Well, I had a wonderful Christmas. On Christmas Eve, my mentor Mavis came over for dinner with her son, my aunt, my brother and two friends. We had a nice ham, as well as tamales, yams, green beans and multiple desserts. Presents were opened to "oohs" and "aahs".
On Christmas Day, my brother and I drove out to my cousin's house in San Dimas where we ate even more food and desserts, and opened more presents.
But the real magic came on Christmas morning.....renewing my faith that yes, there is a Santa Claus.
On Christmas morning, I awoke, as usual, to a cat on my face. It was a holiday morning, and so I had slept late - past their usual feeding time. I stumbled groggily from my bed, and Wobbly, my gray and black tabby, stood expectantly by the door.
"Map", she said. "Map, map, map".
"Just hold your horses, girl," I said, and made my way into the kitchen. I pulled down two cans of Friskies and prepared to take them outside to the cats' bowls on the patio. I almost tripped over the cats a number of times just between the kitchen and the door - they were under my feet, around my ankles, in front of my toes and generally making themselves annoying with their eagerness to be fed. I opened the front door and looked down, and there it was.....proof of the existence of Santa Claus......
In front of my door..a giant, four and a half pound tin of tunafish with a festive green bow on top, and a note: "To Wobbly from Santa".
Before seeing this gargantuan can of tuna I had never given much thought to how large institutions such as schools and hospitals prepare their batches of tuna salad. I guess I assumed they opened lots and lots and lots of little cans and dumped them all into a giant vat before adding the mayo and the relish.
But this can of tuna on my doorstep was huge....big enough to feed a tiger! With leftovers!
Wobbly stood next to the amazing package and looked up at me - her eyes glistening with anticipation. "Map!" she exclaimed.
Of course, this surprise present caused me some ethical conflict, since I certainly wasn't going to open this huge can of tuna and only give the contents to Wobbly - Toc and the Creature would have to have their share as well. I bent down, picked the can up and took it back into the kitchen, cats around my ankles at every step. Suffice it to say that the past two days have been kitty tuna heaven at my house. And the can is barely one-tenth eaten!
I don' t know why Santa chose to leave this precious gift with only Wobbly's name on it. It may have something to do with the fact that Wobbly "gets around" - she visits the homes of my neighbors frequently and they may have spoken to Santa about her on one of their trips to the mall.
At any event, I believe in Santa. And I believe that he loves cats. And that's all I need for a very merry Christmas.
Hoping you all had a good one as well, and that you have a happy and tuna-filled new year,
Byrd in LA
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Channeldeadcomposers.com, a fictional new age website, announced today that Erma Goofman, a Missouri mystic and "channeler" has produced the musical score for a new Christmas ballet, channeled from long-dead Russian composer Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky.
Entitled "The Goodie Basket", this new ballet follows the adventures of Wendy, an overweight office employee who falls asleep at her desk and dreams of consuming a giant basketful of Christmas treats in the office lunch room.
Huge cookies in various forms, together with fruit cake slices, holiday breads, and petit fours, all dance seductively and temptingly before Wendy's eyes.
Wendy is rescued by Prince Richard Simmons and Fairy Lady Sarah Ferguson. Both are in lovely white tutus and they dance a romantic pas de deux.
In Act II, the office lunch room is invaded by an army of Ants, led by the wicked Ant King. Wendy holds the Ant King down while Prince Richard Simmons does aerobics on his head and Fairy Princess Fergie sprays him with a sparkly toxin.
The Ant King is defeated, the deligious goodies disapear, and Fairy Princess Fergie presents Wendy with a gift-wrapped carton of non-fat cottage cheese with a big red bow on it.
A curtain pulls back to reveal Wendy asleep at her desk. She awakens to discover a gift-wrapped carton of non-fat cottage cheese on her desk. This leads us to wonder...was it a dream, or was it real....?
