I am very interested in hearing all of your stories.
What was happening in your life before you started chanting?
What were the first changes that you saw?
What are some of the major benefits you've had over time?
I would like to hear your stories so that I can share them with the other blog readers and include them in my book. Please take this cool chance to inspire others with your story~ It's a wonderful positive cause to make!
There are many reasons people continue to chant every day~ twice a day.
Once you get the feel of the power you are tapping into...well, you just want more. It's human nature. It works!
I began chanting when a I spent the day with Kate Randolph in 1985.
We met in late summer when I was in a very depressed frame of mind. I'd been laid off from my job and suddenly didn't know who I was.
I was scared.
I was depressed.
And I was searching for a solution to my troubles. She and I met for the first time and spent a day working together on a project. All day long we talked about Nam Myoho Renge Kyo. She told me a story I'll never forget. She was woking on this project in LA with Paul Newman. THE Paul Newman. In 1985 he was still a super star. In his prime he was similar to Brad Pitt. Gorgeous blue eyes...great humanitarian...the whole nine yards. She told me that when they first met she could barely talk to him. She was nervous and couldn't think straight or get the words to form to communicate. She knew she'd have to work with him quite a bit so she chanted for an hour to regain her composure and to treat him like any other human. It worked. From that hour on she was able to speak with him and keep her brain engaged. All my life I'd been looking for a practical practice....one that produced whatever result I was seeking at the time. This sounded like it could be the solution.
So I called a local friend who'd mentioned Nam Myoho Renge Kyo to me, and went to a meeting and began an earnest practice.
Immediately the fog and depression started to lift. I woke up one day and realized I could still have a bright future. I found a job and had to wear a suit every day. I began to make some friends. And I made new friends in the wonderful Soka Gakkai organization who taught me how to chant...and helped me to realize that the things I thought were PROBLEMS in my life could actually be viewed as FUEL for the happy transformation of my life. What a revelation.
And I learned that my desires were good, and that I could become happy just the way I was, without memorizing and fourfold path or changing my eating habits or wearing yellow robes and shaving my head. I didn't have to change anything about myself! All I had to do was chant, and learn about this practice. And go to meetings. And help others learn to chant to the best of my ability.
I got one job, then another...then another. Each new problem was like a baseball coming at me and I hit it out of the park by chanting through it. I learned to appreciate everything and everybody...and I started turning the depression that I'd suffered from my entire life around.
I have countless experiences to share...and will share more and more and more...of my own, and hopefully of YOURS!!!
If you just started chanting GREAT! Go to SGI-USA.org and find your local meeting! Go to Soka Gakkai Interntional and search for your country. Join us! We are all here to help you live your happiest life ever!!!
What was happening in your life before you started chanting?
What were the first changes that you saw?
What are some of the major benefits you've had over time?
I would like to hear your stories so that I can share them with the other blog readers and include them in my book. Please take this cool chance to inspire others with your story~ It's a wonderful positive cause to make!
There are many reasons people continue to chant every day~ twice a day.
Once you get the feel of the power you are tapping into...well, you just want more. It's human nature. It works!
I began chanting when a I spent the day with Kate Randolph in 1985.
We met in late summer when I was in a very depressed frame of mind. I'd been laid off from my job and suddenly didn't know who I was.
I was scared.
I was depressed.
And I was searching for a solution to my troubles. She and I met for the first time and spent a day working together on a project. All day long we talked about Nam Myoho Renge Kyo. She told me a story I'll never forget. She was woking on this project in LA with Paul Newman. THE Paul Newman. In 1985 he was still a super star. In his prime he was similar to Brad Pitt. Gorgeous blue eyes...great humanitarian...the whole nine yards. She told me that when they first met she could barely talk to him. She was nervous and couldn't think straight or get the words to form to communicate. She knew she'd have to work with him quite a bit so she chanted for an hour to regain her composure and to treat him like any other human. It worked. From that hour on she was able to speak with him and keep her brain engaged. All my life I'd been looking for a practical practice....one that produced whatever result I was seeking at the time. This sounded like it could be the solution.
So I called a local friend who'd mentioned Nam Myoho Renge Kyo to me, and went to a meeting and began an earnest practice.
Immediately the fog and depression started to lift. I woke up one day and realized I could still have a bright future. I found a job and had to wear a suit every day. I began to make some friends. And I made new friends in the wonderful Soka Gakkai organization who taught me how to chant...and helped me to realize that the things I thought were PROBLEMS in my life could actually be viewed as FUEL for the happy transformation of my life. What a revelation.
