By Karin White 
[Excerpted from “Dawn’s Early Light”] 

I was told that I would never live to see my twenty-first birthday. It was believable. Abuse, abandonment, violence, and death defined my life. 

My grandmother, mother, her four children, my two aunts, and their children all lived in a four-bedroom house in Philadelphia. There were ten to sixteen people living in the house at any given time. Our family lived in poverty. One of my chores was to gather firewood for the wood burning stove which was the only source of heat. Most of the adults were alcoholics who took their miseries out on the children. We were constantly beaten and were often locked downstairs in the basement without light, food, or water, sometimes for two days at a stretch. I went to school pretty bruised up. If the teacher called home, the beatings would intensify. 

My brothers and sisters became my reason to exist, because I felt they depended on me. Suffering and pain accumulated in me and I became an angry, hostile, and hopeless person with no self-esteem. 

At eleven, I was put in an institution for girls. During the next six years, I moved from one institution or group home to another. At seventeen, when no other shelter was available, I ended up in the house of corrections for women. I was surrounded by women who were jailed for murder, prostitution, and drugs. It was a ghastly environment, but from there things only got worse. 

I was declared an emancipated minor and was thrust into society on my own. I found myself out on the streets, completely unequipped to deal with the world on any level. I became a heroin addict. One morning I awakened to the barrel of a shotgun pressed against my forehead. The sufferings I first experienced as a child intensified. 

At eighteen I was jailed and I weaned myself from the heroin habit. 

Three months after I turned twenty-one, I was wondering “Why am I still here?” Just then a drunk man accosted me on a street corner and bludgeoned me repeatedly, slashing my head open with a broken bottle. A fight ensued. When it was all over, I lay in a prison cell and he died the next day. 

Just after I was let out of prison, a bright young man told me about chanting while I was waiting for a bus. Then I started to hear about Nam Myoho-renge-kyo from many people. A few weeks later, I went to a meeting on my own. 

I started attending Buddhist activities. I learned gongyo, studied, and even sponsored another person to receive the Gohonzon. Chanting and doing gongyo were the best things that ever happened to me. It made me feel good inside, cooled my anger, and gave me hope. Incredibly, I began to see the value of my own life. 

I was on welfare, I had no job, I had no money. I would often chant for hours on end. I was sick emotionally, and I could feel the daimoku healing me. I received many conspicuous benefits, including a job and an apartment I could afford. 

I was full of questions like “Why have I endured so much suffering? What is the purpose of my life?” I would read and chant, read and chant. Then I found a Gosho that states: “Suffer what there is to suffer, enjoy what there is to enjoy. Regard both suffering and joy as facts of life and continue chanting Nam Myoho-renge-kyo no matter what happens. Then you will experience boundless joy from the Law. Strengthen your faith more than ever.” (MW, Vol. 1, p. 161) 

Although I had appealed to my brother many times to try this practice, he emphatically refused. One day, while his children watched, he shot and killed their mother and then took his own life. My nephew Rocky, twelve years old, and niece Markita, eleven, were left parentless and traumatized. 

The children were suffering. They were like terrified animals, experiencing all kinds of symptoms from their physical and emotional trauma — nightmares, screaming, vomiting, sweating, and failing in school. They were even afraid to go from one room to another by themselves. In many ways, their condition was a mirror image of the sufferings my brother and I had experienced. The prospect of all that suffering continuing into the next generation was unbearable to me. 

After chanting abundant daimoku, I was able to get a court injunction allowing me visitation rights. The first thing I did was to teach the children to chant. They got benefits right away. Their terrible feelings of fear and all their symptoms of trauma went away. They began to feel a sense of appreciation for the Gohonzon. 

Finally, after more than a year of struggling, I was awarded custody of the children. I taught the children gongyo and helped them to participate in the New York Joint Territory General Meeting. Markita was in the Junior Pioneers and Rocky was in the Brass Band. They were so excited to be able to participate in the parade. Watching their bright faces as they marched down the street, I could not restrain my tears of joy. 

We live in our own home now and I have a wonderful job as an assistant teacher in the elementary school Markita attends. 

Markita is an honor student and vice-president of the student council. Rocky is doing well in school and has many friends. 

These children are messengers from the future for kosen-rufu. They are living proof that our family has changed its destiny.