Famed choreographer Mikhail Barishnikov has expressed no interest whatsoever in the project.
in the Gosho entitled, "On Reciting the Expedient Means and Life Span Chapters", Nichiren Daishonin wrote:
When we scrutinize the sutras and treatises with care, we find that there is a teaching about a precept known as following the customs of the region that corresponds to this. The meaning of this precept is that, so long as no seriously offensive act is involved, then even if one were to depart to some slight degree from the teachings of Buddhism, it would be better to avoid going against the manners and customs of the country. This is a precept expounded by the Buddha. It appears that some wise men who are unaware of this point express extreme views, saying such things as, because the gods are demonlike beings they are unworthy of reverence, and that this has offended many lay supporters.
The SGI's commentary reads:
The precept of adapting to local customs. It is mentioned in passages in The Fivefold Rules of Discipline and in the preface to The Essentials of “The Fourfold Rules of Discipline.” The precept states that, in matters that the Buddha himself did not expressly either permit or forbid, one may act in accordance with local custom, provided that the fundamental principles of Buddhism are not violated.
This raises a number of questions in regard to the issue which has been discussed here during the last couple of days:
1. In the United States of America, is holding a prayer campaign to close down a rival house of worship a "seriously offensive act"? If so, why? If not, why not?
2. Does holding a prayer campaign in the United States to close down a rival house of worship in the United States "go against the manners and customs of the country"?
3. Does holding a prayer campaign to close a rival house of worship advance any "fundamental Buddhist principle"? Which one? How?
4. In the United States, is holding a prayer campaign to shut down rival houses of worship likely to "offend many lay supporters"? Has it offended lay supporters in the past? Take a poll of people at your workplace. Does the idea offend them there?
5. In the United States, would a reasonable person, Buddhist or non-Buddhist, see a prayer campaign to close down a rival house of worship as an "extreme view"?
6. Is the idea of religious liberty a "local custom" in America which is worth adhering to? Is it a local value? A humanistic value? An SGI value? What is the value and what are its "limits", if any?
7. In the United States, would a reasonable person, Buddhist or non-Buddhist, interpret the view that prayers to close a rival house of worship result in "absolute happiness" an "extreme view"?
8. In the United States, would a prayer campaign to close a rival house of worship as a birthday gift to an overseas religious leader be interpreted as an "extreme view"?
Ask around at your workplace. Ask around in your neighborhood. Are you embarassed to be asking the questions? I know I am.
I'm genuinely interested in knowing what the public's views are, and how they compare with the Gosho's admonition.
Have an enlightened day, Byrd in LA
P.S. This material will be on your mid-term. That's a joke.
-b-
I was at my monthly SGI-USA world peace prayer meeting this past Friday night. This is the time each month when (at least in my chapter in Burbank, California) we all get together to chant and watch a videotaped speech of our organization's international leader in Japan, Daisaku Ikeda. You also get to see your friends, give a donation if you like, and applaud for anyone joining the SGI and receiving a mandala Gohonzon.
At last month's meeting, a senior leader and a very nice lady - someone I like and respect - got up and made a few announcements. One of them had to do with the creation of a "new group" - for those of you unfamiliar with the SGI, we are a Japanese cultural colony in many ways. Everything is done in groups. And typically, Daisaku Ikeda gives these groups names, like:
The Sophia Group These are members of the women's division - another group - who get together to study SGI publications, particularly Ikeda's autobiography;
The Boys and Girls Group (the name speaks for itself);
The Lotus Group for recovering addicts;
The Soka Group members of the young men's division - another group - who help out at activities;
The Courageous Hearts Group which is made up of people who have friends in our rival sect / parent sect Nichiren Shoshu;
The Fierce Pride Group for gays, lesbian, bisexual and transgender members and their friends and familes; and of course...
The Glorious Colonoscopy Group (named by me in honor of a friend of mine who is undergoing the procedure next week). This group has not yet been officially recognized by the SGI-USA, and I don' t know if it ever will be. It may turn into one of those internet phenomena your leaders have warned you about.
