From the Jan 5, 2019, issue of the Seikyo Shimbun, the Soka Gakkai’s daily newspaper.
Together with fellow members throughout the world, we have vibrantly set forth into the Year of Soka Victory.
Members attended New Year’s gongyo meetings in high spirits, even in snowbound regions. Some were joined by non-practicing family members, and participants celebrated together with youth who were receiving the Gohonzon. Ours is truly a gathering of human harmony brimming with great joy.
I would like to offer my heartfelt appreciation and praise to the behind-the-scenes support staff for their dedicated efforts to ensure the meetings’ success.
I am chanting Nam-myoho-renge-kyo in earnest so that our precious Soka family members everywhere—including our “uncrowned heroes” who deliver the Seikyo Shimbun newspaper every morning—will enjoy good health, benefit and victory again this year.
Over the New Year holiday period, the Soka Gakkai Headquarters complex bustled with energy and exuberance as an unending stream of visiting members and guests from all over Japan and countries around the world visited to celebrate. I am truly grateful for everyone’s sincerity and good wishes.
Many members kindly sent me photos of Venus and the moon side by side taken shortly before sunrise on Jan. 2 [my birthday]. One of them attached a message saying, “It was as though the three heavenly gods of light—the gods of the sun, the moon and the stars—who had gathered at the assembly of the Lotus Sutra, had appeared together to offer their congratulations.”
Nichiren Daishonin states, “It is the power of the Buddhist Law that enables the deities of the sun and moon to make their rounds of the four continents” (“Consecrating an Image of Shakyamuni Buddha,” The Writings of Nichiren Daishonin, vol. 1, p. 685). Let’s align our lives with the Mystic Law, the ultimate rhythm of the universe, and sing a joyous song of life “day by day and month after month” (“On Persecutions Befalling the Sage,” WND-1, 997).
The great adventure of kosen-rufu is one in which the progress we each make in our human revolution directly contributes to bringing peace and security to our communities and societies.
Many years ago, in Okinawa, where I began writing my novel The Human Revolution, I called on the members there to make their beautiful islands the Hawaii of Asia. I hear that, today, Okinawa rivals Hawaii as a tourist destination, welcoming nearly 10 million visitors annually.
I was also delighted by news I received from the members in Amagasaki, an area making leading efforts for kosen-rufu and playing an important role in ever-victorious Kansai. A city once infamous for its heavy pollution, Amagasaki was last year named as the most livable place in Kansai.
Second Soka Gakkai President Josei Toda once said: “Any place where people have faith dedicated to kosen-rufu is a Buddha land. The spirit of the Daishonin resides there.”
I would like to share some passages from Nichiren’s writings that I hope we will all engrave in our hearts again at the start of this new year. The Kansai members and I read these words together at the district leaders meeting on Jan. 5, 1956, which marked the actual start of the historic Osaka Campaign[1]:
I am praying that, no matter how troubled the times may become, the Lotus Sutra and the ten demon daughters [guardian deities of Buddhism] will protect all of you, praying as earnestly as though to produce fire from damp wood, or to obtain water from parched ground. (“Rebuking Slander of the Law,” WND-1, 444)
• • •
Employ the strategy of the Lotus Sutra before any other. (“The Strategy of the Lotus Sutra,” WND-1, 1001)
Let’s each vigorously enact an inspiring drama of positively transforming our environment into a beautiful realm of lasting peace and prosperity in the place where we have vowed to fulfill our mission!
References
- In May 1956, the Kansai members, uniting around the young Daisaku Ikeda, who had been dispatched by second Soka Gakkai President Josei Toda to support them, introduced 11,111 households to Nichiren Buddhism. In elections held two months later, the Soka Gakkai-backed candidate in Kansai won a seat in the Upper House, an accomplishment that was thought all but impossible at the time. ↩︎
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