The Treasure Tower

I prepared this as a study point for my discussion meeting.
Two years ago, The Gosho on The Treasure Tower was at the centre of the study movement for the Young Women. I must have read it a hundred times, in my head, out loud, at meetings, alone, etc.
I thought I understood it, but as it is with many things in Buddhism, I only understood with my head, and not with my heart. Last year I have gone through the most painful time of my life, largely because I did not fully understand this Gosho. I did not believe I was the Treasure Tower. 
Maybe this will help someone not to suffer as much as I have.

The Treasure Tower. (Jpn hoto)

The term “Treasure Tower” can refer to any of a variety of jewelled stupas (a dome-like structure built to house the relics of the Buddha) depicted in Buddhist scriptures. 

The best known, however, is the treasure tower of Many Treasures Buddha that appears in the "Treasure Tower" (eleventh) chapter of the Lotus Sutra. 

Devil King of the Sixth Heaven

This is another study point I prepared for a Discussion meeting. I ended up not sharing it at the meeting, but I had made this text into a handout which I circulated at the end.

Enjoy!

Devil King of the Sixth Heaven (Jpn dairokuten-no-mao)
AKA, Devil King, Heavenly Devil, Demon of the Sixth Heaven.

The Devil King of the 6th Heaven is #19. 
You can easily Google this map or you could look here.

To understand this concept we must talk about Fundamental Darkness, the negative aspect of life, which is bound to appear in some form when an ordinary person attains Buddhahood.
This negative aspect is often referred to as the 'three obstacles and four devils' (in Japanese, sansho shima).

Trekkie Shakubuku

Goodness me, I was almost leaving February without an entry.
Perish the thought!

So, following a recently established tradition, I am going to share with you lot some notes I took to prepare for my February discussion meeting.

The topic of the meeting was "Friendship", following encouragement from President Ikeda to make 10 new friends.

We like to have a little study point during discussion meetings, and we decided to have it on shakubuku this time.

The importance of dialogue

This is something I wrote for a Discussion meeting I was supposed to moderate but I ended up not being able to attend. In rereading it, I found it not too shabby, so here it is. (nothing at all to do with the fact that it's already written).

Why is dialogue so important and how do we do it?

This is based on a wonderful article from November AOL, in which Peter Osborn (btw, who is this guy? He must be a bloody genius!) talks about the importance of dialogue.

Sensei stresses the importance of dialogue constantly. Whenever we are stuck or have problems with others, we are always encouraged to “create a dialogue” with them.

Arrogance

Some time ago, Seleus republished on her blog Lotus Flower an article titled Mistaking Arrogance for confidence. I found it extremely interesting on a variety of levels and it made me think a lot.

Arrogance is something that has been ascribed to my character for my entire life. It caused me endless suffering, especially because the pattern is usually as follows. 
I am accused of being arrogant. I believe it, and start policing my thoughts and actions in a paranoid way. This is all for nought: people keep coming at me with accusations of being arrogant. All the while, these same people are surrounded by others, who get praised to no end and to me appear  completely full of it. So I get harshly criticised for being arrogant, my efforts completely ignored, and other people, displaying what to me looks as genuine arrogance, get praised instead of me. 
It used to drive me insane.

Dancing experience part two. AKA the one evil.

I wanted to speak a bit more of the experience I am doing with bellydancing. 

In my last post, I mentioned my current battle against my one evil. In my case, my one evil is my lack of self esteem, which makes me dependent from other people’s approval.

My journey to finding and transforming my one evil has been long and complicated. I went through several experiences in my life.

Transforming my financial karma was one step in my journey. It was my second absolute victory and the first time I felt I had really accomplished the impossible. 

Sometimes, I make myself go back at my recent past, a time when having a coffee with friends meant completely reworking my weekly budget, and buying clothes in anything but a charity shop was out of the question. I don’t want to forget that time, I MUST not forget that time, I have to cling to every struggle, to every time when I felt impotent and hopeless. Not to delve in past misery, nor to gloat. I need to remember the pain in order to be able to really empathise with the people in my district and chapter who are going through similar problems at the moment, so that I can feel true compassion and find the right words to encourage them.

The Dragon King's daughter and other ramblings.

I've been meaning to speak about this topic, which generally deals with the role of women in Nichiren Buddhism, for quite a while.

Being a woman myself, it is obviously something close to my own heart, but I do believe that any person with a genuine humanistic spirit, be they a man or a woman, should be interested in the topic of equality.

Discrimination is discrimination, whether it's done on the basis of gender, race, sexual orientation, religion, pizza topping preference, IQ, it is still discrimination, and as such it is not conducive of a happy society based on humanism and fundamental respect. In many ways, discrimination is the polar opposite of respect.

The ten factors

An absolutely awesome explanation of the ten factors (which are different from the ten worlds) can be found here.


I will just steal and repost the awesome graph used to represent it. If the owner is unhappy about that, let me know and I'll delete it immediately.

Prayer beads

I finally found an article that explains the meaning of our prayer beads, or juzu. Yippee!!

Ichinen

A couple of years ago, I spent six months in Romania for a European project. It was a very interesting experience and I'm glad I did it, but it was also very challenging. During most of the six months the weather was really rubbish, alternating snow and rain, and the temperature ranged between -12º and -25º.

The worst part was not having Buddhist meetings. At the time there were only a handful of members in Romania and I couldn't manage to contact any of them. Furthermore, I was living in this very small town up north and my Romanian was very basic, so there was really nothing to do. At all.

Luckily I had my mom's Omamori Gohonzon with me, (not being able to carry a Butsudan made it impossible to take my Gohonzon with me), and that made it a bit better. I went home for Christmas and forgot my Gongyo book there, so from January till May I had to chant from memory, which to be fair was great. It meant I had to really focus on what I was doing and couldn't let my mind wander on trivial things, otherwise I would lose the thread and had to start again. The first days I found myself starting Gongyo again five times, then I found my focus.

To make a long story short, I wasn't doing any activity and I was missing it terribly. I missed the discussion meetings, I missed chanting with other people, and most of all, of course, I missed doing lilac. On the plus side, I had loads of free time so I could chant more, but I was longing for something to do.