Every time I look at my phone, it’s as if my worth is being calculated,” says Mili, a high school student in New York. “How many likes did my post get? How many views? Why so many views but so few likes?”
A growing body of research finds that the more time a person spends on social media, the more likely they are to experience mental health struggles, including anxiety, isolation and hopelessness. If an overemphasis on social media can spur an emotional roller coaster for people of all ages, consider the impact on teenagers, who are still developing their sense of self.
A 2022 Pew Research Center poll found that 97% of teenagers use the internet daily, while some 67% percent use social media platforms at least once a day, with TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat topping the usage chart.
Such sustained online engagement can be exhausting, says Mili. Among her peers, communication can get complicated even when sending a simple text. If a friend sees she’s read their message but not responded, they may assume she’s mad at them, which adds to the pressure she feels to respond right away. “But it’s not like I can just quit social media,” she says. “That’s where I get crucial updates about my friend group, extracurriculars and even school work.”
Not all aspects of social media are detrimental. Social media can help us connect with friends and loved ones who live far away, bring together people of marginalized groups and help us cultivate an interest or hobby.
The question becomes: How do we take full advantage of social media’s positive functions, while avoiding the trap of deciding our self-worth based on algorithms, anonymous users and unrealistic depictions of peoples’ lives?
Ultimately, it comes down to how we spend our free time. The things that help us build a positive sense of self include interacting face-to-face with friends and family, engaging in our hobbies, sports and exercise, and enjoying culture in all its forms. Time spent with others can boost our mental health and help us develop a stronger and healthier self-image.
Going back to Mili, she said how important it is for her and her peers to believe in themselves apart from what the social media world thinks about them. “I love how Buddhism’s main focus is that each person is infinitely capable and precious and can create unique value for the world,” she says. Ikeda Sensei speaks to this sentiment, writing of the challenges young people face:
Youth is a time of extreme emotional sensitivity, a period of uncertainty and insecurity in the face of what seem like infinite possibilities. The bigger your dreams, the greater your anxiety. It may seem that you are weak and that your feelings are easily hurt, but in fact that is not the case. Within youth resides the vitality and strength to overcome any obstacle. Please be confident of that.
There may be times when you experience such extremes of emotion that it sends you reeling downward. But you always have the power in the depths of your being to pull yourself up and overcome that despair. This, I declare, is the real meaning of youth, as well as its special privilege. (The New Human Revolution, vol. 17, pp. 111–12)
Here are tips and guidance from Ikeda Sensei that can help parents and guardians promote healthy social media use to their teens.
1. Chant Nam-myoho-renge-kyo daily with your teen to empower them to see their inherent worth and irreplaceable value.
If you can overcome hardships and trials without being discouraged by temporary ups and downs, both you and your children can nurture an indestructible strength of heart. The foundation for this is prayer. Parents pray for their children and the children respond to that prayer, and in this way parents and children grow together. We must not forget to chant Nam-myoho-renge-kyo. We must never forget the basics. (Happy Parents, Happy Kids, p. 29)
2. Engage in social media and internet fasting. Set breaks throughout the day for your teens and have a plan for what you will do together during those breaks.
If you think that too much TV or video games are negatively influencing your children, it is important to discuss this with them and set time limits. Use your ingenuity to divert your children’s attention from TV and games by encouraging them to perhaps rest a while or by giving them a snack. TV can have both a good side and a bad side. You should be open-minded enough to discuss certain TV programs with your children. For example, there are some people who decided to study medicine and become doctors because, when they were in elementary school, they saw a program about the plight of refugees. Television is not an evil in itself. It is the adults creating the programming who have lost their sense of values and ethics. The problem is society’s growing tendency to emphasize profit over children’s well-being, while failing to consider, or even being willing to sacrifice, children’s future. (Happy Parents, Happy Kids, pp. 50–51)
3. Model positive social media behavior. Keep your presence online positive and try not to scroll at the dinner table or during other opportunities to connect with your teen.
Parents’ everyday conduct is the greatest form of education for children. Many things can be conveyed through words and reason, but what is most readily communicated to children is the parents’ character and way of life. (Happy Parents, Happy Kids, p. 13)
4. Help your teen understand that popularity or online success does not equate to happiness. In fact, many who achieve success cause suffering for themselves and others.
True victors in life are those who never give up and continually challenge themselves, without losing sight of their goal. There is more to life than just advancing on the “track of success” based on where one went to school or where one works. Even if one should progress on that course, it is a separate matter whether that person can lead a truly fulfilling life. More than a few graduates of famous universities end up getting involved in corruption and ruining their lives. (Happy Parents, Happy Kids, p. 75)
5. Provide your teens with a safe space for them to discuss their feelings. Young people need an outlet to discuss and better understand their emotions.
No matter how busy you may be, you find the time to get together and talk with your children. The length of time is not important. What matters is that parents use their wisdom.
When you have to be away from home for some reason, try to leave a note for your children or call them on the phone when you have a chance. The important thing is to make sure that you stay in communication with them in some form.
• • •
The good fortune that accrues to parents who apply themselves diligently to SGI activities will protect their children without fail. Nonetheless, you must still make positive efforts to open and sustain dialogue with your children, not allowing yourselves to neglect them, claiming that you’re too busy or it can’t be helped, or telling yourselves that somehow things will be taken care of. Unless you exert yourselves in this way, you are irresponsible parents who lack compassion.
