Adversity gives birth to greatness

Daily Guidance Wed 04/25

For Today and Tomorrow Daily Encouragement by Daisaku Ikeda Wednesday, April 25, 2012 Adversity gives birth to greatness. The greater the challenges and difficulties we face, the greater opportunity we have to grow and develop as people. A life without adversity, a life of ease and comfort, produces nothing and leaves us with nothing. This is one of the indisputable facts of life.       Buddhism Day by Day Wisdom for Modern Life by Daisaku Ikeda Wednesday, April 25, 2012 If you think about it, although we may not be destined to die five minutes from now, we are all, without exception, going to die at some point. We can count on it 100 percent. There is nothing surer than this. Victor Hugo says, "We are all under sentence of death, but with a sort of indefinite reprieve." Ideally, we should live every minute of our lives valuably, as if it were the last moment of our lives. Those who live aimlessly are left with a sense of emptiness at the end of their lives, but those who live all-out, striving right to the end, will die peacefully.  Leonardo da Vinci says, "As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so life well used brings happy death." One aware that death could come at any time will live each day to the fullest. Daily Wisdom From the Writings of Nichiren Daishonin Wednesday, April 25, 2012 Buddhahood is the most difficult to demonstrate.  But since you possess the other nine worlds, you should believe that you have Buddhahood as well.  Do not permit yourself to have doubts.  Expounding on the human world, the Lotus Sutra says, "The Buddhas wish to open the door of Buddha wisdom to all living beings." . . . That ordinary people born in the latter age can believe in the Lotus Sutra is due to the fact that the world of Buddhahood is present in the human world. The Writings of Nichiren Daishonin, page 358 The Object of Devotion for Observing the mind Established in the Fifth Five-Hundred-Year Period after the Thus Come One's Passing Written to Toki Jonin on April 25, 1273