Earthly desires in many traditional religions are considered the cause of suffering and obstacles to attaining enlightenment. Eliminating them altogether becomes the goal.
Enlightenment, on the other hand, is to attain a vast, expansive state of unshakeable happiness. The two would appear to be polar opposites.
In Nichiren Buddhism, when you chant about your problems, concerns and opportunities, the sufferings created by the attachment to earthly desires become the motivation, the fuel for constructing happiness. Chanting for and overcoming your problems and challenges to achieve your goals provides actual proof of faith.
When you base your life on Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, (link) it doesn’t matter what problem you are concerned about, a friend who is ill, an issue in a relationship, a problem at work. You can use those problems to create value, grow, and become happier.
Elevate Your Character: Broaden & Deepen Your Life
By chanting about your concerns you can use them to elevate your life condition thus pulling yourself out of negative states such as anxiety or depression, which exist in the lower Ten Worlds. ( link)While chanting, you can shift into one of the higher positive life states, thereby elevating your character.
When you chant, you can increase your life force and build good fortune in your life.
Problems become the direct path to strengthening, broadening and deepening your life, and as you overcome them one by one they become the steps which lead you to Buddhahood, or enlightenment.
How it Works
When you chant about a problem you are tapping into the level of Buddhahood in your life and bringing it out to use in daily activity. As you do this over time, your life comes to embody the characteristics of your Buddha nature, deep wisdom, compassion, unshakeable happiness and infinite freedom.
The Experience of Growing Happiness
In a meeting one day, I heard the following discussion. Members were talking about how happiness came to live in their lives. It was a lot like the tide coming in, they said. First they were a little happier, then it would recede. It came in further and then further until they were happy, no matter what.
It was as though they had developed a central core of happiness in their lives.
Attachment to Outer Things Diminishes
As you experience the deep happiness arising from inside, you will find your attachment to material things diminishes. People strive for things to make themselves happy. Once you are deeply happy already, that need subsides.
Earthy Desires Lead to Unshakeable Happiness, Enlightenment
Earthly desires and enlightenment aren’t so separate after all. Earthly desires can be used to grow into enlightenment, when you chant Nam-myoho-renge-kyo