A personal blog by a graying (mostly Anglo with light African-American roots) gay left leaning liberal progressive married college-educated Buddhist Baha'i BBC/NPR-listening Professor Emeritus now following the Dharma in Minas Gerais, Brasil.
The
reason that remarkable stories of forgiveness take our breath away is
that we instantly feel the liberation in the lifting of boundaries, the
end of separation, of “inside” and “outside.”
As
your mindfulness develops, your resentment for the change, your dislike
for the unpleasant experiences, your greed for the pleasant
experiences, and the notion of selfhood will be replaced by the deeper
awareness of impermanence, unsatisfactoriness, and selflessness.
Grew up a bahai, felt immense love from the community and loved the teachings. Started having homosexual thoughts at 12 and now 10 years later the still haven’t left me. I have prayed so much that I don’t even know if I want to live anymore. I am clinically depressed and the thought of my family or the community finding out I’m gay would make me want to commit suicide.
This is all as a result of the Bahai Faith which is supposed to be a ‘progressive’ and ‘accepting’ religion which teaches about the unity of mankind. I feel isolated and repressing this part of myself is truly AWFUL for gay bahais. I have no one to talk to about this except for my therapist and even telling her has caused me so much pain because I hate associating the Faith with the reason for my depression. It should be a solace and a source of comfort in my life but the past few years has made me doubt everything I truly believed in before. I wonder why I am ‘spiritually diseased’ as Shoghi Effendi wrote. I think about how Bahaullah taught about the harmony between science and religion yet Bahais do not see homosexuality as a natural thing. I just feel like this is too much for me to handle and I am gradually drifting away. I don’t pray anymore, I just go to activities to support my family and friends and for the social interactions because otherwise I would be a disappointment to people.
I’ve turned to bad coping mechanisms to help escape the reality of who I am. I am so ashamed and feel horrible guilt over the person I am that I wonder how I’d ever be able to overcome this ‘spiritual disease’. Conversion therapy? No thanks. It’s detrimental to anyone who engages with it. I’m so heart broken that I believe in Bahaullah and everything he taught except for this ONE thing which is a part of who I am. I’m sure there are may gay bahais out there like me who also feel the same. We can’t just be expected to stay in the closet and not get married or stay celibate our whole lives. I’d rather die.
Sorry for the rant I’m just super upset and feeling a lot of mixed emotions around the faith.
She’s the Queen of Rock ’n’ Roll. An unwanted child. A believer in the power of love. A longtime Buddhist. Andrea Miller talks to Tina Turner.
Tina Turner. Photo by Alberto Venzago.
Tina Turner—I’ll never forget my first glimpse of her. It was when I was ten years old and watched Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. She had killer legs, impressively large shoulder pads (even by eighties standards), and the most incredible raspy, sexy voice I’d ever heard. What happened to me is what, at that point, had been happening to audiences for more than two decades, and now has been happening for more than half a century: I was awed.
The Queen of Rock ’n’ Roll is not just a powerhouse on stage. She is also a longtime Buddhist, having begun her practice in the 1970s while struggling to end an abusive relationship with musician Ike Turner. Soka Gakkai, the tradition to which Tina Turner adheres, is like other schools and subschools of Nichiren Buddhism; it focuses on the Lotus Sutra and teaches that chanting its title in Japanese—Nam-myoho-renge-kyo—ultimately enables chanters to embrace the entirety of the text and uncover their buddhanature.
Turner chanting the Lotus Sutra is featured on Beyond, an album that weaves together Buddhist and Christian prayers, and also features the singers Dechen Shak-Dagsay and Regula Curti. “Bringing together corresponding pieces from Christian and Tibetan Buddhist traditions as has been done here,” wrote the Dalai Lama in the liner notes, “will allow listeners to share in these prayers, stirring thoughts of deeper respect and peace in their lives.” All revenue from the CD goes to foundations dedicated to spiritual education or helping children and mothers in need.
In this interview, Turner speaks about the power of song and practice, and the meaning of love.
All religions speak about love, and it sounds easy to be loving. But people so frequently fail to love. Why is loving so difficult?
Some people are born into a loving family. For example, everyone in the family greets everyone else in the morning, they sit at breakfast together, they give each other a kiss when they leave. There is harmony and love in the house. When you are born with that, you take it with you.
But some people are born into situations where they’re exposed to everything but love. The world is full of people that are born into such situations, and they are traveling through life in the dark. No one has ever explained to them that they need to find love, and they have no education for love except for falling in love with another person, for sexual love. I believe that the problem with the world today is that we have too many people who are not in touch with true love.
Get 'Beyond' Featuring Tina Turner chanting the mantra chanting 'Nam-Myoho-Renge-Kyo' here: http://amzn.to/2ejZ08u
The meaning of the Lotus Sutra is 'I devote my life to the Mystic Law of the Lotus Sutra'. It is the royal sutra of Nichiren Buddhism in Japan (1253). Coming from India to China and then to Japan, the prayer was translated from the Sanskrit word ‘Saddharma-pundarikasutra » first into classical Chinese as ‘Miao-fa Lien-hua Ching’ and then into an ancient form of Japanese as ‘Myoho Renge Kyo’.
