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Christians believe that all people in the world must accept Christ, and missionaries undergo all sorts of hardship to bring the gospel of Jesus to all mankind. Christians "have a story to tell to the nations." They go to teach and elevate people.

Shin missionaries, on the other hand, go out to seek people who have similar opinions to their own. They invite them to join them in their activities. Shin regards entrance into the Hongwanji as a union of attitudes. The basis of these religious attitudes lies in one's past experiences. No amount of arguing or teaching can bring these attitudes about without there having been the necessary conditioning experiences in one's past.

Shin does not believe that everyone will or must become a Shin follower. It is said that Sakya taught 84,000 different doctrinal systems so that there might be one suited to each possible kind of human personality. Shin, as one of these many doctrines, will find kindred spirits in every country of the world, but were any one country even -let alone the whole world- to follow Shin alone, it would be a sure sign that Shin is not a true doctrine.

With regard to conversion, then, Christianity and Shin are quite different. Christianity finds evidence of its truth in the fact that all people will accept it. Shin takes universal acceptance as a sign of not being a true doctrine. [www.seattlebetsuin.com]

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Japan has long boasted of having many of the world’s oldest people — testament, many here say, to a society with a superior diet and a commitment to its elderly that is unrivaled in the West.

That was before the police found the body of a man thought to be one of Japan’s oldest, at 111 years, mummified in his bed, dead for more than three decades. His daughter, now 81, hid his death to continue collecting his monthly pension payments, the police said.

Alarmed, local governments began sending teams to check on other elderly residents. What they found so far has been anything but encouraging.

A woman thought to be Tokyo’s oldest, who would be 113, was last seen in the 1980s. Another woman, who would be the oldest in the world at 125, is also missing, and probably has been for a long time. When city officials tried to visit her at her registered address, they discovered that the site had been turned into a city park, in 1981.

To date, the authorities have been unable to find more than 281 Japanese who had been listed in records as 100 years old or older. Facing a growing public outcry, the country’s health minister, Akira Nagatsuma, said officials would meet with every person listed as 110 or older to verify that they are alive; Tokyo officials made the same promise for the 3,000 or so residents listed as 100 and up.

The national hand-wringing over the revelations has reached such proportions that the rising toll of people missing has merited daily, and mournful, media coverage. “Is this the reality of a longevity nation?” lamented an editorial last week in The Mainichi newspaper, one of Japan’s biggest dailies.

Among those who officials have confirmed is alive: a 113-year-old woman in the southern prefecture of Saga believed to be the country’s oldest person, at least for now.

The soul-searching over the missing old people has hit this rapidly graying country — and tested its sense of self — when it is already grappling with overburdened care facilities for the elderly, criminal schemes that prey on them and the nearly daily discovery of old people who have died alone in their homes.

For the moment, there are no clear answers about what happened to most of the missing centenarians. Is the country witnessing the results of pension fraud on a large scale, or, as most officials maintain, was most of the problem a result of sloppy record keeping? Or was the whole sordid affair, as the gloomiest commentators here are saying, a reflection of disintegrating family ties, as an indifferent younger generation lets its elders drift away into obscurity?

“This is a type of abandonment, through disinterest,” said Hiroshi Takahashi, a professor at the International University of Health and Welfare in Tokyo. “Now we see the reality of aging in a more urbanized society where communal bonds are deteriorating.”

Officials here tend to play down the psychosocial explanations. While some older people may have simply moved into care facilities, they say, there is a growing suspicion that, as in the case of the mummified corpse, many may already have died.

Officials in the Adachi ward of Tokyo, where the body was found, said they grew suspicious after trying to pay a visit to the man, Sogen Kato. (They were visiting him because the man previously thought to be Tokyo’s oldest had died and they wished to congratulate Mr. Kato on his new status.)

They said his daughter gave conflicting excuses, saying at first that he did not want to meet them, and then that he was elsewhere in Japan giving Buddhist sermons. The police moved in after a granddaughter, who also shared the house, admitted that Mr. Kato had not emerged from his bedroom since about 1978.

