This series, prepared by the SGI-USA Study Department, features timeless stories in Nichiren Daishonin’s writings (also called the Gosho) that continue to offer practical wisdom for us today.
In the Lotus Sutra’s fifth chapter, Shakyamuni Buddha presents a parable that tells of a great cloud covering the entire world that sends life-giving rain equally upon all medicinal herbs, plants and trees.
The great cloud symbolizes the Buddha’s wisdom and compassion, the rain points to the Buddha’s Law or teaching, and the various plants and trees represent all living beings. Though they grow in different places and conditions, they all receive the same nourishing rain. Shakyamuni explains:
Though all these plants and trees grow in the same earth and are moistened by the same rain, each has its differences and particulars. (The Lotus Sutra andIts Opening and Closing Sutras, p. 135)
Although the rain is the same, each plant grows according to its own nature. In the same way, the Buddha expounds his highest teaching, the Lotus Sutra, for all people’s enlightenment, yet individuals benefit based on their unique capacities. The sutra says:
In accordance with what each is capable of hearing, [the thus come one] preaches the Law for them in an immeasurable variety of ways so that all of them are delighted and are able to gain excellent benefits therefrom. …
It is like the rain falling from that great cloud upon all the plants and trees, thickets and groves, and medicinal herbs. Each, depending upon its species and nature, receives its full share of moistening and is enabled to sprout and grow. (LSOC, 135–36)
Nichiren on ‘Medicinal Herbs’
The parable’s three types of plants and two types of trees symbolize Buddhist teachings that preceded the Lotus Sutra. While practitioners of those teachings may not realize it, the Lotus Sutra’s perfect principle and teaching of enlightenment are the foundation that nurtures all paths to Buddhahood.
Explaining this “Medicinal Herbs” chapter, Nichiren Daishonin writes:
Now with the preaching of the Lotus Sutra these “plants and trees,” which represent the five vehicles,[1]come to know and understand their mother, the perfect principle, and their father, the perfect teaching. They realize the debt they owe their mother, the one earth that they all sprang from, and the debt they owe their father, the one rain that watered them. This, then, is the meaning of the chapter on the “Parable of the Medicinal Herbs.” (“The Unanimous Declaration by the Buddhas,” The Writings of Nichiren Daishonin, vol. 2, p. 850)
The Lotus Sutra thus encompasses the perfect principle and teaching that enables all people to reveal their Buddhahood.
—Prepared by the SGI-USA Study Department
Ikeda Sensei’s Guidance
The Buddha, while fully recognizing people’s differences, does not discriminate among them. The Buddha respects people’s individuality and desires that they may freely manifest their unique qualities. He is neither partial nor adverse toward people on account of their individual proclivities. The Buddha loves, rejoices at and tries to bring out each person’s uniqueness; this is his compassion and his wisdom. …
The important point is that the Buddha’s preaching begins from a recognition of human diversity. The Buddha asks the question: How can I enable each person to attain Buddhahood, notwithstanding differences in circumstance, temperament and capacity? The Lotus Sutra, without departing in the least from the reality of the individual, clarifies the path to Buddhahood for all.
The humanism of the Lotus Sutra comes down to the tenet of treasuring the individual. This is the Buddha’s spirit. The Lotus Sutra’s fundamental objective of universal enlightenment begins with treasuring the individual and can be realized only through steadfast adherence to this point.
To love people or love humanity in the abstract is easy. To feel compassion toward real individuals is difficult. (The Wisdom of the Lotus Sutra, vol. 2, pp. 71–72)
August 21, 2026 World Tribune, p. 9
References
- Five vehicles: Five kinds of teaching expounded in accordance with the people’s capacity. Vehicle means a teaching that brings people to a particular stage of attainment. The five vehicles are the vehicles of ordinary people, heavenly beings, voice-hearers, cause-awakened ones and bodhisattvas. This contrasts with the one Buddha vehicle of the Lotus Sutra, which leads all people to enlightenment. ↩︎
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