Saturday morning. Ten thousand daimoku, finished.
Something came to me while I was chanting. It was this: to chant daimoku at all — just that, nothing more — is already a strong thing.
▶ Today’s video (YouTube Short, in Japanese)
To keep chanting is to refuse to give up on yourself
To chant daimoku. That is all. It sounds like a small thing.
It is not small. Without faith, you cannot keep doing it.
Many mornings I almost gave in. Not today, I thought. Then I sat down in front of the Gohonzon anyway, and chanted. And chanted again the next morning.
That, in the end, is refusing to give up on yourself. Not for anyone else. Not to look like anything. You sit down so that you do not throw yourself away.
Why don’t things go the way we want?
Every day brings something. More often than not, things do not go the way I want. And each time, I feel the stress of it. That is ordinary. We are ordinary people.
But I try not to stop there. Why don’t things go the way I want? One step below that question — that is where faith begins, I believe.
Not resenting what happened, but looking at the state of my own life underneath it. When my hand reaches that far, the chanting itself changes.
Does it reach the prayer to change my life?
What I felt today was this: face the Gohonzon exactly as you are. Hide nothing. And then — does the chanting reach the prayer to change my life, or not? That is the dividing line.
When my heart is calm, I can start there from the very first daimoku. Today I could. I felt it.
Other days are full of stress. On those days the complaints ride out on the chanting — all the grumbling of daily life, poured out. It takes until seven thousand, eight thousand, before the prayer finally turns. Those days are real too.
Neither day is better than the other. What matters is to face the Gohonzon as you are, with an honest heart, and keep chanting. To keep polishing that. That is faith, as I have come to be sure of it.
Let’s Daimoku!
Thank you for being with me today.
🙏 From Yukihiro Shima — Oubaitori.com
Bloom your own way, at your very best.
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