Young Women's Division....

Marsha Lucas shares her experience:

I’ve been practicing this Buddhism since I was five years old.  The one thing I’ve learned over the past 20 years is that all of the efforts you make to practice-- whether is chanting, doing activities, or teaching members gongyo-- you are creating fortune in your life.  Building this fortune bank is so important.  Chanting Nam-Myoho-Renge-Kyo allows you to tap into your own Buddha wisdom and be at the right place at the right time.  This fortune can even be tapped into in the midst of struggle when practicing is so difficult.

 I am a graduate student in molecular biology at The Ohio State University.  My big struggle this year and the past several years has been consistency in my Buddhist practice.  One of the pitfalls of this has been zero confidence in my abilities as a graduate student.  When I’m chanting consistently and doing gongyo everyday, I have so much confidence that I can truly accomplish anything.  Of late I’ve been asking myself, “What am I doing here?”  The main reason I haven’t left is that I don’t know what else I would do.

 In my program, all second year graduate students must give a seminar in which they present a recent scientific journal article that relates to their own research.  This requires having a good understanding of the question the authors set out to answer and knowledge of exactly what their data suggests.  Basically, a lot of background must be gathered to present a clear picture of the data to a diverse audience as well as answer any of their questions.  I set out to do this while teaching two undergraduate biology labs and attempting to do research of my own.  Even when faced with balancing all of these things, consistent Buddhist practice was extremely difficult.  When I did sit down to chant I focused on being totally prepared for my talk and being able to answer all of my questions with confidence. 

 On the day of my seminar I thought I would vomit so I just kept chanting to myself.  The talk went really well.  The audience seemed to keep up throughout my entire talk and I was able to answer all of their questions.  In fact, some of the questions were things I had just read about days before.  This is so amazing because when you are reading nearly twenty different background papers its very difficult to focus on any one specific topic.  However, when you are chanting you are able to pick up exactly what you need.  Another interesting irony is that the one professor who I would never have chosen to be grading me (because I’ve seen what he’s done to students in the past) was my biggest advocate.  What’s that all about?

 This experience has once again given me confidence in my abilities to be a successful graduate student.  Everyday I chant to be consistent in my practice because I know how amazing this Buddhism is.  I don’t want to be just an average student.  I want to be great.  I am determined to put 100% effort into chanting and doing activities in order to achieve this victory. 

Please check out the photos from the March 24, 2002, Youth meeting.