Daily Encouragement by Daisaku Ikeda

What is the purpose of life? It is happiness. But here are two kinds of happiness: relative and absolute. Relative happiness comes in a wide variety of forms. The purpose of Buddhism is to attain Buddhahood. In modern terms, this could be explained as realizing absolute happiness-a state of happiness that can never be destroyed or defeated.

Thursday

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Executive Order 9066: The infamous order issued by FDR during WWII that forced thousands of Japanese Americans into internment camps. In this poem, the relative abruptness of the order is mentioned- Japanese were given extremely short notice to pack up their belongings and move to these camps.

Jermone, Arkansas: One such camp.

Japs: a racial epithet used to describe persons of Japanese descent

Pearl Harbor: the surprise attacks by the Japanese on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. This event spurred the creation of the Japanese internment camps.

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