Study

I have been involved in the study movement for a few years now, and I love it.

I have always loved studying, it comes easily to me because I have an incredible memory, I also have the advantage, within Buddhist study, to have been raised by Buddhist parents who are extremely knowledgeable of Buddhist philosophy and I love supporting other people in their journey (ever the teacher!).

I took Grade 1 in 2012, when I created a pretty popular series of posts about exam prep. 

In 2013 I was lilac chief for my local exams. 

A new life

In the last few years, I have found it increasingly difficult to keep the good rhythm of posts I had at the start of this blog. 

It started off as a way to channel my pain and frustration. I hurt, I write it down, I realise stuff, I feel better. 

I started getting some followers, some questions, and I like to share what I know, so I carried on.

Maybe I haven't needed this outlet anymore, maybe it's because a few things happened that I could not share on here, maybe it's because I have incrementally less time now because I am doing more buddhist activities and I am (finally!) in a relationship. 

Who knows?

I know, however, that I like this blog and I don't want to let it go defunct.

So, I've made some decisions. (I sound like RuPaul here)

You must rise and greet [them] from afar...

I wrote this experience for an Education Division meeting. Once again, I ended up not sharing it, but hey. The experience proper happened in the last three-four years, as in, my first years in the teaching profession, however in order to understand where I am coming from, I have to, once again, start with my childhood. There will be some overlap with other experiences, since the childhood was the same!

Here we go!

Buddhist quotes - October

Soooo, my journey to hell is coming real soon.

In the meantime, here is a little quote from The Opening of the Eyes Gosho.

I recently went through all my Buddhist books and wrote inside the front cover when I read them and, if applicable, as part of what study programme.

Lectures on the Opening of the Eyes is one of the books I am studying as part of my LIPC Dedicated Lilac training.

Last Committee meeting (a study/feedback meeting with all the team leaders), I was asked to feedback on Chapter 14 of this book.

This little quote stuck with me:

My graduation experience

I wrote this experience for my Graduation Day.

As things stand now, I don't know if I will share it on that day, I but I am scheduling the post so that it will go live on the 31st anyway. People who know me already know parts of it. If you read my blog I speak about different parts of it in other posts, so some things will look familiar. I will put some links at the bottom for people who are interested in reading more about my journey.

Here is the experience: 

My name is Ewa, I am 28 and I come from Italy. I am the vice team leader for team S and I will graduate today.

In this experience, I will try to talk about how much lilacing has changed my life.

Victories

A couple of months ago I went to a Lilac inspiration meeting.
That was an experience in itself. Part of it is too private to share it here, and deeply intertwined with TTTH, but the big part was doing my first Bellydance public performance.

I was using my phone for the music and it didn't occur to me to ask anyone to take pictures, so I don't have any memento of the occasion. I redid my improvisation on Comptine d'une autre été and a new one on a string version of Sweet Dreams by a great German band called Eklipse.

It felt awesome to dance in front of other lilacs. Years ago I remember reading on a bellydance blog that to be a good dancer and a good teacher you have to have performance experience. I never really dismissed it, but I only actually understood the importance of it when I did my first performance. Those five minutes made me realise more things about me as a dancer than all the training sessions I've done in six years.

Funnily enough, it looks like my natural style as a dancer seems to be extremely serene and relaxed. Who knew?

Anyhoo, during the inspiration the HQ lilac chief told an experience related to the actual proof campaign. She said that when November came she didn't think she had had a lot of victories, so she decided to sit down, look back into her diary and write down anything she could consider a victory. She had a list of something like 35 victories.

I felt inspired and decided to go back home and immediately write down my list.

Old and New Year's Resolutions

Before writing my first entry for 2014, I went back to read what a wrote a year ago, to see if I had any victories to report (who am I kidding, I thought it would be easier to quote something else rather than writing an entirely original piece, but I know you love me anyway.)

I want to start with an apology for my lack of new posts in the past few weeks. I have been rather busy and then down with a stinking flu (I'm not really fully recovered yet).

That is still true, a year on. No posts for over a month and I am once again down with a stinking flu!
It's so nice to see certain things never change! (not).

I'm now going to go through the determinations. I'm quite annoyed I did not put them down as a nice bullet point list. What the heck was I thinking?

I'll sort it now.

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.

Actual Proof campaign

I can't believe how it didn't occur to me to write anything about our Actual Proof campaign.

D'oh!

This campaign started last year, and will finish on the 18th of November.

Quoting from the SGI website:

Tsunesaburo Makiguchi (front row, center) with Soka Kyoiku Gakkai members in Fukuoka, Kyushu, 1941

November 18 is the anniversary of the establishment of the Soka Gakkai.
Tsunesaburo Makiguchi, first president of the Soka Gakkai, and his disciple Josei Toda (second president) published the first in a series of writings outlining the system of soka, or value-creating pedagogy, on November 18, 1930, and this date marks the founding of the Soka Kyoiku Gakkai--the Society for Value-Creating Education. The word "soka," which was coined by Toda and Makiguchi, is a combination of Chinese characters meaning "create" and "value."
The group's aim was to reform the Japanese education system in order to foster the unique creative potential of every child, and this endeavor was further strengthened by the philosophy of Nichiren Buddhism which also stresses the vast untapped potential of every individual.

A birthday surprise

***Warning***

Ranty emo-fest alert. If you are not in the mood for that, skip to the Determined Cat picture. That's where the good stuff starts.

I hate birthdays.

Or rather, I hate my birthday. At least I used to, until this year.

