A friend of mine who is over at my house often asked about my altar. She decided my bell (actually a Tibetan singing bowl) looks more like an overlarge food bowl. (Actually, I have another bell that IS formerly a food bowl, but that is another story).

My friend has a wicked, laconic sense of humor. She delivered her concise summary of Buddhism. "Here's your mat, here's your bowl, now go meditate."

Hey, at least she didn't suggest it was a dog bowl!

For instance:
"Now go to the woods, to the root of a tree, or to an empty hut. Sit down in a crosslegged position and straighten your body. Establish present moment awareness right where you are."
(The Anapasanasati Sutra, translated by Glenn Wallis in his book "Basic Teachings of the Buddha").

Heck, he was even more concise than that. Check this out:
"Meditate! Do not be negligent!"
(The Parayana Sutra, also in Wallis' book)

Anyway, nowadays when I'm stressed, angry, acting in a way not befitting a buddha, my friend pipes up. "Go get your mat and bowl". I like to think that makes her a good example of a good friend in practice. This, in spite of her not being part of my designated formal sangha.

I often wonder how many others have heard any funny but relevant comments about their practice... It would be interesting to hear them.

Here's to mats and bowls,
Kris

Years ago, when someone introduced me to chanting the odaimoku, I figured if I was going to chant the title of a book over and over again, that I should know what the book was like. So I bought the Watson version of the Lotus Sutra, and read it immediately.

I didn't understand a lot of it, to be honest. Particularly the Dharani chapter, which seemed a bit strange.

Still, I had no clue as to what it meant. Well, finally I've found a tentative translation as interpreted by Keisho Tsukamoto in the book "Source Elements of the Lotus Sutra, Buddhist Integration of Religion, Thought and Culture". What was kind of cools was that the dharanis are addressed to a female deity. Here's a snippet of the dharani as given by Medicine King boddhisattva :

"Oh, she who is exceptional!
Oh she who is known, Oh she who is in all respects exceptional!
Oh she who has thought consciousness,
Oh she who doesn't have thought consciousness... "

It ends with:
"... Oh saviour difficult to understand"

So, in short reciting the dharanis is basically praying to a female deity. Smells like goddess worship to me.

Who knew?

(The book "Source Elements" can be pedantic and hard to wade through but it definitely reveals the breadth and scope of thought, religions and local culture that molded what we now know as the "Lotus Sutra". I enjoy it because it increases my appreciation and understanding of the Lotus Sutra).

Learning and teaching incantations were considered monastic offenses according to Pali Vinaya precepts , but the Mahayana world view was different, and permitted blessings, as well as beings to pray to. Just another "phantom city" to get people on the road to Buddhahood, I think.

I have some more thoughts about the whole notion of blessings and incantations but I'll save that for a later post.

Stay on the good course!
Kris

When I first tried explaining some of the facets of my personal buddhist practice to a dear friend of mine, she heard the word "Gohonzon" in a different way. Her unique interpretation of the word "Gohonzon" became the "Go Home Zone". So now she asks if I am chanting to my "Go Home Zone".

Wallis then follows up with what this "home ground", this domain of safety for sentient beings is. This domain is staying solidly in the present.

This really came home to me recently. You see, my cat died; he was mauled and killed by two dogs who found their way inside a fenced in yard within a fenced in property. Now, sometimes, I like to think that I've mastered this or that facet of Buddhism... but this, this was so unexpected and painful for me. Buddhism is supposed to be a way out of suffering.

And, I was definitely feeling pain, and suffering.

Rather than pummeling myself, or applying palliative thoughts couched in cliches, I decided to try an experiment, drawn from the first part of the Mahasatipatthana Sutta (The Application of Present Moment Awareness) as translated by Wallis. Simply to be with my feelings, seeing them as such, letting them wash over and through me. I even decided to really put some of the Buddhist stuff to the test - the Tevijja Sutta suggests that "metaphysical frippery" (i.e. what happens when an animal dies? Do we go to heaven? etc.) is a nice diversion, but does not, ultimately, lead away from suffering.

