My immediate experience right after the SGIA 2nd Outlying Region Training Course

I went to a SGIA training course for people living away from the capital cities in Sydney last weekend and almost immediately so many things happened to me. I emailed it to a bunch of people and just today I thought I'd share my experience in the WWW for all to read. So below is copy of the email I sent.

Enjoy the read!

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What I am about to share I guess started on Sunday at the ACC right after the closing ceremony in that meeting room. I was feeling very 'high' filled with hope and determination and courage to go back to Nhill and work harder for kosen-rufu there. This might sound very unusual to those who know me well, but I am actually a bit shy and a bit of a coward in terms of reaching out to others. I can seem very friendly and outgoing to some people, but that is usually because someone else or some situation has introduced me into their world. I rarely initiate conversations and can easily keep to myself. I guess the immediate change I felt and very surprising to me was my encounter with Soon Joon (from Central Coast) at the toilet right after the closing ceremony. For some reason, I really wanted to get to know him - I stopped him and said hi, and told him that I would like to talk to him more first chance we get later (poor guy was busting and I interrupted him on the way to the loo).

Mystically, I later found out that Soon Joon was going to be in the same car as me that would take us to the airport! Anyways, it started to go 'downhill' from here.

After the commemorative meeting, I went to the bookshop and excitedly found a copy of Shin Yatomi's guidances in book form. He has left a really deep impression on me in the previous OYPC. I also bought a cover for my Gosho Vol. 2 - it was something that I held off buying for a long time. To cut a long story short, I misplaced these purchases of mine during lunch. At first I felt really anxious, and a bit of a regret - but for some reason, this feeling didn't last long as I started to think immediately, what value can I create from this? I suddenly realized that things are transient and losing material things is no big deal. Furthermore, Eu-jin was quite worried that we would miss our flight and was saying that we were going to leave soon. All I could do was tell him and also Anurag to look out for these items and hold on to it for me if they found it. Now, I'm mentioning this because I am a type of person that is considered to be a 'hoarder' and letting go of things isn't easy for me. In this instance, I was calm and collected about it and did the most that I can to recover my lost items.

On the way to the airport, our driver was so engaged in dialogue with all of us in the car that he missed the turn to the highway AND drove into Arrivals, instead of Departures at the airport. I'm mentioning this NOT to criticize him, but to say that it suddenly dawn upon me then that 'things' were going 'wrong' around me. Warning bells started ringing in my head. I immediately thought, well, must be my benefit, as I must have gotten something right to invite obstacles.

Sure enough at the airport, things got a bit more worst! When I went to do my electronic check-in, a screen popped up telling me my flight has been cancelled! Great, I thought, more obstacles... Usually I would panic a bit by now, but I was pretty calm, but a bit uneasy as I didn't look forward to arriving late into Melbourne as I had another +4 hours of driving to do. I thought, as I lined up, I'll just be on the next flight, no worries, just a minor setback. But of course, the next flight was full. And so was the next one. And the next one! I ended up on the 6pm flight to Melbourne. I guess the most positive thing about this experience was that I got a $6 meal voucher. Yay! Free meal! Food always makes me happy.

Like all things usual on that day - it got a bit more worst for me!!

As I walked through the security checks, I picked up my backpack and laptop and moved to the far corner away from crowds to repack my laptop. Of course, I stood out like a sore thumb for the security guy to pick me "randomly" for a standard trace particle test. Great...

What they do is that they have this sticky tab that they brush on your clothes and shoes to pick up fine trace particles and put it into a machine to analyze and gives a loud beep if it detects anything contraband like drugs, etc.

Of course the machine had to beep loudly for me... twice.

I was informed that I had been tested double-positive for tmx(?) something to do with explosives. Right then I was thinking *OH SH*T!* (not the they-caught-me type, but the how-can-that-be-even-remotely

-possible??!!! type). They told me that they had to frisk me and search my baggage.

I was taken to another room where they got me to sign a consent form, frisk me, took my shoes, belt - unpacked my bags and one by one X-rayed them all. Through out this ordeal, I felt quite embarassed, confused, and a bit frustrated. But suddenly, I had that same feeling that I had in the toilet at the ACC (no, not the urge to 'go'). I really wanted to reach out to those security guy.

