Melanie's "Buddhism from the fringes"

Picture of Angela

Here's a new pic of my baby Angela. She's two and a half months old and weighs about 9 lbs.

Cheers!

Melanie

Benefit or Bummer?

Hi everybody! Thanks so much for the kinds thoughts and warm wishes for me and my new baby, Angela Ren�e. She's doing great! She weighs close to seven lbs. now, which is phenomenal for a preemie who is now only 35 weeks gestation (plus some change). In other words, she is still about five weeks away from her due date, yet she is the size of a healthy new born. She has gained more than three pounds since she was born at 29 weeks gestation.

]]> Her course has been benign, which is the best you can hope for. The only issues she has are that her hematocrit is a little low, but she is making new blood cells, so this should not be a problem in the long run. And, she is still on a "bubble" (very little) of oxygen. We live at 4,000 feet altitude, which affects babies' oxygen needs. If we were in San Francisco, she would most likely not need any extra oxygen. She should be released to come home within a couple of weeks.

Even though going back and forth to the hospital wears me out, I am in no hurry to get her home. Angela will develop at her own pace and be ready to come home in her own time, and that's fine with me.

In terms of Buddhism, this birth is like a cosmic joke. Is the glass half full ( i.e., is this a benefit?) because I dodged some big bullets, beat the odds and we both lived through this? Or, is this bad karma because Angie and I had to suffer so much (hospital for her, trauma for me)?

My husband, being Christian, thinks that the hand of God came down and saved me in the operating room. He's still pretty pissed, however, about what happened to me. This pretty much ends me having any more kids, so that is a closure and a loss for both of us.

For me, I think it's sort of a matter of perspective. It's definitely a benefit that I didn't die and the timing, although really serious for Angela, couldn't have been better. No one should ever want to have a kid born at 29 weeks. That is cutting it so close that it's frightening to even think about. Even one week earlier (let alone two or three) and she would have most likely had serious long-term health problems, or she might very well have died. But had I gone longer with the increta problem (placenta growing into the uterus) and the chances that I would have died go up significantly. After 35 weeks gestation, maternal deaths go way up for women with accreta/increta/percreta. So my way of rationalizing this is to think that Angela came out early and is suffering through a long stint in the hospital in order let me live.

Benefit or bummer? You cast the vote.

Cheers to all!

Melanie

Birth announcement

Life is certainly fraught with peril!

I'm back from the dead -- literally -- I had a baby girl Oct. 26, 2004 in an emergency situation -- I was bleeding out following unexpected preterm labor at 29 weeks gestation. I lost four liters-plus of blood and was in critical condition in ICU with pulmonary edema for several days following lifesaving surgery. I also had a rare complication of being intubated -- I developed an obstruction in my airway and couldn't breathe -- I thus needed another lifesaving surgery to unblock the airway and a tracheotomy to make sure I could breathe if I re-obstructed. Bummer!

]]> The extremely good news is that Angela Renee and I are doing great -- she's gained more than two pounds since birth, and while she is still in the intensive care nursery, she is doing fabulously! I lost a ton of weight, and almost don't look like I was pregnant! I attribute this to the zero-calorie diet I was on in ICU! (Movie stars with personal trainers don't have anything on me!)

Incidentally, we picked out Angela's name a long time before this crisis, so it seems apropos that it means "angel reborn," (I feel like I got "reborn" anyway).

You can view a Web page of photos at:

Melanie Robbins is pleased to announce: http://homepage.mac.com/tajmari/PhotoAlbum10.html
Password: eyezzz

FYI - Dane and I got married Sept. 25, 2004, so I've changed my last name.

Cheers!

Melanie

Babies & Beheadings

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

My daughter

This is my lovely daughter. Here's how you put pictures up on FWP as an entry:

]]> After logging in to the writer's login, go to the "upload file." Then follow the default prompts to upload a picture file from your hard drive or CD rom. The next dialog box will give an option to save the file as a new entry. Use that option. For my daughter's pic above, I chose the "save thumbnail" option. The first time I tried this with my picture - to be found in the "My picture" entry - I did not use that option, but I saved the file as a rather small, Web-ready pic.

