Trade(off) day

Who is the mysterious Taiyou Sorano, and why does he teach people that their soul, rather than the body, is their real self?  (Promotional picture from animated movie “The Rebirth of Buddha”.)

If you wonder why this is not about my moving to a new apartment today, that’s because it is delayed till Tuesday. As far as I am concerned, it could be delayed for another ten years and I would not complain (much), despite the icy cold winters and the poor bus connections. Anyway, until then, life more or less goes on.

***

Today was Trade Day in Kristiansand, the city where I work.

Extremely regular readers will know that this day is a recurring temptations to two groups of people. One is the chubby women from the surrounding villages who are drawn to the super cheap (and mostly useless) goods that are on near fire sale this one day. The other is me, who is drawn to the chubby women. Even though I don’t have any further designs on them, they are still a pleasant sight.

After the youthful lusts subsided a few years ago, I generally felt it was OK to look at women as long as I took care to not stare or otherwise appear suspicious. It certainly did not contradict the Golden Rule (do unto others etc). It was not like I wanted to pry them away from their husbands, if any, and mate with them myself.

However, after being exposed to a higher degree of spiritual light, I started to pay more attention to the “compass needle of the mind” as Ryuho Okawa fittingly calls it, and found that it can move greatly even when the body does not respond in the way of men. So I have recalibrated, as it were. This way, I can have the struggle of temptations all over again in my advanced age. Wheee!

***

In the evening, I watched my copy of an old Happy Science movie, Hermes – Winds of Love. It is actually the only Happy Science movie you can buy in American without going through a Happy Science temple, I believe. For some reason it was a hit in Japan and a flop in America. I guess the cultural difference was too large. (And of course, Ryuho Okawa is a household name in Japan, although I am not sure if it was that when the movie came out. It looks really old.)

Apart from whatever encouragement it may bring me personally, the movie also set a great mood for working on my JulNoWriMo novel. JulNoWriMo is like the less gifted younger cousin of NaNoWriMo, the National Novel Writing Month. Even the name is stumbling a bit: “July Novel Writing Month” does not really make much sense. But it is an excuse to write again, so I’m on it, although with the move and all, I don’t expect to come anywhere near 50 000 words.

Like last NaNoWriMo, my attempt is a first-person story by a member of the TSI, the Taiyou Sorano Institute, the equivalent of Happy Science in the parallel world seen in the movie The Rebirth of Buddha, conveniently made by Happy Science. Both of my stories take place in the USA, which is not shown in the movie, so I have expanded it with features from the real-world Happy Science and my own imagination. I feel it is pretty true to the spirit of the movie though. Of course, as a fanfic I can’t actually sell it or anything, so it is more like a writing exercise.

The second story is not a sequel. It features another main character with a completely different background. But of course after a summary of his earlier pathetic life, he has an encounter with the Truth and learns Master Sorano’s Teachings of the Mind, and his life changes for the better. Cute girls and spiritual adventures in the Other World are waiting, but it is bedtime now.

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