ON PRAYER
On Prayer- Kito Sho -
Therefore
we know that the prayers offered by a practitioner of the Lotus Sutra will be
answered just as an echo answers a sound, as a shadow follows a form, as the
reflection of the moon appears in clear water, as a mirror collects dewdrops, as
a lodestone attracts iron, as amber attracts particles of dust, or as a bright
mirror reflects the color of an object.---
And yet, though one might point at the earth and miss it, though
one might bind up the sky, though the tides might cease to ebb and flow and the
sun rise up from the west, it could never come about that the prayers of the
practitioner of the Lotus Sutra would go unanswered. If the bodhisattvas, the
human and heavenly beings, the eight kinds of nonhuman beings, the two sages, 40 the two
heavenly deities41
and the ten demon daughters would by some unlikely chance fail to appear and
protect the practitioner of the Lotus Sutra, then they would be showing disdain
for Shakyamuni and the other Buddhas above, and below they would be guilty of
deceiving the beings of the nine realms.
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