Outward appearance is not important, what counts is what is inside our hearts. Are there heart-to-heart bonds? Some families may always be together physically but are estranged at heart. Other families can only get together for brief periods but manage to enjoy concentrated and lively heart-to-heart communication at such times.
Families that share bonds of closeness based on day-to-day efforts are ones in which the members feel comfortable and at ease with one another, no matter where they are or what they’re doing. (Happy Parents, Happy Kids, pp. 86–87)
Living Buddhism: At your middle school, you’re known for teaching classes in which students dramatically improve their writing, reading and speaking. As the young men’s leader for South Zone, an area spanning Georgia, South Carolina and southeastern Tennessee, you travel long distances to personally encourage the young men. What drives you?
Lance Powell: Many youth in South Zone are struggling to believe in themselves. One reason I bring such passion to my classroom and to my leadership is that I understand that struggle very well.
Bullied as much at home as at school, I didn’t have a happy childhood. I have a speech impediment and, what’s more, I’m gay—something that, in my mother’s mind, disqualified me from salvation. My mother was not a lovey-dovey person. She raised me on her own, and whole years passed by in which I did not hear the words “I love you.” The words I heard most often were “You’re worthless.”
Tell us about your encounter with Buddhism.
Lance: It was the summer of 2011, one month after receiving my undergraduate degree. I’d pursued academics rigorously, driven by the hope that academic success would somehow make me feel worthy. But upon graduating, I became depressed. I was underemployed and spent the bulk of my time in bed on the internet, where I got to talking with an SGI member. It was, she said, the most life-affirming philosophy she’d ever encountered—a practice that had the power to help anyone achieve their dreams, no matter who they were.
Impressed by her enthusiasm, I decided to give it a go. Two weeks later, I received a message from my aunt, whom I hadn’t heard from in a long time. She wanted to know how I was doing—she and other family members had been trying to reach me for years but had been unable. Through her, I was connected with other family members whom I hadn’t ever spoken to—my paternal grandparents among them. Not only did the rest of my family not hate me—as my mother had hinted—they cared about me.
A week later, I walked up the steps of the Atlanta Buddhist Center. Here goes nothing, I thought, sure I’d be the only Black guy in the room. But as it happened, the meeting looked very much like the rest of Atlanta, and it overflowed with warmth.
You went on to accept district leadership, didn’t you?
Lance: That’s true. I received the Gohonzon the winter of 2012 and accepted district leadership in the spring of 2013. With this, the pace of my life picked up. Speaking with my father’s side of the family, I realized that I did have a dream, a dream that had been pursued by his family for four generations: teaching. Chanting about where I wanted my life to go, I started moving in that direction and applied to Mercer University in 2013 to pursue a master’s in education. But obstacles immediately hit.
What did you encounter?
Lance: I ran up against my worst tendencies to shrink away from hard work and coast on the efforts of others. Early on in my Buddhist practice, I experienced the unforgettable sensation of having these tendencies exposed, of a mask being ripped right off of my face.
My practice was flaky at best, and my approach to faith reflected my approach to life. In my final exam for my master’s, I was asked to teach several classes together with an assigned teacher. I didn’t prepare much for the first of these classes, tried to wing it and botched it horribly. After, I talked nervously while my assigned teacher gathered her papers. She cut me off with a hard look. “I don’t think you have what it takes,” she said, and left.
That night, I started chanting serious, abundant daimoku to face my faults head-on and transform my destiny.
Sounds like a wake-up call.
Lance: It was. I went on to graduate, and then the real struggle began—I had to find myself a job.
In 2016, I went to the DeKalb County Job Fair. The fair opened at 7 a.m., so I was up at 4:30 a.m. to get ready, chant and catch the bus. I thought I’d be among a handful of early birds, but there was already a crowd of would-be teachers gathered.
Throughout the day, like fireworks, cries of victory were loosed at random all around: teachers getting hired on the spot. I went from booth to booth but left each one without any guarantees. It was hot. Toward the end, I stood sweating on the sidelines, watching people wander around as though at a loss while around them the booths were broken down and packed away.
Desperate, I closed my eyes and started chanting Nam-myoho-renge-kyo under my breath. I felt myself calm down and my determination flare up from within. I opened my eyes and looked around. Right in front me, I realized, was a booth I hadn’t yet visited.
Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, Nam-myoho-renge-kyo …
I walked right up to the man there, my hand outstretched.
“Sir, my name is Lance Powell. I know I am the person for this job and would like to know more about your school.”
My heart was hammering. I’d never before promoted myself as “the person for the job.” As it happened, this man was the school principal. He seemed impressed by my enthusiasm, and we spoke at length but parted ways with no guarantees. I went home and continued chanting. Two weeks later, I got a call. It was the principal. He gave me the job.
What was your first year of teaching like?
Lance: Oh, horrible. I had one class, all boys in the seventh grade. They had no respect, throwing paper wads behind my back, calling one another names, calling me names. Within my first month, they were scheduling fights in my classroom, earning it the name “Seventh Grade Fight Club.” The other teachers started placing bets on how long I’d last. Fortunately, my district and young men’s leaders were rock solid; were it not for the regular encouragement I received from them, I’d have buckled for sure.
