Self-Faith

"The thing always happen that you really believe in and the belief in a thing makes it happen" - Frank Lloyd Wright

I often call myself Buddhist when I met someone for the first time.

Although that's true, I might have very different ideas from Buddhists in other countries such as Thailand since Buddhist and religions have developed depending on the local culture in each place. They are all unique and inspiring how originally single set of teachings can hold this kind of variety.

I just wrote "single" set of teachings though, Buddha has never left his disciples any materialistic legacies but direct teachings by his presence and expression. Therefore, the teachings were naturally interpreted by Buddha's disciples. Each disciple manifested what they perceived, experienced, learned and felt from Buddha.

Even the name, Buddha which means "enlightened one" (and many more interpretations and translations), is not the original name of the man called so. Buddha is called as we call him because people around him named.

Buddha never called himself as "enlightened" because, in my understanding, he knew he is not only single entity of the universe but one with everything else. Therefore sometimes Nirvana is described as the world without the notion of division.

Lotus Sutra teachs us "heed the law, not person". Person constantly changes and being influenced by environment. Therefore the law made by human beings will constantly fail because no human law can adapt to ever altering environment including human beings themselves. Often what's behind legal restriction is political power and economic strategy for limited number of people who directly involve with the process of implementation, which means that human laws are not originally designed to make this world better place for everyone but few rulers. I use this fact to understand that the law itself is not absolutely justice. In fact there are lots of great legendaries who made revolutionary changes for human beings broke the law at their time. The most trustworthy law in this world is what's within us. People change, pray and meditate to be aware of their internal law and manifest as it says. So it is very natural for somebody to have contrary opinion and belief  toward political authority in their age, like Tsunesaburo Makiguchi - the first president of Soka Gakkai.

As Anesaki (1916) wrote in his book Nichiren: The Buddhist Prophet (1916), the Buddha can be described as a "truths revealer". His teachings are mostly convincing and naturally coming into our heart. This is what science cannot do. Although scientific mind with empirical experiments is tangibly convincing and the easiest to logically understand, the deeper base of scientific mind is skepticism. As long as science desire itself thrive and keep its progress, it will be fed by human skeptical mind. On the other hand, as Buddha was alive, there was no laboratory, microscope, syringe, messzylinder and litmus examination paper. He had no mean to visually confirm credibility of his beliefs. When I take a look at contemporary society, people believe science and be skeptical on spiritual and intangible expressions. It is sometimes pitiful for people because the ignorance toward spiritual mind and intangible mind can let daily pragmatic learnings be nothing. But, precisely saying, what we usually experience, encompass and manifest is science in a true sense and the unique result is something that no one else can outcome.