la réception du gohonzon

Dans la Soka Gakkai la réception du gohonzon en elle même est gratuite, si le nouveau membre souhaite faire un don à cette occasion, il est libre de le faire. Se sont les dons qui font fonctionner l’organisation et permettent de bénéficier des lieux de séminaires, de retransmissions et de cérémonies bouddhiques (Mariage bouddhique, cérémonie pour les défunts, remise de gohonzon...). Il n’existe aucune contrainte financière dans la Soka Gakkai, c’est important de le dire et de le faire savoir en terme de gratuité du culte et de non-sectarisme Aucune cérémonie n’est payante. Des dons peuvent se faire en différentes occasions où ils sont recueillis et restent entièrement libre.

Traditionellement nous pouvons “faire zaïmu” (le don) vers le printemps. L’esprit du don est une chose importante du point de vue de la loi de causalité, il ne faut donc pas donner à contre coeur ou avec un sentiment de culpabilité, mais librement , en conscience de l’importance et de la fonction de celui-ci et aussi du respect de ses propres moyens financiers. C’est la sagesse qui doit nous déterminer, sachant que notre don sert un mouvement international pour la construction de la paix mondiale. C’est un acte adulte de bon sens. De plus la Soka Gakkai contribue à de nombreuses actions humanitaires et ceux qui peuvent donner des sommes plus ou moins importantes le font aussi pour ceux qui peuvent le moins. Toutefois l’importance du don dans l’esprit bouddhique relève du coeur qui le fait et non de la capacité à “signer un chèque” plus ou moins important. Rapellons nous la parabole du roi Asoka qui, dans une vie entérieure, était un petit garçon pauvre qui offrit un simple paté de sable au bouddha Shakiamuni, grâce à quoi la rétribution karmique lui permit de devenir ce grand roi qui se converti au bouddhisme, dans sa vie future !

Jimmy Carter Quits the Baptists | Stands Up for Women

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Tsunesaburo Makiguchi

Tsunesaburo Makiguchi (1871-1944) was a forward-thinking geographer, educational theorist and religious reformer who lived and worked during the tumultuous early decades of Japan's modern era. His opposition to Japan's militarism and nationalism led to his imprisonment and death during World War II.

Makiguchi is best known for two major works,
The Geography of Human Life and The System of Value-Creating Pedagogy, and as the founder, in 1930, of the Soka Gakkai, which is today the largest lay Buddhist organization in Japan and has 12 million members worldwide.

Consistent throughout his writing and in his work as a classroom teacher and school principal is his belief in the centrality of the happiness of the individual. This same commitment can be seen in his role as a religious reformer: he rejected the attempts of the authorities to subvert the essence of the Buddhist teachings, insisting that religion always exists to serve human needs.

Who is Nichiren Daishonin?

SGI members follow the teachings of Nichiren, a Buddhist monk who lived in thirteenth-century Japan. Nichiren's teachings provide a way for anybody to readily draw out the enlightened wisdom and energy of Buddhahood from within their lives, regardless of their individual circumstances. Each person has the power to overcome all of life's challenges, to live a life of value and become a positive influence in their community, society and the world.
Nichiren was born in 1222 in Japan, a time rife with social unrest and natural disasters. The common people, especially, suffered enormously. Nichiren wondered why the Buddhist teachings had lost their power to enable people to lead happy, empowered lives. While a young priest, he set out to find an answer to the suffering and chaos that surrounded him. His intensive study of the Buddhist sutras convinced him that the Lotus Sutra contained the essence of the Buddha's enlightenment and that it held the key to transforming people's suffering and enabling society to flourish.
The Essence of Buddhism

The Lotus Sutra affirms that all people, regardless of gender, capacity or social standing, inherently possess the qualities of a Buddha, and are therefore equally worthy of the utmost respect.

Based on his study of the sutra Nichiren established the invocation (chant) of Nam-myoho-renge-kyo as a universal practice to enable people to manifest the Buddhahood inherent in their lives and gain the strength and wisdom to challenge and overcome any adverse circumstances. Nichiren saw the Lotus Sutra as a vehicle for people's empowerment--stressing that everyone can attain enlightenment and enjoy happiness while they are alive.
Persecution

Nichiren was critical of the established schools of Buddhism that relied on state patronage and merely served the interests of the powerful while encouraging passivity in the suffering masses. He called the feudal authorities to task, insisting that the leaders bear responsibility for the suffering of the population and act to remedy it. His stance, that the state exists for the sake of the people, was revolutionary for its time.

Nichiren's claims invited an onslaught of often-violent persecutions from the military government and the established Buddhist schools. Throughout, he refused to compromise his principles to appease those in authority.

Nichiren's legacy lies in his unrelenting struggle for people's happiness and the desire to transform society into one which respects the dignity and potential of each individual life.

This is your brain on religion

Want to build a better brain? Ramp up your spiritual practice, says Andrew Newberg, a neuroscientist at the University of Pennsylvania. Meditation and prayer can improve your physical, intellectual, and emotional well-being and may even slow the brain's aging process.

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The world is it's own magic.

La vie à la lumière du Bouddhisme

La lumière de la sagesse illumine l’univers tout entier, détruisant la nature aveugle innée de l’homme. L’espace vital du Bouddha s’unit et se fond à l’univers.
Le moi devient le cosmos, et en un bref instant le flux vital s’étend jusqu’à englober tout ce qui est passé et tout ce qui est avenir. La force vital du cosmos jaillit, dans chaque instant du présent, telle une gigantesque fontaine d’énergie. Dans la Bouddhéité, chaque moment présent renferme l’éternité, car l’ensemble de la force vitale du cosmos est comprimée en un simple moment d’existence. Une personne dans l’état de Bouddhéité est à peine consciente du passage du temps physique, parce que sa vie est épanouie et heureuse à chaque instant, comme si elle connaissait la joie de vivre pour l’éternité.
Cette impulsion ne trouvera sa pleine expression que si l’on suit la pratique exposée par Nichiren Daishonin, qui se fonde sur la compréhension de la nature du Bouddha dans tout être, et qui vise à accéder à l’unité avec la force vitale universelle. Dans la religion de Nichiren Daishonin, chaque personne peut devenir une réalisation complète de la Bouddhéité dans son propre être.
Daisaku Ikeda

enlightenment

An interesting idea from Philosopher AC Grayling

" I'm passionately in favour of legalising heroin and cocaine. But I despise people who depend on these things. If you really want a mind-altering experience, look at a tree. "

Your brain on religion

This is your brain on religion

Augustine on time (pardon the pun )

For what is time? Who can easily and briefly explain it? Who even in thought can comprehend it, even to the pronouncing of a word concerning it? But what in speaking do we refer to more familiarly and knowingly than time? And certainly we understand when we speak of it; we understand also when we hear it spoken of by another. What, then, is time? If no one ask of me, I know; if I wish to explain to him who asks, I know not. Yet I say with confidence, that I know that if nothing passed away, there would not be past time; and if nothing were coming, there would not be future time; and if nothing were, there would not be present time. Those two times, therefore, past and future, how are they, when even the past now is not; and the future is not as yet? But should the present be always present, and should it not pass into time past, time truly it could not be, but eternity. If, then, time present — if it be time — only comes into existence because it passes into time past, how do we say that even this is, whose cause of being is that it shall not be — namely, so that we cannot truly say that time is, unless because it tends not to be?

–Augustine of Hippo, Confessiones lib xi, cap xiv, sec 17 (ca. 400 CE)