So... did my little experiment work? Qualitatively, I think so, though of course I can't prove it (I love the line from an Adrienne Rich poem that says:"Quantify suffering, you could rule the world). While I still feel waves of sorrow, I find that if I don't seize hold of "How can I bear this? and chew on it (and that is what my tendency is due to my upbringing) then the pain is not so much... So, pain I feel, but I don't yoke myself to it.

Mike McCormick once likened living with disappointment and pain in life while you are practicing Buddhism as something kindred to an athlete who feels discomfort, even pain, and runs through it, because they have a worthwhile goal on the other side and know the discomfort is temporary.

Several weeks before Joey, my cat, died, I had already begun trying to experience life moment by moment, watching "feelings as feelings, thoughts as thoughts". As a consequence, I actually experienced alot more sympathetic joy (for instance, when Joey was enjoying a happy stretch and was purring) and less anger (such as when Joey would wake me up at 2 am for a snack). It helps.

Anyway, part of me wanted to fall back on the notion of "heaven out there", and reincarnation, but I guess I am more interested in the heaven right here. Joey is still alive, in the joy that I still have from my having known him, and that, for now, is enough.

Be loving, and kind.
Kris

In March, on my last day of bike mechanics school in Oregon, my husband fell at work and injured his left knee. He didn't want to worry me, so he didn't tell me just how bad the injury was.

On the night that I returned -- after 24 hours on an Amtrak train -- he had to pull the car over twice because of the pain and took hours to get to the train station to pick me up. That was my first indication just how bad the injury was.

Some background: Sarge is a marathon runner. He's been a runner all his life. Running came easy to him. When he was in grade school, there was only one person in the whole school who was faster than he was. I'm convinced that if his mother had let him participate in sports like track and cross-country, he would have gotten into college on a track scholarship. But he never had that opportunity.

Here's how easy running came for him. For years after we were married, he would run the Los Angeles Marathon every year -- WITHOUT training for it. That's right. He'd just run the 26.2 miles! And then not run again until the next marathon. I kid you not. That's what he'd do.

Eventually, as he got older, this became more and more difficult to do. I became so concerned that I decided to use what my former father-in-law called "reverse Sick-e-ology." I signed up for a marathon training group, the L.A. Leggers and started training for the L.A. Marathon, something I'd never done before and didn't really have any desire to do.

It took 2 years, but Sarge finally joined our training group. The thing is, though, that he then only trained on the Saturdays we ran with the group. I was doing the mid-week running, but he wasn't. He didn't have to. He could just go out and rack up the miles on the weekend!

Getting back to his knee injury. His boss took him to the ER, where they did x-rays and pronounced his knee as just slightly bruised. Nothing major showed up on the x-rays. But, it became apparent that this was not exactly true.

Sarge was not able to run at all, in fact, could not walk without a limp. After months of physical therapy, the Workers' Comp doctor decided that an MRI was in order. This showed an 80% quadriceps tendon tear. The quadriceps tendon is what lifts the knee, which is why Sarge could barely bend his knee.

Last Wednesday, we drove down to Studio City, where Sarge had knee surgery at a surgery center. It only took a few hours for the surgery and for him to wake up from surgery and then we were on our way home. Since then, he has had his leg in a brace, which is driving him crazy. The doctor and nurses advised us that if he removes the brace he risks infection and repeat surgery, but there are times when he wants to ignore the advice. Good thing he has me around to get on his case!

The good news is that -- if he follows doctor's orders to the letter -- he will be back walking soon and running within a few months.

Since he's off work, we've been chanting a lot of Odaimoku together. After one such session, he expressed to me that he will never ever take running for granted again. It's a gift to be appreciated and savored.

Recently, I read a memoir called Crazy for God by Frank Schaeffer. Schaeffer's parents were evangelists who founded L'Abri, a Christian mission in Switzerland. He grew up in an environment where almost every conversation and interaction with others involved talking about God and/or trying to convert others to what his family considered true Christianity.

Schaeffer and his family became involved in the Religious Right and Pro-Life movements, which he ended up leaving, eventually finding a spiritual practice that he was comfortable with in the Greek Orthodox Church. Over the years, he has been a Christian documentary maker and a fiction author. Nowadays, he writes frequently on the Huffington Post, criticizing the Religious Right. His upcoming book is Patience with God, a book for people who don't like religion.

