cont....Demands on time

Continue…. In recent years, the African nation of Rwanda has gone through a bitter and cruel civil war. In one family, the children lost both parents, only they and their grandmother survived. One of the older boys had to drop out of school to take care of the rest. He was so sad about not attending school anymore that he often cried through the night. His other siblings still in school would share their lessons with him when he came home from work.
   But if that were the whole story, we’d have to conclude that everything depends completely on our environment. That’s not the case. Life and the human condition aren’t so simple. Buddhism teaches that true freedom is connected to one’s inner condition of life. Someone with an expansive life-condition is free even if confined to the most restricted prison on earth.
   Natalia Sats, former president of the Moscow State Musical Theater for children, who fought against oppression and was jailed, also turned her prison cell into a place of learning. She encouraged her fellow prisoners to share their special knowledge with one another. One lectured on chemistry, another taught medicine. Mrs. Sats, who herself was a singer and entertainer, sang songs and recited verses by Aleksandr Pushkin, infusing everyone with courage and hope.
   I’m sure you know the story of Helen Keller. At the age of eighteen months, she lost her sight and hearing. Her loss of hearing also made it difficult for her to speak. But by working together with her teacher Anne Sullivan, she eventually learned to read, write and speak, and she graduated from Radcliffe College in Boston.
   Surely no one could have been as restricted as she was—unable to speak, hear or see. Her world was one of darkness and silence. But she drove the darkness out of her heart. At the age of nine, she finally spoke her first sentence:” It is warm.” She never forgot for the rest of her life the astonishment and joy she experienced at that moment. She had succeeded in breaking out of the prison of silence that confined her.
   Being human, however, at times she would feel forlorn and disheartened by the long hours she had to spend studying, having all of her textbooks painstakingly spelled into her hand, while other students were singing and dancing and enjoying themselves. In the story of My Life, she writes:
                                    I slip back many times, I fall, I stand still,
                             I run against the edge of hidden obstacles, I loss
                             My temper and find it again and keep it better. I
                           Trudge on, I gain a little, I feel encouraged, I get
                           More eager and climb higher and begin to see the
                          Widening horizon. Every struggle is a victory.

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Demands On Time

With school, homework, chores and other demands, I have no free time. It’s making me feel restricted.
   While there is no denying the pressures of one’s schedule at times, I believe that to regard the things you mentioned as merely unpleasant demands on your time is an incorrect perspective. If you think about it, it’s only because you enjoy great freedom that you have an opportunity to attend school and to study.
   Do you look at going to school as a right or as something you’re forced to do? As a liberating activity or something that stifles you from doing what you want? It all depends on your personal philosophy, on your wisdom. If you are passive, you’ll feel trapped and unhappy in even the freest of environments. But if you take an active approach and challenge your circumstances, you will be free no matter how confining your situation may actually be.
   The stronger you are, the freer you will be. Someone without a lot of stamina may have great difficulties climbing even a small hill. Someone sick might not manage it at all. But a strong, healthy person can climb even a mountain easily, with zest and enjoyment. To climb the mountains of your life goals, it’s important to develop your strength. Build a strong enough self so that you can be active in school and in your outside activities. If you have strength and capability, you will have freedom.
   The same is true of sports or music. To pay your chosen sport or instrument with complete mastery and ease, you have to gain an adequate level of proficiency, you have to be prepared to make some sacrifices so you can practice to the degree necessary.
   Children who suffer from serious illnesses or who live in war-torn countries often can’t go to school even though they may want to. Many children in more fortunate circumstances, who do have the opportunity to attend school, never fully appreciate how free they really are. Having the opportunity to go to school—is a sign of the most incredible freedom. And it’s a mistake not to realize it.
   I’m reminded of a story I recently heard about a young man who had multiple myeloma, a disabling and painful form of bone cancer. In the last two years of his life, with his entire body encased in a cast because of multiple bone fractures, he visited local high schools in his wheelchair to talk about the terrible effects of drug abuse. He would say to the students:” you want to destroy your body with nicotine or alcohol or heroin? You want to smash it up in a car wreck? You’re depressed and want to throw yourself off a bridge? Then give me your body! Let me have it! I want it! I’ll take it! I want to live! During the war in the former Yugoslavia, according to one account, children talked about their dreams. One said,” I had many dreams, but the war is robbing me of all of them.” And another said, “Our dream is to live an ordinary life with our friends, to be able to go to school.”continue……

