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.
When fortune surprises us by giving us some great office without having gradually led us to expect it, or without having raised our hopes, it is well nigh impossible to occupy it well, and to appear worthy to fill it.
Knowledge is essential to conquest; only according to our ignorance are we helpless. Thought creates character. Character can dominate conditions. Will creates circumstances and environment.
I wish I was as sure of anything as he is of everything.
Its not a story in which the characters grow up, but a story in which they draw on something already inside them, brought out by the particular circumstances. I want my young friends to live like that, and I think they, too, have such a wish.
One must lose one's life to find it.
Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Do not despair if the answers don't come immediately. Some answers are only revealed with the passage of time.
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