A Great Buddha Is Reading This

I was unable to understand the meaning of compassion (jihi). Although the Doctors Division was often called compassionate, the more I pondered, the less I comprehended.

In Japanese ji means benevolence, which I understood, yet I could not understand the word hi which means sad. Some say jihi means to share suffering with others, another is to eliminate pain and give joy. Yet I still didn't understand. At that time I read a passage in an essay by President Ikeda: "When your soul is victorious, your sadness becomes hi of the word jihi." When I read that I had a revelation.

I had been reading jihi as meaning to be benevolent and sad, which made me more confused. If read by the Chinese character, it reads to be benevolent in times of sadness. Thus, it means to embrace yourself with a warm heart when you are at your lowest point, when you are in the midst of the worst suffering, or in the depths of your anxiety. Here lies the aspect of a victorious life.

For those who are able to embrace themselves in the midst of suffering, their sadness is no longer sadness. Such sadness itself will be transformed into courage when embraced by one's own compassionate heart. Despair will evolve into hope. The true meaning of an indestructible life lies only this way.

Only those who embrace themselves can truly cherish others who are suffering and regard others' suffering as it if were their own. For example, when you are low you don't like yourself. Later when you are feeling better and seeing others in the same situation you may say, "What a pity!" Yet deep within yourself you judge them by thinking, "How weak. He is a failure after all."

The way you judge yourself is exactly how you judge others. When embracing and respecting your lowest self with a compassionate heart like "I love me" or "I'm truly great," you can respect other people.

Gohonzon means the object of fundamental respect. President Ikeda has said, "What do we fundamentally respect? It is one's life. Our life has the highest value. It is the foundation of respect. The respect of one's life therefore cannot be based on whether one succeeds or fails. No matter what happens, we must start from respect. This is the meaning of embracing the Gohonzon. This is Nichiren Daishonin's Buddhism.