The story of my path to Buddhahood through the teachings of Nichiren Daishonin
31 Dec 2012 Leave a comment
in Buddhism Tags: Challenges, Happiness, Happy New Year, Life, Point Of View, Poison Into Medicine, Sadness
I have to report, that for the majority of people I know, with the exception of a couple of high points, 2012 has been a year of sadness, and one that most will be happy to see gone.
But as we know, the challenges in life are there to help us become stronger. And those of us who have met those challenges and grown as a result, are still here to greet the New Year.
Happy New Year everyone. I pray that 2013 will be a healthy, fortunate, positive and above all peaceful one for everyone.
28 Dec 2012 Leave a comment
in Buddhism Tags: Hope, Point Of View, Poison Into Medicine, Problems, Viktor Frankl
I’ve been re-reading Man’s Search For Meaning by Viktor Frankl, just to brush up on the lessons contained therein.
What an amazing account of such unbelievable suffering, and impossible to put down. I have found reading the book to be humbling experience. It’s put my problems well and truly into the ‘insignificant’ category.
Frankl was one of the few people to survive the Nazi death camps and writes his story from the viewpoint of his position as a psychiatrist.
I’m not going to relate anything from the book, but I strongly recommend you read it.
It’s not about Buddhism, but it really is very Buddhist like.
23 Dec 2012 2 Comments
in Buddhism Tags: Cause And Effect, Karma, Poison Into Medicine, Responsibility
Sometimes in life we find ourselves in difficult or disappointing circumstances. But the laws of Karma are universal, and we get what we deserve, whether we recognise the causes or not, the effects speak for themselves.
We might feel sorry for ourselves, we may think it’s unfair, but we make the causes for the effects we experience day in, day out. Now you may be saying that it’s destiny, or coincidence, but that simply means you are delegating responsibility for your life to fate or a mystical figure whose existence can never be proven.
Why do we allow ourselves to be fooled? When we know the reason for events, we accept the situation and move on. When we don’t know (or remember) why something has happened, we waft it away with airy fairy excuses, like fate or God’s will.
I’ve been through the mill in the last year. Failed relationships, serious illness and deaths in the family. More than enough to make me feel, at times, enough is enough. But when I sit and think things through, at the bottom of every disaster, is a cause of my own making.
So I hold my hands up, I’m culpable, in part at the very least, and my chanting, prayer and meditation are the tools I am using to start to put things right. You might be thinking this doesn’t apply in your case, but you are wrong. Accept your own responsibility and start making the causes to get the effects you would like to see.
12 Oct 2012 Leave a comment
in Buddhism Tags: Chanting, Faith, Nam Myoho Renge Kyo, Poison Into Medicine, Practice
Some days we are strong, some days not so strong.
When water is clear, the moon is reflected. When the wind blows, the trees shake. Our minds are like the water. Faith that is weak is like muddy water, while faith that is brave is like clear water. Understand that the trees are like principles, and the wind that shakes them is like the recitation of the sutra.
~ Nichiren
20 Aug 2012 Leave a comment
in Buddhism Tags: Challenges, Poison Into Medicine, Responsibility
When those around you are unable to help, be it due to fatigue, misfortune or other pressing matters, it is beholding to us to stand tall and shoulder the challenges for them. The office was pretty sparsely populated for a number of reasons, so it was down to the troops on the ground, to deal with the issues the day delivered.
I may have mentioned that Monday is not my favourite day of the week, but today was pretty good, all things considered. I had pre-empted the email mountain by sorting and dealing with, a number of them over the weekend, so that wasn’t too bad.
Dan and Steve were on good form, so that meant that, although Guy was unavoidably detained by a misbehaving motor, and Nick is away on his honeymoon, we managed to deal with some rather awkward little problems rather well.
Having a full day also meant that the time flew by. By the time it felt like lunchtime, we were already half way through the afternoon. Despite feeling rather tired after the full agenda of the weekend, I still had enough petrol left in the tank to go out for a nice ride in the warm evening sunshine.
