Buddhism Personal Statement

The type of Buddhism that I practice is called Soka Gakkai Nichiren, which I was first introduced to ten years ago. However, I didn’t start practicing Buddhism until late last year. When I first joined this practice I was going through a lot of struggles. I was aimless and pessimistic, but I was determined to be happy and get my life together by chanting nam-myoho-renge-kyo, our Buddhist mantra. With the help of this practice I was able to overcome all of my obstacles. It helped me get back on track to graduating from my dream school UCSD as an economics major. My top priority is to graduate from UCSD and it is important for me to do this because I would the first person in my family to graduate from college. Without a doubt, practicing Buddhism …show more content…
In April 2016 my younger brother Jacob was diagnosed with acute lymphocytic leukemia and just a few years before that my other brother Taylor was diagnosed with schizophrenia. Seeing Jacob go through the process of chemotherapy, losing his hair, the drastic weight loss, and his decrease in energy made me feel useless for not being able to help him get better. Just the year before I was academically disqualified from school and I appealed to take classes during summer session 2016. I ended up passing my classes, but I was not able to enroll in courses that Fall because my GPA wasn’t high enough. Around the same time I had a romantic relationship end and it left me completely heart broken. I fell into a rabbit hole and it felt like my whole world was falling apart. It got to the point where nothing gave me pleasure any more. My Buddhist friends would encourage me to chant, but when I did I would start to cry and wouldn’t be able to continue the chant. My fellow Buddhist members reassured me that I would persevere, that everything I was going through wouldn’t matter in a few years and that I could use my story to help encourage other people to keep