How so?
Lance: Well, for instance, at the end of one particularly difficult day, in which my seventh period boys shattered the classroom window, I just let loose to my young men’s leader about how I clearly didn’t have what it took to be a teacher.
He listened for a while and then slowed me down, reminding me that I practice the foremost philosophy in the world, with the foremost mentor.
Every day, I came home thinking, Shouldn’t I just find work somewhere, anywhere, else? But every evening, I’d get in front of the Gohonzon and chant—just to feel any hope at all. And chanting, I’d feel this glimmer of hope rise up in my life, and with it a willful kind of stubbornness.
I won’t leave, not yet; maybe I can change this school, maybe I have the power to do that.
Trying as it was, that experience made me chant and study, which impacted other areas of my life. For instance, it was bringing me and my mother closer.
In what way?
Lance: When I began my practice, I hated my mother. Of course, Ikeda Sensei talks all the time about the importance of appreciating one’s parents, which, I’m sorry to say, made me roll my eyes. But facing everything I was going through, facing my own tendency to shrink from responsibility, I began to feel that my relationship with my mother was not one I needed or wanted to run away from. She was living in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. I began to call her every week, then multiple times a week, telling her about everything that was going on in my life and classroom. Mostly she’d listen, chiming in with a “Mm-hmm!,” “Good Lord!” or “Not in my day, never!”
All told, I thought, getting off the phone one day, she’s still my mother.
Then, toward the end of the summer of my first year of teaching, I got a call from her. She was out of breath; she’d fallen in the bathroom and broken her leg. The person I was when I began my Buddhist practice would have frozen in fear; I would have run from that situation. Instead, I felt immediately: I need to go to her. I took the first flight to North Carolina.
That summer was supposed to be the one I faded into never returning to the classroom. When I did return, the other teachers were shocked. They’d be shocked again that year when my class placed in one of the highest rates of improvement, and they’d be shocked yet again when the same thing happened the next year. Flying home to care for my mother was a turning point for me, a clear refutation of my tendency to run from difficult opportunities to grow. I brought this back with me to the classroom and to my leadership.
What did that turning point look like in your leadership?
Lance: Many of the young men in South Zone are fighting for their happiness in the midst of conflicts at home, in their neighborhoods, in their schools. There are things I never would’ve understood about the young men throughout this zone had I not gotten my butt in a car with the young men’s and men’s leaders and gone with them to offer encouragement face-to-face.
In 2021, during the pandemic, my mother called. She had stage 4 breast cancer, she told me. Though a nurse by trade, she didn’t want anything to do with the medical establishment. Again, I went to her immediately to spend a month together. Near the end, she couldn’t talk much.
I think she knew that she wouldn’t live much longer. Though she could hardly speak, she struggled up onto her elbows in bed to get her face even with mine. “Lance,” she said. That’s all. She was beaming.
All told, she’s still my mother. A few days later, she peacefully passed away.
Recently, I went to visit a struggling young man. Together, we got in front of the Gohonzon and began chanting vigorous daimoku. He opened up about what he’d been through: his grandfather had passed away before his eyes. The reason he was so down when we got there was, I feel, because he didn’t think that anyone could understand what he felt. I told him that my mother had passed away before my eyes but that through Buddhism I’d been able to create the deepest value from that experience.
What would you like to convey to young men who are struggling to believe in themselves?
Lance: There’s so much I’ve been through—I was mugged the night before my final exam at Mercer but passed the exam. I was pulled from the school program due to a mental health breakdown but reentered and passed the program. So many times, I could have thrown in the towel. But because of this practice, I didn’t. I’d just say, stick with your district, stick with the Gohonzon, stick with Sensei and the Gosho. This spirit of endurance is what has allowed me to clearly perceive the power of my own life, which is the power to help others to perceive the same.
Lance will fellow members in Columbus, Georgia, April 2023.
They came in their work clothes—some in uniforms, others in suits. All I knew about these people was that they’d known my mother. My father stood silently, jaw set, as they trickled in, as their boots and dress shoes filled the entry. From the mourning room the sound of their chanting filled the house.
I knew what my father was thinking. As he’d said earlier that day: “We should have never gotten mixed up with weird things! Should have prayed to Buddha!” The major Taiwanese Buddhist schools of his day had stressed prayer to a statue.
I was 10 when my mother began practicing Nichiren Buddhism with the SGI and talking about how “the Buddha is within your own life,” something we all found weird. And yet, it was clear that whatever she was doing was working for her; it gave her a fighting optimism in the face of dire challenges—liver cancer, a failing kidney and the serious medical debts they incurred. She was a janitor, and my father, whose right side had been paralyzed by childhood polio, sold toiletries on the street. In such circumstances, I remember her putting aside a small amount of money each month to contribute to the SGI.
“Why?” I’d asked.
“So that this organization can grow,” she’d say, “and more young people have the chance to encounter this philosophy.”
We couldn’t afford a memorial service, but the SGI put a beautiful one together for us. Hundreds attended—I was astonished. Looking from face to face, it dawned on me that everyone there had gathered because, in some way or another, my mother had impacted their life.
