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.

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.

Sokas and Lilacs part the second (aka The Revenge)

If you have read a couple of posts here you know, but if you just happened to stumble on this blog today, I'll just tell you that I'm a bit obsessed about the whole topic of being a Lilac.

As a matter of fact the whole concept of this blog started with the post "It's not lilac-like" taking shape in my brain, and myself realising that my then blog was not the right place to post it.

So it seems fitting that the first request for a post would be on the topic of lilac-ing.

As I mentioned in that post, I had to do some research into the matter to write the requested article, because I pretty much didn't have a clue.

The anonymous commenter was happy with the result, which is all that matters really, but there was one little thing that kept nagging me. I managed to get a very clear picture of the different roles of Sokas and Lilacs (thanks to the Sokas I stalked, mostly), but I was still in the dark as to WHY things were this way.

So, when the other day I found myself at a Q&A session with the National Lilac leader, I couldn't resist, and asked.

Sokas and Lilacs

I have recently gone through quite a dry spell in my blogging. In Italian we call it "blocco dello scrittore", or writer's block. 

Then the other day an anonymous made the following comment:

I'm interested in how the Lilac role that the women plays differs from the Soka role that the men play. I'd love to hear more about this if you'd consider writing something.

Dedicated Lilac Song

UPDATE: the website mentioned here has now been discontinued. All the songs and materials can now be found on the SGI members website. Every area has a unique login and password, so if you want to access this free content, you need to ask your local leaders for the login details.

Here is a link where you can find the Dedicated Lilac Song. It is an amazing song, really uplifting!

You can download both the lyrics and an mp3 file.

I found the instructions on the page to download the mp3 not to be working on my Mac. The option "Download linked file" doesn't appear when control clicking (or doing the double finger clicking which corresponds to right-click).

"Copy link location" works fine, oddly enough. The file is now safely stored in my iTunes library :)

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.

Guilt and Hon-nin myo

Today I did lilac at the Youth inspiration day at Brixton National Centre.

I had never been to that centre before and I was eager to visit it and lilac there. I was also looking forward to the day. Every year, we hold a big inspirational event on or around the 16th of March. I will write on the importance of the day in my next post.

In my experience, based on how I feel after, there are mainly two types of buddhist meetings. There are those that make you feel full of energy, happy and bouncing around, feeling absolute joy and elation. I feel like that after most meetings, and I feed off that joy and energy for days after the meeting.

Then there's a more complex sort of reaction. Sometimes, after a meeting, I feel weird. I can' exactly pinpoint what's wrong, I just know that something IS wrong. The best ways I can explain it is, I feel fragmented, unsure, swaying between a world and the other without any specific purpose. Until suddenly, something clicks. Something I was mulling over at the back of my head surfaces and I have to deal with it. This more often than not ends in tears, then something else clicks, and I feel better, until eventually, I reach that same feeling of joy and elation, just maybe a bit less euphoric and more serene.

In other words, folks, some meeting make me feel happy, some others trigger my human revolution.

It's not lilac-like!

On Tuesday I was doing a lilac shift at LIPC. I was my first time covering the evening weeknight shifts, but not my first time lilac-ing at Sensei’s video’s showing.

One of the girls who was lilac-ing with me, after action gongyo, told the action chief “We can’t hug because I’m lilac-ing, but you know I love you.” and I thought: “Of course, it’s not lilac-like!” (get it? lady-like/lilac-like? Nevermind) and just about controlled my giggles at my wit.

I’m aware that to the non-buddhists, that first paragraph, not to mention the title, probably makes as much sense as a cat wearing braces, which is… well, it’s actually quite cool.