Years ago – decades, actually – I delved quite deeply into numerology. Montreal, where I lived at the time, had a record and book shop called Phantasmagoria. Such a great name! Anyway, always curious, I felt myself drawn to a particular book titled Numerology, despite its deceptively cheesy subtitle: The Romance in your Name. It seemed like too thick a book to be completely “fluffy,” and its energy in my hands belied the awful subtitle. (In an omg aside, I feel compelled to tell you that it’s still available on Amazon.ca for C$26.91 with a 4.6 star rating!)

My intuition proved correct. The book maps out a sophisticated and detailed system of divination based on one’s given name at birth and also birth date. I really got into it. And I found it uncannily accurate. I did a chart for a friend, for instance. It revealed the serious risk that without the framework of education his kind of intelligence would likely result in a life of crime. Unfortunately, education didn’t seem like an option to him and he later went to prison for unarmed bank robberies. Sad, but true.

One night I worked on my own chart, and became very upset. It revealed that I would have a lot of difficulties in my life and that I wouldn’t break through until I was a lot older. I was in my twenties at the time, and I didn’t want to hear that at all. I had a cry about it and then went out to the nightclub I frequented to immerse myself in music, friends, drinks and dope to forget about it.

But, as time revealed, you can’t shake off your destiny.

Many times over the years I ruefully recalled that prediction as I stumbled and bumbled through my life. I recalled it again today, but for a different reason. For my age is now 70, and I have never felt happier in my whole life.

This weekend I went nowhere. I stayed home, just me and my two cats, and I have had the best time, finding fulfillment, joy and satisfaction in doing things I would previously have found boring and banal.

The reasons? Manifold.

First and foremost, 40 years of daily Buddhist practice. After all, Nichiren Buddhism promises absolute happiness, as opposed to relative happiness, which is fleeting, because it depends on something or someone other than yourself.

“Absolute happiness, on the other hand,” says Buddhist leader Daisaku Ikeda, “is something we must find within. It means establishing a state of life in which we are never defeated by trials, and where just being alive is a source of great joy. This persists no matter what we might be lacking, or what might happen around us. A deep sense of joy is something that can only exist in the innermost reaches of our life, and which cannot be destroyed by any external forces. It is eternal and inexhaustible.”

So is my Buddhist practice the only reason for my deep source of great joy? Absolutely not.

It’s the foundation, but a house is no kind of a house if it only has a basement, no matter how strong and solid a construction that basement has. Buddhism is reason, and it just makes sense that if you want to feel genuinely happy, then all the levels of your life require attention to their wellbeing. We are, after all, multi-faceted beings. And besides, Buddhism isn’t magic. It espouses the formula of chanting/prayer first, followed by action.

“Employ the strategy of the Lotus Sutra before any other.”

Nichiren Daishonin – The Strategy of the Lotus Sutra

Living inside the “house” of my life used to feel about as secure as living in a house of cards. Or, as in the story of The Three Little Pigs, a house of straw, or sticks. When life huffed and puffed, it blew my house down and sent me on the run to hide in fear.

At last my “house” has a solid construction because the right place/right time benefit I’ve always loved about Buddhist practice has enabled me to find the “bricks” I needed to build it well.

Regular walking outside makes good bricks. Friendship makes good bricks. Helping and encouraging others make very good bricks indeed. Cultural and social activities make good bricks.

Reading good books helps to make good bricks. Listening to Dan Buettner’s The Blue Zones of Happiness recently got me focused on creating wellbeing in my home, which I didn’t take much care of before. Now, the more I do, the better and more cared for I feel at home, and the more I feel motivated to do more. A virtuous circle!

And the mortar is good nutrition. I wrote last month about finding a particular supplement that has made a sea change in my being. I’ve ordered another one now, which, according to the questionnaire in Trudy Scott’s book, The Antianxiety Food Solution, will help me even more than she already has.

Yet another book I’m using to influence my life is The Greatest Salesman in the World by Og Mandino. It’s a mind-training program between two soft covers. The teaching I’m reading aloud this month, every day, twice a day, is about persistence. Not a quality I ever really modelled in my life. Or so I thought, until this morning.

I read:

I will avoid despair but if this disease of the mind should infect me then I will work on in despair.

Suddenly, I understood that I was reading about myself. I lived so much of my life in despair. And yet I always, always continued my Buddhist practice and involvement in SGI Canada activities. Always. I knew with certainty that if I ever foolishly let go of this lifeline, then I truly would be lost. And so I continued, in times of despair, doubt and downright misery.

But this morning I switched from the habit of reproaching myself for my weaknesses, my missed opportunities and my past mistakes, some of them huge. Instead, I felt proud of myself. Depression is truly a devil that robs us of the will to even be happy, let alone accomplish anything, and I wrestled with that devil every time I sat before the Gohonzon and chanted anyway.