Chanting Through the Storm

So yesterday morning I went live and y'all, it was storming hard in Atlanta. I cracked open my book The Heart of the Lotus Sutra. Not to a planned page. Just... opened it. And immediately landed on something that had me preaching in my living room before I even finished my first cup of coffee.

That's how quick you can get blessed by the situation.

I want to share what came up, because I think a lot of us are navigating some version of the same question right now: How do I stay grounded when everything outside of me is trying to pull me apart?

Let me tell you what this practice has taught me about that.

Here is how most of us are living, if we're being honest: our happiness is relative. Relative to our bank account balance today. Relative to whether me and my fiancé are getting along. Relative to whether it's storming in Atlanta.

And it was storming down boots in Atlanta yesterday.

That's what absolute happiness means. Not that everything is fine. Not that you're walking around in some kind of spiritual bypass pretending the world isn't on fire. It means that you are the source. Your joy isn't something that other people, or things, or circumstances can take from you. You have decided actively, through practice, that nothing outside of you gets to hold that power.

I talk about this a lot tapping in. Let me explain what I mean by that.

I have come to understand from Nichiren Buddhist practice: by default, we are all Buddhas. Every single person. You have Buddhahood within you right now, in this moment, whether you've ever chanted a day in your life or not. It is not something you have to earn or achieve. It is your nature.

But whether you have tapped into that Buddhahood today? Well…That's your business. That's up to you.

It doesn't happen by default. It requires a conscious choice to access it. For me, that looks like chanting Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, doing my morning and evening practice, being willing to sit with my life clearly. For you it might look different. But the point is: you have to choose to tap in.

And when you do? You get to see exactly how much control you actually have over your own happiness. Not over your circumstances over your happiness. Those are two completely different things.

Okay y'all, I need you to sit with this for a second because the visual alone is everything.

In our Buddhist texts, there is this scene and the way they describe it, it's so mystical, so large tens of thousands, hundreds of millions, these enormous numbers of Buddhas rising up through the earth. Not coming from the outside. Not descending from above. Rising up through the earth. From within. From the ground up.

These are called the Bodhisattvas of the Earth.

And what the texts describe is this: throughout time, across cycles of life and death, these Buddhas have been seeded. Waiting for the right soil. The right conditions. And when the moment comes not from some outside savior swooping in, but from within that neighborhood, that community, that family they rise. They find the teaching. They find the way. And they dedicate their lives to creating world peace by first creating peace within themselves.

This is not about monks in a monastery. This is about you. This is about everyday practitioners; people like me, people in my SGI community, people who wake up every morning and make the decision to do this practice even on the days when it feels hard who have taken on that vow. Peace in your own body first. Then your family. Then your community. Then the world. Watch how the ripple moves.

That's all this is.

Lemme paint this picture for you… One of my favorite flowers.

The lotus flower does not grow in clean, filtered water. It starts in the muddiest, murkiest water you can imagine. In fact it needs that mud. The mud is not the obstacle. The mud is the foundation. The mud is the soil.

And then it grows up through all of that, finds the surface, breaks through and when it gets there, those petals don't have a single flick of dirt on them. It went through everything. And it arrived unsoiled.

I think about my own life when I sit with this image. I traveled through some THANGS before I found this practice. Sex work. Survival. Circumstances I didn't always choose. And I'm not going to pretend I had this practice then, I didn't. But I can see, looking back, that all of that was my mud. That was my foundation. That was what I had to grow through in order to break the surface and blossom into what I'm meant to become.

And I want you to know: I am light as a feather. I am not carrying it. I went through all of that and I arrived unsoiled. Like a swan, baby. You shake it off and keep moving.

Your past is not your ceiling. It is your soil.

I will tell you that “the practice” is not all lotus flowers and swans. Sometimes it is whooping my tail. And I mean that.

It is easy to point outward. It is very, very easy to look at the chaos in the world (and there is a lot of it) and say: it's them. it's that. it's what they're doing. And sometimes? Not a lie detected. Sometimes folks are really are out here creating chaos.

But the Bodhisattva way says: before you try to change anything out there, look in the mirror. The way to transform your environment is to first transform yourself. Every. Single. Day.

That requires a level of honesty that most people are not willing to practice. I include myself in this. I am learning. I am still learning. The lessons be coming hard sometimes. But I do be learning though. (I know that wasn’t proper English, but that’s just how it came out).

I think that's actually the mark of someone who is doing this work genuinely, not that they have it figured out, but that they keep showing up to look at themselves clearly anyway and not filter the imperfections.

The next time you feel like your happiness is being held hostage by something outside of you; your job, the news, someone who wronged you, the weather… I want you to remember: that is relative happiness talking.

You have something else available to you. Something that cannot be taken. Something that is already yours. You just have to tap in.

Don't wait until conditions are perfect. Conditions are never perfect. The lotus doesn't wait for clean water. It just grows.

If this landed for you, share it with someone who needs a reminder of what they're made of. Watch clips from this live from yesterday morning on Youtube below.

In faith and in truth, Angelica Ross

Remember when the news was about what happened, not how to feel about it? 1440's Daily Digest is bringing that back. Every morning, they sift through 100+ sources to deliver a concise, unbiased briefing — no pundits, no paywalls, no politics. Just the facts, all in five minutes. For free.

Read the newsletter trusted by 4.5 million fact-seekers.

No Opportunity Wasted. The NOW newsletter. Original images licensed through Envato Elements Read this on the web at Now.MissRoss.com