"If you wish to free yourself from the sufferings of birth and death you have endured since time without beginning and to attain without fail unsurpassed enlightenment in this lifetime, you must perceive the mystic truth that is originally inherent in all living beings."
"On Attaining Buddhahood in This Lifetime" (from The Writings of Nichiren Daishonin, p3)
The Soka Gakkai is a lay organisation that follows the Buddhism of Nichiren Daishonin.
Nichiren was born in Japan in 1222 and when studying to be a priest he wanted to know how it was possible for there to be so many schools of Buddhism throughout Japan when they all originated from one man - Shakyamuni, the first recorded Buddha.
Nichiren's quest to find the "real" Buddhism of Shakyamuni, took him to many parts of Japan, studying all of the different sutras and visting all of the schools of Buddhism until he finally came to the realization that the one true teaching of Shakyamuni was the Lotus Sutra.
The two key points of this sutra are:
(1) Anyone, no matter what their position within society, their sex, their race or their intellect has the Buddha nature within them.
(2) Your Buddhahood can be accessed at ANY time. You don't have to spend a lifetime of suffering and hardship to achieve Buddhahood in the next life. You can reveal your inner Buddhahood within this lifetime, and not only that, you can reveal and tap into your Buddhahood at this very moment.
The purpose of our practice is to overcome the suffering in our life by awakening this Buddhahood from within us.
Nichiren discovered that the way to open this Buddhahood within ourselves, within our lives and within the universe was to joyfully chant "Nam-myoho-renge-kyo".
The quote at the top of this post was one of Nichiren's first writings and basically means that if you really want to overcome all of the various kinds of suffering that you are facing at this moment in time, and that you have faced through all of your previous lives and you want to have an abundance of happiness, you need to awaken the Buddha from within yourself by chanting "Nam-myoho-renge-kyo".
To hear what chanting sounds like,
This file comes from http://askrobbie.com/Daimoku-Medium.mp3
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