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Open Families Are Strong

It is most important to remember that the future of the family depends on skillful, wise handling of the reins by the person who is in charge of managing the household. That is usually the wife, who is also mediator of the family.
     If there are differences between the children and the older folks, the mother is often better at smoothing things over by talking them out. If there are arguments among the children she becomes an impartial judge. If the storms of malice whip up within the family, she can bring calm by wrapping them in love. When trouble does arise she provides the warmth and harmony to prevent it from getting worse.
   The type of woman most desirable is the one who gives unswerving effort to develop mutual trust and confidence between herself and the man, who will work for the exchange of love and respect between her and her children, and who will continually develop the bonds of cooperation between brothers and sisters. The housewife who is like a ray of sunlight in her family, who is wise, and filled with love and compassion is the one to whom I would like to entrust the future family and society.
   Some people see the family as an oasis in society. Others see the family as a place to relax, and also as a consumer. I would also bet that there are many young people who regard the family as a castle for themselves and those closest to them.
   I agree with all of them. Anyone living in a family which brims over with love and trust, where food is prepared fresh and economically and the parents are happy and cheerful will know what the true meaning of joy is. The senior members of the family experience the delights of age, the husband and wife restore their vigor for another day, and emotional warmth fills the hearts of the young children. I believe it was Fukujawa Yukichi who once said, “ There are many beautiful things done in a family, but the most precious of them is the family discussion where everyone talks things over openly, without reserve. “ Enshrine these words in the form of a picture and the scene would be magnificent.
   But there are times when happiness may be blown suddenly away, like the leaves in a sudden gale. Rising prices and dreadful  economic conditions may chill the wife’s warm smile, the whirlwind of unemployment may cause the husband to bolt from his family. The source of the storm may lie in a traffic accident, children’s illness, anywhere where sudden mishap occurs. And sometimes it may brew within the family.
   If a person looks at his family as a nook nestled in some secure corner of the world, isolated from the rest of society, it may at first glance seem a happy place, but this is the kind of home that will not be able to avoid sudden collapse.
   There is no group as vulnerable to unhappiness as a family that is closed off from the rest of society. I would like to see the kind of family equipped with a strong life-force which will allow them to gauge and cope with the powers of the storm, even while buffeted by the rapid change in society. That family would be always open, ready to fight the evils that fill society. Families such as these in a society are like the white corpuscles and antibodies that fight disease in the human body.
   Since the open family would allow itself to make direct contact with the adversities of society, It would derive the wisdom to sustain itself. If the people making up the family do not have a creative sense, then the family will not be able to cope with the repercussions of society and politics, no matter how great the love that passes between them.    

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cont....The Creative Family: A Base for a Creative Society

cont….     Within the traditional extended family of Japan, love was often overpowered by the strong shadow of the household. On the other hand, there was a distinct family tradition, a kind of family culture which was carried by the vertical connections through the generations. Its customs determined the unique traditions of each family.
                         A style of life and its standards, ways of looking at things, and the way in which the family related to the rest of society were all conveyed from father to son, from mother to daughter, from mother-in-law to daughter-in-law. In the process, the precious experiences of family forebears were interwoven with the wisdom of life.
          Parents taught their children how to live as human beings, provided them with an outlook on life and assisted
them  in developing a world view. Social customs were conveyed from person to person; such things are etiquette and
social behavior, how to manage household finances, raise children, and do well in the world were all taught by parents
to their children.
          But even these advantages were not enough to offset the deficiencies which eroded the human love necessary to
unceasing life-force for the familial organism. Love, then, is the most important bond for the contemporary nuclear
family.
However, the three-generation family in which the grandparents are in good health is preferable, since life with the
Older couple means that the family can learn its traditions. This makes up for the deficiencies in wisdom attendant upon
the nuclear family. When I consider the family of the future, I think life with the grandparents would be the idea.
Realities do not easily permit that, but even where husband and wife are living alone, they should not cut off contact
with the grandparents or older people with their wealth of life’s experience.    

