Daily Encouragement by Daisaku Ikeda
Sunday, April 14, 2013
Thoreau, a renowned American Renaissance thinker, wrote in his journal: "Nothing must be postponed. Take time by the forelock. Now or never! You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment." We shouldn't put anything off but seize the moment, living with all our being in the present. If we do that, he says, each moment will become eternity.
From The Writings of Nichiren Daishonin
Sunday, April 14, 2013
The rice plant flowers and bears grain, but its spirit remains in the soil. This is the reason the stalk sprouts to flower and bear grain once again. The blessings that Nichiren obtains from propagating the Lotus Sutra will always return to Dozen-bo. How sublime! It is said that, if a teacher has a good disciple, both will gain the fruit of Buddhahood, but if a teacher fosters a bad disciple, both will fall into hell. If teacher and disciple are of different minds, they will never accomplish anything.
Flowering and Bearing Grain
Written to Joken-bo and Gijo-bo in April 1278
Wisdom for Modern Life by Daisaku Ikeda
Sunday, April 14, 2013
The tendency of human beings is to try and escape challenges and seek an easy and peaceful environment. But happiness cannot be found somewhere else - it is found within us. A genuine way of life consists of transforming where we are right now into a supreme paradise.
Daisaku Ikeda - A Youthful Diary (09 Apr. 1960) p.498
Myoho-renge-kyo - my mentor Josei Toda; let me live and fight with composure until the beginning of the sixth anniversary of my mentor's passing. I am thirty-two - too young.
On that anniversary of my mentor's death I will be thirty-six, beginning the thirty-seventh year of my life the same age at which Nikko Shonin succeeded the Daishonin.
Ah - is there no one else who can take leadership in place of my tired, worn-out self? Have no one to talk to. My wife quietly watches over me in agony.
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