Rule of thumb is no more than 10K - 30K for a Web pic. Using PhotoShop, resize your photo to no more that 150 pixels wide for a mug shot (head and shoulders) or 300 for a horizontal, maybe 200 for a vertical. Then use the "Save for Web" option and save as a small - no more than 10K - 30K, absolute max about 80K - jpeg. Anyhow, that's what our Web master tells us to do at my job, where we post news and pictures to the Web every day.

Incidentally, the pic of my daughter is 92K because I made a Web pic out of it before I knew how to tweak it with PhotoShop. So, it's an experiment. I don't want to go back and change it now - for fear of losing all this typing! - but if it loads slowly, that's why.
Cheers!

Melanie

Muchos gracias!

Thanks so much for getting my picture up. Jussi asked how I got my picture into an entry. I honestly can't remember. It seemed so simple at the time. I am now trying to retrace my steps and recreate that unique circumstance that led to this discovery!. Will post results soon. Cheers! - Melanie

My picture

]]> How in the heck do I get this uploaded to the spot over my blogsite? Thanks!

Kind of a sad day

Even though I�ve been protected from various evils at my place of work, I have also become discouraged lately at work and acutely aware of how not believing blindly in the Soka Gakkai has made me more vulnerable.

]]> I can no longer sit down and do a 10-hour tozo anymore. I just can�t. Being a blind believer, I could. And it probably helped me. My descent from belief has come with the realization that I don�t really have any friends in the Gakkai. Or maybe anywhere else, with the exception of my father and my boyfriend. I had a friend, who died (after being treated like shit by the leadership and members.) All the other people who I used to socialize with freely and talk to � I�m a gregarious person by nature � at meetings have never so much as given me a phone call in the past year or so. Some of my former �friends� have even shunned me because I stood up for someone who didn�t agree with the party line. Friends? Fair weather only.

My last Gakkai �friend� ended up calling my boyfriend four thousand times on his cell trying to lure him over to her place. You may guess what my response to this sort of �friendship� is.

Other than Dad and Dane � and I�ll include my master�s committee chair Mark, too, I really, honestly don�t have anyone. It�s a sad realization, but I find some comfort in knowing that I have released the bad karma to have �bad� friends in my life and am hoping that someday I might find some real friends. Ok. Just one. I�ll settle.

howzitgoin?

Hi everyone! I am so thankful and amazed that you have been reading and actually responding! I apologize for not being able to respond individually, but I am brand new at this blogging thing and I am not sure that it is even possible. In addition, our esteemed Blogmeister, Toad Dilley, found himself a bride who could see beyond his toady exterior to the prince within � so he�s outta been town on a honeymoon. (Congratulations to the prince and princess!). Therefore, I can�t figure out how to get my picture loaded up, either. I�ve been reading the other bloggers� writing with great interest, but I�m not caught up yet.

]]> Anyhow, these last few weeks have been life-changing and very difficult. More to come on this once I get my facts straight. Suffice to say for now that my difficult job has been, as usual, difficult, and despite positive changes in management, I�ve been working so many hours I can�t keep track of them anymore. Which brings me to the topic of my next blog: Am I happy now? Stay tuned . . .

Oh those darn Buddhists!

This morning, I lost my Daimoku chart. Or, at least I couldn�t find it. Myoho. I have my suspicions about how it �walked away,� but my main suspect denied outright that he messed around with my Buddhist papers (despite an incriminating notebook mysteriously lying on the coffee table near the Budsadan . . .)

I couldn�t have lost my chart if I had been more diligent in chanting every morning and evening. It�s my fault. But while I was tearing the drawer apart searching for the chart, I thought of something that has been a minor irritant to me.