And I learned that my desires were good, and that I could become happy just the way I was, without memorizing and fourfold path or changing my eating habits or wearing yellow robes and shaving my head. I didn't have to change anything about myself! All I had to do was chant, and learn about this practice. And go to meetings. And help others learn to chant to the best of my ability.
I got one job, then another...then another. Each new problem was like a baseball coming at me and I hit it out of the park by chanting through it. I learned to appreciate everything and everybody...and I started turning the depression that I'd suffered from my entire life around.
I have countless experiences to share...and will share more and more and more...of my own, and hopefully of YOURS!!!
If you just started chanting GREAT! Go to SGI-USA.org and find your local meeting! Go to Soka Gakkai Interntional and search for your country. Join us! We are all here to help you live your happiest life ever!!!
I'm almost (but not quite) embarrassed to share my first positive experience with daimoku, because it doesn't paint me in a particularly noble light. But it was thirteen years ago when I first discovered the practice, and I'm a rather different person now. Also, it underscores the point that you really can chant for any desire.
ReplyDeleteI found daimoku rather serendipitously, and did not have a great deal of information about it at first. Remarkably, I was instantly able to intuit a great deal about the practice that was later confirmed by research. I knew instantly that it just worked whether you believed in it or not; I knew instantly that "namu" could be shortened to "nam"; and, despite not having word one of Japanese (let alone Sanskrit) I had a pretty good working literal translation of the phrase in my head, but also knew that each syllable had its own distinct, separate meaning.
I wrote a list of my goals. And on that list of goals was a rather trivial desire that I knew would be a good test for the practice.
If there was any validity to this philosophy, this desire could be delivered pretty much instantly.
So I wrote down that I wanted to see the girl whose bedroom I could see from mine topless in her window. For a couple of nights, nothing happened - and then on the third night, this girl changed her habit and got undressed for bed before drawing her curtains. A one-off moment of absent-mindedness on her part.
Actual proof of daimoku? Well, kind of. I hadn't actually seen anything of her. The angle was wrong, the netting over the pane obscured the view, etc. It just wasn't quite right.
So the next evening, I altered what I had written down on my list of goals. Now I wanted to see that girl topless in her window as a matter of course.
The following morning I awoke to discover her curtain rail had fallen down.
It wasn't replaced for an astonishing six months, so I got my desire. Most nights I could see her topless in her window... except the mystic law still managed to preserve the girl's dignity. I never really saw anything of her in all that time. Just an almost-nightly impression of nudity.
At the time, I found that rather frustrating. "If it's going to go to the trouble of pulling down a curtain rail, why can't it do this properly?" Looking back now though I think my higher self just had a bit more decorum and decency than my ego. I'd been given the proof I needed to drive me forward, but I hadn't permitted myself to interfere with this girl's right to privacy. A remarkable balancing act.
Over the years, I've struggled with daimoku and had a very sporadic practice. Or rather series of practices. I once gave it up for over two years! It's only really in the last ten months that I've dedicated myself to a sincere, daily practice. I finally decided I was tired of the same worn-out patterns in my life, and was determined to change pretty much everything.
And it's been tough. At time of writing it still is very tough for me. The last year or so has been a deeply challenging period, and there's no obvious sign that things are getting better - or that I'm starting to move towards a better life condition, environment, financial situation, anything.
Practice feels stronger than it ever has before, but I'm not really witnessing any results yet.
But despite the inevitable doubts that this apparent stagnation produces, I will keep pushing forwards every day, and will not give up as I have in previous times. One of the things that keeps me going is this wonderful blog.
And another of the things that keeps me going is thinking back to that girl in the window thirteen years ago.
It may be a slightly embarrassing anecdote to tell, but - let's face it - physically pulling a curtain rail off a wall in such a timely fashion, is quite a spectacular demonstration of power.
I'm on the same page with this last comment. I too continue to chant regularly but to state that I'm happy would be an understatement. Sometimes I want to give up on chanting or get angry with chanting and see it as a waste of time. But I still continue to do it. I read the goshos, go to meetings and remain in contact with my mentor. I know I don't believe in it as much as I use to, but I'm trying to get back there. I feel that it works for everyone else but me or only for certain aspects and not everything. This lack of faith makes me feel empty. When something great does happen, I don't contribute it to nmrk. If I did, then wouldn't it stand to contribute nmrk to bad things too? I know tons of people who don't chant and have great fortune. How do you keep going when you don't see actual proof?
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