How my daily ups and downs led to overall growth

Buddhability

SGI-USA

Health & Fitness, Self-help, Self-care, Religion & Spirituality, Mental Health, Buddhism

4.9 • 603 Ratings

🗓️ 20 April 2023

⏱️ 46 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Today, we’re talking about what it really takes to build a foundation for your life. It’s a theme we’ve explored before on the show but one that looks different for all of us. Our guest is George Wong, of San Francisco, California, who shares how his Buddhist practice of chanting Nam-myoho-renge-kyo has allowed him to turn his difficulties with school and self-worth into a career creating value from every experience.

SHOW NOTES:

2:44 Getting rejected from college inspires George to start practicing Buddhism

10:44 Previous setback turns into a great breakthrough

16:55 Struggling with impostor syndrome

25:48 Importance of never giving up, even if you’re not sure where you’re headed

32:13 Seeing long-term growth despite daily ups and downs

35:43 Each experience has deep meaning

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome back to Butability, a weekly interview series about the amazing ability we all have to change our lives and the world if we're brave enough to tap into it.
0:11.3	I'm your host, Ghi Jolly.
0:19.3	Today we're talking about what it really takes to build a foundation for your life, a theme we have
0:25.9	explored before on the show, but one that looks different for all of us. Our guest is George Wong
0:32.0	of San Francisco, California, who shares how his Buddhist practice of chanting Namyo Hōrengekio allowed him to turn a challenging experience with school and self-worth into a career in which everything he has experienced has created value.
0:49.1	I'll let George share the rest.
0:59.0	So my name is George Koichi Wong. I'm 29 years old.
1:01.0	I'm born and raised in San Francisco.
1:03.0	And I work in the civil liberties and human rights space in tech law.
1:07.0	So I work for a nonprofit that works on defending our digital rights. Amazing. Very cool.
1:14.4	Well, I know we're going to hear a lot today about kind of your journey to get into the work
1:19.3	that you're doing and your journey with your Buddhist practice. So thank you again for taking
1:24.0	the time to talk. Yeah. Thank you for having me. Yeah, yeah, yeah, super excited
1:28.8	to dig into all this. I always like to start with kind of like the story of how somebody
1:34.0	encountered Buddhism. So if you could just tell me like briefly, how did you first encounter
1:39.2	Buddhism and then when you actually decided to start chanting Namya Hōringekyo, like what was going on in your life at the time or why did you want to start?
1:48.4	Yeah, absolutely. So I, my parents practiced this Buddhism. So it was always around me growing up.
1:55.4	But for me, it was always something, you know, they would encourage me to try chanting namioho Rengkekiyo.
2:00.5	I would see them chanting every morning and evening, and they would attend meetings, SGI meetings
2:06.0	in the neighborhood. And I always, for me, thought of it as just another responsibility on the
2:11.0	list of things, you know, grown-ups make you do when you're a child. So I didn't really care
2:14.6	about it growing up, but it was always there in the background.
	...

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