Daily Encouragement by Daisaku Ikeda
Thursday, March 22, 2012
I call to each of you: Strive for prosperity! Strive for development! Strive for victory! Life is about striving all out to achieve our aims; it is about hard work and effort. Regardless of how smart you may be, intelligence alone cannot guarantee your future.
From The Writings of Nichiren Daishonin
Thursday, March 22, 2012
If a tree is deeply rooted, its branches and leaves will never wither. If the spring is inexhaustible, the stream will never run dry. Without wood, a fire will burn out. Without earth, plants will not grow. I, Nichiren, am indebted solely to my late teacher, Dozen-bo, for my having become the votary of the Lotus Sutra and my being widely talked about now, in both a good and bad sense. Nichiren is like the plant, and my teacher, the earth.
The Writings of Nichiren Daishonin, page 909
Flowering and Bearing Grain
Written to Joken-bo and Gijo-bo in April 1278
Wisdom for Modern Life by Daisaku Ikeda
Thursday, March 22, 2012
Life is full of unexpected suffering. Even so, as Eleanor Roosevelt said: "If you can live through that [a difficult situation] you can live through anything. You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, "I lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along." That's exactly right. Struggling against great difficulty enables us to develop ourselves tremendously. We can call forth and manifest those abilities lying dormant within us. Difficulty can be a source of dynamic growth and positive progress.
Daisaku Ikeda - A Youthful Diary (1954) p.191
My oldest son, Hiromasa, is becoming quite a raucous child. What destiny awaits him? Can only pray he becomes a healthy, upstanding individual, a man of pure faith, a believer in the Daishonin's Buddhism.
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