“Study hard!” and “Put in your best effort!” were two encouragements she’d given often. Taking them to heart, I managed against all odds to get into college on a full scholarship. There, I encountered this Buddhism once again, in the student lounge during a commercial break of an airing of the Korean drama “Winter Sonata.” As though waiting for the break (and almost like she wasn’t really there for the show) a young woman turned to me and asked, “Have you heard of Nam-myoho-renge-kyo?”
Weird things! I heard my father say. Even so, we became friends, though I told her I wasn’t interested in the SGI. But one day, I saw her feeding coins into a campus pay phone, the receiver tucked against her ear, dialing numbers off a scrap of paper in her lap. “What’s up?” I knew that her financial situation was the same as my own, her future equally uncertain. “Inviting people to an SGI meeting!” she said brightly.
I had some change on me. I chewed my lip before saying, “Give me a couple numbers; I’ll help.” I got going on the pay phone next to hers. What I didn’t bet on was the first person I called needing a ride. I had a scooter. I chewed my lip before saying, “I’ll drop you off, but that’s all—I’m not interested in SGI.”
But when we got to the culture center, there were these women unloading food from the trunk of a car.
“Oh! We have so much food!” they called. “Would you help us carry it in?” The food smelled delicious. “All right,” I said. Setting it down inside, another woman turned to me. “Ah! We have so much! Would you stay and eat with us?” The food was as good as it smelled, and the people reminded me of my mother: positive and energetic. By my senior year, I was coming out regularly, drawn to the spirit of the members—especially my peers. Encountering them in my youth proved a great treasure.
Racked with anxiety about my future, I sought guidance from my academic advisor, who warned against pursuing my master’s degree until I’d worked several years and paid off my mother’s debts. But the youth at SGI meetings emphasized my dreams. “You can do it!” they’d say. “Chant to win!” So simple and joyful—not complicated! With joy and appreciation, I began making monthly contributions, as my mother had, even when I struggled, and chanting earnestly about my dream to study in the United States.
In 2007, my senior year, I was admitted to a prestigious graduate school in Taiwan on a full scholarship. While there, my university conferred an honorary doctorate on Ikeda Sensei and even established a Daisaku Ikeda Research Room in the library. It was an acknowledgment that knowledge is neutral; to create value, it must be grounded in wisdom, directed by a powerful philosophy of life. And I, studying Sensei’s writings, was coming to understand how my mother, with her elementary school education and hardships, had become so wise, so joyful.
My Buddhist practice gave me the courage to pursue a master’s degree, then travel to America to earn a doctorate, a double major in curriculum instruction and teacher education at Michigan State University. All my causes for kosen-rufu crystallized in 2013, in the form of a tenure-track faculty position at a state university in Georgia, generally considered unattainable for international students like me.
After 2 1/2 years, my university submitted a green card application for me under “Outstanding Professor or Researcher”—the most demanding category. Just as I was to attend the 2015 culture department conference at the Florida Nature and Culture Center, my employer received a 14-page request for evidence from immigration. My university attorney said I had a less than 5% chance of approval and suggested I wait several years to resubmit. My dean agreed.
At the FNCC, I sought guidance from a senior in faith.
“Five percent?” he said. “If there’s a 1% chance, you oughta go for it!”
Chanting abundant daimoku, I decided this was what my mother would have done, what Sensei would encourage me to do. I got to work putting my case together—what amounted to 42 pounds of evidence and a 24-page, single-spaced response. I submitted everything to immigration just before the deadline—something my attorney had claimed impossible. The following month, on my birthday, I received my green card in the mail.
Both my parents had difficult lives, their health conditions hindering them from freely pursuing their educations. Today, I work to reshape educational practices to support those with disabilities so they can freely manifest their full potential.
My family no longer struggles financially. My father receives physical and occupational therapy three times a week, and my sister takes good care of him. My family supports my SGI activities and warmly welcomes members to our home.
Recently, Miyoko Hamilton, a pioneer member here in Georgia, passed away. She was like a mother to me, and I’d asked her many questions I never got to ask my own mother. “Do you think she was unhappy that I didn’t practice this Buddhism while she was still alive?” I asked her once.
“No!” she’d said. “Your mother wanted to leave you with a life philosophy, not a religion for religion’s sake. She died knowing she’d left you with the memory of her fighting spirit!”
At every impasse, I’ve chanted Nam-myoho-renge-kyo to muster courage, fight for my dreams and win. To know that a strong life force can transform any hardship into value is the greatest happiness in the world. It is the treasure my mother left me.
On May 8, the 188th lecture in the Hiroshima Study Lecture Series for Peace was held at the Hiroshima Ikeda Peace Memorial Hall in Japan. International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) Head of Delegation in Japan Jordi Raich delivered the lecture, stressing the significant role of the upcoming G7 Hiroshima Summit in promoting nuclear disarmament. On May 9, Mr. Raich attended the opening ceremony of a new exhibition, jointly created by the ICRC and the SGI (Soka Gakkai International), at the same venue. The exhibition introduces ICRC’s humanitarian efforts and support of nuclear abolition and SGI President Daisaku Ikeda’s approach to nuclear abolition.
