After many inquiries from folk about obtaining the Nichiren Prayer (Medicine) Mandala, I am changing the terms for acquiring one. The 11” x 14” will now be available for $100.00, plus shipping and handling (about $8.00 U.S.)
Of course, as you may know, you can download the Kito Mandala and other Nichiren mandalas at the Coffeehouse free of charge. This Kito Mandala offered by Modern Buddhism is a flawless Nichiren mandala that has mystically appeared at a time when the sects are warring and independents are rising up. This mandala is copied from the original brought to America for the express purpose of transmitting the Lotus Sutra. No affiliation with Modern Buddhism is necessary to obtain the Kito Mandala.
For those who are seriously ill and financially insolvent, Modern Buddhism may wave the fee and provide you with a Kito Mandala. To qualify, send a letter telling me about your situation at cratkins50@earthlink.net. No one will be turned away because of financial hardship. Grifters need not apply.
I have been a professional writer with a modestly successful career in paying markets for about thirty years. Amy Tan spoke wisdom about the craft when she said, "It's about the writing." My first published writing was a poem I wrote in the third grade that was published, much to my astonishment, in our local newspaper.
The winter winds have blown
And trees have lost their foliage
Few stay and remain
While others life on their backs defeated
Not bad for a third grader who was into Davey Crockett, Bing Crosby, and was fascinated by the Beast of Revelations. I was, as my father told me, “a creepy kid.”
In 1969, I dropped out of college to take a fulltime job as a sports reporter for the daily newspaper, The Elgin Courier, in Elgin Illinois. It was there that I learned the basic skills of journalism. At my side was a recent journalism graduate of Northern Illinois University who was kind enough teach me how to edit my articles before I turned them into “the butcher,” my beloved editor. He taught me how to interview people and exercise due diligence in meeting deadlines. Old Forrest Gump said it best with “stupid is as stupid does,” because I was drafted about six months after I dropped out of college.
It wasn’t until I joined NSA at age 22, and became a World Tribune correspondent, that my interest in writing for publication was revived. Prior to that, my creative work consisted of incoherent, stream of consciousness poetry, inspired by the likes of Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl,” and Aleister Crowley’s “Ode to Pan.” The World Tribune and NSA refocused my mind on the fundamentals of writing, even though the articles I wrote were formulaic and utterly contrived propaganda. Bless you NSA for giving me a forum to reorganize and update my writing toolkit.
Although there was no pay for writing experiences, meeting reports, or pieces on cultural events, it was that exact functional exercise that honed my skills for the paying markets which would soon follow. Over the next ten years or so, book ideas would come and go into the recycle bin, not having the necessary technical expertise to stay in viewpoint for novels, nor the education and experience to pull off the saleable nonfiction manuscript. But over that ten year training prior, for an obvious slow learner of the practical craft of professional writing, there were numerous successful freelance contributions to various newspapers that kept me encouraged to keep going.
Perhaps the the single most productive action I took to improve my writing skills was enrolling in the Writer's Digest Novel Writing Workshop, a school that still exists and thrives today, putting aspiring writers together with successful authors in all the various genres, to teach the basics of book writing. Every element of style is covered in meticulous detail with a drill sergeant like instructor whose sole ambition is to make you a published author. If you want to write books and have felt like your beating your head against the wall, look no further. No they didn't pay me to write this promotion. I tried a few other advanced writing schools but there was no comparrison to the affordable cost and high quality of the Writer's Digest School. If you're interested in the next step, check them out. I highly recommend them
In 1984, after six years, I was fired from my well paying job as assistant production manager at a Chicago-area manufacturing job shop. I guess that I insulted the company president. I can't recall if it was referring to him as "pin-head" or "pin-dick" that did me in, but he still gave me seven weeks of severence pay. Thanks,"Pin." Unemployed, with a wife, young child, and many expenses, including a $100+ monthly obligation to pay for World Tribune and Seikyo Times publications for inactive members, I was faced with the fact that I was a bullheaded, uneducated, inexperienced dipstick, who wanted to be a writer, but couldn’t break into mainstream journalism because I lacked a degree or appreciable experience. As a gung-ho Buddhist, I did what we were all taught to do when confronting a huge obstacle, I sparked up a joint and pondered my future. No, what I mean is that I wrote out a list of goals or determinations and began to chant for the wisdom and good fortune to succeed. But I did smoke the joint and it was good.
