Daily Gosho - Winter Always Turns To Spring

The Gosho extract that keeps us moving forward. The one that assures us that we will have a victory, no matter how "murky our pond" is currently.

The one we can keep in our hearts, with absolute conviction, that we will transform poison into medicine, transform our karma into mission and prove the power of the practice to ourselves and others.

 The one we can use to rally forth our ichinen (sincere determination). And as President Ikeda writes "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."

 "Those who believe in the Lotus Sutra are as if in winter, but winter always turns to spring."

(Winter Always Turns to Spring - The Writings of Nichiren Daishonin, Vol. 1, page 536)  http://www.sgilibrary.org/view.php?page=535 

Selection source: New Human Revolution - "Atsuta" - 28, , July 18th, 2012

Background

This letter, written in the fifth month of the first year of Kenji (1275), is one of several that Nichiren Daishonin wrote to the lay nun Myoichi, who lived in Kamakura and was related to Nissho, one of the Daishonin’s six senior priest-disciples. Myoichi was an educated woman who had lost her husband and was struggling with the difficulties of raising her children alone. Nichiren Daishonin wrote to encourage her, explaining that believers of the Lotus Sutra are as if in the midst of winter, but that winter unfailingly turns to spring.

This letter reveals that the lay nun’s husband was a strong believer, since he continued to follow the Daishonin even when his estate was confiscated because of his faith. He died worrying about the Daishonin, who was then in exile, and about his wife, whose constitution was frail, and who would have to support their two children. But the Daishonin assures Myoichi that her husband has received the same benefits as sages such as the boy Snow Mountains and Bodhisattva Medicine King, and that he is protecting his bereaved family. One theory maintains that the lay nun is the same person as a believer named Myoichi-nyo who received the letter The Doctrine of Attaining Buddhahood in One’s Present Form.