Ikeda: There are methods for changing the karmic energy in one's life from 'negative' to
'positive' through steadily accumulating good causes.
But in reality that is not practical; sooner
or later we are liable to do something that erases the good causes we have made, just as in
piling up stones we can only get so high before we upset what we have worked to create. That
is particularly so in an age when society, to its very depths, is swirling with negative energy.
By contrast, the Lotus Sutra teaches how, by activating the ninth consciousness, which lies at
the utmost depths of our being and is fundamentally free of impurity, we can at once change
both the negative and positive karmic energy in our life into ,supremely positive' energy.
The
ninth consciousness is the universal life that underlies the eighth consciousness and every
other facet of our being.
Ikeda:The 'eternal Buddha' of the 'Life Span' (sixteenth)chapter could be called an expression in
human form of this fundamentally pure consciousness that is without beginning or end.
When
we activate this fundamentally pure consciousness, the energy of good and evil karma in our
life is all directed towards value creation; and the mind or consciousness of our ethnic group
and of humankind is infused with the life-current of compassion and wisdom.
Saito: The Daishonin calls this fundamentally pure consciousnessthe ,unchanging reality
which reigns over all life's functions' (Major Writings, Vol. 1, p. 213). It is the Gohonzon, which
exists 'only within the mortal flesh of us ordinary people who embrace the Lotus Sutra and
chant Nam-myoho-renge kyo.
