作仏後の２４年間を振り返って
Looking back on the 24 years since attaining Buddhahood
2025-12-19
It has now been twenty-four years since I awakened (= attained liberation) and became a Buddha.
Here, I will briefly look back on that time.
Awakening (= liberation) occurred in the middle of the night, yet without being consciously aware of it, I simply went to sleep and morning came.
When I awoke, the knowledge and vision of liberation arose in me—the realization that I had attained wisdom-liberation.
At that moment, I remember declaring to my wife, “I have unquestionably awakened and become a Buddha.”
At the time, I was a company employee, and I then drove my own car to work as usual.
I stopped my immediate supervisor, and even a senior supervisor with whom I was close, and told them that I had awakened and become a Buddha that very morning.
In response, they seemed somewhat doubtful, but my direct supervisor frankly said, “There’s something fundamentally different about your presence today from usual.”
Now, from that day until today, I have continuously remained conscious of the fact that I awakened and became a Buddha—this awareness is present even in my dreams—and these twenty-four years have been a time in which I have constantly felt the certainty of the knowledge and vision of liberation that arose then.
When I became a Buddha, I fleetingly thought, “Since I have become a Buddha, I will give rise to thirty-two thousand Buddhas (2 to the fifteenth power).” At present, however, this has been limited to the birth of only a few Buddhas.
Even so, I feel a sense of fulfillment in having created the karmic conditions for Buddhas connected to me to appear in the modern age, and I also feel a tangible response in having been able to present to the world, through means such as a website and books, the words of principle and law that I myself have recited and brought forth during this period.
Moreover, being able to directly experience that the appearance of a Buddha brings about corresponding social changes has been a significant matter.
It is also a joy that my children have all grown up admirably and become independent.
And it is an even greater joy that the disciples whom I have made Buddhas have each established their own Buddha-lands and are manifesting Nirvana in the world.
I have no interest even in whether my disciples attain awakening; however, it has been a joy to have opportunities to truly sense that my direct disciples and those connected to me are each steadily advancing in their Buddhist practice.
Seeing—or bearing witness to—the fact that followers of other religions, practitioners of non-Buddhist paths, and foolish beings who do not understand the correct teaching are writhing in every kind of suffering and remain unable to escape from fundamental delusion, I find myself deeply convinced of the correctness of the principle and the law.
What can be said, based on these twenty-four years of life as a Buddha, is that the state of Nirvana brought about by awakening (＝liberation) is a wonderful state that can be recommended without exception to all people (sentient beings).
And it is also to be acknowledged as a fact that those who, without relying on anything other than themselves, discover this single path and walk it firmly will, step by step, accumulate merit and proceed straight toward, and ultimately reach, Nirvana.
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