhartha who became at the moment of his enlightenment, Shakyamuni Buddha, “the enlightened one of the Shakya clan,” the Buddha who sees beyond the universe, beyond space and time, perceiving that his birth as a human being emerges out of limitless, eternal incarnations, a continuity shared with all humanity.

  In the moment of his enlightenment, the Buddha is awakened to the profound interconnection of all living things. He perceives that an imperishable energy, a universal life-force, is the cause of all existence, imbedded in all laws. From emptiness, the profound Law of the Void, itself the Great Perfection, he realizes human beings and all living things, are equal in the fundamental value of their existence and are caused to live by the will to live, brought into being by virtue of karmic necessity, evolving creatively with planet earth.

  He has awakened to a profound truth that has existed from the infinite past, even before he appeared in this world. His fundamental desire in teaching this “final profound truth” is that all living beings will discover it for themselves.