Hi Everybody,
First episode in 2016! We're about 20 pages from the end of TCFB. Wonder if I should start blogging the new book? Perhaps that's tempting fate. Better wait until it has been published. Anyway...wishing everybody a creative, fulfilling, energetic New year, bringing a strong and stable sense of well-being into your life.
We're working our way through the chapter on Approaching the practice, and we've reached a sub heading that goes...
Not a question of blind faith.
A fundamentally important point about the central practice of chanting nam myoho renge kyo is that you don't have to understand what this mantra means theoretically when you begin to chant. The understanding will grow and deeepen as your experience of the practice grows. You certainly don't have to hang onto the many layers of meaning locked up in the characters as you chant. It's not an intellectual process in that way. Nor is it a feeling one, in the sense that you should experience some sort of emotional response. You simply chant nam myoho renge kyo in a steady rhythm, as loudly or as quietly as you choose, or as the environment allows, freeing the mind off from any particular concerns, relaxed, listening to the rhythm in the voice, feelin gthe slight vibration in the body. The key thing is to enjoy it, enjoy the moment for what it is.
If you are thinking about what other more valuable things you could be doing with your time, then it's probably better that you go off and do them!
But that having been said Buddhism clearly teaches that anything resembling blind faith is not an acceptable basis for practice. Does it work? Does it enhance how I feel about myself and my life and the way I handle my relationships? Nichiren argues constantly that it's up to us to pose these questions to ourselves. Take nothing on purely on trust he tells us, however interesting however seemngly powerful and profound the teaching. Unless it actually enables us to do something better with our lives, overcome problems more readily, feel a greater sense of self confidence in our own abilities, a greater sense well-being, more focused and more capable of achieving what we are seeking for our lives...then what is it for?
As we have seen, in Buddhism, the word ' faith' is realted not to some external power or force, but to the strength of our belief in ourselves, in our own capacities, in our inner resources of courage and compassion and wisdom, and our ability to make use of them in our daily lives.
We may indeed take up the practice because we come to value some quality that we see in the practitioners we meet, or because we are attracted by what we are told about the promise of change embodied in the practice. But in the long run, we are only likely to continue the practice with real commitment when we become aware that it is truly beneficial in the entirety of our life.
It is too demanding a practice to continue on the basis of someone else's belief, or someone else's promises. That is certainly true in my own experience. I began slowly, and it was something of a struggle for several months. But as I became aware of thos profound sense of well-being that ran right through my life, I started getting up an hour earlier each morning, wherever I was, at home or on location, so that I could fit in at least 45 minutes or so of chanting, to launch me positively into the day.
I'm still doing just that!!
Enough for today.
See you next week.
Have a great weekend.
William
PS TCFB is available in paperback from Amazon or as a download on Kindle.
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