My memoir, Crazy for God, is an attempt to stop lying. I wanted to try and come clean. I wanted to admit my mistakes. I wanted to try to be the same person to everyone I met. You can be the world's biggest hypocrite and still feel good about yourself. You can believe and wish you didn't. You can lose your faith and still pretend, because there are bills to be paid, because you are booked up for a year, because this is what you do.

One morning in the early 1980s, I looked out over several acres of pale blue polyester and some twelve thousand Southern Baptist ministers. My evangelist father -- Francis Schaeffer -- was being treated for lymphoma at the Mayo Clinic, and in his place I'd been asked to deliver several keynote addresses on the evangelical/fundamentalist circuit. I was following in the proudly nepotistic American Protestant tradition, wherein the Holy Spirit always seems to lead the offspring and spouses of evangelical superstars to "follow the call."

At that moment we Schaeffers were evangelical royalty. When I was growing up in the religious community of L'Abri (founded by my parents in 1954 in Switzerland) it was not unusual to find myself seated across the dining room table from Billy Graham's daughter or President Ford's son, even Timothy Leary. Only later did I realize that L'Abri attracted a weirdly eclectic group of people who otherwise would not be caught dead in the same room. My childhood was, to say the least, unusual.

Crazy for God charts my journey from being born the son of cultic religious leaders to the present, with detours into Hollywood and the movie business, art and (at last!) the lucky stumble into writing fiction and nonfiction -- in other words what I do for a living today.

It turns out it was easier to move beyond my parents' beliefs intellectually, than to abandon my gut responses. So who instilled those responses? In other words, who were we? It depends on what moment you choose to become a fly on my wall. People are not as one-dimensional as the stories about them. There is no way to write the absolute truth about any family, much less my family or me. The only answer to "Who are you?" is "When?"

I identified with Shaeffer, even though I didn't grow up Christian. The feelings he described felt similar to what I experienced being a member of and eventually leaving a large fundamentalist Buddhist organization. I could relate to how he found comfort in the traditional ritual of Greek Orthodoxy, as I now feel similarly at home with Nichiren Shu.

If you get a chance to read it, I'd highly recommend Crazy for God.

Howdy partners!

Welcome, this is xtnlion, back from a hiatus.

Today I just got back from a children's rodeo. My dad is in town, and I live in the heart of Cowboy land, so that is what we did. No, REALLY .

It featured kids from about 4 to 16, and such memorable events as the sheep riding competition. Imagine, if you will, a small kid clinging, ticklike, to the back of sheep. Then, of course, cow riding. We missed the goat roping, but saw the sack roping event.

Wow! I had to admire the tenacity and hard work of these kids.... even the ones that knocked over poles in the pole race, or who couldn't rope the cow, or stay on the bucking sheep - they gave it their all.

Next, this mom was so happy that her children had an passionate interest in something. She was all about supporting them in their dreams. But- she was mortified that her boys (who were riding cows) were doing something that could potentially harm them.

You are thinking, "What on Earth does this have to do with Buddhism?" Stay with me. From a standpoint of Boddhisattva vows, and the Lotus Sutra, there are numerous lines about not to harming living beings or engage in dangerous sports.

For instance:

"He should not approach dangerous wrestlers
Or makers of various amusements
Or immoral women"

I suspect wrestling cows in right up there with any dangerous sport (not to mention rather scary for the cow. And the quote is rather apropos in my county, since we have legalized prostitution, as well as cow riding).

Most Buddhist take some sort of vow to save all sentient beings (you all probably know these). I'm thinking that the cow and sheep riding is not so fun for the critters, and not so fun for the contestant who gets a hoof in his or her belly.

Another thing that floated up in my mind was the topic of right livelihood. The livelihood of many individuals in this area is cattle. Raising and killing them for food (and folks down here, cowboys and non-cowboys alike eat a lot of steak).

