Tuesday, August 27, 2013
PowerPrayers for Busting Through Obstacles! TWO PowerPrayers today!
Those of us who are challenging our lives through strong Daimoku (the chanting of Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, which means "I fuse my life with the mystic law of cause and effect through sound vibration") are summoning up obstacles in our lives. This is part of the practice and part of life. As I've said many times, we can use these obstacles to FUEL our lives and our happiness, and provide us with the fire to change our karma forever, or we can have these obstacles FOOL us into thinking we are not strong, not capable and not wise, and give up.
The choice is up to us!
Here is a passage from my upcoming book:
The BuddhaZone, PowerPrayers for Chanting Your Way to Absolute Happiness. (The actual PowerPrayer is at the end)
Recognizing Obstacles for What they are!
“When devilish functions are recognized for what they are they lose their power.” Daisaku Ikeda, Living Buddhism June 2013 p 23
In the words of Nichiren Daishonin in his letter to Niike:
“There is definitely something extraordinary in the ebb and flow of the tide,
the rising and setting of the moon,
and the way in which summer, autumn, winter, and spring
give way to each other.
Something uncommon also occurs
when an ordinary person attains Buddhahood.
At such a time, the three obstacles and four devils
will invariably appear,
and the wise will rejoice while the foolish will retreat.
I have long been waiting to tell you this,
either through my own messenger or by some other means.” http://www.sgilibrary.org/view.php?page=637
PowerPrayer for Recognizing
and Removing Obstacles
Hello, Sansho Shima,
I was expecting you.
I recognize you for what you are.
Sansho Shima, I see you for what you are!
No way!
Not this time!
Not any more!
I'm in charge now.
I AM Nam-myoho-renge-kyo
and I am roaring like a lion.
You are not real, you have no power here.
On the contrary,
I take your pure energy now, and
through my Daimoku I make you my ally, instead.
I turn Sansho Shima into Shoten Zenjin
(protective functions in life and the environment)
Shoten Zenjin
Get my back!
I now use you to refuel my determination
and I will chant _________number of hours
every day until I have ultimate victory.
I will encourage others with this victory,
and by my strong faith while facing this challenge!
Obstacles:
I transform you now.
Nam-myoho-renge-kyo!
PowerPrayer to say,
"No More! Enough is enough!”
I am chanting with
absolute conviction in the power of my life to declare and demand:
No more of this karma
of feeling insecure and doubting myself.
No more of this karma
of being abused by anyone or any thing!
No more doubting my own Buddha Nature!
No more living in fear!
No more feeling unloved or hopeless.
No more struggling in a job I hate, or any other terrible situation.
No more ________________ (you fill in the blank.)
I am the Buddha.
I am roaring with power in my life!
I now determine with all the power vested in me that I will___________________________.
Monday, August 26, 2013
How is Our Practice Different from the "Law of Attraction" or The Secret?
I am very familiar with the law of attraction. I have read the Secret and I attended many talks by Abraham (Esther and Jerry Hicks) and I DO believe that what we focus on is very important.
We need to focus on what is positive, and what we want to bring into our lives. The thing the Secret is missing is any recognition of karma, and a consistent practice to elevate each person's vibration. Every day, by chanting, we elevating our life-condition. We intone the rhythm of the name of the universe itself, Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, meaning: I fuse my life with the mystic law of cause and effect through sound vibration.
Let's face it, some things are easier to change than others, right? For some things you can just focus on them, watch how others are accomplishing them and just make the change and make it happen. Other things, well...they could take years; they are more embedded karma, but they CAN be changed with this practice.
Without the tool to tap into the source vibration itself and elevate our life condition, some of the things we want to change may never change. This is why we chant. And we receive actual proof every day that this practice works!
We know that changing our karma is not easy. That's why we chant twice a day - every day! We fight to change our karma. We know that we must not just change our own karma and become happy for ourselves ~ but we also are in the daily process of helping others achieve happiness too, and spreading the word of the mystic law. If the law of attraction by itself really worked for all people, wouldn't everyone who focuses on what they want already have achieved their goals?
As we know, Karma is the sum total of all our past deeds of every lifetime we have ever lived. Karma is not our FAULT, we are not bad people for having karma. We all have karma. SGI Buddhism tells us we don't have to spend lifetime after lifetime paying our karmic debt. We can change it right here, right now by chanting Nam-myoho-renge-kyo and challenging ourselves in faith, practice and study.
