The Guiding Light

The Guiding Light

First we have to create a vision and then think of how to go about realizing it. Of course it’s important to look at reality, but unless we have a grand vision and fight with a passionate will for advancement, we won’t accomplish a thing.

Staunch realists tend to become conservative. Preoccupied with immediate realities, they often end up surrendering to those realities.

Ultimately, happiness rests on how you establish a solid sense of self or being. Happiness does not lie in outward appearances nor in vanity. It is a matter of what you feel inside; it is a deep resonance in your life. To be filled each day with a rewarding sense of exhilaration and purpose, a sense of tasks accomplished and deep fulfillment – people who feel this way are happy. Those who have this sense of satisfaction even if they are extremely busy are much happier than those who have time on their hands but feel empty inside.

Remembering things about a person is an expression of compassion and concern. Forgetfulness shows a lack of compassion, a lack of responsibility.

Strength is happiness. Strength is itself victory. When you wage a struggle, you might win or you might lose. But regardless of the short-term outcome, the very fact of your continuing to struggle is proof of your victory as a human being.

Life is full of unexpected suffering. Even so, as Eleanor Roosevelt says: “If you can live through that, (a difficult situation) you can live through anything. You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face… Struggling against great difficulty enables us to develop ourselves tremendously. We can call forth and manifest those abilities lying dormant within us. Difficulty can be a source of dynamic new growth and positive progress.

-Daisaku Ikeda