The Power of Sutra Recitation as Prayer

Kyohei Mikawa

In my daily sutra recitation at home, I always return to this passage with a full heart:

May these merits

Extend universally to all

So that we and all living beings

Together accomplish the Buddha Way

(KYOTEN, p.81)

Buddhists understand that a single-mindedly offered sutra recitation is a prayer for all living beings — present, past, and future — whether known or unknown to us. Its purpose is simple and boundless at once: the end of suffering for all.

Since the 6th century BC, Buddhists have felt, experienced, and known that this form of prayer generates spiritual blessings — for the one who offers it, and for anyone held in their heart while offering it.

This is not merely a beautiful tradition. It is grounded in a profound teaching.

Buddhism has long held that self and other are not separate. But the Lotus Sutra goes even further — it reveals that self and other are not merely inseparable. We are, in our deepest nature, identical to one another.

It is from this place that the power of sutra recitation as prayer becomes real. When we offer a sincere prayer for someone who is suffering — when we hold them in our heart with genuine care — something remarkable happens. In that moment of wholehearted offering, we are no longer simply praying for them from a distance. We are, in a very real sense, becoming them. Their suffering becomes ours. Our merits become theirs.

This is why the blessings reach them. Not through magic, but through revealing the ultimate absence of the boundary we imagined was always there.