The story of my path to Buddhahood through the teachings of Nichiren Daishonin
29 Dec 2013 Leave a comment
in Buddhism Tags: Challenges, Nichiren Buddhism, Nichiren Daishonin, Practice, Winners, Winning
The true victors in life are those who, having endured repeated challenges and setbacks, have sent the roots of their spiritual being to such a depth, that nothing can ever shake them loose.
By practicing Nichiren Buddhism, with all our heart and mind, on a daily basis, can allow us to grow our own spiritual roots to a great depth. Whilst our practice takes us along the road to enlightenment, this is a powerful side-effect that makes us able to defeat anything that life throws at us.
16 Dec 2013 Leave a comment
in Buddhism Tags: Challenges, Changes, Chanting, Edward Canfor-Dumas, The Buddha Geoff & Me, Wisdom Courage and Compassion
Dealing with the ever changing aspects of life is a little like sailing a yacht in a squally breeze. There are external influences that push and pull on the direction of our path. Our role as skipper of our own craft, is to deal with the challenges that those influences bring, whilst trying to steer in the direction we want our lives to go.
The similarity to sailing is most evident when you compare the way a yacht has to sail across the wind, in a direction as close to, but rarely directly towards, the desired goal. So there has to be a degree of compromise in order to make progress towards that goal.
Life is exactly the same. It is pretty rare to find, that the influences on our lives, push or pull us directly towards our goals. The old adage of ‘two steps forward and one step back’ is often very accurate. A little progress in the right direction is often followed by a period of consolidation, during which we may even find that we have slipped back a little.
It is good to remember that, as illustrated in The Buddha, Geoff and Me, resistance is not only inevitable, and a measure of our progress, but is essential for some processes to work at all.
09 Dec 2013 Leave a comment
in Buddhism Tags: Bad, Challenges, Changes, Confidence, Daisaku Ikeda, Good, Happiness, Life-State, Sadness, Self, Self Awareness, Self Discipline, Self Improvement
Many things happen in life. There are joyous days and times of suffering. Sometimes unpleasant things occur. But that’s what makes life so interesting. The dramas we encounter that are part and parcel of being human.
If we experienced no change or drama in our lives, if nothing unexpected ever happened, we would merely be like automatons, our lives unbearably monotonous and dull.
Therefore, it is important to develop a strong self so that you can enact the drama of your life with confidence and poise in the face of whatever challenges you may encounter.
~ Daisaku Ikeda
07 Dec 2013 Leave a comment
in Buddhism Tags: Challenges, Daisaku Ikeda, Determination, Effort, Self Improvement, Strength
There is no self-improvement without effort.
Without taking action, happiness will never come, no matter how long you wait. A life without peaks and valleys is a fairy tale. Reality is strict, because it is a win or lose struggle.
This is the way it is for human beings. Therefore, you should not allow yourselves to be battered about by reality but rather willingly rise to its challenges and use them as opportunities to train and strengthen yourselves.
~ Daisaku Ikeda
06 Dec 2013 5 Comments
in Buddhism Tags: Cause And Effect, Challenges, Food, HCRV, Lessons, Mistakes, Point Of View, Practice, Teaching
So the HCRV diet is going rather well. I’m hoping to get over to Thailand next summer for the inaugural Thai Fruit Festival, but situations may not conspire to make that possible. Never the less, I am trying to make the causes to see it through to fruition.
I have to be careful, however, not to evangelise about the diet too much, even though the benefits are incredible.
It’s easy to sit here, in the quiet of my living room, and pontificate about eating a vegan diet, when I only have myself to consider. Being able to do so real life family situations is so different from the theory, but it does give you a really good measure of how much you want to make the change.
When you read some of the topics on my blog, and think ‘I could never be like that’ or ‘I would like to give that a try, but I just can’t see it working for me’ remember that I’m only human too, and that even though I do try my very hardest to practice what I preach, it doesn’t work all the time.
The trick, if that’s what you would like to call it, is not to give up completely just because you have a slip up. Learn from the slip, in this case seeing things from another’s viewpoint, and be determined to try harder next time. You will get there in the end.
03 Dec 2013 Leave a comment
in Buddhism Tags: Challenges, Changes, Chanting, Nam Myoho Renge Kyo, Point Of View, Practice
We all have a mental view of where we are going in life, what we would like our future to look like, a set of challenges that we must conquer if we are to find our utopia.
Each day, maybe even each second of each day, that view changes, usually just a little, sometimes quite a lot.
In a way, we can look at this from the view of a swimmer who is trying to swim against the flow of a river or a tide. He or she can swim at a constant pace, from their own viewpoint, a set number of strokes per minute, but their progress, from the viewpoint of an observer on the bank or the shore may be anything but constant.
It all depends on the strength of the current. If the current is flowing slower than the swimmer, the swimmer moves forward, if it is flowing faster than the swimmer, the swimmer moves backwards. Unsurprisingly, if the two are the same, the swimmer stays in exactly the same place.
Now we know that rivers and tides change, hourly, daily, in fact all the time. In order for the swimmer to know how fast to swim in order to make his or her desired progress they need to have a constant unchanging point on which to focus, a pole in the river, or a landmark on the shore, a point against which they can measure that progress.
Our situation in life changes in a similar way, so when we are striving towards our goals, we may think we are ‘swimming’ fast enough, think that we are making progress, when in fact, from another viewpoint, we are going nowhere, or even going backwards.
So what can we use as our ‘pole in the river’, our landmark by which we can measure our progress? Something that is constant, no matter what else changes around us. The answer, for me at least, is my practice. It is unchanging, it is strong and resilient and is always in the same place, no matter what else may be going on around me.
