Wow, I had an inspiring day, even though it started with a night I hardly slept. And I had to wake up quite early as a friend of mine had invited me to attend a Buddhist meeting of SGI, representative organization of Nichiren Daishonin Buddhism at 9.30am, so it was not really easy for me to get going, especially as waking up is not my strongest characteristic.
I still don’t fully get this Buddhist thing, including the chanting of Nam-Myo-Ho-Renge-Kyo, but as my friend seems to be very positive and happy I have decided I’ll give it a try. The philosophy of Nichiren Daishonin Buddhism is a bit weird though at first, as it seems on many questions I have the simple answer is ‘just chant’. Being quite a complicated person as I think I am that’s not an easy answer to deal with, but maybe it is exactly the answer I and I guess many other people need: just keep it simple, don’t think, just do and everything will be ok. Of course there is more to it, but then better check out any SGI member or the SGI website for more information as I’m not a member and they are very serious about the right teaching.
About today during the chanting in the meeting I had many experiences. At first I just started to cry, which felt very embarrassing, as I was just new and I guess the only one crying. It was the first time in a long time though that I realized that I am a very sensitive person and that this crying is part of it. It’s not really sadness or so, just very deep emotion. And I realized that I had suppressed that emotion or maybe expressing that emotion for too long, like completely harnessing it inside, locking it up. And I am starting to realize that doing things like that, locking myself up, would of course result in an awful lot of stress and complete isolation from other people. Because how can other people see me as I really am, how can I see myself as I really am if I completely hide, well, completely hide myself, hide my true feelings, my true self. How can people love me, how can I love myself if I deny my very self, my very own being.
The second thing that happened was that i noticed that it took a while for the chanting to be in unison, or at least for like 80% in unison. It was my first experience with chanting in quite a large group and I never noticed the differences and the importance of a leader. And the difference of the leader chanting or not. And realizing that probably everybody has or had a similar experience as I had, And for me the experience was something like my emotions making it hard for me to chant, mainly because of my emotional crying. But sometimes also just feeling blocked. And it felt that the whole group was just trying to get ‘in tune’ trying to get rid of all negativity by chanting. And it took a while before there was some kind of unison in the chanting, so it seemed like quite an effort, but it felt good as the chanting got more and more, well, smooth, in unison. So there was change in energy, there was turning negative into positive, and it was kind of massive.
What I also noticed was that everybody chants differently, indeed, trying to get in tune, but different. It told me that people are different, but everybody is trying to get to ‘the good’. It made me realize that in real life people are also different, something I don’t fully get or maybe often just forget, not realize. So quite an experience for me, the ‘large group chant’.
And then the song Sleeping Child of Michael Learns to Rock was played, played on a guitar. And the guitar sounded cheap at first. And then I realized I like this type of guitar. And that I really like and love this song. And that the player, although he did not play it perfect, had done his effort, had done his exercise. And suddenly I realized that i had forgotten this type of guitar sound, that I had forgotten to listen to music for a long time. That i had forgotten how beautiful music can be, life can be. And I still don’t know what happened to me in life, i still don’t know why I ended up here, in misery, with everything fallen apart. But this song, this guitar player, this guitar sound brought back some of my long forgotten dreams, some of my long forgotten ‘enjoy life’ things, no matter how imperfect the guitar sound, no matter how imperfect the guitar player. It was one of the most beautiful things I ever experienced, so thank you friend who brought me here, thank you guitar player, for giving me this today.