Today’s Daily Dharma contains this advice:

The thoughts we have are mostly words, and the words are about the things we want. Words can help us make sense of the world around us, especially the words the Buddha uses to teach us. But words can also confuse us when we mistake our expectations for the reality of the world. When the Buddha calls us to become Bodhisattvas, to realize that our happiness is linked to that of all beings, his words open a part of our mind with which we are not familiar. He asks us to set aside the habits we have learned from this world of conflict and see his world in a new way.

As someone who made a career of words and the arrangement of words to communicate ideas, such a reminder of the power of the Buddha’s words is particularly compelling.

This advice from the Daily Dharma echoes the English translation of the Verses for Opening the Sutra that I recite each day:

The most excellent teaching of the Great Vehicle is very difficult to understand. I shall be able to approach enlightenment when I see, hear or touch this sutra. Expounded is the Buddha’s truth. Expounding is the Buddha’s essence. The letters composing this sutra are the Buddha’s manifestation.

One word wraps all of my thoughts in the same way the Odaimoku encompasses the ocean of the Buddha’s teaching. That word in my mind is “faith.”