by Pamela Plummer
Huntsville, Alabama
My son and I had just spent the weekend together. It was July 2006, and he had just come back from college. We had done so many wonderful things. We visited my sister. We ate and we talked. He told me that I was the best mother a kid could ever have. I told him I wished I could have been even better. Looking back now, it was like I was drinking him in.
It felt out of place to get the call so soon after our weekend together that he had taken his life. I moved from Birmingham, Alabama, to Buffalo, New York, to care for my ailing mother, who died a year later. If I could communicate the pain and emptiness I felt, it was as if my mind was on fire.
I had been introduced to Buddhism at a work conference 13 years earlier, in 1993, in Maryland. I was studying a lot of different philosophies back then, Hinduism and Buddhism among them.
I had grown up in the ’60s, coming home from school to TV news stories on the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights struggle. I was a child searching for peace and some understanding of the world and myself in it.
At the conference, I had a book on Buddhism, and one of the presenters told me the teachings I was studying were old.
“Hinayana,” she told me.
“What comes after that?” I asked.
“Mayahana,” she said.
She introduced me to Nichiren Buddhism and the Mahayana tradition of altruistic, or bodhisattva, practice. I had already been to an SGI meeting by then, in 1989, but everybody at the meeting was smiling and laughing so much that I thought something was wrong. Looking back, I can truly appreciate how joyous everyone must have felt at that gathering.
The woman I met at the conference in 1993 became my best friend. She sent me a sutra book and beads. We spoke long distance by telephone for two years, not just about Buddhism but about life. Through a mystic series of events, I encountered another SGI member, who happened to be an aquaintance of mine. She took me to a Buddhist meeting in 1995, and I received the Gohonzon later that year.
I found so much in Buddhism—good friends, family and a philosophy that encompassed all of life. It had everything that I needed. It was like a perfect nutrient; you don’t need to feed a baby anything other than its mother’s milk.
When I lived in Birmingham, an elderly neighbor would come to my house on Saturdays, right before we had our chanting sessions. I’d ask: “Do you have water?” “Do you have an umbrella?” because it was so hot outside. I would let her sit in the house, and she would listen to us chant while she waited for her ride to some place or another. Even though she never practiced, she was able to be a part of the Soka human family.
It was this beautiful family and my Buddhist practice that I will never forget as I began to process my inexplicable loss. I wrote a lot of poems in conversation with my son, but then, it felt as though I had no more words. I then started painting but with certain ground rules. Painting was not about being perfect, or avoiding mistakes. It was about exploring the things going on around me, inside me and the beauty of life. It was a dialogue that occurred within my own life.
I chanted to the Gohonzon to banish my pain and my fear; to not succumb to it. I chanted to learn how to live and appreciate life again.
My mission brought me back to Alabama to teach at the largest historically Black university, filled with promising young people and amazing colleagues.
My experience with my son taught me how important it is to be open with youth, to listen carefully to them and to look for those opportunities for them to shine—because they shine even when they cannot see it.
I remember when I was young. Sometimes I think it’s about having that spirit that there’s so much of life that lies ahead of you. That it’s about continuing to believe that life is open and broad and full of possibilities. When I get the chance, I tell and show young people the source of all that potential and hope in them—chanting Nam-myoho-renge-kyo. I am chanting for a student division member to emerge on campus so that we can start a campus club here.
It will be 19 summers this July since I lost my son. Loss has taught me that I have to locate that person, to find them in my life. For me, that place changes with time. My Buddhist practice has helped me find his laughter, his sense of humor and his joy, etched in my heart.
When you’re chanting to the Gohonzon, you’re in the treasure tower; and it’s eternal, so everybody is there, including my son. All the people whom I have loved, all the people who have been a part of my life, they are there. We are connected, across the three existences, eternally.
When I envision him now, I see him working hard. He’s saying, “I love you, Mom.” He’s saying, “I’m OK, I’m good.”
I chant with this same belief for the members in my local region, that my prayer will encompass everyone. Some people have to travel long distances to get to one another and to get to a discussion meeting. I chant that everybody’s safe on the road and that they have joyful gatherings. I chant with these words from Ikeda Sensei in my heart:
I pray for your health and long life, and for your success in all endeavors. I am sending you daimoku. I hope you will all pray, too. Pray that instead of devils or negative, destructive forces infiltrating your being, Brahma, Shakra and the gods of the sun and the moon—positive, protective forces of the universe—will enter your life! Pray that they will enter the lives of all members in your region and the entire membership of the SGI, as well. If you do this, your strength will multiply a hundredfold, a thousandfold. With such prayer, with such faith, you will be able to realize a fundamental transformation in the very depths of your life. It is the secret to achieving your human revolution. … That is why we will never be defeated. Let us move forward with this invincible conviction. (Jan. 10, 2014, World Tribune, p. 5)
Life is full of towering heights and great depths, but whatever occurs, I’ve learned over time to hold on to my Buddhist faith and not let go. It’s a beautiful and profound practice, and I am so grateful to have found what I had been searching for—how to live in this world, how to create value and how to more deeply appreciate the lives of others and my own.
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