Hiroshima has suffered severely from the atomic bomb. The world views it as a place where a great misfortune took place and is still heavy with sorrow, pain, hatred, and bitterness. In truth, the things that are transmitted from the city are more often pessimistic than not.
Even when transmitting a wish for peace, the underlying sentiment is frequently, “We are sad and suffering from the affects of the atomic bomb. Hiroshima is humanity’s symbol of the destruction of war.”
Sorrow that is strongly mixed with resentment, the feeling of wanting to hurt others, or disconsolation does not help.
Make the effort
It is true that a terrible thing happened in Hiroshima and many people have suffered, but I would like them to strongly hold on to the thought ‘live positively’. Simply by being positive, you can exorcise spiritual disturbances. However, it is no good to just pretend.
Pretending to laugh or putting on a cheerful front while your mind is clouded with hatred is no good. The important thing is to focus your mind on changing people and changing the world by changing yourself. In order to do that, you must first make an effort to want to do this.
Go outside-in
Start from the outside by creating a cheerful expression from your eyes and mouth, but then you should go on to imprint this in your mind. Making the effort to do so is important. If you think repeatedly, “I’m going to become a positive person. I’m going to change my mind so it’s positive,” then the effects will gradually enter your subconscious and will deeply permeate in you.
Stop blaming the past
Hatred, sorrow, unhappiness, accusations against others, and thoughts that blame the environment can accumulate and fill your mind. Especially, in the case of Hiroshima, you can blame the atomic bomb for being the cause of all things. Whether you are talking about business or other things, if you say that things are not going right for you because the atomic bomb was dropped, then you may have found a reason for it, but it is one that nothing can be done about.
The historical fact that the atomic bomb was dropped and over a hundred thousand people died, will not change. Nothing will come from blaming something that will not change. What you have to do is to make a try at something that you can change—your way of thinking.
Change your thoughts
Change the direction of your mind. Change the thoughts in your mind. You should be able to do that. You are capable of changing your mind according to your own will. In your mind, you are at liberty to hate people or love them. No one can reach into your mind and flip a switch so that you will love the people you hate, or hate the people you love. What goes on in your mind depends entirely upon you.
Don’t blame the situations
Other people do have an effect on you. The environment does affect you as do events in the past. It would be a lie to say that there are no outside influences such as problems with money, work, or your boss. As long as there are many people living together, there will be outside influences.
However, you must not give in to this. Certainly there are times when the environment or outside influences are to blame, but do not let it beat you. Even if it did, you must not use it as an excuse.
People in Hiroshima, for instance, can make the atomic bomb an excuse for everything if they take it to the extreme. One after another, they can probably come up with other excuses as well. However, it is also possible to think, “That’s exactly why I have to try hard.” You should think, “I am not going to let anything bring me down.”
Choose good friends
When you have a positive mind, you will gradually come to feel that you have nothing in common with people who are the opposite of you. Perhaps you may have experienced this before. For example, if you have a dark and gloomy personality and detest other people, it is irritating to see someone who is cheery and smiling. You would not become friends with that person because you are not on the same wavelength.
Either that person will run away from you or you will pull back from him. Just as two individuals can be friends if they are both cheery, it is possible for gloomy people to form friendships with other gloomy people. There is common ground and friendship found in slandering others.
You can also be comrades in misfortune, or have a friendship of mutual consolation. A friendship based on comforting each other for their misfortunes ends if one breaks away. The other will try to cling on and drag you down, but the friendship flounders if you make your escape. This is why we do not want to have a negative relationship if we can help it.
If possible, friendship between cheerful people is the best. Of course, gloomy people will befriend you too, but you should have the power to change their gloominess to cheerfulness with your own positivity. Become someone who can generate your own positivity.
Strengthen your mind
The power of thought is immense. Your mind can grow stronger just as the body can grow stronger through training.
However, if you try to get your body into shape quickly by running all day, pretty soon your muscles will start aching and you will end up having to apply cold compresses all over yourself. Like the body, the power of thought does not become strong overnight.
You have to train the ‘muscles’ of your mind little by little, just as you would gradually adapt your body to exercise.
You would wear yourself out if you tried to do it in a day or two. For example, if someone in a very gloomy state of mind were to force himself to be cheery all of a sudden, people will think he has lost his mind. He would feel even gloomier than before when people ask him what was wrong with him.
If you focus on training your mind and work at it, after a few years, you really will become stronger and your endurance will increase. You will be unfazed by situations that previously would have saddened or discouraged you and made you think you would never be able to get over them. You will be able to say in the face of such circumstances, “Hey, this is nothing. This doesn’t bother me one bit.” I wish all of you to be strong and to be able to think in this way.
Try your best to be positive
The root cause of all problems lies in the human mind. This is why I want you to not let yourself be beaten by things that make you negative. There is only one way to beat such things, and that is to be positive. It is to radiate light yourself.
This is the type of person is well liked. To people who stand in darkness and plead, “Please, give me light” they would think, “How ridiculous! Stay in darkness then.” But if they see someone trying hard to find a way to create their own light, tenaciously striking a match to create a spark, they would want to shine light on them.
Asking other people to make you happy usually won’t get you what you want, but people will gladly help to brighten your day if you are doing your best to make yourself a positive person.
Resolve to live cheerfully
Every cause for unhappiness, every reason for misfortune, and every excuse exists in this city of Hiroshima. However, it is meaningless to go on about them.
I have only one point to make—simply resolve in your heart to live positively. Then train your mind every day and, little by little, make it stronger, so that you can become a person who can ‘generate’ your own energy.
If you do that, you will be able to change your life and furthermore, change your environment as well. The power of the mind is like light in that it can be strengthened 10-fold, a 100-fold. however much you like.
Become a generator of light
Most people live self-centred lives when they are young. I too worried about myself when I was in my youth. People in sorrow or in suffering are in darkness because they only think about themselves. You stop thinking about yourself when you think of doing something to make people happy or to do something for the sake of others. When that happens, gradually you become able to light up your surroundings.
Today, my own thoughts have strengthened to the point of desiring to shed light on the entire world. I am working to ‘generate’ that much power. I wish all of you to do your best to ‘generate’ your own power. The more ‘generators’ there are, the better.