As always, the challenges of today will be followed by the challenges of tomorrow, but having risen to them all today gives us a nice warm confident feeling for the morning. Of course, I may be tempting fate (if there is such a thing) by feeling this way, but with tons of life-energy, I’m sure we can deal with anything the day might bring.
16 Aug 2012 Leave a comment
in Buddhism Tags: Challenges, Chanting, Crisis, Life-Energy, Life-State, Nam Myoho Renge Kyo, Poison Into Medicine, Practice
Sometimes, problems, or as we like to call them, challenges, seem to just keep on coming, one after another after another. With two deaths, as well as other problems associated with dementia in the family happening in the past few weeks, it’s been all too easy for us to start to wonder ‘What on earth have we done to deserve all this?’
However, challenges are just a fact of life. It’s true that some people seem to have more challenges than others. It is also obvious that there are times when they appear to come along like buses, nothing for ages and then a bunch of them turn up at once.
What helps, or at least helps me, is to look upon them as a way to become stronger. Buddhism sees challenges as a way to strengthen your faith and your practice by turning their poison into medicine. Of course this is easier said than done, but over time it is amazing what a person can learn to deal with.
When a challenge rears its ugly head I try to think about it from a number of viewpoints. Chanting definitely helps me in this regard. While I’m chanting Nam Myoho Renge Kyo, my mind is emptied of the minutia of daily life, so I can concentrate on the issue at hand. Finding the positives in a situation is never easy, but they are there if you care to look.
So even though things may look dark, that there is nothing but sorrow to be gained from some event, that really is not the case. Losing someone close may seem to be such a situation, but if that person was suffering, that suffering has now ended, which is positive. If someone has to go into care, that is very sad, but it means that they, and others, are safer in the process.
Whatever the situation, there are positives, all that is needed is to find them in amongst the morass of bad feelings we may be having. As I say, chanting allows me to do this, and although it may not work for you, giving it a chance certainly won’t make things worse. Having a really good chant raises my life-energy and life-state and that in turn makes me more able to confront things head on.
07 Aug 2012 Leave a comment
in Buddhism Tags: Cause And Effect, Challenges, Life-Energy, Life-State, Poison Into Medicine, Worry, Worrying
Leaving the works PC in a dishevelled state last night was not good for my peace of mind. But my fears of being left with an unusable machine for a week while Dan ‘the man’ went off to Barcelona on holiday proved to be unfounded.
With a laudable effort on all parts, particularly Dan’s, the machine is now honed to perfection and all ready to take on the challenges of the Fraser’s website restyling. Much of the work has already been done, all that is needed, and I say ‘all’ reservedly, is to incorporate said changes into the working copy, iron out any bugs and publish it to the server.
Worrying about things is such a pointless exercise. It takes energy, it lowers your life-state and achieves absolutely nothing. So don’t do it, I tell myself, but that’s easier said than done sometimes. What does work, and it works every time, is making the causes to create the effects we wish to see.
So as the old war-time song went, ‘what’s the use of worrying, it never was worthwhile; so, pack up your troubles in your old kit back and smile, smile, smile’. In my case that happens to be a rather battered old shoulder bag, but the principle still holds true.
27 Jul 2012 Leave a comment
in Buddhism Tags: Daimoku, Death, Family, Funeral, Happiness, Poison Into Medicine, Sadness, Wisdom Courage and Compassion
Today was Ivor’s funeral, and a chance for the majority of his family and friends to say a fond, final farewell at the graveside. In all honesty, it was not the sombre event I had dreaded. The setting, the Memorial Woodland, was the most tranquil and beautiful place I have been in a long time.
At the allotted hour, we followed the hearse to the graveside, through sunshine and shade, through ancient woodland and newly planted saplings. This was my first burial ceremony and there is a certain something about the hole in the earth that emphasises the physical finality of the service.
It was a very close family affair, even the service was performed by Steve’s dad Alan, and beautifully so. I read my little piece, putting the Buddhist perspective …
Life is a journey, an adventure during which we are set challenges to test our resolve and to help us learn lessons that will ease our steps along the path to enlightenment.
Buddhism sees death as part of that journey. Far from it being the end of life, it is simply the next step in the process.