Frankly, I'm all for going vegetarian (so please don't rant at me) but my question is, say you've got third generation rancher, whose son will be number four. When you are in such a family, what kind of livelihood do you take on to support your young family? Then it becomes a serious burden to take up Buddhism, at least in worldly terms.

Thich Nhat Hanh discusses this in his book entitled "Anger", how we must come to understand, with compassion, where the ranchers, and turkey breeder are coming from, and work with them to move towards more wholesome livelihoods. (Plus, there is a magnificent couple of paragraphs about angry chickens on page 16).

Anyway, I'm curious about how other people think about this - how one engages in transforming the world into a more compassionate place - one buckaroo at a time....

Happy trails, all.
Kris

Had the good fortune to spend the afternoon with two gracious ladies Mavis and Eve. They are both octogenarians, which is s hell of a lot better than being octomom (sorry I couldn't pass that up). Anyway, each day we observe the sunrise or merely stumble out of our bed roll and slog our beverage of choice we are on an unavoidable path, like it or not we are growing older each day. Not a damn thing to do with that one.

That reality hits harder each passing year and I for one have reached an age where I no longer lump everybody over 40 into one gelatinous mess. Sorry, but that is what I used to do. Now I find that there are nuisances associated with aging: Seventy year olds are different from eighty year olds and eighty is tough even for the toughest of us. To spend time with 2 feisty, interesting eighty year olds is like meeting someone on a mountain trail who promises you that there a waterfall up ahead.

I have already described Mavis, who never beats around the bush. Eve is also very direct, which I admire. So anyhow Mavis, Greg and I were having interesting conversations about health and life and rocks when Eve arrived a little later. Eve is an actress who had just been working in New Orleans, but things hadn't gone so well. Mavis took the position that it was probably best in the long run for Eve's health that she didn't end up having to work 20 hours a day for a slave driving director even though it might have been a real coup for her professionally. Then Mavis asked Eve whether she believed in free will or pre-destination? Eve thought it was a little of both. So that is where I would like to end this session. Are our lives predestined or do we have free will and therefore create our own destiny?

Mavis was sitting on her front porch so to speak, which is just her little yard with a comfy bench and chairs in front of her trailer. Her son Jim was also there and it was a pleasure to meet him. Then Mavis and I had a really interesting conversation about life and death; things that you can talk to Mavis about like your talking about the weather. After about an hour had passed I remarked to her that she looked even more vibrant than when I had seen her in January. She told me she had been doing these exercises and she asked her son to come out and demonstrate a few of them. Then she said she had gotten them out of a book, but she had taken book back to the library. She said maybe she would have it next time I came so I could see the pictures in the book showing people doing the exercises. I asked her the name of the book and she said it was something like "The Fountain of Youth". Well that was amazing because it sounded like the book I had just seen at my house and was planning to read. When I told Mavis she said, well if it's the same book then you are definitely meant to do these exercises. When I got home I ran upstairs to my library and grabbed the book I had set aside but never actually opened and sure enough it was the same book. It had the illustrations of 5 Tibetan Exercises to keep you young. So I did the exercises immediately and have decided to start doing them every day!

When I arrived for our visit, although we had never met, she greeted me like a long lost friend. Her tears came quickly when she mentioned Byrd and I was happy to allow her to express her grief. We talked for an hour and a half. We talked about her experiences in Mexico and mine in Peru. We talked about religion and literature.

I was humbled by the fact that she still walks everywhere, doesn't have a TV or a phone and reads 4 or 5 books a day.

She also told me more about Byrd's final week. How Byrd was distraught with her SGI situation, trying to meet the deadline for her screenplay and hadn't slept for days.

The way I met Mavis at all was pretty crazy and there is a series of events connected to Byrd that I can't explain. As Buddhists we talk about being in rhythm. I have been in rhythm, but I'm not sure who's playing the music, if you get my meaning.

I told Mavis I would try to locate Byrd's screenplay so if anybody has any ideas let me know.

January 29, 2009

I’m not a big TV viewer. But years ago, my kids twisted my arm, pinned me to the bed, and made me watch an episode of LOST.

During the opening sequence, I was distracted and resistant. Five minutes into the episode, I was totally confused. By the first commercial break, I was hopelessly lost. And by the end, I was hooked.