Much to the chagrin of my wife of that time, I opened a professional resume writing service in a well-located office building, advertised my product, and chanted A LOT. It was an instant success and afforded me the time to work on other writing projects, Of course, anyone who has read my book, Modern Buddhist Healing, should remember that it was about a year after opening my writing business that I was stricken by stage four Hodgkin’s Lymphoma and ground into dust. Writing is not just putting words on a page, it’s really about the teaching that life provides. Without being mauled by the cancer tiger, there would have been no books on healing by me, that have travelled to all parts of the globe, helping Buddhists and non-Buddhists alike mount a spiritual defense against that vicious predator. I have found that you take what happens and make it into something positive. Keep this in mind, if life kisses your ass you won't have anything important to write about. Comfort is the killer of creativity.
In 1996, my resume business went the way of the IBM Selectric. I tried to revive it in 1998, but it died quickly. In that time, I made hundreds of submissions of my Modern Buddhist Healing manuscript through two literary agents and on my own. I saved the rejection letters as a reminder of what a wacky world and age we live in, when tabloid drivel is worthy of publication and authenticity is panned as unsalable. If you can't handle rejection, find another hobby like taking a few twenties and try to shakubuku hookers. All that changed in 2000 when the manuscript was picked up by a small but respected Jungian publisher, Nicolas-Hays, a property of the great occult publishing house, Samuel Weiser.
It has been seven years now since that book hit the market – there was even a follow-up book. I am both surprised and happy to announce that Modern Buddhist Healing is selling at record levels, even better than when it was first released. In fact, it outsells my second book, Riding the Wheel to Wellness, 5 to 1 (although I believe the second book is less dogmatic, deeper, and more accessible to non-Buddhists). I was astonished by the sales numbers I received last week. The book is being sold by more than a thousand on-line booksellers and has developed a life of its own, so it seems, as I have done next to nothing to actively promote it, beyond making an occasional reference to it here at Phantom City, since 2004. A couple of years ago, the rights were sold to a prestigous old publisher in India who throws around rupees like manhole covers. Even though I won’t see any money from them unless I invoke Shiva or Kali, that part of the world is being reintroduced to the greatness of the Lotus Sutra, and that’s enough of a reward for me. Thank you Ganesh.
Today, I give you a few recent entries of random ideas from my personal notebook I call Moonlight Grimiore. My creative process begins with jotting down ideas in a notebook that I carry around with me all the time. The entries may be a word, a sentence or two, or paragraph. These words may be observations, feelings, or predictions. Often they are comments to something juicy I've just read. Sometimes, one of these notes will bud and flower into a fully formed idea. At other times, the idea lies dormant for the right conditions to emerge. Often, seemingly random entries over a prolonged period somehow evolve into a coherent whole as if it were a jig-saw puzzle.
Everyone who writes books, songs, paints, or creates in some other medium has their own way of capturing ideas that emerge from the unconscious. If you don't put them down they tend to vaporize, so write down the bones. The environment stimulates the senses and engages the mind, then ideas flow forth in varied levels of intensity similar to rain bearing clouds that just pass over head, giving a fine mist or producing a gulley-washer.
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Note # 1. Virgo Energy
From the October 16, 2008 Rolling Stone, page 32.
Chrissie Hynde fields questions with Austin Scaggs about her life and new album Break Up the Concrete.
“The opening on your new album is a Buddhist phrase, “Nam-myoho-renge-kyo.” Where did you learn about that?
About 1971, this guy and I were hitchhiking through Canada. We thought we were John and Yoko. Somebody told us that if we got to Toronto, we should stay with this woman Georgia Ambrose, who had Buddhist ceremonies at her house. We called her and she said, “What sign are you?” “Well, we’re both Virgos.” And she goes, Come over, I need some Virgo energy.” When we got there, that’s what they were chanting. It means, basically, that every drop that goes to the vein comes back to the heart.”