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The creative Family: A base for a Creative Society

          In the early autumn of 1974, after returning from the Soviet Union, I went to Hokkaido, where I had been several times before. No sooner had the plane left Honshu than Hokkaido came into sight. Rain clouds began to gather, soon concealing the view outside. Flying over cloud-covered Hakodate, the fond memory of this town’s somewhat exotic landscape came back to me. I have many friends there. Their faces and those of their families crossed my mind one after another. Among them were some supporting traditional, large families, newly married couples, and women who had suffered great misfortunes but succeeded in pulling their families back from the brink of disaster. The life patterns of human beings are as different as their faces. I pondered, as I rode in the plane, the lives of my Hakodate friends and the love, hatred, suffering and joys they experienced. Then, I remembered the bitter life of a family who had to leave Hakodate and go south across the Tsugaru Straits. I had never met them personally, for they were the ones the TV drama, “Kita no kazoku” was based on, a series broadcast ending in the spring of 1974. Even though it was a TV play, it was a very moving, true- to life story. Apparently, many women watched each episode with rapt attention.

          The story is about a women who, caught up in the repercussions of her husband’s disappearance, leaves with the three children for a new life in Kanazawa. There she lives with her own family, an extended family in which three generations live under one roof. The plot is told against a background of conflict between the grandmother and grandchildren. Eventually the oldest son graduates from school and goes to work, the entire family moves to the port city of Yokohama, where we witness the oldest son and his wife starting their own nuclear family.

          The aging parents then move on  to Uwajima with the daughter. The second son moves to kanazawa to take over the family business , at the grandmother’s wish. But life in the south was not a secure one for the northern family. After the death of the father, the daughter leaves and goes north, back across the Tsugaru Straits to Hakodate. That’s the story as I remember it.

          The author was probably posing the question of what a true family should be. An ordinary family through their meandering travels breaks up to go their separate ways. The drama ended, simply hinting at the kind of family that will probably emerge in the future. I was thinking hard about what kind of family is best for the future, when an announcement that we were going to land interrupted my thoughts.

          The family is a kind of organism. If we think of society as one human body, then each family is a group of cells. Some families move around in the body while others stay fixed in a certain place. Each family group has to live as part of the entire body or else it will not survive. If, on the other hand, each of the cells does not work with the vigor of the life, then we cannot expect society to move forward. The family is like a group of cells which is created  through the efforts of each of its members. The family is the basic unit which decides where society moves. Love is the blood coursing through the unit holding all members together. The family is the only organism by which love can be transacted between husband and wife, parent and child, brother and sister. The love between husband and wife provides the basis for all families and from this the nuclear family is born. When they have children, love will be a reality between parent and child.

          In the large family the bonds of love between grandmother and grandfather weave their vertical thread through

Three generations. That love then spreads horizontally among brothers and sisters. These vertical and horizontal ties of

Love are what give dynamism to family life. The parents bear the responsibility for increasing solidarity with each other

and for skillfully handling the vertical and horizontal arteries running through the family.cont…………….          

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PROPOSE OF STUDYING

                     