From then on, every Wednesday night was “LOST” night at my house. 9:00 p.m. meant two bowls of popcorn, my two daughters and my two dogs, piled onto my king-sized bed with me and a heaping serving of shared pillows.

No guests were allowed on LOST night. Computers off. No instant messaging. No texting either. It was a closed and sacred circle of three. (Heaven help the unwitting soul who dared to phone when LOST was on. Not that we'd answer... but whichever one of us listened to the voicemail message later would surely announce the name of said caller with an expression usually reserved for names of environmental polluters or serial killers.)

And now, here we are once again, into a new season of the wild, mysterious, cosmic, and confusing adventures of the survivors of the crash of Oceanic flight 815. If you’re a fan, you know how much fun we’re already having, two episodes in and more confused than ever before.

If you haven't ever watched the show, it's probably too late for you to get onboard.

But maybe not.

You see, a few years ago, Tricycle Magazine ran an article called "Let's Get Lost; Television to Meditate On." In it, Buddhist teacher, Dean Sluyter wrote, "LOST'S deepest dharmic resonance is probably the experience of lostness itself. Ironically, as the characters struggle to get UN-lost, viewers tune in to GET lost - not only to hang out vicariously on a lush uncharted island.... but to get good and disoriented by the ever-twisting, ever-widening plot."

Indeed, this sense of “lostness” seems to be part the attraction to LOST. Just when you think you know what's going on... You don't. In fact, there are only two statements ever made at my house while the show is on: The first, always uttered by my teenager (and usually TO me), is "Stop asking questions, you're SUPPOSED to be confused!" The second is, "Shhhhhh!"

If you've missed the previous seasons, you can catch up a bit by watching the re-cap shows online and then asking a lot of questions if you can even think of what to ask..Or just relax and give yourself over to the sensation of complete disorientation on Wednesday nights from 9 – 10 p.m.

If nothing else, you might get so lost, you'll tip over into enlightenment.

In fact, that's what Tricycle writer Dean Sluyter cleverly suggests the show is about.

"To be lost is to be stripped of the cozy but confining assurance that you're on course, on a tidy, logical trajectory from Point A to Point B.," he says. "If you're really going somewhere new (toward enlightenment, let's say), any concept you have of the destination or the path when you set forth from your point of departure (ignorance) is necessarily an ignorant concept. So, with any practice that's going to really help you get there (meditating, chanting, studying sutras, relating to a teacher, and so forth) somewhere in the middle of the process you must get lost to your concepts, disoriented, discombobulated."

It's nice to be reminded that my often distractible, diffused way of thinking (which frequently feels like a liability) may actually be a desired state of mind.... at least for an hour on Wed. nights.

Sluyter wrote, "In fact, to do ANYTHING right, to do it so that it becomes a means of awakening, whether it's writing your novel or playing your saxophone, or falling in love (why do you think they call it "falling?"), you must become so hopelessly lost that wherever you come out is somewhere you could not have conceived of when you went in."

So although President Obama is the era's commander-and-chief, we as a nation will collectively become part of the Obama Era. This lead me to think about Esho Funi, the Buddhist concept of The Oneness of Life and Its Environment, in a way I don't normally do. I wasn't just watching the Inaugural Parade, I was watching President Obama watching parade groups as diverse as the Air Force Marching Band, The United Union of Workers and The Lawn Rangers, a group of guys pushing lawn mowers who dress like The Loan Ranger. And thinking I hope The United States will grow to reflect the life force of our new President. If so, I believe not only will we be disciplined and hardworking, we will also be vibrant, curious and we'll have a playful side. Playful as evidented by the way President Obama after respectfully saluting the military marching bands, also playfully saluted the "George Washington" riding atop the float from the George Washington University.

Now some people may not value playfulness in a leader, but I think it's an important quality. There is something reassuring about a President who seems aware of the magnitude of his position and responsibility, but is confident enought to give a mock salute to a humorous representation of one of his most important predecessors.

