Your faith guarantees that an infinite number of your ancestors and descendants will attain Buddhahood. Such is the wondrous power of the Mystic Law. How profound and important is your existence! There is also no greater way to repay the debt of gratitude to your parents than through faith.
Daisaku Ikeda
This is the kind of guidance that I struggle with a bit ... I've never found the whole 'eternity of life' thing very easy to understand even though I do believe in it .. I'm just not sure in a practical sense how it happens. I did read a good article once though where Sensei stated that all religions have a different take on what happens after death but the most important factor of this was how that view encouraged people to live their lives in the here and now .. ie don't focus on the next life. This makes complete sense to me ... if there is nothing after death we won't know so we may as well live this life to the full. If there IS life after death then we'll have made great causes ... a real win win.
The other aspect of this is about how both our ancestors and descendants will benefit ... I've recently been reading about 'time' in Buddhism and how it is not the same as time as we usually understand it .. ie linear time .. so it's not about yesterday or tomorrow but about NOW ... I guess what this is saying is that by practising now, we are showing gratitude to our ancestors by living the best life possible and making a great cause for generations to come.
