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Latter Day of the Law ［末法］ ( mappō): Also, age of the Decadent Law, age of the Final Law, or latter age. This shouldn't be compared to the Christian teachings to "repent" or "suffer." As a Buddhist we know that suffering is now, as well as heaven and hell, and we can be in hell one moment and heaven the next (see the Ten Worlds), the goal is to elevate our state of life to our Buddha nature so we remain in the higher words and not hell. In other words, there ain't no bad guy/girl, there ain't no good guy/girl, there is only us and them and we all just disagree. That's the Latter Day of the Law, Mappo, in a nutshell. Here it is in detail:
The last of the three periods—the Former Day of the Law, the Middle Day
of the Law, and the Latter Day of the Law—following Shakyamuni Buddha’s
death, when his teachings are said to fall into confusion and lose the
power to lead people to enlightenment. The Latter Day of the Law is said
to last for ten thousand years. The fifth of five five-hundred-year
periods following Shakyamuni’s death described in the Great Collection
Sutra corresponds to the beginning of the Latter Day of the Law. The
sutra predicts that it will be an “age of quarrels and disputes,” when
monks will disregard the precepts and feud constantly among themselves,
when erroneous views will prevail, and when Shakyamuni’s teachings will
“be obscured and lost.”
In contrast, the Lotus Sutra views the Latter Day of the Law as the
time when the teaching it contains will be propagated. The “Medicine
King” (twenty-third) chapter of the Lotus Sutra says, “After I have
passed into extinction, in the last five-hundred-year period you must
spread it abroad widely throughout Jambudvīpa and never allow it to be
cut off.” T’ien-t’ai (538–597) states in The Words and Phrases of the Lotus Sutra,
“In the last five-hundred-year period, the mystic way will spread and
benefit humankind far into the future,” and Dengyō (767–822) says in An Essay on the Protection of the Nation,
“The Former and Middle Days are almost over, and the Latter Day is near
at hand.” It was believed in Japan that the Latter Day would begin in
1052; this was based on an account in The Record of Wonders in the Book of Chou that places Shakyamuni’s death in 949 b.c.e. Modern research suggests, however, that he died in the early fifth century b.c.e.
The concept of the Latter Day of the Law is also applied to Buddhas
other than Shakyamuni, and Buddhist scriptures often refer to the
“Latter Day of the Law” of a particular Buddha as the age in which that
Buddha’s teachings are lost.