My practice gives me a great view of my progress. No matter what the challenge, when I chant Nam Myoho Renge Kyo, my perspective on things is focussed on a wider view of the situation rather than just my own viewpoint. So I know whether I am ‘swimming’ fast enough to reach my goal, or whether I need to put in more effort to achieve my aims.
28 Nov 2013 2 Comments
in Buddhism Tags: Bodhisattva, Challenges, Changes, Commitment, Goals, Happiness, Teaching
Sometimes we need to wipe the slate clean, take a deep breath, and start anew. With my decision to change career, this might just be the perfect time to do so. Having new goals, new horizons and renewed vigour is just the ticket.
I know that some people fear change, are loath to relinquish all the effort put into a particular path, even if that path may be taking them in the wrong direction. I am not one of those people, I embrace change.
Setting sail on a new career, I intend to make the most of each and every day, and when change does arrive, I will enjoy the excitement of being reborn into a new and exciting experience.
26 Nov 2013 4 Comments
in Buddhism Tags: Cause And Effect, Challenges, Learning, Opportunity, Poison Into Medicine, Positive, Possibilities, Teaching
With my recently announced redundancy still five months away, time is not yet of the essence to find alternative employment.
But as we all know, times are tight, jobs few on the ground, and times flies when things of this nature are concerned.
Not, I have to say, that I am unduly concerned at present, but I have been having a look around.
Having put in a 40 year shift in IT, I’m not at all sure I want to continue in the same vein, so I’ve decided to have an open mind and see what opportunities present themselves.
Interestingly, during a recent night out in Poole to watch Jack Dee in concert, a friend asked whether I had thought about teaching English as a foreign language, know as TEFL in the profession. I had to admit that I hadn’t.
I’ve never been drawn to teaching. In the past I would never have had the patience to teach anyone anything. But with age and, maybe more so Buddhism, I have a great deal more calmness and patience. So I have been looking at the process needed to get qualified.
On the face of it, it all looks rather straightforward. There is an international qualification required, a TEFL certificate from an academy accredited by the World TEFL Accrediting Commission (WTEFLAC).
The course takes a minimum of 120 hours, of which 20 hours are face to face tutorials and practice. The cost is not too crazy, and the opportunities appear quite realistic, in places as close as Paris or as far away as China and Indonesia.
Whether or not the notion takes hold, the whimsies turn into reality or the possibilities become fact is in my hands. At the moment I have to say that it all sounds rather exciting, and I’m certainly going to take some time to investigate further.
So, far from being the end of the world, this redundancy might be the start of a whole new adventure. We all need a short, sharp, shock at times, just to ease us out of the comfortable rut we have made for ourselves. The shock has been administered, so time will tell.
20 Nov 2013 Leave a comment
in Buddhism Tags: Challenges, Changes, Chanting, Dark Passenger, Fundamental Darkness, Problems, Winners, Winning
The challenges we meet in life are often seen as the negative side of our existence. We alone can decide how we deal with them, either we can accept them, tackle them head on, or we can shy away from them and hope they go away. Anyone who has tried the second path will know that it virtually never works, so accepting challenges has to be the right way to go.
Accepting our challenges is not, initially, the most natural thing to do. It might seem easier to run away, to bury our heads, or just ignore the issues, but no good will ever come of taking that path. Taking responsibility and meeting challenges head on can be really hard. That doesn’t mean it has to be difficult, but it does mean we have to dig deep, stay strong and never ever give in.
So how should we approach the process? For me, it means looking at the challenge from all sides, and that involves keeping a calm mind and thinking clearly about all the aspects involved. Chanting allows me to calm my mind, to focus and to concentrate. This is the state of mindfulness and gives me control over my thoughts, words and deeds. For others it may be beneficial to meditate or to write down a list of all the facets of the challenge.
The whole process can be thrown into turmoil by our fundamental darkness, that little voice in our heads, that tells us the challenge is too hard, that we cannot overcome it and that giving up is the easy path. We must listen to that voice because it is part of us, but we must then rationalise the alternatives and be determined to take the right path, not the easiest path.
When you overcome a challenge, the feelings of elation are immense. When we give into a challenge, the feelings of defeat are equally immense, but terribly damaging. Gaining your first win will be the hardest. Once you know the winning feeling, you will never again want to feel defeat again.
So try different coping strategies, be that chanting, meditation, list building or whatever works for you. Be sure that overcoming challenges will make you a stronger and more confident person and that each win will make the next challenge easier to overcome. In time, you will lose the fear of challenges, and although you may not actually look forward to the next one, you will be more prepared to meet it and overcome it when it arrives.
14 Nov 2013 1 Comment
in Buddhism Tags: Challenges, Daisaku Ikeda, Ichinen Sanzen, Life-Energy, Life-Force, Life-State, Positive, Self Determination
Whilst feeling a little adrift given my current situation and enraged by the lack of fairness in the way modern institutions and those in power treat us mere morals, I found this piece by Sensei rather encouraging …
What can the individual accomplish in the face of the huge institutions that run our world? This feeling of powerlessness fuels a vicious cycle that only worsens the situation and increases people’s sense of futility.
At the opposite extreme of this sense of powerlessness lie the Lotus Sutra’s philosophy of three thousand realms in a single moment of life and the application of this teaching to our daily lives.
This principle teaches us that the inner determination of an individual can transform everything; it gives ultimate expression to the infinite potential and dignity inherent in each human life.
~ Daisaku Ikeda
The Search For Enlightenment 
Recents Comments