The word 'Nam' derives from the Sanskrit ‘names’ and means ‘devotion’. It is placed before the name of all deities when worshipping them. ‘Myo’ is the name given to the mystic nature of life and ‘Ho’ to its manifestation. ‘Renge’ means lotus flower. The beautiful and undefiled Lotus blooms in a muddy swamp with all the obstacles against it. It symbolizes the emergence of our Buddha nature from the everyday problems and desires of ordinary life. ‘Renge’ stands also for the simultaneity of cause and effect, because the lotus puts forth its flower and seedpod at the same time. ‘Kyo’ literally means sutra, the voice and teaching of the Buddha. It also means sound rhythm or vibration and therefore it might be interpreted to indicate the practice of chanting. Since everything in the universe is connected through sound waves, ‘Kyo » refer to the life activity of universal phenomena and indicates that everything is a manifestation of the Mystic Law. ‘Myoho-Renge-Kyo’ is the Mystic Law of the Lotus Sutra.
An explanation can help you understand, but the Sutra can only be fully appreciated through chanting it. TINA: ‘However you must do it, to truly understand.
When you say ‘Nam-Myoho-Renge-Kyo’ it will slowly remove all of the bad decisions you have ever made.
The more you repeat the words the more you make your life clearer. The more you chant it the closer you get to your true nature. Your true nature is the right way of thinking and the right way of acting. The longer you go on this path, the more you avoid making wrong decisions. The Lotus Sutra helps me in my daily life. It is indeed mystical! And my life has proven this!’
GET 'BEYOND' (2009): http://goo.gl/uYccFZ GET 'CHILDREN BEYOND' (2011): http://goo.gl/vfrDek GET "BEYOND 'LOVE WITHIN' (2014): http://goo.gl/hiuNOG Video: Xaver Walser Music: Regula Curti & Roland Frey (NJP Studio Zurich) Album Producers: Erwin Bach & Beat Curti Video Editing & Upload: Ben (TinaTurnerBlog.com) ALL RIGHT RESERVED BEYOND FOUNDATION #TinaTurnerBlog#TinaTurnerMantras
We
need to give up something. We can’t have it all. We can’t try to layer
wisdom on top of confusion. The spiritual path is about what we give up,
not what we get.
Just
as meditation requires an understanding of the practice as well as
determination to carry it out, likewise it requires a sense of balance
to determine when to push ourselves harder and when to step back and
relax where we are, without falling into either of two extremes.
Experiencing
emptiness is also experiencing peace, and the potential of peace is its
unfolding as harmony among all people, animals, plants, and things.
Learning
to drop what we’re doing, however momentarily, and to genuinely pay
attention in the present moment, without attachment or bias, helps us
become clear, just as a snow globe becomes clear when we stop shaking it
and its flakes settle.
The
focus of Nichiren Buddhism is to transform hardships and sufferings and
enjoy a meaningful happy life. There are no commandments in Soka
Buddhism on personal matters of the individual.
President of SGI, Daisaku Ikeda addressed the LGTBQ community within SGI at their cultural meetings and celebrations: “Daisaku
Ikeda, recently circulated a message to LGBT members, Robert proudly
recites it off by heart, “Nature is diverse, human Beings are diverse,
that is the natural way of things.”
Daisaku
Ikeda also regularly sends messages to annual meetings of SGI’s gay
groups, his most recent said: “Buddhism makes it possible for us to
bring forth our innate, brilliant humanity to the fullest, enabling us
to manifest it through our unpretentious, natural behavior as genuinely
human beings”.
The essence of Buddhism is the conviction that we have within us at each moment the ability to overcome any problem or difficulty that we may encounter in life; a capacity to transform any suffering. Our lives possess this power because they are inseparable from the fundamental law that underlies the workings of all life and the universe.
Nichiren, the 13th-century Buddhist monk upon whose teachings the SGI is based, awakened to this law, or principle, and named it “Nam-myoho-renge-kyo.” Through the Buddhist practice he developed, he provided a way for all people to activate it within their own lives and experience the joy that comes from being able to liberate oneself from suffering at the most fundamental level.
Shakyamuni, the founder of Buddhism, who lived some 2,500 years ago in India, first awoke to this law out of a compassionate yearning to find the means to enable all people to be free of the inevitable pains of life. It is because of this that he is known as Buddha, or “Awakened One.” Discovering that the capacity to transform suffering was innate within his own life, he saw too that it is innate within all beings.