What does this mean? It means that we get out of chanting what we put into it. The Gohonzon is a mirror of our lives. It is the vast sonic mirror that reflects the highest potential life condition, the life condition of Nichiren Daishonin, the Buddha who was predicted to be born in the Latter Day of the Law and teach us all the correct Buddhist practice for our time. After studying and researching for years, Nichiren realized that the title of Shakyamumi's highest teaching, the Lotus Sutra, was the correct practice and he began chanting Nam-myoho-renge-kyo in the 1200s in Japan. He inscribed the Gohonzon to enable people to bring out the highest state of life within each person.
Even though the Gohonzon, the scroll we face when we chant, is our object of worship, we are not praying TO it. Since the Gohonzon is depicting our highest life condition, it is actually within all of us. We chant to bring forth the wisdom, the energy, the Buddhahood we ALREADY possess.
When we chant we are chanting to our own life, our own essence, our own Buddha nature. We don't chant to Buddha! We chant to our own highest selves...deeper than our subconscious minds...the part of us that is connected to the whole universe. It is, of course, impossible to explain and must be experienced. If you are reading this blog and haven't experienced chanting you need to chant to feel it.
When I started, I chanted 5 minutes every morning and 5 minutes every evening, and I went to SGI meetings to learn more. I had a "seeking spirit" and felt I was onto something. 28 year later I am still "onto something" and live my life to help others tap into the power within themselves. When we live this way life is an incredible joy...and all our problems FUEL our happiness! To find a meeting in your area, click the SGI Portal on the right.
Sunday, August 25, 2013
Gongyo is a Grand and Noble Rite, by Daisaku Ikeda
This is one of the many speeches of Daisaku Ikeda I read over and over again. We are truly microcosms of the macrocosm of the Universe. This speech resonated for me. It also corresponds with the blog from a few days back comparing the irises of our eyes with the nebulae in the universe. Enjoy!
Gongyo is a Grand and Noble Rite:
I would like to take the opportunity provided by today’s training session of the youth division to present a succinct and easily comprehensible discussion of the significance of gongyo. Because of the limitations of time I cannot pursue the subject in all its details, so I would like all of you to consider and explore this topic on your own afterwards as well.
Nichiren Daishonin’s Buddhism teaches that our existence is identical to the universe as a whole, and the universe as a whole is identical to our existence. Each individual human life is a microcosm.
The practice of gongyo is a grand and noble rite to achieve the vital communication to the microcosm of each person’s existence with the universe, based on the Gohonzon.
The correspondence of each part of our bodies to parts of the universe is proof that our existence is a microcosm. Our heads are round like the heavens above us are round, and our eyes are like the sun and the moon. We close them and open them, like day and night. Our hair shines like the sparkling stars. Our eyebrows are like the seven stars of the Big Dipper.
Our breath is the wind,
and the quiet breathing from our nostrils is like the still air of the valleys and dales.
There are some 360 joints in the human body
and they stand for the days of the year.
The twelve major joints signify the twelve months.
The warm, front side of our body — our abdomen and stomach — is spring and summer. The cold hard back is fall and winter.
Our blood vessels and arteries are streams and rivers.
When we suffer a cerebral hemorrhage, it is as if a dam or dike has burst.
Our bones are stones, and our skin and muscle are like the earth.
Our body hair is a forest.
Buddhist scriptures discuss in detail these correspondences i
ncluding each of the internal organs,
teaching that our body is indeed a universe in miniature.
There are clouds in the heavens. The wind blows, the stars twinkle. There are oceans on earth. The rivers flow. Volcanoes erupt. And great quantities of metals and minerals — gold, silver, copper, potassium, calcium — lie in the earth’s depths.
The activities and qualities of all these materials are also incorporated in our bodies.
The infinite elementary particles of the cosmos — atoms, protons, photons, electrons, neutrons, and all the rest — microscopic animals such as bacteria, the activities of good and evil, and the laws of gravity, the conservation of mass and energy, and all other laws of the universe also apply in almost the same fashion to the microcosm of our bodies.
A look at the operation of our bodies suggests that they are great pharmaceutical plants. They have the capability to produce the drugs we need to preserve our health. They take in food and transform it into nourishment and energy.
