“A group of immigrants enters a new world”

  Etiwanda, California at the Myohoji Temple, October 24, 1976 at precisely 11:13:14 am, Pacific Daylight Savings Time, the priest taps me on the head with a scroll rolled up in a white envelope tied with a blue ribbon, the Gohonzon (object of worship); one of a group of fourteen other celebrants. At the moment my head is tapped, friend Robert LuPone (who lured me into this strange celebration) clocks the time on one of his precision watches:  11:13:14 am Pacific daylight time.

  Strange, perhaps, but the moment we had entered the temple that day, hearing soft, mysterious sounds of chanting, Nam Myoho Renge-kyo, I turn to Bob and Kathy to say, ”I’ve been here before.” If this is true, I’ve never left this world in forty years.

  Found in the symbolism marking that formal entry into the Buddha’s teachings we find the Zodiac degree for the Sun’s position relative to the eastern horizon as 23° Sagi­ttarius, the “Rising Sign” or the true nature of the moment, the start of the first house where one discovers through life experiences How to envision and deal with destiny:

a group of immigrants as they fulfill the require­ments for entrance into the new country.  Keynote:  Consciously accepting the ways of a new stage of experience, in readiness for the opportunities it will present. . . “We find our­selves in a period of TRANSITION [Rudhyar’s key word].  We have to imitate, yet retain our inner integrity.”

  Well, forty years later, still at it, and the original Gohonzon received that day still graces my meditation center. (Robert LuPone, by the way, has been active in theatre all these years, currently as Director/Founder of Manhattan Class Company in New York.) Practice is much different than earlier days, and I no longer formally belong to any Buddhist sect. As to “results” and “merits” derived? Perhaps some of them may be seen in the postings here at “Ancestral Well.”