My sincere greetings to all during this Lunar New Year (LNY) festivities! I hope everyone is keeping in good health and high spirits as we take extra precautions while going about our LNY visits.
This year, SSA is again invited to participate in the Chingay Parade. Fifteen SSA Merdeka Generation (MG) members will represent SSA in the online Chingay performance titled, “Light of Hope”. Our MG members will be bringing hope and cheer to all through their item. They have been practising hard since December, living up to Ikeda Sensei’s guidance: “What is the true significance of old age? It is not a time to look back with nostalgic longing on our youth. I believe it is the climax, the period of life that should be the most satisfying and fulfilling, the time when we shine with the brilliance and glory of a magnificent sunset.” Let’s cheer them on!
We have also just commemorated the significant 60th anniversary of Asian kosen-rufu in January, and also launched the second phase of the Building Fund campaign for the SSA centre at Punggol. For SSA to develop to what it is today, we are forever grateful to our mentor Ikeda Sensei that during his first stopover in Singapore on January 29, 1961, he chanted fervent daimoku with the deep prayer to call forth Bodhisattvas of the Earth to emerge in the land of Singapore (please refer to January 2021 issue of the Creative Life on Sensei’s first stopover).
In the essay “Our Brilliant Human Revolution”, Ikeda Sensei wrote, “Wherever young Bodhisattvas of the Earth take initiative with the vow ‘I will advance worldwide kosen-rufu!’, the curtain rises on a new drama of human revolution and transforming karma.”
I am also heartened to hear reports from our SSA youth on the successful Youth Division Training Course held over the weekends of January 30, 31 and February 6. To mark the first step in this crucial decade towards 2030, the youth division in Singapore will strive hard with the lionhearted spirit and determination as “The New Human Revolution Generation” and expand its youthful ranks for kosen-rufu with 2023 as the first milestone. Through this undertaking, every youth will practise the mentor-disciple spirit as taught in The New Human Revolution, participate actively in SSA activities and share their personal conviction with friends.
Now is the time to respond to Sensei’s prayers, to inherit and assure our mentor that we will be the lionhearted disciples to ensure the perpetuity of kosen-rufu (peace and happiness of all people) in Singapore. As what Ikeda Sensei had shared recently in the 1st Soka Gakkai Headquarters Leaders Meeting, let us join our mentor to “create a hundred years of history in a single year” and take action to blaze new trails forward based on the lion’s roar daimoku (please refer to pages 1 to 2 of February 2021 issue of the Creative Life for Ikeda Sensei’s full message).
Together, let’s create Hope and Victory with the “Vast Heart” of Soka, score personal victories and thereby imparting hope to others through demonstrating the joy of winning in our own lives.