The human brain has the capability of a giant computer — even though we may not always be able to use it!
The sixty trillion cells of our bodies work together
in their established order in a perfect biorhythm. This is the original order of things.
The Great Law That Pervades Individual Existence and the Universe
Our existence is the universe, and its life processes are sublime. A slight change in the heat of the sun will enormously affect not only the Earth but all the other planets. If the Earth’s rotation were to stop for the briefest instant, or if its axis were to tilt the slightest degree, all living things would be threatened with extinction.
That is how subtle the natural order is. And further, a firm and irrevocable law of the universe exists. This holds true for the microcosm as well.
It is science that pursues this invisible but truly existent law, and technology is the invention of machines and other devices based on the fruits of scientific research.
Nichiren Daishonin discovered and awoke to the great law of all existence that underlies all the partial laws governing all spiritual and physical phenomena, and it was he who revealed that law to humanity as Nam-myoho-renge-kyo. This Mystic Law applies equally to the universe as a whole and to each and every individual human existence. The universe and the individual are one in this Mystic Law.
Under certain circumstances, an invisible law takes form as a visible existence. The individual human existence, for example, emerges out of its state of fusion with the rest of the universe by taking shape in the womb and being born in the world.
A ship can be regarded as a tangible representation of the law of buoyancy, just as an airplane is a representation of the laws of aerodynamics, a radio or television program a representation of the law of electromagnetic waves. All of these objects give shape to invisible laws.
The fundamental law of the universe and individual existence is also invisible. The Daishonin inscribed the Gohonzon as a visual representation of that Mystic Law for the people of the world. The Lotus Sutra and other Buddhist scriptures are the instruction manuals for the Gohonzon.
Josei Toda, my teacher and the second president of the Soka Gakkai, explained the Gohonzon in an easily comprehensible way as "a machine to produce happiness."
When we practice gongyo and chant daimoku before the Gohonzon, our individual existence is perfectly harmonized with the universe.
Both the universe and our individual existence are the concrete manifestation of Nam-myoho-renge-kyo as is the Gohonzon. That is why when we practice gongyo and chant Nam-myoho-renge-kyo with faith in the Gohonzon, our existence and the universe mesh as perfectly as two gears, and with an initial creak begin to work together.
The single life-moment (ichinen) of the individual becomes one with the three thousand (sanzen) factors and realms of the universe and begins to produce great value. This is the concrete practice of ichinen sanzen.
Through that practice we can acquire wisdom and good fortune, and glow with the energy to overcome any obstacle throughout the four seasons, three hundred sixty-five days a year; we can enter the way to the eternal happiness and attain eternity, joy, true self and purity (jo raku ga jo).
Gongyo is a practice which calls forth and activates the infinite power that the microcosm inherently possesses. It transforms your fate, breaks through any apparent dead end and converts sufferings into happiness. It creates a transformation, a revolution of the microcosm. It is a diagram in miniature of kosen-rufu in our lives.
The kosen-rufu that is our aim is a movement to transform the universe, the Earth and human society into a world of peace, comfort and harmony in accord with the rhythm of the Mystic Law.
The Practice of Attaining Buddhahood in This Lifetime, Which Leads to Eternal Happiness
If you let an automobile or any other machine fall into disuse, it will rust and stop working correctly. You have to use it and maintain it regularly and properly. Why, the same thing is even true of the hair on our heads: If we don’t wash it regularly we’ll be encrusted with dandruff!
Gongyo and chanting daimoku are like starting the automobile’s engine every day and driving in the direction of happiness and truth.
By doing so day after day, you will gradually attain perfect unity with the universe and the Law. That state is the state of the Buddha.
Once that has happened, you will be able to enjoy yourself with complete freedom for all eternity. Your existence will be a diamond that will never perish throughout the three existences.
To attain Buddhahood in this life, the Daishonin warns us with firm concern that we must never retreat in our practice.
Even though we may experience a period of sadness or depression, the principle that earthly desires are enlightenment teaches us that great sufferings are bound to be transformed into equally great joy, progress and value. There is nothing to fear, since the Gohonzon possesses the infinite power of the Law and the Buddha.
We often say that strong faith, valiant and untiring practice and courageous acts are important. This is an expression of the truth that without a strong will and courageous practice it is impossible to achieve great things.