My birthday falls in the middle of the Summer. 
This normally meant that:

1. I was never able to just bring a cake to school.
2. Everyone always forgot about my birthday, because everyone was on holiday on that day.
3. Everyone, that is, except me.

My parents being artists, usually they worked more during the school holidays than during the school year. Yep, that means during my birthday too.
Also, in Sicily it is stupidly hot in August, so someone invented the rule that I couldn't have a birthday cake, because it was too hot to eat it.

Revenant...

'ello everyone!

I have been away (both physically and metaphorically) for a long time.

My last post and subsequent absence made me realise how many more people than I thought are actually reading this little blog.

In the past few weeks since I've been back to the UK and started to do Buddhist activities again, I have had a lot of people expressing concern about my happiness after having read that post. Some people wondered if I had stopped practising, some others thought I had abandoned the blog.

I came back to the blog today and found THREE beautiful comments awaiting my approval.

I feel loved.

I don't want to discuss what happened to me (I will refer to it from now on as That Thing That Happened, or TTTH), people close to me know it well enough and I don't want to dwell on it. Things that happen to us, I believe, are not important in themselves, but only for the relevance and connection they have to our own lives. In other words, it's not what happens that we have to analyse, it's our reaction to it.

Dancing experience part the third: Videos!!!

Finally, my bellydance video is ready!

The background for this wonderful experience can be found in these two posts:

Dancing experience in-the-making
Dancing experience part two. AKA the One Evil

Now, onto the technical aspects.
The day I stood up and made my rather crazy determination, I actually had no idea how to put it into practice. I mean, of course I had to keep on dancing and learn the choreography, I knew I needed a costume, but I also needed someone to shoot it and a place.

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.

On the transformation of karma.

I am a fukushi. I am really proud of having been brought up within this Buddhism and to have all these years of experience in faith.

Often the years of experience mean very little. I am now 27. This means that I have chanted my first daimoku more than 26 years ago and I have been doing gongyo regularly for 15 years.

And yet, only a few weeks ago did I really understand (and experience) the principle of transforming your karma through your buddhist practice.

In buddhism, we believe that at some point in the distant past, we have been sitting at a ceremony, called the Ceremony in the Air, with Shakyamuni Buddha and countless other Buddhas and Bodhisattvas. In that occasion, we have made the great vow of becoming absolutely happy and teaching others to do the same.

In order to fulfil this vow, we have all chosen, allow me to repeat, we have CHOSEN a certain karma, laden with specific challenges. We have made this choice in order to be able to transform this particular karma and, by doing so, to provide example to others and lead them to the path of happiness.

Sometimes you just need to blow your own trumpet...

As part of my journey of becoming a person of unlimited self-esteem, I decided to write a list (or two), of things that I can do well and that I am proud of. 
I am generally my harshest critic, so putting it together was a pain, but I think it's important if I want to learn to truly appreciate myself. 

Dancing experience in-the-making

Here I am, back from the land of the dead, AKA writer's block.

Lately, I have been doing a lot (and I do mean A LOT) of Buddhist activity and lots of other things, which means that I haven't had the time, or the head, to write anything on here, which made for a very poor start for 2013.

This will change. Has changed.

So, I wanted to talk about something that doesn't happen often enough (at least to me): a New Year's Resolution that is actually being carried through.

I know, shocking.

Only, it was my LAST YEAR'S New Year resolution, which my HoY read out in assembly in front of an entire cohort of Y8 students. Harumph:

"To take my bellydancing seriously"

So, after having to shamefully admit in front of said cohort of Y8 students that, no, I indeed had not taken it seriously, I began thinking about it. And then, amazingly, I started doing something about it.

Why amazingly? Read on.

Grade 1 Study Exam - 2012. Section B. AKA Shijo Kingo

This is the third installment of a series dedicated to the study exams. 
As for anything in Buddhism, preparing the exam is turning into a great faith - and life - experience.

So, after Section A1 and Section A2, here is section B.

Section B of the exam is based on a Gosho called The Hero of the World. It is Gosho n.102 in The Writings of Nichiren Daishonin Volume I, (pp 835-841). It was written in 1277 and is one of many Gosho addressed to Shijo Kingo. 

Before moving onto the exam paper, allow me to say a thing or two about Shijo Kingo. 

A new start to my Human Revolution: Dedicated Lilac

On the 2nd of June I attended the Dedicated Lilac Graduation ceremony.

Becoming a Dedicated Lilac has been a goal of mine since 2009.

But let's start from the beginning :)

In 1998 I started practising Nichiren Buddhism regularly. I was twelve at the time, and this meant my practice had several limitations. One, I had to wait my 18th birthday to receive Gohonzon (or in my case, become a member). Another one was that I could not take up any responsibility, again until my 18th birthday. But the biggest one, for me, was that I could not do lilac.

Courses and songs

This post should have been another of my descriptive, "everyday Buddhism" posts to talk about Buddhist courses, and it has shifted into one of my biggest experiences so far.

Because my HQ course has been the first time I had to sneak out a lilac shift to cry. And also the second time.

But let’s start from the beginning. Or, well, from the point where my memories started creeping back and creeping me out.

An old experience, for now

I have been really slacking on my blogging. Amazingly enough, there are a few people who are reading this, and I am really sorry I have let you down.

I have an experience simmering, springing from my recent HQ course, but I haven't got the head to write it up yet, and maybe, who knows, it's not complete after all.

So for now, I will share the first experience I have written in my whole (and admittedly quite long) Buddhist life.

It was originally told at a magical meeting on a boathouse, in honour of the European guests coming to London for the 50th anniversary of SGI in Europe.

It was my first time writing down an experience, and I decided to amend it slightly and share it on my blog.