What Is Buddhahood ?

What it certainly isn't is some transcendental state of life that is seperate from daily reality. Buddhahood means enlighment : enlighment to the true nature and potential of life. As such, it is a state of life which each individual inherently possesses. The awakening of this state in our lives brings with it such characteristics as strengthened life-force, courage, determination, compassion and wisdom. There are no commandments whatsoever in Nichiren Daishonin's Buddhism, since an awakening to our higher state of life, or Buddhahood, enables us to make our own moral and ethical judgments. These are based, above all, on respect for the dignity of all life and a growing awarness of the reality of a strict and inescapable, universal law of cause and effect. Buddhism does not believe in the concept of heaven or an afterlife but rather speaks of the eternity of life. Our physical body must at some point decline and need to be replaced, but the essence of our life will continue, to be reborn in a new body at some time in the future. Buddhism states that life is to be enjoyed and, whilst it recognises the basic suffering of life, directs its followers to challenge them. Through this, we grow as human beings and become strong, improving both the quality and circumstances of our own lives and that of society, with all the potential at our disposal. The Buddhist practice activates the power within us to do this.