The G7 Summit—a forum bringing together leaders of seven of the world’s most powerful industrial nations—takes place every year. Ahead of this year’s May 19–21 assembly in Hiroshima, Japan, Daisaku Ikeda, Buddhist philosopher, peacebuilder and veteran advocate for abolishing nuclear weapons, issued a statement on April 27 calling on the leaders to focus their conversation on pledging No First Use of nuclear weapons.
The World Tribune has curated statements, essays and testimonials from the SGI’s decades-long efforts for nuclear abolition, underscoring why it is important to care right now.
Statements
No First Use of Nuclear Weapons
Daisaku Ikeda, as president of the Soka Gakkai International, has issued three emergency declarations in the past year calling for nuclear weapon states to pledge No First Use of these weapons to avoid catastrophe, defuse the climate of mutual fear and promote nuclear disarmament.
July 26, 2022 ‘No One Anywhere Should Suffer What They Endured’
In his July 26, 2022, statement to the 2022 NPT Review Conference, Mr. Ikeda calls for No First Use of nuclear weapons.
Jan. 11, 2023 ‘Nothing Is More Cruel or Miserable Than War’
In his Jan. 11, 2023, statement on the crisis in Ukraine and No First Use of nuclear weapons, Mr. Ikeda calls for action aimed at restoring peace in Ukraine and steps to lessen the risk of nuclear weapons use.
April 27, 2023 ‘Let’s Live Together, Not Die Together’
In his statement to the leaders of the G7 countries in advance of their summit in Hiroshima this month, Mr. Ikeda calls on them to reexamine the actual consequences of nuclear weapon detonation and the bitter lessons of the nuclear era and, thus, initiate “earnest deliberations on making pledges of No First Use.”
Photos by Jolie Tea-Taniguchi.
Photo essay
The Cries of People Everywhere for Peace
A singed tricycle. A woman’s kimono pattern burned onto her skin. A school uniform charred by intense thermal rays. The November 2014 Living Buddhism carried a photo essay of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, which displays belongings left by the victims of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings in August 1945, with photos and other artifacts that convey the horror of a nuclear attack.
Voices of Hibakusha, Survivors of the Atomic Bomb
‘My Life Has Just Begun’
Susan Urabe shares her experience as a young girl being a mile and a half from ground zero when the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. See April 3, 2015, World Tribune, p. 7, for the full interivew.
‘Praying Each Day to Abolish the Hatred in People’s Hearts’
Kiyoko Neumiller, of Whidbey Island, Washington, was 15 and working at a combat boots factory a mile from ground zero when the bomb fell on Hiroshima. In this interview, she shares how Buddhist practice and our SGI community are the keys to a better future. See March 5, 2021, World Tribune, p. 10, for the full interview.
Address
‘We, the Citizens of the World, Have an Inviolable Right to Live’
As Josei Toda neared the end of his life, he deeply considered what to impart to the Soka Gakkai youth, who embodied the mission and responsibility to carry out the kosen-rufu movement far into the future. Those ponderings gave birth to the Declaration for the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons, which he delivered on Sept. 8, 1957. See September 2017 Living Buddhism, p. 15, for the full address.
Interviews
Transmitting Buddhist Humanism in Society
Living Buddhism sat down with Asle Toje, deputy leader of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, to discuss the Soka Gakkai’s enduring role in contributing to peace and why, as one of the largest intact peace movements in the world, now is the time for us to rise up for peace. See April 2023 Living Buddhism, pp. 14–18, for the full interview.
Avoiding Nuclear War: the Case for No First Use
In October 2022, the World Tribune carried a message from Alexander Harang, co-president of International Peace and Understanding and distinguished adjunct professor at Soka University of America, in which he shares how Mr. Ikeda’s call for No First Use of nuclear weapons contributed to redirecting focus toward what can actually be done to avoid nuclear war. See Oct. 14, 2022, World Tribune, p. 11, for the full interview.
So That Our Children Might Live
In September 2017,Living Buddhism interviewed Ira Helfand, co-president of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, a nonpartisan federation of national medical groups in over 60 countries dedicated to mobilizing influence of medical professionals against nuclear weapons. For its work, IPPNW received the 1985 Nobel Prize. In the interview, Dr. Helfand shared his thoughts on nuclear abolition and the necessity of opening a path forward. See September 2017 Living Buddhism, pp. 16–19, for the full interview.
Key Essays by Ikeda Sensei
‘Our Shared Vow to Create a World Free of Nuclear Weapons’
To mark the 60th anniversary of second Soka Gakkai President Josei Toda’s Declaration for the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons, Mr. Ikeda writes in an essay why it’s important to instill in every nation awareness that nuclear weapons are an absolute evil, and he offers four points toward making nuclear abolition a reality. See Oct. 20, 2017, World Tribune, pp. 2–3, for the full essay.
Nothing Is More Precious Than Life
On the 50th anniversary of second Soka Gakkai President Josei Toda’s Declaration for the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons, SGI members co-sponsored the Civil Society Peace Forum at The Cooper Union in New York on Sept. 8, 2007. In his message to the event, Mr. Ikeda emphasizes key points in the campaign to abolish nuclear weapons and create a peaceful world. See September 2022 Living Buddhism, pp. 15–17, for a reprint of the full essay.