I wonder how much Rush Limbaugh pays Chrissie for his show’s lead in. Maybe Maha-Rushie could use this song to save his fat, sorry ass.
Note #2. Mr. Wilson
Robert Anton Wilson is a freaking genius! With all this political bullshit flying, find some way to incorporate this from “The Walls Come Tumbling Down,” page 17:
Canada, Japan, Iceland, Sweden & Switzerland…
“None of of these nations have one dominant religion or one dominant dogmatic ideology; all rank as “open” in Sir Karl Popper’s sense, and all either encourage or allow infophilia. No catholic or Islamic nation made it into the top five. Infophobia means stagnation and, usually, filth, poverty, plague, and general misery. (And don’t forget that what I here call infophobia means exactly what the Right Wing in this country calls “traditional family values,” including the right to hate the same people that Grandpa hated.)
Note #3
“Doubt Everything.” Frater Perdurabo.
Aleister Crowley aka Frater Perdurabo, wrote every sentence to contain seven levels of meaning, so I doubt his statement on seven different levels. If I met him today, I’m not sure if I’d shake his hand, bow, or just plain kick his class conscious ass?! Oops, that’s not so Buddhist now is it, Chuck? I really have to work on my anger issues. Don’t understand how I can see “the clear light” and be so volatile. Maybe that Vanya guy was right...Carlos angry...Carlos arroused...love those obits, commrade. Okay, I'm better now.
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As you can see, most of my musings have some kind of literary or circumstantial source. I try to read widely and absorb the essence of what others have to say while maintaining my own voice, versus being a parrot for someone else’s view. Many times my view and other’s dovetail nicely, while at other times they collide. It’s of no concern if I get criticized for praising and recommending Deepak Chopra when others think he’s a money grubbing quack. I don’t care if people think Timothy Leary was a dangerous drug promoting fraud because I think he was an aeonic avatar. I don’t care if people think Aleister Crowley was the wickedest man in the world because I understand his accomplishments and admire his style. And I don’t care if people beat up on Daisaku Ikeda for his lifestyle or teachings, because I like him and owe him a debt of gratitude, even though I’ve moved on from the role of disciplehood, just like I moved on from my Writer's Digest teacher, Ray Farraday Nelson of 'They Live" fame. God love you, "Uncle Smiley! You were R. Lee Ermy with a red pen. It seems to me that the great thinkers and writers of this realm respond to an inner voice. Some people, I think, hear the voice, then tune it out because they are unwilling to believe it or make the effort or sacrafice. I suspect what some mystery schools describe as “knowledge and conversation with your holy guardian angel,” and what I define as the “universal intelligence” or nonlocal consciousness, is that very same intuitive impulse that drives invention and causes the arts to flourish.
Life is the teacher. Adversity is the catalyst. Writing starts with a singular idea and develops or dies from there - it's up to you. With patience, effort and discipline, that singular idea ends up as a finished work. But is a finished work just the beginning for something else. That’s up to you.
The most influential person in my life was my grandfather, Charlie (Lee) Atkins. More than my father, president Ikeda, any of my former SGI leaders, coaches, or other mentors, my grandfather taught me how to live, survive, and view life. He was able to see the transformative effect that Buddhism had on me after my Army stint and years of psychedelic use. Although an old school Christian who didn’t cotton to church going, he immediately respected Buddhism for rescuing his grandson from the hippie generation.
Charlie was born today, October 14, 1899, in Eckerty, Indiana, just north of the Kentucky border. He was the youngest of eleven children from a family of stonemasons. My great-grandfather, Isaac Wilson Atkins - a Civil War rebel, was a skilled stonemason, local water witch (dowser), and brutish man who ruled his family with a thick leather lash and fists of steel. Old Isaac must have done something right, though, as Charlie was the most impressive man I have ever known. He was soft spoken, kind, well travelled, and wise like a shaman.
I thought it appropriate to pay tribute to Charlie today, on what would have been his 109th birthday. One of my first memories of my grandfather was his size. He was a flat janitor and maintenance man in Chicago. In those days, many men were generalists. He was a plumber, an electrician, carpenter, landscaper, master gardener, and, of course, a stonemason. Another fascinating aspect to Charlie’s well-rounded life was that he was a terrific musician. He played the guitar, the piano, and sang in a beautiful baritone. He grew up on bluegrass and he loved to entertain us three grandkids.