The record of Shakyamuni’s teachings to awaken others was captured for posterity in numerous Buddhist sutras. The culmination of these teachings is the Lotus Sutra. In Japanese, “Lotus Sutra” is rendered as Myoho-renge-kyo. CourageWhat may to one person seem a simple problem may be experienced by another as overwhelming and insurmountable. But the process of summoning up the courage required to take action is always the same regardless of how seemingly big or small the challenge. Over a thousand years after Shakyamuni, amidst the turbulence of 13th-century Japan, Nichiren similarly began a quest to recover the essence of Buddhism for the sake of the suffering masses. Awakening to the law of life himself, Nichiren was able to discern that this fundamental law is contained within Shakyamuni’s Lotus Sutra and that it is encapsulated and concisely expressed in the sutra’s title—Myoho-renge-kyo. Nichiren designated the title of the sutra as the name of the law and established the practice of reciting Nam-myoho-renge-kyo as a practical way for all people to focus their hearts and minds upon this law and manifest its transformative power in reality. Nam comes from the Sanskrit namas, meaning to devote or dedicate oneself.
Nam-myoho-renge-kyo is thus a vow, an expression of determination, to embrace and manifest our Buddha nature. It is a pledge to oneself to never yield to difficulties and to win over one’s suffering. At the same time, it is a vow to help others reveal this law in their own lives and achieve happiness.
The individual characters that make up Myoho-renge-kyo express key characteristics of this law. Myo can be translated as mystic or wonderful, and ho means law. This law is called mystic because it is difficult to comprehend. What exactly is it that is difficult to comprehend? It is the wonder of ordinary people, beset by delusion and suffering, awakening to the fundamental law in their own lives, bringing forth wisdom and compassion and realizing that they are inherently Buddhas able to solve their own problems and those of others. The Mystic Law transforms the life of anyone—even the unhappiest person, at any time and in any circumstances—into a life of supreme happiness.
Renge, meaning lotus blossom, is a metaphor that offers further insight into the qualities of this Mystic Law. The lotus flower is pure and fragrant, unsullied by the muddy water in which it grows. Similarly, the beauty and dignity of our humanity is brought forth amidst the sufferings of daily reality.
Further, unlike other plants, the lotus puts forth flowers and fruit at the same time. In most plants, the fruit develops after the flower has bloomed and the petals of the flower have fallen away. The fruit of the lotus plant, however, develops simultaneously with the flower, and when the flower opens, the fruit is there within it. This illustrates the principle of the simultaneity of cause and effect; we do not have to wait to become someone perfect in the future, we can bring forth the power of the Mystic Law from within our lives at any time.
The principle of the simultaneity of cause and effect clarifies that our lives are fundamentally equipped with the great life state of the Buddha and that the attainment of Buddhahood is possible by simply opening up and bringing forth this state. Sutras other than the Lotus Sutra taught that people could attain Buddhahood only by carrying out Buddhist practice over several lifetimes, acquiring the traits of the Buddha one by one. The Lotus Sutra overturns this idea, teaching that all the traits of the Buddha are present within our lives from the beginning.
Kyo literally means sutra and here indicates the Mystic Law likened to a lotus flower, the fundamental law that permeates life and the universe, the eternal truth. The Chinese character kyo also implies the idea of a “thread.” When a fabric is woven, first, the vertical threads are put in place. These represent the basic reality of life.
They are the stable framework through which the horizontal threads are woven. These horizontal threads, representing the varied activities of our daily lives, make up the pattern of the fabric, imparting color and variation. The fabric of our lives is comprised of both a fundamental and enduring truth as well as the busy reality of our daily existence with its uniqueness and variety. A life that is only horizontal threads quickly unravels.
These are some of the ways in which the name “Myoho-renge-kyo” describes the Mystic Law, of which our lives are an expression. To chant Nam-myoho-renge-kyo is an act of faith in the Mystic Law and in the magnitude of life’s inherent possibilities. Throughout his writings, Nichiren emphasizes the primacy of faith. He writes, for instance: “The Lotus Sutra . . . says that one can ‘gain entrance through faith alone.’ . . . Thus faith is the basic requirement for entering the way of the Buddha.” The Mystic Law is the unlimited strength inherent in one’s life. To believe in the Mystic Law and chant Nam-myoho-renge-kyo is to have faith in one’s unlimited potential. It is not a mystical phrase that brings forth supernatural power, nor is Nam-myoho-renge-kyo an entity transcending ourselves that we rely upon. It is the principle that those who live normal lives and make consistent efforts will duly triumph.
To chant Nam-myoho-renge-kyo is to bring forth the pure and fundamental energy of life, honoring the dignity and possibility of our ordinary lives.
A short film demonstrating how to begin chanting Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, explaining its meaning and introducing the daily Buddhist practice of SGI members around the world.
In SGI-USA’s latest video, actor Orlando Bloom discusses his practice
of Nichiren Buddhism. Mr. Bloom also details his encounter with SGI
President Ikeda in 2006 and how his message to “be your authentic
self” became foundational guidance for his life.