So rather than mourning the loss of Ivor, we should rejoice in the sound knowledge that, after a short rest, he will return in a new form, in a new body.
We are all made of stardust; we are an integral part of the Universe and but a single drop of universal energy.
Just as raindrops fall to the Earth, collect in streams and rivers and flow back into the oceans, to be raised up again to repeat the process, so has Ivor joined the ocean of universal energy in preparation for the next cycle in the eternal process we know as The Wheel of Life.
Let us take comfort and rejoice in the fact that Ivor has taken another step on his path to enlightenment.
After the service, a few of us stayed behind to chant, and it was really nice to be able to offer daimoku in such an intimate way and in such a perfect setting.
The photo of the water lilies was taken from the pond outside the chapel of rest, and I think they were a very fitting embellishment to a very lovely and moving ceremony.
Nam Myoho Renge Kyo
13 Jul 2012 Leave a comment
in Buddhism Tags: Challenges, Expectations, Poison Into Medicine, Self Improvement
Following yesterday’s cancelled meeting, I have to admit that I was a little apprehensive about the group meeting planned for today. For me, not knowing about a situation is often far worse than the reality turns out to be.
We do work pretty hard, as a team, to keep the wheels of the company’s IT systems well oiled. Sometimes it involves out-of-hours tasks, simply because we can’t do admin in the middle of the working day, sometimes it is a fire fighting exercise, when a website decides to go AWOL, or a hacker decides to try his luck at breaking in.
So when the governor told us that we were going to have our group meeting, and cover the discussions he had with the other department yesterday, a million questions started whizzing around my brain.
The meeting was to be held in a nice quiet local hostelry, so at least the environment was pleasant. But then their Wi-Fi wasn’t working, so we couldn’t go through the discussion points as we had no access to our back office systems. It was a fairly quite, but very tasty lunch, but the questions remained.
So cutting our offsite visit a little short, we reconvened in the boardroom back at the office to hear what Guy had to say. I don’t think I was the only one wondering what he had in store for us. So when it turned out to be a case of miss, or lack of, communication, we gave a collective sigh of relief.
Lesson learned, there is little or no point worrying about issues that it transpires, don’t actually exist. Pointless getting stressed about an imagined set of circumstances, and less than productive to try to second guess the outcome of anything, given little or no information to go on.
We do need to improve our processes, hone our interdepartmental communications, and fine tune our planning strategies. But as far as the worrying was concerned, it was a sad waste of time and effort. I must try harder next time, to remember the lessons of today.
Nice lunch though!
11 Jul 2012 1 Comment
in Buddhism Tags: Cause And Effect, Poison Into Medicine, Rain, UK, Water, Weather, Wheel of Life
With the Meteorological Office reporting that June has been the wettest on record in the UK, I imagine that many of us are getting pretty cheesed off with the lack of a ‘proper’ summer.
Recently Wimbledon and now the London Olympics both rely quite heavily on reasonable conditions, so it will be interesting to see how the authorities cope with the unseasonal rain.
The economy could do with some fine weather too, the UK tourism industry needs a good summer to turn a profit, but the outlook looks rather bleak. Even our own holiday was not without a couple of days of rain, as you can see.
But we should all remember that life, in the form we know it, would not exist on Earth if it were not for water. Only weeks ago we were being told that there was a water shortage and that hosepipe bans would be with us all summer. For the poor weatherman, having to spread the news of doom and gloom each evening, it can’t be much fun either.
In the news today, the Environment Agency have issued a report, stating that the Government should plan for more ‘extreme weather’ brought on by man-made global warming. It cannot come as any surprise, we have been releasing increasing amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere for decades, and we all know the connection between cause and effect.
But as with all things in life, this is all part of a longer cycle of events. Remembering back to my childhood, the sun shone every day during the school summer holidays, it was always roasting hot during exam times and the Wheel of Life will turn again.
So let’s look on the bright side. As someone once said, there is no such thing as bad weather, just a poor choice of clothing. Whilst I sympathise with the poor souls who are watching their homes get ruined by flood water, we actually need the water. So like the Boy Scouts, be prepared, carry an umbrella, and remember that every cloud has a silver lining.
The Search For Enlightenment 
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