Don'tcha just love synchronicities?!
Don'tcha just love synchronicities?!
I just has been driving me crazy wanting to get on here to update everyone, but the volume of shit my fingers are typing is running against the laws of nature. There is only so much you can say in a day through your fingers. In that way this all kind of sucks, 'cause my voice is the great gift I was born with. Words conveying thoughts is my great treasure and the difference of my life, in the living (of it). So I just have to get this out there before I set off to see the wizard.
The drum circle, the rhythms, the synchronicities, these are the basis of buddhist reality as it pertains to the Law. Amsterdame, you are running in parallel. You are talking about buddhism whether you want to, care to, or know that you are doing it. Chanting is nothing more than putting your life into play to be in rythm with your environment.
The power of your life, your Buddha Nature, is activated and has great influence on this manifestation of rhythm. It is the process by which your desires are fulfilled. We have no concept of a "god" answering our prayers.
The reality, in my opinion, is that these "prayers" are answered via the power of our lives becoming manifest through the invocation of the Daimoku which contains acknowledgement and praise and a desire for all suffering to end and all beings becoming equal. This is what you are doing and conveying when you chant Nam Myoho Renge Kyo. It occurs in exact moment to moment parallel with your prayer for more mundane desires to be fulfilled. This is expedient means.
I wanted to share all of the synchronicities of last weekend, but the flow was so cosmic, that that will have to wait for another day. There is just too much to share and not enought time to type it all. However here is a quick one from just last evening.
I am here living in the US with my sister-in-law who goes to community college here locally. Our real home is in Asia (I am going home again next week! Yea!). She came back from her summer visit home thinking she would just finish off two courses and bail at the end of the semester. She will get her certificate with the addition of these two courses and qualify for critical training here in the US.
A week or so ago, she was disheartened and ready to give up because she found out, to get into the critical training program, she would have to take a full course load, (not just the two classes) and that only 40% of the applicants get in. Not encouraging odds or requirements for her; and she pays for all of her classes herself. She was ready to give up.
She is a grown up, so rather that tell her what to do, I said chant about it. She is not one to reflect a daily practice of Buddhism, but she does do Daimoku from time to time. She says she chanted, but admitted it was while sitting in her room listening to me. She finally said, "Please Tong Mu (me), tell me what to do."
I said, " I can't. That decision has to come from your life. I tell you to sit in front of the Gohonzon and have respect and make efforts and cause and you don't listen. Now you want me to make an important decision for you. I won't! If you can't chant, then I suggest you go get on your knees and pray to Jesus or Allah or whatever it is you are thinking is your higher power, because you need to pray!"
She started laughing her ass off. She is from a buddhist cluture, but oddly the addition of the white boy from America is the basis that virtually all of my Asian family now chant Nam Myoho Renge Kyo. She started to do as I suggested! All I did was encurage her to follow her heart and not be afraid, and that I would support whatever decision she made. So last night she says, "I have made my decision!"
She then tells me she has decided to go for it. But the PS is that she doesn't have the money for all of the extra courses she is going to take to qualify with a full load. They were never in her thinking or planning, and tuition costs have sky rocketed in the last couple of years. She asks, "Can I borrow the money?'
WELL!!!! Now what have I gotten myself into here! I was encouraging her to follow her dreams but now my compliance with her request might be the difference in it happening. She had done an excell spreadsheet showing that she needed to borrow $1800, and repay it at a rate of $500 a month. I said, "Ask Your sister (my wife)!"
We are stretched to the limit right now. Four kids have been born within 15 months. The expense of a US residence. Two mortgages in asia, one for where we live now and another on a place we got in forclosure (but a seven figure forclosure) that we are renovating this month and next into the eight bedroom, four bath home of our future. We have three maids, live-in full time. Etc, Etc, Etc. We don't have a lot of spare change.
She called the wife, and then said the wife said for me to call her back. My wife said she wanted to help but had found herself in a cash flow crisis and was looking to scurry up 30 G's herself to pay a vendor. Ok, I thought, I'll just have to not pay some bills like the rent for a couple of months out, and juggle this thing to help her (I usually advance pay the rent here, my landlord has become a good friend, and works within the constraints of our cashflow).
So I go back to my lil sis, and say, "OK. Let me figure out how to do this. I have to move some things around. Let me figure it out tomorrow. I don't have that much cash here, and I'll have to transfer some more into checking tomorrow to cover what I need to give you." She asks, "Can you do it tonight?" "No! I told you I don't have that kind of cash." "Would it be more convenient to use a credit card?" "Wow, we can do it on a CC? Cool! Let me make sure I have enough of an open line on a card to do it that way."
I went back to my cluttered desk to think and remembered an offer that I had opened that afternoon from B of A. I had paid it no attention, as it was just another balance transfer offer, but I thought maybe it would allow me to pay one card down enough to free up what she needed. "No interest until February. No balance transfer or check fees" I had seen that part, but now I noticed a custom message to me on the left side of the page. "Since you are such a valued customer we have increased your credit line by $2000, so you can get the most out of this special offer." "use these checks to pay...or college tuition...!
"Hah! Fuck an A! Yes! Yes! Yes!" Free money, in exactly the right amount, at exactly the right time! Being in rythm with my environment, from making good causes and changing my KARMA!
Happy , Happy , Happy Boy! Synchronicities?!
I call it NAM MYOHO RENGE KYO! I am off to see the wizard.
love you all!
T
