The Search For Enlightenment

Tonight, ten of us attended the study group at Jayne and Ken Hawkins’ flat in Sandbanks.

The meeting had been planned by the Youth Division, there were several young people there and the topic had been set based around several poems about youth and the importance of youthfulness. The youth of today are, after all, the future.

We started to discuss a couple of the poems, but one lady, who had practiced Nichiren Buddhism in her youth, rather derailed the discussions when she started to explain that she had been rather ill, both physically and mentally. She wanted to know why she was being punished and told us that there were times when she felt she just could not face the future.

Whilst it wasn’t the planned discussion, it gave us all the opportunity to show our support and to help her see that she wasn’t being punished, that is was simply her karma to be suffering in the way she is.

Ken pointed out, that although she had been through some very difficult times, that was in the past and by focussing on the future, and making the right causes, that she could be confident of a much better future. We all tried to explain that the future was under her control.

I don’t think that this single meeting will change her current plight, but it will, if she is supported and resumes her practice, be the trigger for her to create a much better future for herself. After all, we are responsible for our own lives, and for creating the causes for the happiness we wish in our lives.

The meeting ended and I had offered Simon, the head of the youth division in Poole, a lift home. I had no idea that he had been cured, or rather, had cured himself, of Hodgkin Lymphoma, a form of cancer that attacks the body’s lymphatic system.

Whilst Charlotte’s cancer is slightly different, it had spread to the lymph glands under her arm, so is similar. Simon was very helpful and during the journey to Bournemouth, jotted down several natural remedies as well as some useful website addresses for me.

So an evening that was intended to be all about youth, turned into a support group for one of the members and a fact finding mission, albeit unwittingly, about cures and treatments for Charlotte’s condition.

When we chant, it always brings results, but as I have said on so many occasions, not always the results you might expect.

Nam Myoho Renge Kyo.