SGI UK Youth Division 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 Youth Division Song. We sang it today at my Chapter's study kick-off. I really really like it, especially the rhythm of the chorus, it's really catchy.

You can download both the lyrics and an mp3 file.

Once again, the instructions on the page to download the mp3 don't work on my Mac. And sadly the "Copy link location" trick I did last time didn't work this time around, but I'm having problems downloading anything today, so I'll try again and maybe edit. 

My Chapter's leader happens to be one of the writers of the song, and he told us the story of how it came to be. He was in Trets - a Buddhist cultural centre in the south of France where a lot of international training courses are held (note to self: MUST go to Trets, soon), when a National leader approached him and a few other musicians and asked them to write a song for the YD. They sat under a tree and did it.

It might sound cheesy that a group of young people, sitting under a tree in the sun would come up with a lovely song in just a few minutes, but it makes perfect sense to me. A training course is just a monumental source of inspiration, and it maximises your natural talent... you actually get to discover talents you didn't know you had, to be honest (and I speak from personal experience here).

When my life opened wide. AKA The Gohonzon

Hello people, I'm back from the land of the dead, i.e. my holidays, survived my first two weeks in school and went to an A-M-A-Z-I-N-G Summer course.

The Summer course has been an important turning point in my practice, and really in my life. I will need a while to come to terms with all the things that happened there. I will, eventually, write everything up, but not now.

However, I need to get back into the good habit of writing this blog (even if noone answered my plea for help, me not happy >.<)

During the course, we had our first ever Gohonzon receiving (at a course). Two beautiful young women made the commitment to practise this Buddhism, and they inspired me to write this post.

Ages ago, I had decided to write about my Gohonzon receiving day and the Gohonzon in general, but never got round to it, until now.

Some blog that I used to know

Just in case you were wondering, I have not fallen off the face of the Earth.

I'm on holiday.

I spent two weeks in sunny Salamanca, improving my Spanish and having adventures (like spending the night in the car park of Madrid airport with 20+ hippies), and am now about to relocate to Sicily for another couple of weeks, before going back to my beloved job of trying not to murder children on a daily basis teaching.

That, however, is not the reason why I haven't kept up with my weekly update on my blog.

I hit a dry spell. I haven't got the faintest clue what to write next. Hopefully my mother will have some ideas when I get home later on today, but as of now, I can just stare at the blank page.

So, if any of the lovely people who are reading this blog has any idea or question, please do ask. I'm not a Buddhist scholar, but I have access to vast literature and expert consultants (dad? DAD!?!?!?!) and I'll be glad to sink my teeth into any topic you would like me to write on.

Please.

I beg you.

Thanks.

More songs

Today I went to an inspiration day. It wasn't in my chapter, but I happened to lilac with the vice action chief on Thursday and she invited me to go anyway.

It was a lovely meeting, featuring a lecture by the Men's Area leader on "making the impossible possible", two great experiences and (and here we go to the point of this post) a short entertainment provided by a Young Man. First he sang a song he composed and then his favourite SGI song "March towards the 21st century".

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.