So, last month, this nice lady stood up and announced the formation of a new group. This group would be composed of SGI-USA members over the age of 60 years who had been chanting for at least 30 years. She told us that they had applied to Daisaku Ikeda for a name for the group, but they didn't have a name yet. Then, she joyfully told us of this group's first "campaign".....they were going to challenge a million daimoku (i.e., they were going to chant a million "nam-myoho-renge-kyo") for a specific goal, and that goal was...."to close a Nichiren Shoshu Temple in the United States" by Daisaku Ikeda's 80th birthday on January 2nd, 2008.
For those of you who are coming in late to the Nichiren Buddhism in America Show (a Chuck Barris Production), the Soka Gakkai International "divorced" its parent sect, Nichiren Shoshu in the early 1990's. Or they excommunicated us, or whatever. We still haven't settled on a coherent piece of language for the split. If you are familiar with the history, you can skip this italicized part. If you're a glutton for punishment, read on.
At any event, for the next 15 years, our organization was obsessed with defeating the evil temple. Non-Buddhist guests came to our meetings, seduced by promises of "Buddhism for World Peace", only to find a rabid religious divorce underway. Our publications oozed anger, and "guidance in faith" became an excuse to stoke the flames of hostility. Got cancer? Chant to defeat the evil temple. Bankrupt? Chant to close the temples.
At one point, I even got a telephone-tree notification that the local Nichiren Shoshu temple was holding a potluck church social, and the SGI was organizing a chanting session for the failure of our rival denomination's potluck. Good grief. In my chapter, chanting sessions were organized if an SGI-USA member was having lunch with a temple member. While the two were out at lunch, the SGI membership would be gathered around, sincerely chanting to "disassociate" the rival sect's member from their church of choice. Things got really weird there, for awhile. Really, really weird.
Those SGI members who advocated applying American values such as religious tolerance and the rights of individuals to freely choose their denominations were marginalized, denounced, or demoted. Those who supported the war on Nichiren Shoshu were promoted and rose within the ranks of leadership. There was no effective "conscientious objector" status allowed, and we lost a lot of good people and scared away a lot of guests.
The war against Nichiren Shoshu was pretty much focussed on the person of the then-high priest of that sect, Nikken Abe. The SGI alleged (inaccurately) that Nikken Abe had personally altered basic Nichiren Shoshu doctrine. This was not true, but was a fiction needed by the SGI in tradition-bound Japan to keep the Japanese members from defecting to the enemy parent sect. Those SGI-USA members who did any reading in mainstream Buddhist scholarship soon discovered that Nikken hadn't really changed much of anything at all. Nichiren Shoshu had been screwed up and "non-Buddhist" for many centuries before the Soka Gakkai was even founded. It was tough for the Japanese organization to admit this, however, since it would have meant that the Soka Gakkai's founding presidents had made a mistake and taken up with a weirdo denomination. Americans have a much easier time saying "oops" than the Japanese do...
...And so the Western values of rights of conscience and religious freedom were subjugated to the Japanese sectarian war because, after all, we in the SGI-USA are a colony.
When Niken Abe retired from his position as head priest of Nichiren Shoshu in December, 2005, there was a general sigh of relief within the SGI. Now that the personified King Devil of the Sixth Heaven was out of office, maybe we could get back to Buddhism and world peace. What a relief that would be.
So, for the past couple of years, every now and again, you might hear a little burp of hostility towards the temple, but for the most part, the SGI seemed determined to pretend that the whole embarassing, sputum-spitting, 15-year episode had never happened. "Deny with a smile and move on" seemed to be the word of the day. That was fine with me and with most other sane souls. And then....last month... we heard about the new senior citizens' group's campaign to "close a temple as a birthday gift to President Ikeda".
God! This temple war is like the swamp thing! The thing that wouldn't die! Someone should make a zombie movie - we could call it "28 Years!"
Anyway, so silly me. Back to the present. I thought that whomever had conceived of this "close a temple for Sensei's birthday" campaign would be gently corrected by the SGI national leadership, maybe administered a laxative, and we would hear no more about it. But no. This past Friday when I went to the Kaikan again for kosen-rufu gongyo, there it was. The flyer. Announcing the creation of the new group! And what was the group's big, happy kick-off campaign? What do you think?
