by Adin Strauss
SGI-USA General Director
Words cannot express our appreciation for the outpouring of concern we’ve received for the SGI-USA members, their families and friends, and all people who have been deeply impacted by the fires in the Los Angeles area.
The entire SGI community in Southern California tremendously appreciates all the messages of support and daimoku you have been sending.
Nichiren Daishonin encourages us: “Great events never have minor omens. When great evil occurs, great good follows.”[1] The “great good” of which Nichiren speaks is determined by our actions in the present. This is the Soka Gakkai spirit.
We have witnessed the SGI community here come together—opening our centers to provide support to evacuees, staying in tight and steady contact, and providing incredible care for those who, in some cases, walked away with only the clothes on their backs. The members affected by the fires, meanwhile, have shown such incredible strength and resilience. One member who lost everything said that, in chanting, she realized that she did not need to rise from the ashes like a phoenix because she was already a bodhisattva who had emerged from the earth.
SGI-USA leaders have been moving briskly to meet with people affected by the fires, providing relief supplies and Omamori Gohonzon to those who lost their homes.
We are still in the earliest stages of recovery and a long road lies ahead, but some things I’ve noted:
- Local SGI communities most affected by these fires have been able to quickly locate and effectively reach out because of the individual care they have done up to now. They visit and know where each member lives. And because of that, these members took their call at a crucial moment, even if they hadn’t been to an SGI activity in quite some time.
- All people, including our members, were greatly protected. In the case of the Pacific Palisades neighborhood, its location between the mountains and ocean creates unique challenges for car travel, with limited routes out of the area. While some members lost their homes, had the fires that occurred midmorning broken out in the middle of the night, the outcome could have been tragically different.
- Our spiritual “training” as Buddhists that we fall back on at a crucial moment is to “Strengthen … faith day by day and month after month. Should you slacken in your resolve even a bit, devils will take advantage,”[2] in the words of Nichiren. Like a top-flight athlete, if we cruise through life without effort, then it’s difficult to respond at a crucial moment.
One of the evacuees called the SGI “the real deal” because it’s been there for him at his lowest moments. “The SGI,” he said, “is the women’s division member who stayed on the phone with me the night that my wife died until she was sure I was OK. That’s the Soka Gakkai.”
It’s time for us as a Buddhist community to come together, to go deeper in creating genuine bonds of friendship and community, and in our effort to raise successors of our Soka movement.
SGI-USA men’s leader James Herrmann recalled the time when U.S. youth training course participants returning home from Japan on Sept. 11, 2001, had their plane diverted to Canada because the U.S. borders had been sealed after the terrorist attacks.
When he was finally able to turn on his phone, the first call came from Ikeda Sensei’s office. Sensei relayed the Daishonin’s words: “Great events never have minor omens. When great evil occurs, great good follows.” He added: “I will be taking full responsibility for your safety and will ensure your safety until you get home.”
With the same heart as Sensei, we can use this moment to open a completely new era in our kosen-rufu movement in America, to transform our country on the deepest level. This is my determination. Please join me.
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