That said, even in a world that appears shrouded in darkness and has a seemingly unforeseeable future, there is a powerful message that asserts every one of us can do something. This concept, articulated by the renowned Eastern philosopher Masahiro Yasuoka (1898–1983), is called “the practice of illuminating one corner [of the world] with one lamp—the practice of illuminating the world with ten thousand lamps.” “Rather than complaining about the darkness, light a lamp. / We s

In this day and age, how can we foster societies that are easy to live in, where everyone is kind to one another, and where the spirit of living together and the spirit of reciprocity—the great foundation of human life—develop effortlessly in every quarter? The Buddhist teaching of “the mutual inclusion of the ten realms” means that every mind mutually possesses every other mind in the ten realms of living beings, and therefore, we all inherently possess the mind of a buddha

When we think very deeply, we particularly see that our encounters with others arise from a mysterious convergence of a variety of ongoing causes and conditions. In a standard dictionary, the Japanese word en, “connection” or “karmic connection,” is defined as “a mysterious force, transcending human agency, that binds people together,” so we can only conclude that whoever we have encountered, we were supposed to encounter them.