Daily Encouragement by Daisaku Ikeda
Friday, April 25, 2014
Adversity gives birth to greatness. The greater the challenges and difficulties we face, the greater opportunity we have to grow and develop as people. A life without adversity, a life of ease and comfort, produces nothing and leaves us with nothing. This is one of the indisputable facts of life.
From The Writings of Nichiren Daishonin
Friday, April 25, 2014
Buddhahood is the most difficult to demonstrate. But since you possess the other nine worlds, you should believe that you have Buddhahood as well. Do not permit yourself to have doubts. Expounding on the human world, the Lotus Sutra says, "The Buddhas wish to open the door of Buddha wisdom to all living beings." . . . That ordinary people born in the latter age can believe in the Lotus Sutra is due to the fact that the world of Buddhahood is present in the human world.
The Writings of Nichiren Daishonin, page 358
The Object of Devotion for Observing the mind Established in the Fifth Five-Hundred-Year Period after the Thus Come One's Passing
Written to Toki Jonin on April 25, 1273
Wisdom for Modern Life by Daisaku Ikeda
Friday, April 25, 2014
If you think about it, although we may not be destined to die five minutes from now, we are all, without exception, going to die at some point. We can count on it 100 percent. There is nothing surer than this. Victor Hugo says, "We are all under sentence of death, but with a sort of indefinite reprieve." Ideally, we should live every minute of our lives valuably, as if it were the last moment of our lives. Those who live aimlessly are left with a sense of emptiness at the end of their lives, but those who live all-out, striving right to the end, will die peacefully. Leonardo da Vinci says, "As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so life well used brings happy death." One aware that death could come at any time will live each day to the fullest.
Daisaku Ikeda - A Youthful Diary (15 June 1954) p.177
Periodically, ideals and reality mix and my mind becomes very complex. There are times I want to blame others, while overlooking my own faults. Must not forget to self-reflect and consider my own shortcomings.
No comments:
Post a Comment