My mind was always racing: How should one live? Where do we go when we die? What’s the purpose of life? I searched for answers everywhere—in religions, schools and jobs, but wherever I looked, whomever I asked, I never found an answer that stuck.
“Very purehearted, our daughter,” my parents would say, but they looked tired when they said it. I’d try anything but give it up in a flash. Purehearted, yes, but confident? More like a total give-up!
The year 1976 found me and my husband, an American military man, stationed in Okinawa with our firstborn son, something that worried my parents, who’d seen me give up on just about everything else.
At my son’s school, another mother and I got to talking. She mentioned she was Buddhist and invited me to a Soka Gakkai meeting. There, I asked all my usual questions.
“This is the religion you’re looking for,” someone told me. “You’ll never know if you don’t try.”
“Well, true,” I said. I received the Gohonzon and began studying for an introduction-to-Buddhism exam.
Photo by Samy Pinarli.
Studying, one question stumped me—the same question, in fact, that had stumped Abutsu-bo, a disciple of Nichiren Daishonin.
“What is the significance of the treasure tower?” he’d asked the Daishonin, referring to the massive structure described as emerging from the earth in the 11th chapter of the Lotus Sutra. The Daishonin had answered, “Abutsu-bo is … the treasure tower itself, and the treasure tower is Abutsu-bo himself” (“On the Treasure Tower,” The Writings of Nichiren Daishonin, vol. 1, p. 299).
What’s it mean? I asked the Gohonzon. I want to know! As I chanted Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, I felt a huge and sudden surge of energy, almost as though a tower were rising up from within my own chest—a positive feeling of boundless appreciation and confidence.
“What was that?” I asked a senior in faith.
She thought a moment and then lit up. “Must be life force coming up!”
“Must be, ” I said uncertainly. What I did know, though, is that I’d asked a question and for the first time gotten an answer that gripped me with excitement.
Every day after that, I woke up and chanted, asking whatever was on my mind to the Gohonzon, feeling great confidence that I’d get an answer worth having. At last, I’d found something I knew I’d stick with for good.
Over the following years, my husband received assignments to New York, South Carolina, the Philippines and finally, Southern California. Each place brought new adventures and challenges, but everywhere I went I brought with me the same daimoku, the same confidence in my life, deepening with every challenge overcome.
In the Philippines, my youngest son was caught outdoors in a flash flood. The rain nearly swept him into a storm drain, but his raincoat caught on a bit of fencing. Two servicemen happened to spot him flailing there and hauled him out. That night we chanted daimoku of appreciation, me with the conviction that the power of daimoku is boundless. It was a conviction I’d come to rely on in the years to come.
In 1987, in California now, my eldest son, at age 16, suddenly withdrew, shut his door, drew his blinds and fell into a long, deep depression. He wouldn’t talk to us or anyone.
Chanting one night, sick with worry, a realization hit me like a wave. My son is teaching me the greatness of daimoku.
Confidence emerged from my life: Everything, everything, I felt, is going to be OK. My prayer changed then. It became one of appreciation. Thank you, my son, thank you, thank you.
He still didn’t want to talk, but I think he could sense a change in me—no worry, no fear, just deep confidence and appreciation for him. In any case, my daimoku certainly reached him. Within a week, he began to eat again. From there he did a complete 180, deciding to enter the U.S. Air Force, and then to pursue a career in IT. Both my sons, I realized, had helped me reveal to myself the power of the Gohonzon and of daimoku. So, that left my husband.
I remember the day he told me he wanted to leave me. “Why?” I managed—hardly able to breathe. It wasn’t anything ugly; he simply wasn’t happy.
“Share this with the members at your next meeting, with a determination to show results,” my women’s leader told me. “Then all the Buddhist gods will follow you home.” I did that and went home to chant. My prayer was not Why me? but What is this a reflection of in my own life?
The prospect of separation also meant I’d need to search for work, but I’d never held a real job in my life.
What quality do I have to bring to a job? I wondered. I had no idea, but, chanting, I felt the treasure tower emerging from my life—a feeling of confidence that I absolutely had something to offer. Though it was completely new to me, I attended computer school for a year and graduated. Then, I landed a job working as a salesperson at a high-end fashion company. What can I bring to this job? I asked myself and soon I discovered what it was: earnest resolve. Three years running, I was my company’s top salesperson, an accomplishment that earned me a share of company stock, dramatically transforming my financial fortune. I worked that job and loved it for 20 years.
Likewise, I began to ask myself, What quality can I bring to my marriage? My husband, I realized, was gentle and kind. I asked myself, Can I be more gentle? More kind? Reflecting earnestly, I realized the answer was yes.
Over the years, my husband and I came together, then apart; together, apart—but there was nothing ugly between us—never. Actually, we passed the years in friendship. In the meantime, I made many causes for my life.
For 32 years, I did regular shifts at SGI-USA bookstores, made spring and fall visits to my mother in Japan and helped many people receive the Gohonzon. I don’t remember exactly how, but at some point my husband and I got back together, and have been so, happily, for many years.
