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Answer: The ease of believing and understanding in the one case is due to the fact that the Buddha taught in accordance with the capacity of the people. And the difficulty of believing and understanding in the other case is due to the fact that he taught in accordance with his own enlightenment.

Kobo Daishi and his successors at To-ji temple in Japan hold that, of all the exoteric teachings, the Lotus Sutra is the most difficult to believe and the most difficult to understand. They assert, however, that in comparison to the esoteric teachings, the Lotus Sutra is easy to believe and easy to understand. Jikaku, Chisho and their followers contend that both the Lotus Sutra and the Dainichi Sutra are among the most difficult to believe and the most difficult to understand, but that of these two, the Dainichi Sutra is by far the more difficult to believe and to understand.

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shakyamuni said 'work out your own salvation with diligence' he might have said 'w*rk at your own pace.' because the goal was the end of human suffering.

to claim that such is impossible would be to reduce all of Buddha's caring and focused intention to the level of absurdity, to just call him a crazy man, a heretic. to accept it --


in this tradition of the sangha there are actually many "buddhas and bodhisattvas". Buddhism is not Christendom, nor is it Islam or any other monotheism. it's what it is and where it comes from matters.

it has things in common with the newer religious philosophies.

perhaps buddhism could be called a bridger of ages, bridging the times of many divinities with the time when monotheism came to dominate the planet.

buddhism is a philosophy that exists, coexists with many diverging religious ways of seeing. it has had to if it didn't want to be squashed out, and people and movements have tried to dilute and pervert buddhism.