Sensei's Daily Encouragement - 29 April 2012 - The Year of Developing a Youthful SGI

Daily Encouragement by Daisaku Ikeda

Sunday, April 29, 2012

 

What is success in life? Who are the truly successful? There are famous and powerful people who become pitiful figures in their old age. There are people who die alone, feeling empty and desolate inside. Just what is success? The English thinker Walter Pater (1839-94) wrote: "To burn always with this hard, gemlike flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life." The person who lives life fully, glowing with life's energy, is the person who lives a successful life.

 

---

 

From The Writings of Nichiren Daishonin

Sunday, April 29, 2012

 

Little streams come together to form the great ocean, and tiny particles of dust accumulate to form Mount Sumeru . When I, Nichiren, first took faith in the Lotus Sutra, I was like a single drop of water or a single particle of dust in all the country of Japan . But later, when two people, three people, ten people, and eventually a hundred, a thousand, ten thousand, and a million people come to recite the Lotus Sutra and transmit it to others, then they will form a Mount Sumeru of perfect enlightenment, an ocean of great nirvana.

 

The Writings of Nichiren Daishonin, page 579

The Selection of the Time

Written to Yui in 1275

 

---

 

Wisdom for Modern Life by Daisaku Ikeda

Sunday, April 29, 2012 

 

Our efforts for the sake of dialogue, in order to be worthy of the term dialogue, must be carried through to the end. To refuse peaceful exchange and choose force is to compromise and give in to human weakness; it is to admit the defeat of the human spirit. Socrates encourages his youthful disciples to train and strengthen themselves spiritually, to maintain hope and self-control, to advance courageously, choosing virtue over material wealth, truth over fame.

 

---

 

Daisaku Ikeda - A Youthful Diary (1955) p.223

 

Fatigued throughout my body.  An agonizing day.  Is it my evil karma?  I am reading with my life the passage from a sutra that states, "The people's sins are like frost or dew, which vanish in the sunlight of wisdom."

At noon, shopped for birthday gifts for President Toda…  Purchased a dress shirt, two neckties, pearl cuff links and a shoehorn. Confident these gifts express my sincere feeling.

 

---