Chicago Faith Journey, Continued

I have forgotten to continue with the details of my Chicago trip. If it isn't interesting anymore, please leave a comment and tell me to move on. I will obey. Trust and obey, that is.

Anyhoo, after the Mosque we went to a Soka Gakkai Buddhist temple, which looked like a post office. We went in and a lady, Barbara, spoke to us for some time. She seemed a little crazy, like someone who had been very hurt by very many people in the past. She mentioned having planned to commit suicide because some things had happened to her, including losing her hair. On her way to kill herself, someone invited her to chant and she felt better, and has kept up with it for twenty years now.

There is nothing but you, according to her. You chant for things and actualize them. You cause them. You don't chant TO anyone; you just chant. You don't chant to contact or tap into anything; you just chant. She spoke of having chanted for things, their not going the way she wanted, but working out better in the end, thus showing that she actualized greater goods that she wasn't even aware of.

Also, there is no evil, but you have your own sense of good through terms of cause-and-effect, and "what works."

It really freaked me out and was completely unappealing. It's just chanting. In Japanese. To a shrine.

I guess that's all I have to say about this, because I dislike it so much. Perhaps I'll write more when I have some free time.