A businessman went to an island in the South Pacific where he found local children relaxing on the bench. He said to them: “Stop idling away your time. Get yourself to school immediately and start studying”.
They replied, “Why should we go to school?”
“If you go to school and study hard, “the man said, “You can get good grades”. “Why do we need good grades?” the children asked. “Ah, if you get good grades, you can get into a great university”.
“And what will happen if we get into a great university?”
“If you graduate from a prestigious university, you can work for a big company or serve in a prominent public office. You can also earn a high salary and maybe enter into a good marriage”.
“Then what?”
“You can live a beautiful home and enjoy life”.
“And then?”
“You can work very hard, send your, send your kids to a good school and then retire.” And?” the children queried. “Then you can go to a nice warm place and spend every day relaxing.” “If that’s the goal,” the children responded, “then we don’t have to wait. We’ve already achieved it!”  So why do we expend so much time and energy in studying? For what purpose do we live our lives? What is money for?
If our soul reason for living is to have is easy, there may be no need to make such strenuous efforts to get into a good school or find a good job. Good schools and good jobs do not automatically grant you happiness and ease. Even if you chase after them, there is no guarantee you’ll be happy if you get them.
Only by meeting life’s challenges can you fulfill your potential and experience true happiness. To do so, you need strength character. That is why we stress constantly how much there is to gain by working hard and challenging yourself now.
There was a person who easily excelled in everything and whom everyone admired. So you can imagine surprise when, twenty-five years later, that person ended “a sorrowful life that could only be described as hellish, filled with financial seatbacks and family problems.”
You may ask how this could happen to someone who had shown such promise in his youth. That was because; having been pampered and fussed over from a early age, that person never learned what hard work was nor what it meant to struggle to accomplish something. He never learned what a life of genuine depth and substance was. Thinking that everything he desired would just fall in his lap, he never challenged himself, even going out of way to avoid strenuous effort.

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Daisaku Ikeda’s prface about family

     The family is the basic unit in social life. People are social animals who can not live alone, and from the moment of birth to the time of death, one’s life is a composite of interactions with others. The essential unit in social relationships throughout a lifetime is the family.
     Families come in all sizes, big ones and little ones. There are many different types as well; families is a patriarchal society differ in many ways from those in a matriarchal society. Form of marriage varies, too, from monogamy to polygamy or polyandry. Th
e family is, nevertheless, the first social group to have existed, before there was any community or society, state or nation. The birth of the family occurred with the inception of the human race.
     In japan, until a generation ago, the word “ family “ was likely to bring up an assortment of gloomy associations all related to the prewar institution of house. The family system of the pre-1945 period was patriarchal, and the authority of the father was nearly absolute. Primogeniture was the rule, and the second son and his younger brothers, not to mention the women, were subordinate to patriarchal authority. Restrictions, restraints and obedience; these were the images of the prewar family system, based as it was on a Civil Code that was heavily influenced by the confucian concept of morality.
     For postwar Japan’s professed democracy, abolition of such concepts of family and household was essencial to the construction of a healthy society. But certain ramifications of the destructions of the oldstyle family are lamented by many. The loss of maternal feeling among mothers and the decline in paternal authority, for example, seen to come right out of the age of the nuclear family. But I for one think the course of democratization itself has been a good thing. I have no sympathy for those who feel nostalgia for the prewar period, who moan that Japan’s society today has brought about the collapse of morality. A society like that of prewar  Japan creates a system in which the indivisual, male and female alike, is bound by the chains of family and group; and such a society can hardly be called wholesome.
    Postwar democratic societies, in the too hasty attempt to liberate the indivisual, have been totally oblivious to something, and the important thing is to discover just what that something is. Society is chenging faster than it ever has, and many adults are bewidered by the growing generation gap and sense of discontinuety. These times are difficult ones indeed, and as an organization leader, I have been able to gain a somewhat broad perspective on those difficulties.
    However, we will not make any progress by just lamenting the confusion. We must not run helter-skelter in bewilderment but get back to our beginnings---our beginnings as human beings, for whether we are old or young, man or woman, we have to try to answer the question of how we should live. This constant searching must begin from a spirit of independence. Only then can we look for the way to harmony and accommodation. This is an easy thing to say, but all the more difficult to put into practice, for we lack a spirit of independence today, and that, I think, is the blind spot  of postwar society.
     Women’s liberation is neccessary. I understand that there is , in the United States and other countries, a men’s liberation movement developing along with the women’s. Before considering whetherone is male or female, parrent or child, the urgent need is to cultivate a spirit of human independence. This is the movement for human liberation. Through the efforts of each and every person, we can leave behind us the forms of the past and out of this will come something new; the creative family. I hope this matter will be of some helpin that work  

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