The other day I heard of the experience of a women’s division member whose son had run away from home more than ten years ago. This had been her greatest anxiety, Two years ago the son returned to the same prefecture in which his mother lived, but he would not come to her house. What came instead were dunning notes from the loan sharks to whom he was indebted. Day in and day out she was filled with complaint and hatred for her son, constantly blaming him and thinking, Because of that child I have to go through all this suffering.
One day she attended a guidance meeting. Hearing a leader talk, she realized that it was she herself who had the destiny to suffer on account of her child. There and then she profoundly regretted having borne a grudge against her son. The Gosho states, “Even a small offense will destine one to the evil paths if one does not repent of it. But even a great slander can be eradicated if one repents of it. Why did she have to suffer on account of her child? It was because of the negative causes she herself must have made in the past. Nevertheless she had placed the entire blame on her son. True, he might have been the immediate cause of her hardship, but the fundamental cause lay in her own karma and she had thus far been powerless to change it. All this she now completely understood.
From that day, she changed her entire attitude in faith, She chanted and chanted, apologizing to the Gohonzon for the slanders she must have committed in her past existence and for the grudge she had harbored against her child, Soon her son, after an absence of more than a decade, returned to live with her again. What’s more, he took faith in Nichiren Buddhism. At a meeting of his district he publicly ‘apologized and said, “I am truly sorry for all the trouble I’ve caused over these many years.” Tears filled his eyes as he pledged to strive and develop himself.
A child will change for the better when his parent corrects his or her attitude in faith. Take this deeply to heart, and you’ll be able to change your bad karma. As long as you blame the other person, thinking, “If it weren’t for him, I could be happy,” then he never will change. Rather, gaze into your own life and destiny, and change your attitude first. Then, much to your surprise, a change will occur in the other person according to the principle of the inseparability of life and its environment.
