Dharma World Buddhist magazine

Helping One Another

by Nichiko Niwano

Although we take our daily lives for granted, we owe a great debt of gratitude to many people and things, and to all of nature.

Our everyday lives are a repetition of getting up in the morning, washing our faces, chanting the sutra before our home Buddhist altar, and then heading to work or school after some breakfast. Although we take our daily lives for granted, we owe a great debt of gratitude to many people and things, and to all of nature. We are caused to live through their innumerable blessings.

When we become aware that we do not lead our lives only through our own efforts, we are able to receive such blessings gratefully, and we develop the wish to help others and can interact kindly with anyone and everyone without prejudice.

When I was in the first grade at elementary school during World War II, I was evacuated to Suganuma in Niigata Prefecture, the founder's birthplace, where I spent ten years. The people there had a humble rural lifestyle, conducting their lives by helping one another and sharing in small joys, and from them I experienced the kindness and simplicity of country people that I had not found in the city.

For example, when visitors arrived they were warmly welcomed with thanks for "taking the trouble to travel so far." In those days, it was usual for everyone to walk to the nearest village or town, so they knew from personal experience that it was not easy to walk a long distance.

As our material wealth has continued to grow since those days and the means of transportation have vastly improved, traveling on foot to visit a distant friend or relative has all but disappeared. And we may find it difficult to express the same warm appreciation to our visitors.

Destroying Illusions

"The ocean of impediment of all karmas / Is produced from one's illusions," is written in the Sutra of Meditation on the Bodhisattva Universal Virtue. This means that human beings' wrong deeds, which are like a wide ocean, as well as the many mental and physical obstructions that arise from them, are all born of faulty imagination or illusions.

Illusions are the result of our thinking in a subjective, self-centered way that causes us to see what is not true as if it were true. In order to destroy such illusions, it is essential that we awaken to the fundamental truth that all living beings share in the same one great life-force.

When we recognize this fact, the selfish illusion that "I am what I am, other people are themselves" gradually vanishes, and we become aware of the oneness of all of us together.

Then we can develop the spirit of putting others first, and the happiness of others becomes our own joy. We thus are able to build rich human relationships by supporting one another and helping one another.

Nichiko Niwano is president of Rissho Kosei-kai and the Niwano Peace Foundation, a president of the World Conference of Religions for Peace, and chairman of Shinshuren (Federation of New Religious Organizations of Japan).

This article was originally published in the October-December 2006 issue of Dharma World.

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