Hello folks! So very sorry that I haven't written in awhile. It's the morning sickness that's been getting to me. Yes. It's a miracle (although technically they don't exist in Buddhism). I'm having a baby in January.
All my adult life I've been infertile. I have a daughter born in 1993 after six years of trying and eight years of chanting. I chanted my ass off for her. It still took forever to get pregnant. Many invasive, painful procedures and a pregnancy from hell later, it happened. I chalked it up as a benefit from the Gohonzon and my practice. And maybe that is true. I may not have had the stamina to continue to try so long if I had not had faith.
However, this time, due to my estrangement and disillusionment with the Gakkai, I chanted only a little, teeny bit. And here I am, pregnant on the fdirst try, totally unremarkable pregnancy -- feeling fine now, actually. It actually occurred to me that perhaps, just maybe, all that chanting may have made it more difficult the first time? Who knows? Who can tell. I'm happy to be having another baby at long last, no matter what forces granted me this wish.
Which brings me to beheadings. Specifically that of Daniel Pearl's. When he was kidnapped, I, like so many other Gakkai memebers and well wishers from around the globe, began praying for him to survive. His wife, Marianne, was sending heartfelt e-mails to Gakkai members and I recieved them and was moved enough to download his photo and put in next to my Gohonzon and chant for him every day.
Of course, none of the prayers worked. He was grotesquely murdered, while the pregnant Marianne behaved with more spirit and grace than anyone could have ever imagined under the circumstances.
But this -- and the recent spate of obscene beheadings of the innocent - beg the questions: Do prayers work? How powerful are Gakkai prayers cmpared to "other" prayers? Are results that we attribute to cause and effect something we -- as mere humans -- apply after the fact, discounting the times that our prayers are not answered?
Or, like Christians, do we say that some prayers aren't answered, while others are (such a copout, if you ask me!).
Prayer and chanting do seem to lift my spirits, giving me a better life condition. Maybe that's enough to ask for.
Cheers!
Melanie