He was bald and with his build, looked a lot like Mr. Clean. Although he was only 6’1”, he weighed in at about 230 lbs of solid muscle. He had forearms like Popeye from carrying tenant’s garbage down three flights of stairs, then hauling it to the boiler room for incineration. To give you a visual of his strength, I clearly recall him pulling a Chicago phone book from a garbage can and tearing it in half. He never complained nor was he fearful, even though he underwent several painful series of injections because of rat bites. Once, when I was about eight, I was in a bin shoveling coal at a Beacon Street three flat when I was surrounded by a number of vicious rats trying to attack me. He came to my rescue and beat them with a coal shovel. The man was fearless and I loved and idolized him.
He was a man’s man in a setting totally unlike the hillbilly environment of his youth. Chicago was a fascinating place in the 50s. There were no pollution controls. All garbage was incinerated in a building’s coal fired boiler, busses belched out black exhaust fumes, factories spewed pollution of every variety from their smoke stacks, and it was like big city cologne to me. I wonder what people with acute chemical sensitivities did back then. Well, they would have had to move to the country, endlessly suffer, or blow their brains out, as it was pollution Mecca. There was also a quaint, old world feel to the city back then too. I still remember an old man leading his horse drawn wagon through the alleyways, ringing his bell, shouting “rags and iron.” Charlie was the lord of the alley. Let me explain.
Each summer I would spend a month with him. I was about five when he began to take me with him on his route. His routine was to wake at 3:00 a.m. to make his rounds to collect the garbage and fire the boilers. There had to be ten buildings he maintained. After a big bowl of cereal, he would put on his long sleeved work shirt, boots, and take out his razor sharp K-bar commando knife and put it up his right sleeve so the handle rested at the bottom of his palm. He showed me how he could make one twitch of the hand and be ready fight. But nobody dared to bother Charlie. Walking the alleyways of the near west side of Chicago was extremely dangerous at any time, let alone after dark, just before the dawn. But he did so for forty years and lived to tell about it.
In 1965, my parents bought a small, dilapidated farm in northeastern Wisconsin, about a mile from Lake Michigan, where my grandparents retired. Using all his skills, he took that old farmhouse and made it a showpiece that could have been shown in Better Homes & Gardens. He dug in to his new life and began gardening, growing and canning enough food to feed a dozen families for an entire year, with enough left over to barter with the other area farmers for whatever else he needed. Unfortunately, as it is with life, there is rarely a happy ending. But that’s a story for some other day. His life was, in my estimation, one of wisdom, dignity, and accomplishment.
Over the years, he told us grandchildren stories and anecdotes that would guide our lives. A few of his observations are worthy of mention here. He was the first to tell me that I should not lament the dead and that life was eternal. He told me that no matter what happens in life that I should have a sense of honor. Finally, he told me that one of the most important things in life was forgiveness, not just others, but yourself.
I remember my grandfather each gongyo when I ring the bell for the deceased. I pray to be the kind of man he was: simple, soft spoken, and wise. Apparently, there is still work to do on that soft-spoken trait, but I have the perfect example to work from. Thank you Grandfather, you were the best.
There are many promises in the Lotus Sutra. In these difficult times, the Lotus Sutra offers the one true hope for transcending confusion and decline. For those who hear the Lotus Sutra and embrace it, any, and all illness becomes mutable. All of one’s senses and faculties are enhanced. Personal prosperity proves impervious like a mountain peak against the stiff wind of adversity.
Awakening to the ultimate reality of our lives found in Namu-myoho-renge-kyo, protects us from the shadow world of fear and insecurity that grips the masses. For those who uphold the Lotus Sutra, the incalculable treasure of abundance is their reward.
Where other teachings promise their reward after death, in another world or future time, the Lotus Sutra provides peace and security in the here and now, where it is needed the most. To those who uphold the Lotus Sutra, for even a short while, strength, wisdom, vision, and an uncanny synchronicity of good fortune appear without fail.
The time is now right to realize the boundless bounty of the Mystic Law and to rescue others from the troubles up ahead.