Some people hold that human affairs are completely predetermined, a way of thinking regarded as fatalistic. For similar reasons the Buddhist view of causation is sometimes criticized as being fatalistic. If one’s life in this world is predestined as the result of causes in the past, and if one’s future is determined by one’s present karma-bound life, where can one find freedom and what meaning can one seek in life?

A typical example of fatalism can be found in some of the pre-Lotus Sutra teachings. Those teachings state that the only salvation is found in life after death. For example, it was said that if a person believed and relied on the grace of such a Buddha as Amida, he would gain freedom from the fetters of this world and be reborn in the Pure Land of Perfect Bliss. But there is no rational support for such a belief. Freedom is found, not by trying to escape causation, but by turning it to our advantage.

No one can escape the law of causation, but human beings can learn how it works and utilize it. Throughout history, individuals have discovered and put into application various laws of nature, such as the law of gravity and the theory of relativity. Gravity can be thought of as a force holding people to the earth, but it can also be seen as the force which makes possible the freedom to move on land, across the seas and in the air.

Shakyamuni states, “If you want to understand the causes that existed in the past, look at the results as they are manifested in the present. And if you want to understand what results will be manifested in the future, look at the causes that exist in the present.”

There exists, then, the absolute possibility of changing one’s future through one’s present efforts. But what can be done about the causes one has already formed in the past? One’s personality, character and destiny are all results of what one was and what one did in the past.

In the Lotus Sutra Shakyamuni directed people to a source of power which can sever the chains of karmic forces, but he did not specifically identify it. It was Nichiren Daishonin who explained the entity of life, as opposed to life’s phenomena, and how it remains for all eternity free from karmic influences. This entity or Law of life, which he called Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, is the cause which enables one to overcome all karmic inertia and allows new effects to be brought out of the life of every human being.

The struggle to overcome the inertia of evil causes created since ages past is naturally a difficult one and requires lifelong effort. Yet the fact that this struggle is certain to result in victory dispels one’s feeling of fatalism and brings hope for a bright future.

The word renge (literally, the lotus flower) of Namo-renge-kyo symbolizes the principle that cause and effect exist simultaneously in a single moment of live. Therefore, it means that one’s will in the present will determine one’s future, or the effect for which one is striving. Is one’s determination strong enough to change one’s destiny?

Will power operates in the conscious levels of the human psyche, while karma exists in the unconscious levels, or even deeper. Clearly humankind needs some power which can alter the flow of life itself, and that power is and always has been Nammyoho-renge-kyo. With the awareness of this powerful key to human beings’ inherent inexhaustible life force, people can be confident that they can form causes to emancipate themselves totally from their negative karma. With this key, all that remains is to draw the life energy of Nam-myoho-renge-kyo out of the depths of their own lives. This is possible through the steady, sincere chanting of daimoku to the Gohonzon, the embodiment of Nam-myoho-renge-kyo.

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This page was last modified on Sunday, August 20, 2006.