In a more typical case that took place just blocks from the Mr. Kato’s house, relatives of a man listed as 103 years old said he had left home 38 years ago and never returned. The man’s son, now 73, told officials that he continued to collect his father’s pension “in case he returned one day.”

“No one really suspects foul play in these cases,” said Manabu Hajikano, director of Adachi’s resident registration section. “But it is still a crime if you fail to report a disappearance or death in order to collect pension money.”

Some health experts say these cases reflect strains in a society that expects children to care for their parents, instead of placing them in care facilities. They point out that longer life spans mean that children are called upon to take care of their elderly parents at a time when the children are reaching their 70s and are possibly in need of care themselves.

In at least some of the cases, local officials have said, an aged parent disappeared after leaving home under murky circumstances. Experts say that the parents appeared to have suffered from dementia or some other condition that made their care too demanding, and the overburdened family members simply gave up, failing to chase after the elderly people or report their disappearance to the police.

While the authorities have turned up a large number of missing centenarians, demographic experts say they doubt that discoveries of the living or the dead would have much impact on Japan’s vaunted life expectancy figures; the country has the world’s highest life expectancy — nearly 83 years — according to the World Bank. But officials admit that Japan may have far fewer centenarians than it thought.

“Living until 150 years old is impossible in the natural world,” said Akira Nemoto, director of the elderly services section of the Adachi ward office. “But it is not impossible in the world of Japanese public administration.” [www.nytimes.com]

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And this looks to be another voluntary upload, this time of perhaps an ex-$GI cult member, who has cult hopped to another similar cult (JMO) and still regards Williams-Sadanaga as his "hero." Virtual daimoku (magic chant, sansho, etc.) for the U.S.A. gakkai cult org. mini-master-boss of the olden days. [www.youtube.com]

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I've noticed something - people who believe strongly that whatever they believe is extremely beneficial to them like to tell other people about it. Frequently. (I've got a Christian acquaintance seizing every opportunity to tell me how she relies on God for every step etc. etc. yadda yadda yadda

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wakatta1
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I recall how I would look at the cranes on my butsudan while chanting, thinking about the one crane with an open mouth and the other closed, and then the crane brushing the mountain with its wings, etc. etc. My point is that there is a big internal experience, totally personalized to the individual. Filling all the blank spots in with convenient details. How easily we can furnish our little pointed heads with stuff. Right now my head is furnished with an air mattress and a mini fridge with chips and salsa <grin>.

Wakatta1

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There's a book worth a peek by Colin Wilson called Rogue Messiahs. (The title may be different in the original UK edition).

Wilson isnt a sociologist or professor, but he has had a special vantage point. He wrote a large body of science fiction and fantasy novels, very well received, and he had a front row vantage point in England during the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, when legions of gurus, spiritual movements and projects were brand new. And Mr Wilson, having become an important author, received quite interesting correspondance from some of these persons, which gave him access to their inner lives, hopes for themselves and for the world.

Mr Colin, having seen many of these people begin their careers and gain success noted that many spiritual leaders by their sucess in lose access to thier private lives, their deepest selves. . They become their roles, get lost in them.

And he observed that most gurus die 'in harness'. They can never get free from the role, the public persona. Its like a mask that gets stuck to one's face after awhile, that cannot be removed.

Some gurus do manage to go into retirement or into hiding, but its rare. And if they do flee. suddenly and abruptly, followers experience this as trauma. Disciples can remain dependent on having someone to look up to, and unless they work on themselves, have a 'guru sized hole.'

The disciples, suddenly abandoned, cannot to recognize how they feel and experience this as abandonment, because by definition of the role, a guru is perfect and is not capable of abandoning others.

This makes it impossible to question the person's actions or see the person as a human being under severe stress with few if any of the limits and reality checks that human beings need in order to stay balanced and sane.

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Through discussions about this ban with local senior leaders, I learned that SGcult's postion was solidly in FAVOR of supporting the war, not against it! Lame excuses were offered up, like "we can't speak out against the war or we might lose our tax exempt status" and "we don't want to offend any of our military members (patriotic ferver) by supporting protests against the war". I could not believe my ears.