You will not be able to communicate in a discussion with another unless you are clear and direct. If you lack the courage of your convictions and mumble vague things, you won’t make any impression on your listener. Nor can you strike a chord in his heart. And of course you will not be able to move or convince him. To do that you need to be very determined and sure.
Isn’t the same thing true of love?
It’s certainly true in a job interview. Unless you present your thoughts clearly and forcefully, you won’t make any impression on the interviewer. In other words, mental determination and courageous actions can change any situation and they possess a critical capability to produce happiness.
The Victory Song of Life Is to Be Found in Action
To fly, a plane needs the extra push it gets by acceleration down a runway. To get good grades in school, you need the extra push of study before a test.
Whatever you do, to achieve something better, to reach a higher level, you need a push.
Buddhism teaches practice for oneself and practice for others. If either one is lacking, you cannot practice properly.
The Gohonzon is the concrete manifestation of the very existence of Nichiren Daishonin, who taught kosen-rufu. Because of that, if you only practice gongyo and chant the daimoku and don’t take any other action for the sake of kosen rufu or improving your own life, the Gohonzon will not have its true, full effect.
If, however, you take actions to achieve kosen-rufu, they will serve as that extra push for your own life and help you leap to higher and higher states of mind in your gongyo and chanting as well.
And it is only natural that the energy you acquire through the gongyo practice for yourself will be channeled back into your activities for others, for kosen-rufu.
The fact is that the practice of gongyo and your actions in service of kosen-rufu will become one, and together they will unlock the infinite power of the Mystic Law in your life.
In Buddhism, practice is faith. That means action is faith, and without action there can be no true faith. The action I speak of is the way of practice for oneself and for others that is taught in Nichiren Daishonin’s writings.
Action is the source of blessings and merits. In propagating the teachings, for example, whether the person you are presenting the teachings to arouses faith or not is his problem. The effects of our action of propagating will vary, depending on the person’s capacities and other conditions.
There is no need at all to rejoice or lament over each effect. You can be proud that you have practiced the truest, most wonderful law of life in the universe to the best of your ability and go forward with your head held high. One who has acted for the sake of kosen-rufu is already a great victor in life.
The words "the heads of those who cause affliction will be split in seven pieces" are written on the Gohonzon.
This is a warning that it is wrong to seek to harm this law of your own being.
Abandoning the teachings or slandering them are self-destructive actions that are bound to split you apart.
We also find the words "those who make offerings will acquire blessings surpassing the Buddha’s ten names."
This forceful statement tells us that the merits of one who make offerings to the Gohonzon and spreads the teaching will be far greater than the magnificent merits of the one who makes offerings to Shakyamuni Buddha. This is a promise that our personal microcosm will absorb the nourishment of all the blessings in the macrocosm, the whole universe, and be elevated to a state of existence of the highest happiness itself.
Thus we know that the children of the Buddha who strive for kosen-rufu are each guaranteed to attain the ultimate degree of happiness. There is no one who will be more blessed.
Faith in Present and Future
"For both the present and the future" is also written on the Gohonzon. For present and future. That is what faith is for, what the Buddhist Law is for.
When we worship the Gohonzon, the eternal life of time without beginning wells up within us. Our faith is that every day, every instant begins from time without beginning.
We are always setting out, full of hope, from today to the future, from this moment to eternal happiness. We are always young, always beginning.
My message to you is that you must be absolutely certain of this and live your wonderful lives without regret, with joy and brightness, always moving forward.
Gongyo is a Grand and Noble Rite:
I would like to take the opportunity provided by today’s training session of the youth division to present a succinct and easily comprehensible discussion of the significance of gongyo. Because of the limitations of time I cannot pursue the subject in all its details, so I would like all of you to consider and explore this topic on your own afterwards as well.
Nichiren Daishonin’s Buddhism teaches that our existence is identical to the universe as a whole, and the universe as a whole is identical to our existence. Each individual human life is a microcosm.
The practice of gongyo is a grand and noble rite to achieve the vital communication to the microcosm of each person’s existence with the universe, based on the Gohonzon.
The correspondence of each part of our bodies to parts of the universe is proof that our existence is a microcosm. Our heads are round like the heavens above us are round, and our eyes are like the sun and the moon. We close them and open them, like day and night. Our hair shines like the sparkling stars. Our eyebrows are like the seven stars of the Big Dipper.
