"A bird’s egg contains nothing but liquid, yet by itself this develops into a beak, two eyes, and all the other parts, and the bird soars into the sky. We, too, are the eggs of ignorance, which are pitiful things, but when nurtured by the chanting of Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, which is like the warmth of the mother bird, we develop the beak of the thirty-two features and the feathers of the eighty characteristics and are free to soar into the sky of the true aspect of all phenomena and the reality of all things. This is what is meant by the sutra passage that says in essence: “All people dwell in the shell of ignorance, lack ing the beak of wisdom. The Buddha comes back to this world - the land where sages and common mortals live together, the latter undergoing transmigration with differences and limitations - just as a mother bird returns to her nest, and cracks the shell of ignorance so that all people, like fledglings, may leave the nest and soar into the sky of the essential nature of phenomena and the reality of all things.”"
From Gosho "Letter to Niike" (The Writings of Nichiren Daishonin Volume I, page 1030)
From Gosho "Letter to Niike" (The Writings of Nichiren Daishonin Volume I, page 1030)
