All this week, I have had to visit hospitals for various problems.  Yesterday, I received news about the glaucoma in my eyes- that an operation might be needed earlier than thought (I have had three operations already).  This made me both anxious as well impatient to do as much reading and writing that I could. Of course, I felt depressed too.  This morning, I got up and went for a walk.  The sun was shining and I looked down at an avenue of Victorian brick houses, washed in the rain and glorious in the early daylight.  Those houses had been standing there for more than a century- and I thought of the loves, the lives, the fights and the illnesses of the people that would lived there, now gone and unknown.  Then I thought, ‘I am alive and that is all that matters.  Not what has happened and what may come.  Now is the moment to live. Now is important’  So I walked back, in a happier mood than I started.  The treasures of the storehouse of my belief in myself are more important than anything else. That is all I need to celebrate today.

‘As the Buddhist teacher Nichiren states: “More valuable than treasures in a storehouse are the treasures of the body, and the treasures of the heart are the most valuable of all.” “Treasures of the storehouse” refer to money and other forms of material wealth. “Treasures of the body” are skills and abilities, as well as physical health. “Treasures of the heart” are the riches that we build within our lives. This indicates the kind of inner strength that cannot be defeated by any tribulation. It refers to the power to live out our lives in a creative way, with constant joy, fulfillment and vitality.’ Daisaku Ikeda.