Our breath is the wind,
and the quiet breathing from our nostrils is like the still air of the valleys and dales.
There are some 360 joints in the human body
and they stand for the days of the year.
The twelve major joints signify the twelve months.
The warm, front side of our body — our abdomen and stomach — is spring and summer. The cold hard back is fall and winter.
Our blood vessels and arteries are streams and rivers.
When we suffer a cerebral hemorrhage, it is as if a dam or dike has burst.
Our bones are stones, and our skin and muscle are like the earth.
Our body hair is a forest.
Buddhist scriptures discuss in detail these correspondences i
ncluding each of the internal organs,
teaching that our body is indeed a universe in miniature.
There are clouds in the heavens. The wind blows, the stars twinkle. There are oceans on earth. The rivers flow. Volcanoes erupt. And great quantities of metals and minerals — gold, silver, copper, potassium, calcium — lie in the earth’s depths.
The activities and qualities of all these materials are also incorporated in our bodies.
The infinite elementary particles of the cosmos — atoms, protons, photons, electrons, neutrons, and all the rest — microscopic animals such as bacteria, the activities of good and evil, and the laws of gravity, the conservation of mass and energy, and all other laws of the universe also apply in almost the same fashion to the microcosm of our bodies.
A look at the operation of our bodies suggests that they are great pharmaceutical plants. They have the capability to produce the drugs we need to preserve our health. They take in food and transform it into nourishment and energy.
The human brain has the capability of a giant computer — even though we may not always be able to use it!
The sixty trillion cells of our bodies work together
in their established order in a perfect biorhythm. This is the original order of things.
The Great Law That Pervades Individual Existence and the Universe
Our existence is the universe, and its life processes are sublime. A slight change in the heat of the sun will enormously affect not only the Earth but all the other planets. If the Earth’s rotation were to stop for the briefest instant, or if its axis were to tilt the slightest degree, all living things would be threatened with extinction.
That is how subtle the natural order is. And further, a firm and irrevocable law of the universe exists. This holds true for the microcosm as well.
It is science that pursues this invisible but truly existent law, and technology is the invention of machines and other devices based on the fruits of scientific research.
Nichiren Daishonin discovered and awoke to the great law of all existence that underlies all the partial laws governing all spiritual and physical phenomena, and it was he who revealed that law to humanity as Nam-myoho-renge-kyo. This Mystic Law applies equally to the universe as a whole and to each and every individual human existence. The universe and the individual are one in this Mystic Law.
Under certain circumstances, an invisible law takes form as a visible existence. The individual human existence, for example, emerges out of its state of fusion with the rest of the universe by taking shape in the womb and being born in the world.
A ship can be regarded as a tangible representation of the law of buoyancy, just as an airplane is a representation of the laws of aerodynamics, a radio or television program a representation of the law of electromagnetic waves. All of these objects give shape to invisible laws.
The fundamental law of the universe and individual existence is also invisible. The Daishonin inscribed the Gohonzon as a visual representation of that Mystic Law for the people of the world. The Lotus Sutra and other Buddhist scriptures are the instruction manuals for the Gohonzon.
Josei Toda, my teacher and the second president of the Soka Gakkai, explained the Gohonzon in an easily comprehensible way as "a machine to produce happiness."
When we practice gongyo and chant daimoku before the Gohonzon, our individual existence is perfectly harmonized with the universe.
Both the universe and our individual existence are the concrete manifestation of Nam-myoho-renge-kyo as is the Gohonzon. That is why when we practice gongyo and chant Nam-myoho-renge-kyo with faith in the Gohonzon, our existence and the universe mesh as perfectly as two gears, and with an initial creak begin to work together.
The single life-moment (ichinen) of the individual becomes one with the three thousand (sanzen) factors and realms of the universe and begins to produce great value. This is the concrete practice of ichinen sanzen.
Through that practice we can acquire wisdom and good fortune, and glow with the energy to overcome any obstacle throughout the four seasons, three hundred sixty-five days a year; we can enter the way to the eternal happiness and attain eternity, joy, true self and purity (jo raku ga jo).
Gongyo is a practice which calls forth and activates the infinite power that the microcosm inherently possesses. It transforms your fate, breaks through any apparent dead end and converts sufferings into happiness. It creates a transformation, a revolution of the microcosm. It is a diagram in miniature of kosen-rufu in our lives.
