Photo: Robert S. Donovan
I once made a determination to call a friend on the phone every day for one year. He was new to the practice of Nichiren Buddhism and struggling with a misery of an intensity I’d rarely seen. Anxiety and depression were overwhelming him and ruining the quality of his everyday life. I’d hoped to encourage him by leveraging some discipline of my own.
Most days we’d talk for under two minutes. My goal wasn’t to engage him in a lengthy and significant dialogue every day, which would have been exhausting to us both, but rather simply to remind him I was there and to try to bolster his determination to do something that he said he wanted to do and that I thought would help resolve his suffering. Continue reading…