In recent visits to Japan, my sister and brother, seeing how much I’ve changed—from someone who’d give up in a flash to someone who never backs down—decided to take faith themselves. “Must be something to this practice,” they said.
How should one live? I always wondered. And now I know: with the confidence that every challenge in life is a lesson, an opportunity to deepen one’s appreciation and conviction—to reveal the boundless power of one’s prayer.
Q: What advice would you give the youth?
Fumi McGlothen: It’s important for young people to have a big dream and go for it! Maybe you think there’s no way, but you’ll never know if you don’t try. Never give up! Stick with Ikeda Sensei and daimoku, and you’ll win—a hundred percent!
On May 7, SGI-Netherlands held Buddhist study exams at the Ikeda Friendship and Peace Center in Amsterdam. The exams were conducted in English and Dutch and were taken by some 110 people. On the same day, SGI-UK held introductory and elementary level Buddhist study exams. Around 500 people took the exams at some 70 venues throughout the country.
On May 3, the “Seeds of Hope & Action: Making the SDGs a Reality” exhibition, a joint initiative of the Earth Charter International and the SGI (Soka Gakkai International), opened at the Central University of Venezuela in the capital city of Caracas. The opening ceremony was attended by Director of the School of Economics and Sociology Dr. Ángel Reyes and SGI-Venezuela General Director Lydia Salas.
Gratitude: it’s a word we hear often. Studies have shown that feeling and expressing gratitude can benefit our mental health and can even change our brain.[1]
Buddhism also teaches that gratitude is key to living with joy and accumulating good fortune and benefit. Ikeda Sensei says:
There is nothing as strong or as sublime as a person whose heart is always filled with gratitude. In the realm of Buddhism, gratitude is the foundation of everything. (April 6, 2012, World Tribune, p. 5)
What’s more, Sensei explains that when we have a sense of gratitude and appreciation, “our prayers will be answered more quickly” (Discussions on Youth, p. 306).
For SGI members, every May 3, Soka Gakkai Day, is a time to reflect on our Buddhist practice and also express our gratitude by taking part in the May Commemorative Contribution activity, which enables us to nurture and extend our kosen-rufu movement far into the future. With that in mind, the World Tribune distilled from Sensei’s guidance five reasons to practice gratitude.
—Prepared by the World Tribune staff
1. It multiplies our good fortune.
“It is the heart that is important” (The Writings of Nichiren Daishonin, vol. 1, p. 1000), writes the Daishonin.
When we do something, do we approach it with a negative attitude—grumbling, “Oh, not again! I hate this!”—or a positive attitude—telling ourselves brightly, “All right, here’s a fresh opportunity to gain good fortune!”?
This seemingly small, subtle difference in attitude can make a huge difference in our lives. It can change things 180 degrees. This is what the Lotus Sutra and the doctrine of three thousand realms in a single moment of life teach us.
The heart is invisible, and Buddhism provides a comprehensive understanding of the principles governing that invisible heart. It represents the highest form of psychology, neuroscience and psychotherapy.
Appreciation and joy multiply our good fortune. Complaint and negativity erase it. (The Wisdom for Creating Happiness and Peace, revised edition, part 1, p. 138)
2. It produces limitless self-esteem.
Appreciation is what makes people truly human. The Japanese word for thankful originally indicated a rare or unusual condition and later came to denote a sense of joyful appreciation for an uncommon occurrence. Having a spirit of appreciation for someone from whose actions we benefit, a sense that “this is the rarest and noblest thing,” produces in our heart a feeling of pride and self-esteem: “I am worthy of receiving such goodness.” It provides us with spiritual support to go on living. (Faith into Action, pp. 7–8)
3. It transforms our life state.
If we cherish the spirit to repay this debt of gratitude in the depths of our hearts, then our good fortune will increase by leaps and bounds. No matter how much action people might seem to be taking outwardly, if they lack the spirit to repay their debt of gratitude, their arrogance will destroy their good fortune. Consequently, they will be unable to transform genuinely their state of life. A subtle difference in our spirit produces diametrically different results. (The Wisdom of the Lotus Sutra, vol. 6, p. 13)
4. It connects us to others.
“Human beings owe all kinds of debts of gratitude. We need to be grateful to our parents, to all living beings, to our sovereign—or, in contemporary terms, society—and to the three treasures—the Buddha, the Law (the Buddha’s teachings) and the Buddhist Order (the community of believers). We also owe gratitude to our mentor.
“But people today tend to look at others as adversaries or competitors in a struggle for survival, having lost the ability to perceive the kindness of others. As a result, people become alienated from one another and feel isolated and alone. But if we can open the eye of our heart, the eye of wisdom and the eye of the Law, we will see just how much others support our lives. Once we realize that, we no longer feel alone, and a tremendous sense of joy and appreciation wells forth from our being. Buddhism teaches the importance of repaying such debts of gratitude, and that doing so constitutes the correct way of life for a human being and is the mission of a Buddhist.”
To lack gratitude is a sign of poverty of the human spirit. (The New Human Revolution, vol. 17, p. 72)
5. It builds unshakable happiness.
Some words of wisdom that I like the best were sent to me by my husband. He wrote, “Complaints erase good fortune. Grateful prayer builds happiness for all eternity.” This means that we must have a positive outlook in everything we do. I have made this a personal habit. (Kaneko Ikeda, Kaneko’s Story, p. 120)
byElaine Armstrong Snoqualmie, Wash.
