Flint has the potential to produce fire, and gems have intrinsic value. We ordinary people can see neither our own eyelashes, which are so close, nor the heavens in the distance. Likewise, we do not see that the Buddha exists in our own hearts.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the hidden potential within ourselves that we often overlook.
In this quote, Nichiren suggests that just as flint can spark a fire and gems hold value, people have intrinsic worth and potential that may not be immediately visible. He compares the obscured view of our own eyelashes to our inability to recognize the Buddha's presence within our hearts, highlighting that we often underestimate our own capabilities and the spiritual essence that resides within us.
In practice
During a motivational speech about self-discovery, one might use this quote to illustrate the idea that everyone has hidden potential.
Worthy persons deserve to be called so because they are not carried away by the eight winds: prosperity,decline,disgrace,honor,praise,censure,suffering, and pleasure.They are neither elated by prosperity nor grieved by decline. The heavenly gods will surely protect one who is unbending before the eight winds.
If you light a lantern for another, it will also brighten your own way
Never let life's hardships disturb you. No one can avoid problems, not even saints or sages.
Suffer what there is to suffer. Enjoy what there is to enjoy. Regard both suffering and joy as facts of life.
To be a man's own fool is bad enough, but the vain man is everybody's.
When you stop admiring yourself _x000D_ and let the eyes of the heart _x000D_ open your vision to vast other worlds _x000D_ then all you do, will become admirable
Everybody says they want to be free. Take the train off the tracks and it’s free-but it can’t go anywhere.
Who doesn’t respect and value his past, is not worth the honour of the present, and has no right to a future
Habits are the daughters of action, but then they nurse their mother, and produce daughters after her image, but far more beautiful and prosperous.
Now, five years is nothing in a man's life except when he is very young and very old... - Wang Lung
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