I own a business and have been asked to do this bail-out fundraiser about 10 times. This time I said I would do it. My problem? I never asked anyone to donate. Now I'm two days away and thinking I should tell them I have swine flu to get out of it. But as I am a procrastinator on this, I thought I would ask for your help. The donations are for MDA and I copied the email I was supposed to send out.
I'm proud to tell you that I'm being locked up...that's right, I'm going behind bars to help Jerry's Kids and MDA. To be released on good behavior I have to raise bail and I need your help!
All you have to do is click here to make a secure, online donation before 10/21/09. Your donation will help families living in our community and help guarantee me an early release. I can't wait to add you to my list of contributors.
Thanks in advance for your help. Don't hesitate to call or email me with any questions.
Together we'll make a difference,
Nancy
P.S. I'm counting on you, click here to donate.
If the link above does not work, please cut and paste the address below into the address bar of your Internet browser.
https://www.joinmda.org/2009salinas/nt/
You will need to copy and paste the link at the end of the message. Hey, I'm not asking for much... $5, $10 would be great. I just don't want to go there with nothing. Thanks.
Now on to my actual entry.
It is Buddhist Learning Review time in the SGI. We study a gosho excerpt every month and then in October take a test, that we can't call a "test," on what we studied during the year. Too many members are freaked out by a "test" so we call it a "review." There is a study booklet to hep you study for the study review. This year the actual test/review was published in the newspaper publication The World Tribune in September. So now the members can take the test/review and study the actual questions before taking the test/review. Works for me. I took the test a couple of weeks ago. Part I is on Buddhist Concepts - multiple choice - no problem. Part II is on The Life of Nichiren Daishonin - again multiple choice. I am all over this. This one I had to think about
Who accompanied Nichiren during his exile on Sado and shared in his hardships?
a. Siddhartha
b. Dozen-bo
c. Nikko
d. He had no companions
This one bothers me. The answer is c. Anyone want to talk about this?
Part III is on Pres. Ikeda's lectures on the gosho. These are write your own answer questions and multiple choice. I had to look up the fill in questions because they were on PI's lecture as put forth by SGI-USA or at least the publishers of The Living Buddhism magazine.
Now my favorite section - Part IV Soka Spirit: The Errors of the Nichiren Shoshu Priesthood - multiple choice. It has been 20 years, folks, isn't it time to let it go and move on? I especially like the last question which has the "all of the above" answer. We have meetings where we (not me!) talk about infiltrating NST meetings. Really? Why can't we get over this? There are members of SGI who are passionate about Soka Spirit. They have 12 hour chanting sessions with the goal of closing temples or destroying NST. I wonder if they think they will get the "Daigohonzon" back? It just makes us look more cult-like and I don't like it. Man, we really hold a grudge... 20 years and it's still going. Can this be good for us? Are we creating "bad" karma? The new talk is that after 50 years in the United Sates (next year is the 50th anniversary of SGI in The US), we will be mainstream. How can we be mainstream when we still think we have the ONLY answer? Not only do we bash other religions, but we bash other Nichiren sects! This leads me to question 4:
The "devil king of the sixth heaven" is a metaphor for what?
The correct answer is
a. The tendency toward arrogance and disregard for others.
Draw your own conclusions.
The final section is extra credit. These are based on PI's lectures and I had to check my answers against the study material and make some adjustments. I never once wrote "mentor/disciple relationship." I did have to actually look something up:
20. Based on SGI President ikeda's lecture on "Letter to Misawa," what does the devil king abhor most and what do his "ten kinds of troops" represent?
I have never heard the term "ten kinds of troops." But in reading I found the ten troops are 10 delusions or bad things, like greed, regret, anger,hunger, worry,fear.
I'll let you know how I do.
I continue to support my former district by chanting giving up my Mondays. We chant every Monday. Something is going to happen in this district. For the last district meeting, the district leader planned to read an article from the World Tribune, The Bodhisattva Vow, and then she would talk about her trip to FNCC. The afternoon of the meeting she called to tell me her car broke down in another city and she would not make it to the meeting. I couldn't talk about her trip to FNCC, so I decided to do a little study at the end. Several members attended and the two area leaders. Area is one step up from chapter. After gongyo, the very new vice-district leader read the article in her very heavy Japanese accent. The article was about... all together now... mentor and disciple. But near the end, it quotes Pres. Ikeda as saying the organization need members who think for themselves - think for yourself. When she was done I wanted to talk about what that means, to think for yourself. I said I wonder how that would work if someone disagreed with Pres. Ikeda. The area leaders jumped in and one of them read from her notes, Pres. Ikeda does not want dupes. Holy crap, Batman! Now this is a discussion topic! But, no it was not a discussion topic, it was just left there. Every time I tried to start something, the "leaders" were there to set it straight, Pres. Ikeda does not want dupes. Don't think about it, just trust me, Pres. Ikeda does not want upes.
Now, I think this needs to be discussed. What does that statement mean? How would you go about disagreeing with a "leader" in SGI?
At another meeting, we watched a video of a teleconference from earlier this month. A top MD leader was talking about his trip to Japan. Apparently, the Kometo Party lost big in the recent election. Many Japanese members worked very hard to get their members elected, but I guess the Japanese people did what we do sometimes -- they voted for a change. The Japanese members were very upset that they had lost. Pres. Ikeda told them, "When you lose, you win!" Wait, what? There must have been more to this. I must have spaced out after he said that. The the MD told of blocking Pres. Ikeda as he walked across the dais and telling him some jargon filled crap in language no one would ever use. You have all heard it before, so just fill in your own jargon. Why do we need to talk like that? I have been working on a list, The 5 Words Used in Every Christian Song. I can't listen to it, so I can't get all 5. Here is what I have so far, Glory, Rejoice, Worship, Praise. You can help me with the last one.
But we have our own jargon. Greg and I used to sarcastically say "Golden Memories" all the time. It was so over used. Now we have "Mentor-Disciple Relationship." It must be used more than any other phrase. It has to be at the top of the Billboard Top SGI-USA phrases. Our new region was named by PI. It is Ever Victorious Region. Not bad, but now that "Ever Victorious" phrase is going to be everywhere. How can we expect to grow as an organization if we continue to use jargon? That leads me to the last part of my original story.
Towards the end of that district meeting, I wanted to talk about "The Devil of the Sixth Heaven." What is this? What does it mean to us? I was talking to my friend who never learned any of these terms. I was telling her that all these terms used to be in Japanese and now they are in English and I get confused. I don't remember what I did, but I used an incorrect Japanese term. I think I used sansho shima. One of the Japanese women corrected me. I acknowledged her, but that was not where I was going with this. Then the area leader cut in and went off on a 10 minute speech about The Devil King. He was not prepared, made a few mistakes, and just kept talking and talking. Then he tries to hand it back to me. No way I was going to step into this... and I told him that. There was no discussion of the Devil King, what it means to our lives. Then, one of my favorite meeting topics, karma, came up. A returning member, he moved away and then back, asked the leader about expiating karma. The leader said if you get in a car accident and wreck your car, that's better than getting hit by a train. You have eradicated your karma. I couldn't stand for this! I said you can't tell what your karma is and you certainly can not know exactly what karma you have eradicated. Of course, the leader was not going to accept this and tried again to make his point. It was late and the other leader read that statement again, "Pres. Ikeda does not want dupes." But this whole meeting was about dupes!!!!