Recently, my daughter and I have been having these very active, very pointed conversations about her childhood—what I did and didn’t do and how it’s affecting her now. She recalls how, in her teens, I’d pester her and how painful that was. And she recalls how one day, I stopped.
“I think because you laid off the judgment back then, we have a relationship today,” she told me. What had happened was I’d sought guidance from a senior in faith. She asked me the very simple question, “How do you want to be remembered by your children?”
I’d thought of my own mother then, and a heaviness came over me. Did I want my daughter to feel heavy when she thought of me?
My mother’s life, I could tell you, was a kind of impossible quest, a search for someone who could give her the love she hadn’t gotten from her mother. The burden of fulfilling that quest was put on her family. As I grew older, I grew tired, aware that I was partnered in a dance of give-and-take. Whatever I offered, she wanted double. And when I doubled, so did her wants. It was a dance that left me exhausted, closed-fisted, reluctant to engage.
But she’s your mother, I’d think.
I’d go, but pushing hard—rigid, panicked, obligated. It wasn’t just with her, either. I was operating as all three of these things in all my relationships, all of the time.
My husband knew as much. We were a young couple in 1976, living in Eugene, Oregon, when a young woman he was interviewing for the local paper started talking to him about Buddhism. “Something about a meeting in Seattle,” he said, handing me the phone. “I can’t make it, but you should go; she seems like a happy person.” That was enough for me. The bus fare to the meeting was $19—I remember that, scraping by as we were.
Chanting Nam-myoho-renge-kyo for the first time, surrounded by joyful people, I felt this tremendous relief. I just felt like, I’m OK, I’m fine! I’m enough, I’m enough!
Chanting morning and evening was one of very few things I found myself doing not out of obligation; hope welled up within me when I chanted, and with it, a sense of promise that I didn’t have to slog through life. When the May Commemorative Contribution activity came around, I based myself on a winning prayer that I’ve held dear since the start of my practice: to become a billionaire in treasures of the heart. To remove misery and impart joy—this, I came to understand, was the work of the Buddha, the work of a bodhisattva and the life’s work of Ikeda Sensei. In 1981, at 28, I got to see this in action.
I was among the youth training course participants who had the opportunity to have dinner with Sensei on a trip in Japan. I remember looking around at my bright, smiling peers. Am I better or worse than this person, more or less than that person? My sinking heart told me what it thought. And then Sensei walked in and all those thoughts flew out the window, and my heart danced. Sensei was radiant; he treated each person like they were the greatest person, for whom he held the greatest expectations. I’m seated at the best table on earth, I remember thinking, with the best people.
Elaine and her daughter, Joanna, in Snoqualmie, Wash., April 2023. Photo by Mahin Rony.
Sensei approached each of us as a Buddha, seeming to draw the Buddha out from each of us. I decided that night that I wanted to move through life like that, with joy and freedom and vigor! But of course, revealing our Buddhahood is not a one-and-done “poof-you’re-a-Buddha” kind of deal. No, it’s more like brushing your teeth. You do it in the morning and then you do it in the evening, and you’re not bewildered when you wake up with bad breath. You just go and brush your teeth. Often, I’d wake with a negative voice in my head, telling me I was falling short of something. But I knew the answer: a fighting morning gongyo based on a prayer to limitlessly expand my life.
In 2012, my mother called. Sick and nearing the end of her life, she wanted to see me. I panicked. I didn’t want to go out of obligation, but in that moment, that was all I felt. I had to ask myself, How much do I want to extend? Fear took hold: If I extend a hand, she’ll take my arm. I sat down to chant; this was a decision I had to base on the world of Buddhahood, not obligation or shame. And as I chanted, hope and courage welled forth from my life. My life is Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, I thought. I am a billionaire in treasures of the heart!
From this elevated life state, I realized something: I couldn’t make my mother feel loved, but I could love her without reservation, knowing that this was enough. As I continued chanting, my appreciation for my mother continued to grow and grow. I kept up the strong daimoku when I went to visit and, while there, something mysterious happened.
I went to her unworried whether I could fulfill her expectations; I just went to her expecting to find a Buddha. And approaching her this way, for the first time in my life, she seemed to relax, to let go and just enjoy my company. I was enough, she was enough; in fact, the two of us were wonderful, the greatest people on earth.
In April the same year, she passed away, and that May, I contributed to the SGI with deep appreciation—for my life, for hers, for my mentor and for our Buddhist community. Again I gave, in the way that I wanted, in the way that my mentor would have, in praise of life, as a billionaire in treasures of the heart.
Basing my prayer on a spirit of unconditional appreciation has been the key to achieving a stunning reversal in self talk. Living with this spirit, I don’t panic, berate or pester myself, but praise, praise, praise. I can feel and hear the difference. My daughter will tell you the same.
The heart is our unsurpassed treasure in life. It is endowed with tremendous potential and supreme nobility. Its depth and breadth can be expanded infinitely, and its strength can be developed without bounds.
from Ikeda Sensei (The Teachings for Victory, vol. 1, p. 191)
