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This
is from a New York member of SGI who had a one on one meeting
with Mr Yokota, the head of the Boston Research Centre. He had
given a lecture in NY city at the culture centre and one of the
things he talked about was overcoming attachments – which happens
to be one of the Seven Jewels we "polish" to illuminate
the Treasure Tower. This member of SGI wanted to understand what
he meant by that, as many people automatically assume that we have
to "give up" our material possessions, our dreams,
or whatever. Mr Yokoda explained this so beautifully. He said:
To overcome attachments in Nichiren’s Buddhism simply means
to overcome our attachment to our fears, our mistrust, our incorrect
beliefs, our past etc. We suffer because we have an attachment to
our pain and suffering and if we chant to understand the origin
of the pain and suffering, the cause, and then "let it go",
we will quite quickly overcome our need to perpetuate it, and begin
to attach ourselves to our Buddhahood and the Mystic Law and then
our lives will open in a huge way fulfilling all desires and dreams.
He said that we attach ourselves to our suffering because "the
effect is what we are familiar with", so he encouraged this
person (as you are now being encouraged) to place their trust
in the Mystic Law, to place our trust in our Buddhahood. Mr Yokota
continued:
Nichiren Daishonin wrote in ‘On Attaining Buddhahood in This
Lifetime’ - "If you think the Mystic Law is outside yourself,
you are embracing not the Mystic Law but an inferior teaching."
How we can interpret that is – an inferior teaching is anything
or anyone (parents, friends, lovers, you name it) who has made us
believe that we weren’t good enough, or loveable, or worthy,
or deserving, There are also some of us for whom any amount of love,
encouragement and acceptance we have had from those around us, we
still don’t feel we deserve it. Now is the time to discard
that belief, give up that attachment, and place our trust in
the power and truth of our own lives.
One last thing he said was that when we are chanting for our
dreams and desires – and we get negative feedback from our environment,
or it seems that something just isn’t happening, or we are
told "this will never happen", or "cant happen"
– he said that this is our cue, our opportunity to transform
the karma. We have two choices, one is to give up, the other is
to chant with complete conviction that we will transform the doubt
and lack of self worth we have about ourselves. The environment
reflects both our positive and negative tendencies and most of the
time the negative ones are how we feel about ourselves. He said
that although Nichiren’s Buddhism was the Buddhism of Cause
we still keep trying to change/manipulate the Effect in the environment.
He said we must focus on the Cause, on our own lives and eradicate
our lack of self worth. Then the environment will respond to
our treasuring and valuing our lives accordingly.
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