Strangely Perfect

One Small Step for Man, one Giant Leap For Mankind When Armstrong said those words (except I missed out the ‘a’), it looked like men & women would be walking tall on all sorts of astronomical bodies in a continuation of the Apollo programme.  As we no know, things didn’t quite work out like that [...]

The Hell of Incessant Suffering and the Land of Tranquil Light Note: This was originally published here http://buddhastate.co.uk/blog/?p=30 on Sunday, September 24th, 2006 at 4:28 pm and filed under Buddhism..  The link has been dead for quite some time, looks unlikely to re-appear,  so I’m showing the words here as they are so wonderful because [...]

I woke up this morning ……and read two small passages, both written by Buddhists, one of which quotes one of “The Buddha’s” last works, the Lotus Sutra. What struck me, was that sometimes, this Buddhism that I do can get a bit confusing, and then suddenly – suddenly someone says something that brings everything right [...]

FYI: Two Things About Nichiren One: While fishing around back-links to this website, I came across two pages on the BBC website that explain Nichiren’s Buddhism and the Soka Gakkai International (SGI) quite well.  Go for it Robert!! http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/buddhism/subdivisions/nichiren_1.shtml http://www.bbc.co.uk/berkshire/content/articles/2005/03/17/sgi_uk_feature.shtml Two: I’ve just seen this ridiculous rat with a Nichiren t-Shirt on the Amazon website. [...]

As part of my Buddhist practice I recite two bits of prose and chant some Daimoku, which is the words “Nam Myoho Renge Kyo” over and over again. I recite these two bits of prose, called the “Expedient Means” chapter and the “Life Span” chapter because Jill, the person who introduced me did so. Jillian [...]

I’ve just been reading this fascinating book, Encountering the Dharma: Daisaku Ikeda, Soka Gakkai, and the Globalization of Buddhist Humanism by a non-Buddhist, Richard Seager, who gives a really good, well-balanced investigation into Buddhism, the Soka Gakkai (SGI) and it’s meteoric rise in popularity under the inspirational personas of Makiguchi, Toda and Ikeda. Well you’d [...]

Today is the anniversary of the founding of Soka Gakkai in 1930 and also the anniversary of the death of first president Mr Makiguchi in prison at the hands of the corrupt and fascist Japanese government during WW2, only 14 years later. This is the front page of our newspaper, Seikyo Shimbun.  The headline reads; [...]

Introduction I’ve nabbed the content of this from Ted Penfold.  My wife, has told me that she heard this lecture of Dick’s and found it and him some of the most inspiring things in her life.  I came across this wonderful piece by chance, looking for some background information on Nikko, the second guy after [...]

I saw Roger Edwards from Purple Ear today. Roger was a major influence when I started this Buddhism lark and was one of the original SGI people in Somerset. We had a very pleasant day following an invigorating Kosen Rufu Gongyo in Taunton, today being November 18th and 77 years since the Soka Gakkai was [...]

What’s all this Buddhism then, like? Intro I practice the Buddhism of Nichiren Daishonin who was a guy living in 13th century Japan. He is what most people nowadays would call a “good guy” although at the time, because he spoke his mind which then annoyed the ruling classes, he spent most of his life [...]