This monthly encouragement by SGI President Daisaku Ikeda was originally published in the June 2019 issue of the Daibyakurenge, the Soka Gakkai’s monthly study journal.
It is 65 years since my mentor, second Soka Gakkai President Josei Toda, visiting the ruins of Aoba Castle in the Tohoku city of Sendai, declared that we must make our organization a bastion of capable people.
Today, magnificent Soka bastions of capable people are found throughout Japan and around the world. What is the greatest, most powerful force for building those bastions?
It is the prayers and encouragement of the unsung, uncelebrated, yet supremely noble women of Soka—the mothers of kosen-rufu.[1] It is their tireless efforts to enact compassion through courageous action.
In one of his writings, Nichiren Daishonin cites a sutra passage: “All people dwell in the shell of ignorance, lacking the beak of wisdom. The Buddha comes back to this world … just as a mother bird returns to her nest, and cracks the shell of ignorance so that all people, like fledglings, may leave the nest and soar into the sky of the essential nature of phenomena and the reality of all things [the sky of enlightenment]” (“Letter to Niike,” The Writings of Nichiren Daishonin, vol. 1, p. 1030).
A mother bird selflessly devotes herself to warming her eggs so they’ll hatch, and caring for her chicks until she can see them soar into the sky. In this passage, the Buddha’s profound compassion is likened to this maternal instinct.
Our women’s division members, fostering our capable young Bodhisattvas of the Earth, are the perfect embodiments of these actions of “Buddha mother birds.” While grappling with their own personal struggles, they voluntarily go and support others in communities and regions facing difficult challenges and problems. They assure their friends that absolutely any form of karmic suffering can be transformed through the power of faith in the Mystic Law. And through “chanting Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, which is like the warmth of a mother bird” (see WND-1, 1030), they warm their lives and those of others, and liberate them from suffering.
Throughout history, thinkers and intellectuals have sought to find a fundamental solution to human suffering. Today, the confident, caring voices of Soka women, the mothers of kosen-rufu, impart wisdom for creating happiness, which has the power to break through the thick shell of the fundamental darkness or ignorance that is the root cause of all misery.
In particular, their unflagging efforts in dialogue to positively transform their communities and actualize Nichiren Daishonin’s ideal of “establishing the correct teaching for the peace of the land” are a struggle to awaken the Buddha nature inherent within each person and elevate the life state of all humanity in a common commitment to peace.
During a discussion with women’s division members from Hyogo Prefecture, who joined with me in building the golden citadel of Mighty Kansai, I shared three key elements of our Buddhist practice for realizing happiness and unending victory:
1) The spirit to always treasure each person and pray for their happiness.
2) The determination to continue working toward goals with a positive spirit until they are achieved.
3) The unity of “many in body, one in mind” that refuses to be defeated.
Let us resolutely respond to the prayers of our noble women’s division members and majestically soar forth from the Soka bastion of capable people on wings that will carry us to brilliant triumphs.
The lofty endeavors
of the women’s division
in the castle of Soka—
let us win, and bestow upon them
white lilies of happiness.[2]
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