A toys-for-tots campaign with a nice big box in the foyer for the members to drop in their donations for needy children? Nope.
A "feed the homeless at holiday time" campaign in cooperation with other churches in the Burbank area? Nope.
That's right, you guessed it. The first campaign was just as it was announced last month. Let's all get together and pray really hard to close a rival house of worship as a birthday gift for our supremely humanistic leader in Japan! Somehow, I get a weird mental picture of Ruth Buzzi from "Laugh In" with her hair in a fishnet chasing a lecherous Japanese priest around a park bench and hitting him on the head with her purse. I know you can see it, too.
OK, this entry is getting long, so I will try to cut to the chase:
The Japanese place a huge premium of "debts of gratitude" - our official prayer books daily encourage us to pray to repay our "debts of gratitude" to the founding presidents of the SGI. Nichiren Daishonin himself, the founder of our practice, wrote a treatise entitled "On Repaying Debts of Gratitude" - and one of the debts he discusses is the debt to one's country. As in my debt of gratitude as a writer and member of a minority religion to the principles of the First Amendment to the US Constitution.
Because "repaying debts of gratitude" is such an important concept for the Japanese, and because the ongoing temple conflict is holding back the propagation of Nichiren Buddhism in America, I will state the issue as clearly as I can:
Daisaku Ikeda and the SGI owe a huge debt of gratitude to the principle of religious freedom. There would be no world-wide Buddhist world peace organization, and Daisaku Ikeda would be no-one's eternal Mentor if it were not for the fact that Douglas MacArthur imposed a constitution on post World War II Japan which allowed the Soka Gakkai to grow and flourish as a lay organzation of Nichiren Shoshu. The SGI owes its very existence, and the organization's President owes his position to the principle of religious freedom. Here in the United States, that means that we respect other peoples' right to be wrong. We respect their rights to worship as they choose, even if we think it's dung-headed.
The SGI's campaign to shutter rival houses of worship in the United States is the height of ingratitude. It must stop immediately. I am no fan of Nichiren Shoshu doctrine - anyone who knows me knows that, but if the SGI wishes to spread Nichiren Buddhism as a mainstream religion in this country, it must do more than develop choice real estate and print glossy publications. We must respect the principles of this society, and religious freedom is chiefest among them.
Stop the War Now.
Thanks for listening to my long rant.
Be reasonable, be enlightened, be cool.
Byrd in LA
P.S. I have nothing against the fabulous Golden Pioneers - I hope they will decide to engage in some wonderful community service or another. Good luck to them, and may they live long and healthy lives. -b-
Well, here we are, pulling up on Christmas once again. For some reason, this year seems to have just whizzed by at the speed of light.
I have always loved Christmas, and am famed throughout the family for my holiday spirit. I'm the one who gets the ham and I'm the one who gets the tree and I'm the one who decks the halls with boughs of holly, and you know what? I never seem to get tired of it. Until January - then I'm tired of it.
One thing I hate, though, is holiday shopping at the mall. Why do people still go out shopping? That's a mystery to me. With the advent (no pun! ha!) of the internet, now you can do all your shopping from the comfort of your home computer.
No losing your car in the parking structure.
No picking through the scarves and ties on the sale racks.
No standing in line for the assistance of surly seasonal sales associates' attention.
No jostling with your fellow shoppers.
Holiday shopping is such a headache when you go out to the stores. I haven't done it for years. I use amazon.com for just about anything, and it's wonderful - the presents arrive at my door by UPS or US mail, and I don't have to go out and jostle with anybody at all. This year, my jostling will be limited to two occasions - picking my brother up at the airport (a major, major jostling venue), and picking up the Christmas tamales at Carillos Tortilleria. Other than that, it should be a jostle-free Christmas! Just the way I like it!
I'm posting this now in part because I don't think I'm going to be writing a helluva lot more before the new year, so:
HAVE A VERY HAPPY HOLIDAY AND BEST WISHES FOR AN ENLIGHTENED AND JOYFUL 2008!!!