Shine!

I was struggling recently. Struggling with a fellow member hurting me with words. She meant well, it didn’t come across as such.
A couple of days later she asked me to translate sensei’s letter into my first language and I understood what I need to do and what every one of us needs to do to be happy (or at least happier). I don’t think it is exclusively buddhist either. Just Daisaku Ikeda’s advice on how to be a good human being.

The Daishonin teaches us: ‘The voice does the Buddha’s work’. Please therefore be a person of ‘heart-warming and encouraging words’, not of ‘bitter and hurtful words’. Be a person who embraces other people with broadmindedness and advance amicably with others, without holding any grudges. When you take this guidance as Buddhist training and challenge yourselves in human revolution throughout your lives, you can enter the orbit of absolute happiness throughout the three existences.

Simple, eh? Not really and not to everybody.
People seem not to remember the weight of words they’re using. We respond to physical abuse, conflicts, raised voices but very often fail to remember that our immediate environment and people close to us are hurt not by punches or kicks but by ‘bitter and hurtful words’. And yes, most often those words come from us.

And we ought to respect one another not only because they are loved ones, fellow workers, friends or simply humans. We need to respect one another because each and every one of us is a Buddha! They might not know that (but knowing you and knowing you are a Buddhist they should already learn that from you) but you do and should always remember that.

There’s a little reminder from Nichiren Daishonin himself: Take these teachings to heart, and always remember that believers in the Lotus Sutra should absolutely be the last to abuse one another. All those who keep faith in the Lotus Sutra are most certainly Buddhas, and one who slanders a Buddha commits a grave offence. (WND-1, p. 756)

One who slanders a Buddha commits a grave offence!!! Everybody that hurts a Buddha commits a grave offence. Everybody that fails to notice a Buddha in a fellow human being commits a grave offence. That is what we should remember because from there we’re only one step from shining.

One of my friends quoted a book the other day at a meeting: “Happiness can be found even in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn on the light”. I knew that before I read the book, before I went to my first meeting, before I chanted my first Nam Myoho Renge Kyo. You are the one that can fix everything by shining for other people. Good words, kindness, smiling, helping or just being a shoulder to cry on are all little lights that make the darkness disappear.

There’s more! It all comes back.
Imagine a lit candle. It gives some light. Imagine that candle lighting a hundred others. The light becomes blinding. That’s what you do by shining in your environment. In Buddhism it is also known as oneness with the environment. That principle says that your environment is a mirror that reflects yourself and your action. When you shine it shines back. It also shines wider and wider with more people getting infected with that light.

As you see, happiness is not as egoistic as you thought it was. It is infectious. So be happy and shine and infect as many people as possible!

By the way: the quote from the book is a Harry Potter quote 😉