I think it's a good sign for the future of our country that our 44th President appears serious about taking care of business in these most uncertain times of war and ecomomic hardship, but also appears joyful enough to be the lead in a Broadway Musical. I love his spirit and I think it is the real American spirit that makes our country great.

Philip Zimbardo
http://www.everydayheroism.org/pubs/banality_of_heroism.pdf

I was surfing the news today, and stumbled across an article about Stanley Milgram's experiment on obedience:

http://www.cnn.com/2008/HEALTH/12/19/milgram.experiment.obedience/index.html

It caught my eye for a number of reasons. First, I remember studying his experiment in Psych 101 many years ago, and next, I have a personal need to understand how perfectly ordinary people can do horrifically evil things, particularly in groups. Analogously, I am deeply interested in the flip side of the coin - what cause perfectly ordinary people to do heroic things in the face of immense adversity.

It was one of the first scientific tests of how easy it is for an average nice person to inflict pain when responding to an authority figure.

Philip Zimbardo a professor emeritus of psychology at Stanford University set up and participated in a subsequent experiment, the Stanford Experiment, examining the nature of "evil" in humans. He basically set up a "prison" comprised of students being both the inmates and the guards. His "experiment" degenerated rapidly, and was cut short as participants began brutalizing each other.

He's got an interesting site at: http://www.lucifereffect.com/

At any rate, there are REALLY interesting pages at his site: Instructions on "how to dehumanize a group of peoples", and several on how to avoid bad influences that seem to provoke the worst in humans. I particularly like his "Ten Step" program for not falling prey to the factors that spawn evil behaviour, particularly in groups.

http://www.lucifereffect.com/guide_tenstep.htm

What is curious to me was the parallels one can make with a healthy buddhist practice: Here are my takes on a few of his Ten Steps, which I've paraphrased:

Step 1: Learn to admit mistakes to yourself and others. - In my book, this is learning to not cling to the illusion of being right, and not clinging to the notion that any one person or group can be one hundred percent right all the time.

Step 2: - Be mindful - anyone whose read any of the most basic of Buddhist philosophy will recognize this fundamental Buddhist advice.

Step 3: Understand that "I am responsible". To me, while it it is important to not cling to the ego, it is important to recognize that blindly following authority or the mainstream does not absolve us of our acts. The Kalama sutra details that pretty succinctly, I believe.

Step 5: Value being accepted by a group, but value your independence to act morally more. The need to fit in is amazingly powerful - and primal. But it is vitally important to not sacrifice personal morality and integrity just to "fit in".

The story of the first rift in the sangha, comes to mind.

"If you can find no trustworthy companion
With whom to walk, both virtuous and steadfast,
Then, as a king who leaves a vanquished kingdom,
Walk like a tusker in the woods alone.
Better it is to walk alone:
There is no fellowship with fools. "
The Life of the Buddha by Bhikkhu Nanamoli, p.113

I particularly liked Step 8 - Don't sacrifice civil or personal liberties for a promise of security. I agree strongly with it, but am puzzling out any correlatives in the Buddhist tradition.

Anyway, anyone concerned about preventing evil in the world by fortifying themselves with an understanding of some of its causes would be well served checking out his site. He also is doing research on what factors spawn heroes, and he discusses how to build this in oneself and in one's community.

May we all be find courage to of act with kindness and justice towards all,
Kris

Just when I thought there were no demons in the world..... something like the incident at the Long Island Walmart (where an employee died) happens.

http://tinyurl.com/56qgb7
http://tinyurl.com/5opfv3

Wow. Someone's Christmas toy became, for the space of a few moments, worth more than a human life.

From a Buddhist perspective, I suppose it isn't too surprising. Humans have been beset by the three poisons for eons......

Greed: "I've got to get that new ipod before anybody else - they might run out!"

Ignorance: "I had no idea that someone had been knocked down.... anyway, I didn't see it happen, so it's not my responsibility."

Anger:"I've been in line for over 6 hours! Get out of my way!"

It's also a horrifying example of the lower of the ten worlds - all the greed, thoughtlessness, and thrashing anger of a hungry ghost, asura and animal rolled into one ghastly pack of Walmart shoppers tearing down doors.

