YOUNG people should not be too easy on themselves because that is the path to ruin. Cast aside your dependency! There is no way but to stand up in faith through your own efforts. With your sincere and persistent prayers, please touch the lives of all around you – friends and opponents alike – and create a grand alliance of the people and a powerful new ground swell for kosen-rufu.
IN Nichiren Daishonin's Buddhism, it is said that no prayer goes unanswered. But this is very different from having every wish instantly gratified, as if by magic. If you chant to win the lottery tomorrow, or to score 100 percent on a test without having studied, the odds are very small that it will happen. Nonetheless, viewed from a deeper, longer-term perspective, all your prayers will have served to propel you in the direction of happiness.
WITHOUT training, there is no growth. Nichiren Daishonin stated: “Iron, when heated in flames and pounded, becomes a fine sword. Wise men and saints are tested by abuse.” (MW1, p 38) It is because of ordeals and discipline that one can carry out one’s human revolution. The present is an age lacking in discipline. For precisely this reason, one must voluntarily receive training and forge oneself through and through. Those who do so will in the end be victorious.
IN any struggle, victory depends on being able to display unique creativity and to open up new fields of activity; in essence, it depends on the demonstration of genuine wisdom. Mere knowledge can provide neither fresh perspective nor an inexhaustible source of initiative.
WHAT makes a man truly human is, I believe, his ability to act not only for his own sake but for the sake of his neighbours, society and the entire human race.
NOTE: Visit http://nichirendaishoningosho.blogspot.com/ for Nichiren Daishonin's gosho, A Gift of Rice.
IN Nichiren Daishonin's Buddhism, it is said that no prayer goes unanswered. But this is very different from having every wish instantly gratified, as if by magic. If you chant to win the lottery tomorrow, or to score 100 percent on a test without having studied, the odds are very small that it will happen. Nonetheless, viewed from a deeper, longer-term perspective, all your prayers will have served to propel you in the direction of happiness.
WITHOUT training, there is no growth. Nichiren Daishonin stated: “Iron, when heated in flames and pounded, becomes a fine sword. Wise men and saints are tested by abuse.” (MW1, p 38) It is because of ordeals and discipline that one can carry out one’s human revolution. The present is an age lacking in discipline. For precisely this reason, one must voluntarily receive training and forge oneself through and through. Those who do so will in the end be victorious.
IN any struggle, victory depends on being able to display unique creativity and to open up new fields of activity; in essence, it depends on the demonstration of genuine wisdom. Mere knowledge can provide neither fresh perspective nor an inexhaustible source of initiative.
WHAT makes a man truly human is, I believe, his ability to act not only for his own sake but for the sake of his neighbours, society and the entire human race.
NOTE: Visit http://nichirendaishoningosho.blogspot.com/ for Nichiren Daishonin's gosho, A Gift of Rice.