]]> In the summer of 1999, a job opening came available at the University of Nevada, Reno where I was working as an intern in the Office of Communications. I applied for it and then applied myself to chanting and going to meetings in order to make causes to get this job. I went a number of times to a fellow member�s apartment and chanted with him, sometimes helping him with guests he brought and sometimes bringing other members with me. We were sort of a rogue group � these weren�t official meetings, just plain old-fashioned daimoky tozos and gongyos together with friends.

I got the job. Hallelujah! I could divorce my husband, take care of my daughter and continue in grad school!

What�s bugging me is that I heard a rumor that the member who opend up his house to me was running around the chapter telling people he had �gotten me the job.� Now, that�s not exactly true. In order to lead up to the fortune of getting this job, I had to work my way through UCLA, work as a journalist for a decade, win a bunch of awards, as well as excel in my internship. It was a regional search and I beat about 40 or 50 other applicants, but to arrogantly claim that he, and he alone, got me the job, didn�t sit right with me.

Especially since this member is a one of the troubling ones who have tended to de-shakubuku me through their behavior. He doesn�t have a job of his own, nor has he had one in the many years I�ve known him. He has at least five children with various women and he pays not one dime of child support. He�s on welfare and has busted out front teeth. This last point is, I admit, the most petty of my complaints. But it seems to me that if you were serious about doing shakubuku, you would � after 25 years of practice � have chanted for the fortune to get your damn teeth fixed so people at least wouldn�t automatically assume you are the bum you actually are.

Anyhow, I haven�t talked to him in at least a year. To be fair, he did do me the extreme favor of handing me a book called �The Passive-Aggressive Man,� which could have been a detailed account of my life with my ex. It blew my mind and gave a name to the situation I was in and how to deal with it. So no hard feelings. But what is it with folks who chant and chant, but stay the same?

Where I work

This is where I work. University of Nevada, Reno

I am a writer/editor in the office of marketing and communications at the University of Nevada, Reno. Work has been a source of much angst, but also much actual proof. Over my five years here, I can say that - to my astonishment - the people who caused me the most distress have one by one left or been fired. Yahoo!!!! Chanting works.

Who am I (and why should you care)?

Hello everyone! I've been officially practicing Nichiren Daishonin's Buddhism since April 6, 1986, but I started chanting circa 1969 after a friend, Laura Wilhelm, wrote the words Nam Myoho Renge Kyo on a scrap of paper and told me to "chant these words to get anything I wanted." Yowza how it worked, even back then! I have so many mystical experiences regarding chanting that I could write a book. I'd love to recount some of them, but right now I'm in a hurry to get out the door.

I call myself a "Buddhist on the fringe" for two reasons: I have been practiing in the relative hinterland of Reno, Nev. since 1988, after beginning to practice in Los Angeles, and because, of late, I have become estranged from the organization.

]]> I don't go to meetings anymore for a variety of reasons, mainly because I can't stomach the propaganda about President Ikeda from the head-bobbing sychophants. Also, I haven't experienced much, if any, compassion from the leaders or members here. They've basically dropped me like a hot potato - not that they made much effort in the past to really get to know me or listen to me, anyway. My best friend - who got treated like shit by the leadership, by the way - died a few years ago - so what's the point? Incidentally, although becoming estranged has been a very painful experience for me, I have continued to reap vast benefits. Life is indeed mystical, and, Wow! contrary to what the organization tells you, good - amazing even - stuff continues to happen even if you don't go to meetings!

Why you should care is twofold, as well. It's different practicing in an area like Reno - we joke that an hour of daimoku here is worth three in the city! A Kansai-type campaign would alienate the whole city; we would get a bad reputation. It's very different. But also, I think that the progression from utterly gung ho member for many, many years to an alienated member ought to concern the organization. Perhaps they could learn something from me. However, it sure doesn't seem like they care at all.