This screenshot, found on the Internet, shows that TSI members can be pretty in kimono. Hopefully this will figure in the story at some point. The glowing in the dark part, probably not so much, or only figuratively.

I suppose it had to happen. I started on my fifth novel so far this month. While my main story, “Shadow of Yggdrasil”, was inspired in part by Ryuho Okawa’s claim to be the World Tree, most of the story was to be about other things. The new story, however, is an all-out fanfic. It is set in the world of the movie “Buddha Saitan”, which does not actually mean “Buddha is Satan” but something possibly even more blasphemous to the Theravada Buddhist: The Rebirth of Buddha.

Now, the Buddha was most of all famous for breaking the cycle of birth and death and attaining Nirvana, the endless peace. So the notion that he might return is approximately like someone claiming to have found Jesus’ skeleton. However, the movie portrays it in a different light: The Buddha returns, not because he needs to refine his soul or learn anything more, but because he so loved the world.

I am not going to spoil the movie, which you should be able to see occasionally at your local Happy Science temple. But the movie equivalent of Happy Science, more or less, is called TSI. This is short for “Taiyou Sorano Institute”. The reborn Buddha is named Taiyou Sorano. While Sorano is an actual European surname (and the movie character does look half European, half Japanese), if you write his name in the Japanese naming order with family name first, it becomes “Sorano Taiyou”, which is pronounced like the Japanese phrase “sora no taiyou”, the sun in the sky. I could not stop laughing when I first figured that out.

So, my fifth story has the working title TSI, until I find something better. I started with what I thought would be a short piece, a guy telling a bit about his background and how he came to join the TSI. My plan was to have each chapter be such a story, since I suck at long stories.  But the character unexpectedly came to life and I now have over 10 000 words in a couple days, the fastest I have written in… I am not sure how long. Years, probably.

Strangely writing this story seems to be less tiring on my wrist than the others, even though I am writing more over a shorter time. I do not claim divine intervention for this, however. I think I was just more relaxed because this fellow more or less wrote himself.

It is also fun because he randomly inserts pieces of TSI / HS lore and also the occasional reference to Christianity (he is a Japanese raised in America, so he is familiar with Christianity as well, although not from personal experience.)

Since this is basically fanfiction, there is no way I could ever sell it, but then again National Novel Writing Month is mostly a practice run anyway. There are a few people each year who actually write something they can sell (after months of editing, of course), but I have no such ambition this year. I already have a job where I get paid to help people, so I hope to the Light that I can continue working until I am 75, like my ancestors. But in any case, having some writing skill is no sin. Probably. Although I don’t aspire to publishing 600 books and numerous movie manuscript, like the man behind Buddha Saitan.