I have two cats. They’re brothers. I love them to bits, and the feeling is mutual.

Often, when I open the fridge, one of them, Donovan, has the habit of standing in the space between the door and the fridge, and I can’t close the door until he moves. And apparently he finds this habitual behaviour especially compelling on weekday mornings, when I’m running a little late for work!

I try telling him he’ll get squished if he doesn’t move. Nothing happens. Then I get annoyed. Not angry, but definitely annoyed, which I tell him, upon which, he moves out of the way.

But not anymore…

He did the same thing the other week and I prepared to tell him it was annoying. Then something inside me said, “Is it really annoying? Or is it inconvenient?”

I thought, “That’s right! It’s not annoying. It’s just inconvenient.” And I relaxed.

Exactly the same event occurred, and yet my response to it changed for the better, and made life more pleasant and less stressful. For me, and for Donovan.

How did this shift come about?

Nichiren Buddhism, which I practise and study, teaches that our minds have no less than nine levels of consciousness, or perception. Every level has value and contributes to the richness of our experience of life. The first seven levels of consciousness are all powerfully influenced by the eighth level, the so-called Karmic Storehouse, or Never-Perishing Consciousness.

It equates to what modern psychology calls the subconscious, unconscious or nonconscious mind. And it runs the show, so to speak, of your life. Ninety-five percent of your thoughts, words and behaviour, your attitude, comes from this level of consciousness. It’s your default programming that runs constantly in the background, whether you’re awake or asleep.

Trying to fundamentally change this powerful inner force with your thinking or executive mind – your seventh consciousness – is much like trying to lift the proverbial chair while you’re sitting on it. Because your thinking, logical, conscious mind is coloured by the default program running in your subconscious mind. So the same mind with which you created your “stuff” is the mind with which you now try to change that stuff. You can have some effect on it, but your subconscious, your eighth consciousness, is still the predominant force that shapes and gives direction to your life.

What to do?

The great news of Nichiren Buddhism is that even deeper than the eighth consciousness, you have a ninth consciousness. Your Fundamental Pure Consciousness, which has never been touched or changed by anything negative that you’ve ever done, said or thought, throughout your eternal life.

But like any other power source, you have to be able to connect to it so you can activate it and benefit from it.

To use computer analogies again, Nam-myoho-renge-kyo is the password that opens up your ninth consciousness, which can also be called the Cosmic Life Force, that both transcends you and is within you.

Each time you chant Nam-myoho-renge-kyo it surges up in your inner life and purifies every other level of consciousness, including the eighth. Do it consistently, with focus, and you rewrite the default program running in your eighth consciousness. You become wiser. You transform and transcend. You perceive things and people differently, you behave differently. When your cat does the old annoying thing he’s done for years, it’s no longer annoying.

Very naturally, from within, a reframe has taken place. And stayed in place.

Nam-myoho-renge-kyo.

With thanks to World Tribune for the photo of people chanting