Power of Chanting Daimoku

Power of Chanting Daimoku

  

Chanting daimoku is a teaching that is "easy to embrace and easy to practice." Anyone can perform it. It can be done anytime and anywhere. It is the most highly refined and simplified method of practice. As such, it is the perfect Buddhist teaching for not only the 21st century, but the 22nd, 30th and 50th centuries, and for 10,000 years and more of the Latter Day of the Law — for all eternity.

  

The practice of chanting daimoku embodies the Buddha's ardent and heartfelt wish to lead all people to happiness. A practice that only certain people can carry out goes against the Buddha's spirit.

  

Daimoku is like light. As the Daishonin says, "A candle can light up a place that has been dark for billions of years." Similarly, the moment we offer prayers based on daimoku, the darkness in our lives vanishes. This is the principle of the simultaneity of cause and effect. At that very instant, in the depths of our lives our prayer has been answered.

  

Daimoku is also like fire. When you burn the firewood of earthly desires, then the fire of happiness — that is, of enlightenment — burns brightly. Suffering thus becomes the raw material for constructing happiness. For someone who does not have faith in the Mystic Law, suffering may be only sufferings. But for a person with strong faith, sufferings function to enable her or him to become happier still.

  

Source: `The One Essential Phrase' — 2, World Tribune, June 7, 1996 Pages. 9-10