The tragic culmination of all of these poisons in a New York parking lot has jarred me into revisiting how I think and view the world, and left me wondering what Buddhism could possibly provide as an antidote for such toxic poisons.

I know I've "rushed the door" sometimes metaphorically, personally, and steamrolled people in my life, blinded by greed, anger or ignorance.

For me, chanting provides the laboratory in which I can examine myself and reveal the ten worlds within myself. I can then work to make the better parts stronger, and acknowledge the lower parts and redirect them to ways they can serve all humans more constructively (rather than just serving the "me" - the ego and bag of bones I identify as myself).

(Ah, jeesh. Now I've set myself up for some Frankenstein analogies.... but I digress).

Anyway, I am also hoping that by sharing the notions of the ten worlds, and three poisons, with others, and by encouraging others to chant, or meditate, or even to just be more mindful more often, perhaps, just perhaps, they can mend their own personal Frankensteins and strengthen their inner boddhisattvas, just as I endeavor to do, and do the same for others.

Maybe it's not enough, a Band-aid on a gunshot wound, but if the historic Buddha could have stopped a raging bull elephant once, perhaps a few peaceful individuals at large can begin to sooth the savage mob. I can always hope.

What do you think? Can Buddhism really serve to help in this 21st century world?

As I too was removed from my position, I feel some sympathy for others who have experieced the same fate. It's awkward and nobody enjoys rejection. But my sitution was different, I wasn't removed for failing to denounce an SGI Leader, I was removed for voicing my belief that SGI needed to get over the whole schism thing with Nicheren Shoshu, which has now gone on for 17 years. I also criticized what I see as the deification of President Ikeda. Diana's friend, despite being put through the wringer and hung out to dry by SGI, is taken aback when I tell her my experience.

Immediately she launches into the familiar argument about how Nicheren Shoshu is distorting the practice because they say practicioners have to go through the priests. I argue that even if that is true, what about having to go through SGI.
"But that is different," Diana's friend states.
"I don't really see much of a difference," I respond. "Look at last quarter's Living Buddhism where it states that SGI alone has correctly inherited the correct teachings of the Mystic Law of life and death, that sounds pretty adamant that you have to practice with SGI. Where does that leave the people outside of SGI who chant Nam Myo Ho Renge Kyo?"
"Does it really say that?" she asks.
"Pretty much, but even if it didn't, do you think you can receive benefit if you don't practice with SGI?" She is silent. To me the answer seems obvious, why would anyone allow their religious organization to kick sand in their face if they didn't think they needed them in order to correctly practice.

Later I tell Diana that I don't see how SGI is going to be able to keep capable people when someone like her friend who is obviously very gifted and very loyal is cut from being a leader.

Diana agrees. "The people in SGI leadership are not really following President Ikeda." she adds.

We have had similar discussions before and I feel that she gives President Ikeda too much credit. I argue with her that he has to know what's going on because the SGI is a topdown organization.

"No, no," says Diana. "He gives us this amazing guidance, but the leaders don't listen."

"I respect President Ikeda," I say, "But I think he gives some mixed messages. I think SGI is intolerant because of him."

Diana ferverently disagrees. "President Ikeda is incredibly tolerant, that's why so many great leaders in other religions admire and respect him."

"But what about other BUDDHIST leaders?" I say pointedly, "Why doesn't he sit down with other Buddhist leaders?

She doesn't really have a direct answer, but she implies that he will and says he tried to dialogue with the priests. "President Ikeda can't control everything himself, it's up to us to follow his guidance and take some steps." She goes on to say,
"SGI isn't always right, but its ideals are true and good. Its like the United States. Our country hasn't always lived up to the ideals of our founders, the same is true of SGI."

I can't really argue with her on that one. In fact I sort of agree. In any respect I admire her sincerity and her faith in the future of SGI, despite her own personal situation of being less than welcome.

She says, "I'm working to change SGI, just like I'm working to elect Obama and change the country."

I told you she was a warrior.

The next day we both receive an email informing us that President Ikeda has been interviewed by Triangle, a magazine that is inclusive of many Buddhist traditions. My friend is elated. I have to agree that it is a good step for SGI.