Daily Encouragement by Daisaku Ikeda
December 16, 2023
Outward appearance is not important -- what counts is what is inside our hearts. Are there heart-to-heart bonds? Some families may always be together physically but are estranged at heart. Some families can only get together for brief periods but manage to enjoy concentrated and lively heart-to-heart communication when they do meet. Families that share bonds of closeness based on day-to-day efforts are ones in which the members feel comfortable and at ease with each other, no matter where they are or what they're doing.
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From the Writings of Nichiren Daishonin
December 16, 2023
The scripture known as the Nirvana Sutra lists the beings that have been able to attain the way through the Lotus Sutra, and the list includes such filthy creatures as dung beetles, vipers, and scorpions. To express the wonderful power of the Lotus Sutra, Bodhisattva Nagarjuna says that it enables even such creatures as dung beetles to attain Buddhahood.
Great Bodhisattva Hachiman
This letter was written at Minobu 1280 to Nichigen-nyo, the wife of Shijo Kingo, but its contents suggest that it was intended for them both.
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Wisdom for Modern Life by Daisaku Ikeda
December 16, 2023
A society that has sacrificed so much to material wealth that it has forgotten the human heart and the better human aspirations degenerates into something compassionless, doctrinaire, ignorant and ultraconservative. When this happens, fundamental solutions to calamities become impossible. If we protect the truth and are resolute, we are capable of creating peace and prosperity. And the truth we must protect ought to be high and great. Our great truth --- the thing that we must protect to the utmost -- involves ethics and the best of human nature. But more basic than anything else is our duty to guard the truth of life, the truth that we and the universe are one, and that a single ordinary human thought contains the entirety of universal life.
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Excerpt from Daisaku Ikeda - A Youthful Diary (15 May 1957) p.333
In the afternoon, Z., Hiromasa and I went to see the Japan International Trade Fair. Surprised at the large number of people. Science is rapidly increasing its importance in society. People must not fall behind. To know the times, to live with the times and to create the times – forgetting this will lead to grave problems. Sense the arrival of the "Age of Automation" more keenly than ever before. Reported what we saw at the fair to Sensei. A scientist himself, he listened with apparent interest. "We must think about science and religion" were his only words of guidance.
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