The kosen-rufu that is our aim is a movement to transform the universe, the Earth and human society into a world of peace, comfort and harmony in accord with the rhythm of the Mystic Law.
The Practice of Attaining Buddhahood in This Lifetime, Which Leads to Eternal Happiness
If you let an automobile or any other machine fall into disuse, it will rust and stop working correctly. You have to use it and maintain it regularly and properly. Why, the same thing is even true of the hair on our heads: If we don’t wash it regularly we’ll be encrusted with dandruff!
Gongyo and chanting daimoku are like starting the automobile’s engine every day and driving in the direction of happiness and truth.
By doing so day after day, you will gradually attain perfect unity with the universe and the Law. That state is the state of the Buddha.
Once that has happened, you will be able to enjoy yourself with complete freedom for all eternity. Your existence will be a diamond that will never perish throughout the three existences.
To attain Buddhahood in this life, the Daishonin warns us with firm concern that we must never retreat in our practice.
Even though we may experience a period of sadness or depression, the principle that earthly desires are enlightenment teaches us that great sufferings are bound to be transformed into equally great joy, progress and value. There is nothing to fear, since the Gohonzon possesses the infinite power of the Law and the Buddha.
We often say that strong faith, valiant and untiring practice and courageous acts are important. This is an expression of the truth that without a strong will and courageous practice it is impossible to achieve great things.
You will not be able to communicate in a discussion with another unless you are clear and direct. If you lack the courage of your convictions and mumble vague things, you won’t make any impression on your listener. Nor can you strike a chord in his heart. And of course you will not be able to move or convince him. To do that you need to be very determined and sure.
Isn’t the same thing true of love?
It’s certainly true in a job interview. Unless you present your thoughts clearly and forcefully, you won’t make any impression on the interviewer. In other words, mental determination and courageous actions can change any situation and they possess a critical capability to produce happiness.
The Victory Song of Life Is to Be Found in Action
To fly, a plane needs the extra push it gets by acceleration down a runway. To get good grades in school, you need the extra push of study before a test.
Whatever you do, to achieve something better, to reach a higher level, you need a push.
Buddhism teaches practice for oneself and practice for others. If either one is lacking, you cannot practice properly.
The Gohonzon is the concrete manifestation of the very existence of Nichiren Daishonin, who taught kosen-rufu. Because of that, if you only practice gongyo and chant the daimoku and don’t take any other action for the sake of kosen rufu or improving your own life, the Gohonzon will not have its true, full effect.
If, however, you take actions to achieve kosen-rufu, they will serve as that extra push for your own life and help you leap to higher and higher states of mind in your gongyo and chanting as well.
And it is only natural that the energy you acquire through the gongyo practice for yourself will be channeled back into your activities for others, for kosen-rufu.
The fact is that the practice of gongyo and your actions in service of kosen-rufu will become one, and together they will unlock the infinite power of the Mystic Law in your life.
In Buddhism, practice is faith. That means action is faith, and without action there can be no true faith. The action I speak of is the way of practice for oneself and for others that is taught in Nichiren Daishonin’s writings.
Action is the source of blessings and merits. In propagating the teachings, for example, whether the person you are presenting the teachings to arouses faith or not is his problem. The effects of our action of propagating will vary, depending on the person’s capacities and other conditions.
There is no need at all to rejoice or lament over each effect. You can be proud that you have practiced the truest, most wonderful law of life in the universe to the best of your ability and go forward with your head held high. One who has acted for the sake of kosen-rufu is already a great victor in life.
The words "the heads of those who cause affliction will be split in seven pieces" are written on the Gohonzon.
This is a warning that it is wrong to seek to harm this law of your own being.
Abandoning the teachings or slandering them are self-destructive actions that are bound to split you apart.
We also find the words "those who make offerings will acquire blessings surpassing the Buddha’s ten names."
This forceful statement tells us that the merits of one who make offerings to the Gohonzon and spreads the teaching will be far greater than the magnificent merits of the one who makes offerings to Shakyamuni Buddha. This is a promise that our personal microcosm will absorb the nourishment of all the blessings in the macrocosm, the whole universe, and be elevated to a state of existence of the highest happiness itself.
Thus we know that the children of the Buddha who strive for kosen-rufu are each guaranteed to attain the ultimate degree of happiness. There is no one who will be more blessed.
