The book discusses the development of Buddhism after the death of its founder Shakyamuni. Starting from the first council, organized by Shakyamuni's direct disciples, which brought order to the complex system of the Buddha's teachings, up to the birth of the Mahayana movement, whose origins remain poorly defined. Daisaku Ikeda examines the sparse historical information that has reached us and interprets it with his characteristic originality and intuition. He expounds the essential principles of the Lotus Sutra, the fundamental scripture of the Great Vehicle, and retraces the events of some of the protagonists in the history of Buddhism: King Ashoka and the philosophers Nagarjuna and Vasubandhu, who contributed to its affirmation as one of the major world religions.
