The Great Life (3)

There is one  consciousness, one field, one force that moves through all. This field is not happening around, you it is happening through you and happening as you. – Daniel Schmidt’s “Inner Worlds – Outer Worlds.”

  Our awareness of being caused to live is our true salvation. Our absolute devotion to the truth that imparts life to us . . . the state of religious exaltation in which we feel inexpressible gratitude to and joy in the Law [Niwano embeds this in the supreme practice of followers of the Lotus Sutra, devotion to the “Mysterious Law of the Lotus” – Namu Myoho Renge-Kyo] . . . We do not worship a thing, a person a spirit, or a god existing outside ourselves, but devote ourselves to the Law which causes us to live and unites us with it—this is the purest and supreme faith, the expression of practice of taking refuge in the Law with our entire heart and mind, uttering the sacred title, Namu Myoho Renge-kyo.

  In is natural that understanding of the Law is different in each period, and according to the capacity of each person.  As most people today receive a scientific education, they have a tendency to believe only that which is clearly visible, or only that which has been scientifically proved. They are apt to doubt such concepts as the Law and “that which causes everything to live” as mere ideas produced by religious leaders. But they should think of the composition of all physical substances as elucidated by nuclear physics; all substances in this universe are electrons, protons, neutrons and other subatomic particles, and the differences between various substances are caused by different combinations of the basic particles. . . modern scientists say that these elemental particles are produced by “energy.”

  Energy is generally considered as “the force through which matter functions.” But before matter can function, there must already exist energy which produces matter. . .

  We cannot see energy with our naked eyes, or otherwise discern it as a physical entity. Energy seems at first to be “nothingness.”

  Shakyamuni Buddha, however, taught about matter correctly more than two thousand years ago.  He proclaimed in the Heart Sutra that all phenomena are produced from an equal energy or force: form or matter is identical with emptiness or “void” and void is identical with matter.