Faith in Present and Future
"For both the present and the future" is also written on the Gohonzon. For present and future. That is what faith is for, what the Buddhist Law is for.
When we worship the Gohonzon, the eternal life of time without beginning wells up within us. Our faith is that every day, every instant begins from time without beginning.
We are always setting out, full of hope, from today to the future, from this moment to eternal happiness. We are always young, always beginning.
My message to you is that you must be absolutely certain of this and live your wonderful lives without regret, with joy and brightness, always moving forward.
What is the Gohonzon?
This is from the SGI-USA.org Website. I am posting this in answer to a question I got today about the Gohonzon. More clarification is in the next post as well:
The Gohonzon is the object of devotion, in the form of a scroll, that practitioners of Nichiren Buddhism enshrine in their homes and is the focal point of their daily practice of morning and evening sutra recitation and chanting Nam-myoho-renge-kyo. (Go means "honorable" and honzon, "object of devotion.")
The Gohonzon is the object of devotion, in the form of a scroll, that practitioners of Nichiren Buddhism enshrine in their homes and is the focal point of their daily practice of morning and evening sutra recitation and chanting Nam-myoho-renge-kyo. (Go means "honorable" and honzon, "object of devotion.")
"This Gohonzon is the essence of the Lotus Sutra and the eye of all the scriptures," Nichiren Daishonin states. "It is like the sun and the moon in the heavens, a great ruler on earth, the heart in a human being, the wish-granting jewel among treasures, and the pillar of a house" ("On Upholding Faith in the Gohonzon," The Writings of Nichiren Daishonin, vol. 1, p. 624).
In the center column of the Gohonzon are the characters "Nam-myoho-renge-kyo" and under that, "Nichiren," surrounded by various other Chinese and Sanskrit characters that depict historical and mythological Buddhist figures. Together they represent profound philosophical principles and conditions of life.
Like a musical piece or a painting that reflects the life-state of the person who created it, the Gohonzon reflects Nichiren's life-state: Buddhahood. It is not merely a symbol, or something to focus on while chanting. Since it embodies the state of enlightenment, Nichiren's life, it is the actual reality of the Buddha's life. It is the link between the Buddha state within ourselves and in the environment. It is an instrument to see our true potential and use it. Therefore, by chanting Nam-myoho-renge-kyo to the Gohonzon, we call forth our own Buddhahood, tapping our inherent wisdom, compassion and life force. Gradually, day after day, our own life-state is influenced and strengthened through our daily practice to the Gohonzon.
SGI President Ikeda states, "Just as a mirror is indispensable for putting your face and hair in order, you need a mirror that reveals the depths of your life if you are to lead a happier and more beautiful existence" (My Dear Friends in America, p. 94).
Nichiren cautions: "Never seek this Gohonzon outside yourself. The Gohonzon exists only within the mortal flesh of us ordinary people who embrace the Lotus Sutra and chant Nam-myoho-renge-kyo" ("The Real Aspect of the Gohonzon," WND-1, 832). In other words, our faith and practice make the Gohonzon an external stimulus to awaken our internal life of Buddhahood.
Saturday, August 24, 2013
Experience from a Reader
I wish to share an experience with you which happened just yesterday. It was 11:30 am and I was in the middle of my morning gongyo followed by daimoku, when I suddenly heard a big noise outside. It's been raining continuously since the last 3 days in my city so I thought it was probably thunder. However I continued to chant... After a few minutes my helper came running to me saying that the tree in front of our house had been uprooted and it fell right on our building...
The tree was huge, and I got really worried for a moment. My mother was away from home and father at work.
But when I went to check, with the protection of the Gohonzon my building was untouched. The tree fell just a few inches away, without damaging any of our windows or the walls. Two trees that had grown on their own right in front of my house held that huge tree for hours and prevented it from falling further till the local corporation people came and removed the tree...
The consequences of this could have been a lot worse, but I am so grateful to the Gohonzon and god for protecting all of us, and all those people who were outside on the street at the time when this incident took place. I chanted in the evening expressing deep gratitude for being so kind to us and looking over us... I thought I must share this with you as well... We realized yesterday, once again how blessed we are and how powerful this practice is :)
(Thank you so much for sending this in! Email your experiences to me at chantforhappiness@gmail.com and encourage others!)
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