Attracted by International Spiritual Training Seminar

The clock hand had just turned 9 AM. Brilliant sunlight streamed through the plane window. Looking out the window, I saw the sea glittering in the morning Sun. I had a headache because I couldn't sleep on the plane. As feeling sick, anyway, I ate my breakfast. Later the plane landed at the Honolulu Airport. My wife and I headed out to the Seicho-No-Ie(SNI) Hawaii Jisso Center where the 19th SNI International Spiritual Training Seminar would be held.
This was the story on 10th in February 2000.

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Seicho-No-Ie's Spiritual Training Seminar is a seminar which includes lectures, Shinsokan(meditation to visualize God), mind purification ceremony, and round table discussions in which participants talk to each other in a ring, and so on. Such SNI-seminars are held not only in Japan, but also in Brazil, the U.S.A., Canada, Taiwan, South Korea and Germany in their own languages.

The International Spiritual Training Seminar(ISTS) had been launched in New York, the "melting pot" of America, in August 1995, as a part of the International Peace- by-Faith Movement, aiming at world peace by true faith. An ISTS is being held 4 times a year in North America.

I had already started to learn SNI-teaching before I participated a seminar, however, my proper encounter with SNI-Seminar was one held in Uji in 1988. When I attended a SNI seminar for the first time at SNI Uji temple in Kyoto, hearing lectures, practicing Shinsokan, taking a mind purification ceremony and other practice, my feelings of inferiority were removed and the delight of "A Man is a Child of God." welled up. There were a lot of people around me who were choked with tears of joy. Some were healed from fatal diseases, others could rebuild their divided family. Until then I had known SNI only through books, I was overwhelmed by the dynamism of the faith that moves our real life and the world.

Since I could not forget the delight I tasted then, I entered into the services of SNI International Headquarters in Japan in 1992. In 1997, I was transferred to Public Information Department where I was in charge of writing the organization's monthly newspaper. Writing about an ISTS which gathers people from various backgrounds every month, I found myself feeling that "I want to attend an ISTS someday and share delight with people all over the world."

This thought had been getting building up day by day, I ended up participating the 19th ISTS in Hawaii on 10th in February 2000.
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