Leading With Praise

Actually, I felt somewhat affronted. In fact, I felt much the way I had when I first encountered this practice. That would have been in the summer of 2010; we were at a dinner with friends. 

We’d moved from India the year before, having secured work just before the 2008 market crash. Then my company’s largest clients declared bankruptcy, and the work dried up.  

This was the situation when an old work colleague invited us over for dinner. I knew that I had to ask about work leads, and throughout the dinner felt the question caught in my throat. At some point I managed to ask it. But rather than lend me help, this old friend had the audacity to suggest I try some chant, some active meditation. 

On the drive home, Dimple chatted happily in the passenger’s seat. Slowly, her carefree talk melted my anger down, and by the time we were home, I found myself in agreement with what she was saying: There was no harm in trying.

I began chanting, complainingly at first, but after a few weeks of contact with SGI members, my prayer shifted—from a complaint to a pledge. Sensei’s guidance to “become indispensable at work” took root in my life. I began asking my co-workers if there was anything I could do to support them. At first, they were suspicious, but eventually, my intentions became clear. One of my co-workers opened up and asked me to photocopy some pages. Happily, I did, and after this, slowly but surely, the icy conditions in the office thawed. Though the economy had not improved one bit, my colleagues and I began to work more joyfully with one another, with greater trust. Soon after, I was called in to interview at one of the companies I’d applied to, then another. I secured several contracting jobs, the pay amounting to a doubling of my salary.

This taught me what it means to practice the Buddhism of sowing. We don’t wait for the effect, but make the cause—sow the seed—trusting that the effect will bear fruit in time. For us, it always has.

Dimple: By the time I’d written the note that shocked Sunil, I, too, had made the impossible possible a number of times. I, too, set an “impossible goal” for my personal income, and had since doubled it. I credit the practice 1,000%.  

Sunil: Given my situation at work, the goal Dimple had made did, indeed, seem impossible. My manager and I were at loggerheads. Still, I began to chant about Dimple’s figure, and slowly, to believe in it. 

We were planning a family trip to India that May. I was surprised, just a few weeks out, when my manager approached me asking if I would consider taking a little time to visit our supplier there. I agreed and determined that, while in India, I’d make the most of every encounter. 

Upon our return, I had an idea—one I would have balked at one month earlier—to ask my manager if he’d consider covering half the ticket as a work expense. He covered it in full. This enabled us to hit the remainder of our May Contribution goal. 

I stayed on at that company another three years. My manager left soon after I left in 2017, and called asking if I could help him find some work. By this point, I was in a position to do so. Unimaginable as it would have been several years earlier, I wanted to see him win. More than hitting the figure that Dimple wrote down, this was my real impossible-into-possible proof—this transformation of my relationship with my boss that flowed from a change within my own life.

Dimple: For me, my true “impossible” battle came in 2019, shortly after we’d moved to South Carolina. I myself was working in Charlotte, North Carolina, spending the weekdays in a rented room up north and returning to Sunil and the kids on the weekends. Within months of beginning my work in Charlotte, my manager turned on me. 

Every day, he humiliated me, never speaking a kind word in private, always berating, always in front of the team. I’d drive to my rented room in tears, call home in tears and chant to the Gohonzon in tears. 

I’ve always struggled with self-confidence. When my father’s business failed, we lost everything—down to the clothes on our backs (my mother sewed my only skirt from my father’s old trousers) and there was a lot of shame that came with that.

It was not until I discovered the SGI that I began to open up and see myself with new eyes, appreciating my unique strengths, according to the principle of “cherry, plum, peach and damson.” But now, working under this new boss, I felt good-for-nothing.

One night, I reached out to a senior in faith, who encouraged me to chant for my boss’s happiness. I began to do this and found his tirades were losing their power to affect me. I chanted powerful daimoku, drawing from deep within an unshakable appreciation for my own life. In the face of my deepest insecurities and self-doubts, it was up to me to affirm my own strength and irreplaceable value. That year, I engaged in May Contribution with a vow to transform my work into a Buddha land. 

Toward the end of 2019, I was given a spot in a new organization, where I received an almost immediate promotion to leadership. The reason, I believe, is that I’d begun to lead with my strengths—strengths unique to me that no one could take away. Among them is my ability to perceive the strengths of others—praising these and helping people lead with them.

Everything I do is built on appreciation, on uplifting the best of the person in front of me. This is the spirit I’ve learned through contribution and the key to making the impossible possible.

May 3, 2025 World Tribune, p. 5