ON Self Esteem

Guidance from Mr Sonoda – About Self-Esteem, Praising and Respect

Learning how to have self-esteem is difficult because the society in which we are living teaches us what is good and what is bad, what is right and what is wrong. We are conditioned to believe in what is good or bad. If we get what we want then we are happy and if we don’t get it we start to underestimate our life. In Nichiren Daishonin’s teaching there are 14 slanders which make us unable to become happy; two of them are:

(1) To have a wrong conception of our life, meaning to ignore who we really are

(2) Being overly attached to material things

We are so attached to this wrong conception of our own life and of our own mistakes that they become our reality. Self-Esteem has nothing to do with anything outside of us. First start to esteem your own life. Respect yourself when you fail. Appreciate yourself when you try over and over even when you fail again. Love yourself when you are embarrassed. Your fundamental problem is that you’re not truly happy.

How can you transform this attitude? Only by praising who you are. You are Buddha.
You are the most beautiful thing on earth. You are the most gorgeous thing in the universe. If you believe that nothing can be done to change, nothing will change. To believe you can do anything, you have to make your life harmonious.

When you were a child nobody taught you how to walk. You were naturally aware of your real nature and you learned it on your own. But when you grew up, your parents, your teachers … started to control your life and you became upset.

You have to become like a tree. A tree remains the same whether you hit it or you despise it. It is in harmony with itself. It just doesn’t pay attention to what you do to it. It is just self-content. It is just trying to become a tree. But humans do not react the same way!!!!

We don’t follow our true nature, we just follow others opinions. Chanting Nam Myoho Renge Kyo is what enables us to create harmony in our lives, and this uniting with our own selves comes from the esteem we get from our self. When everything is going wrong, at this moment, try to chant Daimoku to love yourself and your life. If you can do this, you can transform what really makes you suffer.

Your life contains infinite wisdom and power, but you, yourself, don’t believe it and you just let yourself drift. You are always looking for recognition from others but you never get it. Once you start to recognize your own value, however, you’ll be able to have a real impact on your environment.

This is the story of the Bodhisattva Fukyo, Shakyamuni’s disciple. Fukyo was really rich but he was not happy. When he converted to Buddhism, he made the decision to show as much respect as possible to all people, that’s why he respectfully bowed in front of all the people he saw. People didn’t understand and didn’t accept so much attention from a perfect stranger. They finally started to laugh at him. But he was never worried. He just carried on. When Mr.Sonoda listened to this story as a young Buddhist, he decided to apply the essence of this Buddhist teaching to his own life: Praise. Normally, when we think about respect we think of something external of us. But in Buddhism, praise is directed to our own life. We are training ourselves to respect the essence of our life whatever we are doing or living at that moment.

From childhood, our family, our teachers, TV conditioned us to believe that we are a certain type of person. Buddhism enables us to understand that we have an incorrect perception of our own life. Nichiren Daishonin says: “One who perceives the greatness of his or her life is a Buddha, the one who ignores it is stupid.” Chant to realize that you are Buddha as you are. Once you deeply perceive who you are you will naturally transform your environment.

Conditioning makes life appreciation difficult. We consider the respect we deserve from our environment to be equal to our materialistic gain. Buddhism is a progression towards greatness and the development of our own life. It is difficult to feel self-esteem because our life itself does not desire self-appreciation. Try to chant Daimoku for 15 minutes, concentrating only on praising your own life. Your spirit will become distracted and you won’t be able to think about self-esteem. Just train yourself to concentrate on esteeming yourself, the way you are.

Deep inside, you are judging yourself. You see what is good and what is not good within you. You believe you have to make everything good to be happy. You don’t have to do that. You are only who you are. There is no good or bad Buddha. There is only Buddha, the way you are. We are all simply Buddha and sometimes we can do terrible things.

Good and bad exist because we are all humans. The only thing attesting to our stupidity is the fact that we are humans and there is nothing wrong about that. Being a Buddha means that we have the innate power to transform the negative things into benefits.

Let’s consider negative circumstance. If we are using it and recognize it as one with our lives, we feel miserable. Rather than feeling hopeless simply because we are not obtain the job we always wanted, we should make it an opportunity for us to prove the power of our life by acting like a human being.
We all make mistakes in one field or another and we believe this is where all our sufferings are coming from. With such convictions we just give ourselves more excuses to fail. We always find excuses to fail, thus we nourish the negative aspect of our lives and bury the problem even deeper within. Our Buddha state exists within our mistakes and within our dysfunctions as well. If we bring out our Buddha state and praise our life, our mistakes will become our greatest benefit.

Nam Myoho Renge Kyo can transform everything
Every aspect of our life is an incredible jewel. We think we have to determine what we consider to be change but there is nothing to be change. We have to make obvious how wonderful and powerful life is. And we can achieve that in one night if we really do esteem and praise our life. Self-esteem doesn’t mean that we accept any circumstances either. Remember again, this is not something external of you.

Self-esteem has 3 qualities:

- Whatever happen do not betray your dreams, neither your goals nor who you are
- Whatever you do, there is no need to judge yourself
- Whatever the circumstances in your life, you can transform them

Whatever your situation it is unacceptable for you to be depressed. Your attitude, if you feel angry, should be to change it into a Buddha function. Whatever situation you are living in, what is fundamental for your life is to chant Daimoku for self-esteem and thus to develop abilities you didn’t even expect to exist.

Challenge to realize in a month time:
1 Regardless of my current situation, I vow to chant Daimoku to transform my situation in one month’s time.
2 I take complete responsibility to do this in one month’s time.

Nichiren Daishonin talks about the Treasure Tower. You are the Treasure Tower. Everyone chanting Daimoku is the Treasure Tower. If you believe you are the Treasure Tower, the place where you are is the Buddha Palace. And the dream that you nurture is the dream of the Buddha. If you keep on denying yourself you will never transform anything. Challenge yourself to transform your situation in one month’s time:

1. Be conscious of the truth of your life as a Buddha.

2. Take responsibility to work for benefits greater than anything you ever had before.

3. Establish the conviction that everything begins and ends with you

-Unity of the Person and the Law
-When you chant Daimoku, you and the Law are one
-Nam-myoho-renge-kyo permeates the entire universe
-Chant for your life and your goals to become one and the same
-You are the center of the universe
-Don’t chant as if you were overcoming an obstacle
-Don’t chant for anything outside of yourself
-Only chant to feel the veracity of your Buddha nature

What does it mean to esteem other people?

1. To make no judgment of others, no matter what the condition
2. You should do anything you can for the happiness of others
3. Don’t use the excuse of being tired or annoyed to judge others
4. It’s OK to be angry but don’t get angry just because someone is annoying you today; they won’t tomorrow
5. To be a Buddha does not mean to be perfect. It means that you have the power to transform what is negative into a benefit each and every time.