I found it quite easy to talk about why I was there (Buddhist training course, etc...) I showed them my Omamori Gohonzon and they understood it was important to me and didn't include it in the X-ray (let me hold on to it). There were two security guys in the room with me, one of them Asian and the other of Mediterranean decent. The asian one was very apologetic and kept apologizing to me for the trouble (he was the one to pick me 'randomly' for the test). I ended up reassuring him and encouraging him that it was quite alright and he needed to do his job right. In the short 10 minutes I was with him, I shared about my practice and what I do - in return I found out he was single didn't have kids and this was a new job for him. With the other security guy, through our dialogue, he shared that he lived near the ACC and has seen it before and mentioned it was a 'beautiful place.' We talked casually like old friends. Furthermore, when they let me go, he came chasing after me (this was about 5 minutes later) to give me my boarding pass that they forgot to return to me. When we parted, he gave me a smile and a thumbs up.

I could have looked at this 'incident' negatively, but looking back I was amazed at how I could be calm enough to engage two individuals, with significant authority over me, and have a normal human-to-human engagement.

I would like to say that was all... but there's more to come!

The wait was long! I didn't mind, because I could sit and read Shin Yatomi's book... wait... I lost that... :( Luckily, I had my laptop with me so I can make use of my time to do.... work... sigh... But looking back, I'm glad I got that chance and today was so busy that I wouldn't have completed my work if it wasn't for all the work done at that airport waiting lounge.

The flight was actually delayed another 30 minutes and I arrived in Melbourne a bit past 8 pm. I found my car easily and in one piece (phew! I thought... at least something has gone right). Went to pay the parking ticket and placed it in a slot beside the steering wheel and off I go to get out of the carpark. Or so I thought. When I got to the gate, the ticket was missing!! Me and the attendant spent the most frustrating 10 minutes searching the car for the ticket (and the ticket machine that I paid was only about 30 meters from the exit gate!). I eventually had the wisdom to pull out the slot - apparently when I put it in, the ticket had gone between the gap behind the slot.

With that behind me, I immediately pulled into the highway to go home, IN THE WRONG DIRECTION! Luckily I noticed the signs all had unfamiliar destination names and figured out that I must have gone the wrong way. Whole trip was uneventful except at the petrol pump that I stopped at to refill. Apparently, I pulled into the pump and had 'taken' someone else spot. Of course, I was completely unaware I had done so. He was complaining to the other owner of the car in front of him and said something like 'well, this f*cker pulled in...' and immediately quieten down in the hopes that I didn't hear him. Of course, I had to open my big mouth and said sarcastically, 'You swearing at me?' My intention was to make a big joke out of it, but he probably took it the wrong way and launched into a tirade of verbal abuse.

I didn't feel any anger at all. It was very weird feeling. I was a bit scared that he might come over and hit me, but otherwise all I could do was look at him straight into his eyes with a puzzled look. He soon enough stopped, got into his car, and for some reason decided to vent his remaining anger by revving his car.

After paying for petrol and passing his car to get into mine, I noticed he was quite calm and happily chatting with the other occupants in the car. It was very strange. I got out of there as fast as I could.

I ended up arriving home at 12:30am and didn't get into bed until a bit after 1am. Woke up this morning at 7am - feeling very fresh and had a very busy day at work.

So what does this all mean? I never had so many things happen to me or 'go wrong' on me within 12 hours! I was reading President Ikeda's daily guidance and this was what it said today:

"Life is like a sea voyage. We each need to open up our own course in life with the strength of our convictions, unperturbed by the crashing breakers of life's stormy seas. The fiercer the tempest rages, the more we need to rouse our own fighting spirit and man the tiller with all our strength and skill crying, "Bring it on!" Through this type of arduous struggle we can forge the practical wisdom to triumph consistently and, as victorious champions, to create history."

These last 12-24 hours has been draining for me - but I am more than encouraged by my own experience of the infinite possibilities that I could transform my situation now. To be honest, these hours immediately after the closing ceremony on Sunday was crappy. But somehow I don't feel bad or crappy about it. I can't explain this feeling clearly enough - I am even more unsure of what these events mean to my life.

All I know is that I feel even more determined to fulfill my vow as a disciple to Sensei.
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