Prayer or Wish? — What I Noticed This Morning (Morning Daimoku #1,154)

Good morning. How are you today? This is Shima, of Oubaitori. Morning daimoku, ten thousand times. This is experience number 1,154. Today, while I was chanting, something made me stop. I was chanting Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, and I began to think about the difference between a prayer and a wish.

“I Will Make It This Way” Is a Prayer. “It Would Be Good If It Turned Out This Way” Is a Wish.

“I will make it this way” — that is a prayer. “It would be good if it turned out this way” — that is a wish.

A wish is simply that. It would be good if it turned out that way.

Things fall into place on their own, or by good fortune. We were protected. Sometimes we call it benefit.

The Wish Rides Along on the Daimoku

In today’s experience, I felt it directly. My own prayer had become a wish that I was praying.

We are ordinary people. We take the wish — “it would be good if it turned out this way” — and we make it our daimoku. I do this myself. Before I notice, it has become a wish again. That is what I felt today.

Say It Plainly: “By the End of This Week, I Will Make It This Way”

The wish has to be turned into a prayer. Not “it would be good if I became this way,” but “I will become this way.” “If possible, by the end of this week” — that is still a wish.

Pray it through — “by the end of this week, I will make it this way” — and it is a prayer.

In Closing

In reality, we wish and we pray, both at once, inside our own lives. I think that is the honest situation.

Switch it over to prayer. When it becomes the prayer for the transformation of one’s life, things begin to move in the direction of fulfillment.

Why? Because one’s ichinen changed, right there.

That is what I felt today. This is a place where we can lose our way. Starting today, I will watch for it in myself.

Let’s Daimoku. Thank you, and I look forward to today with you.