In the back of the Buddhist Community Center, sat a blind man in a wheelchair quietly chanting Daimoku. When he finished, he told us how he came to be at the Washington DC Community Center:

As a young man, he took a liking to motorcycles, alcohol, drugs, rock and roll, and fast women. His adage was “Live fast, die young, and leave a beautiful corpse.”

An accident cost him the lost of the use of his legs. Little by little, his motorcycle buddies stopped visiting.

On weekends, young Christians visited patients to spread the Good News of the Gospel. Through speaking with them and reading their pamphlets, he knew that he had sinned and needed to be saved.

He prayed with all his might for Jesus Christ Almighty to forgive his sins.

There was no effect. “Why?” he wondered.

He searched the Bible, and found the passage:

“And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.” (Matthew 5:29) 

He blinded himself.

The young Christians, who told him that the Bible was the infallible word of God, stopped visiting him.  They were fearful of his faith, his blindness, and the power of their own words.

After all this, he still did not feel saved. He became bitter.

One of the nurses who treated him was a Buddhist. Even though he told her that she was going to burn in hell forever, she always treated him with respect. Even when it was not her shift, she talked with him.

He started to chant.

When he felt lost, abandoned, in agonizing pain, and hopeless, he chants … and feels saved.

Though blind and in a wheelchair, he traveled many miles to chant to the Gohonzon in the main hall of the DC CC.