The Buddha in Your Mirror: Practical Buddhism and the Search for Self

Buddhism teaches us to recognize these cycles of impermanence and have the courage to accept them.

We create causes through thoughts, words and actions. With each cause made, an effect is registered simultaneously in the depths of life, and those effects are manifested when we meet the right environmental circumstances.

According to the Buddhist view, life is eternal. It is believed to undergo successive incarnations, so that death is thought to be not so much the cessation of an existence as the beginning of a new one.

This idea that the power to achieve happiness lies totally within can be disconcerting. It entails a radical sense of responsibility.

Buddhism is a beautiful philosophy, but above all, it is about action.

The universe and everything in it are in flux, arising and ceasing, appearing and disappearing, in an unending cycle of change conditioned by the law of causation. All things are subject to the law of cause and effect, and consequently nothing can exist independently of other things. This Buddhistic concept of causation is also known as “dependent

According to Nichiren Buddhism, Nam-myoho-rengekyo is the law of the universe, and by chanting it you reveal the law in your own life, putting yourself in harmony or rhythm with the universe.

It is said that a drop of ink in a cup of water will turn the water blue. This same drop in the ocean will vanish completely. Likewise, by immersing ourselves in the life struggles of other people, as we develop our natural capacity for compassion (what Buddhism calls our bodhisattva nature), we gain the wisdom and life force to overcome our own pr

Taken all together then, the phrase Nam-myohorenge-kyo could be translated as “I devote myself to the mystic law of cause and effect through sound.”