GLA Membership Charter

The “GLA Membership Charter” is the statement of the common purpose of GLA members, and practices of faith that we should carry out in our daily lives.

We bond with each other, awake to the reality of our own eternal souls, and together strive to deal with diverse pains and callings to build a world replete with creation and harmony.

The Membership Charter, with our far-reaching aspirations, was drafted by volunteer members and adopted and declared at the 2004 “Good Friends Gathering.”

The GLA Membership Charter

We herewith proclaim the GLA Membership Charter in the hope of “creating a nation of freedom in which the glory of God and the dignity of the human sole can truly exist.”

Preface

At the end of a long journey of transmigration, we were born into this era of atheism and materialism, bringing with us layers of regrets and aspirations. We lived in the midst of insolvable confusion and anguish, until we met Keiko Takahashi Sensei and were able to recall, for the first time, our bonds with God and our bonds with eternal life.

Sensei has, at all times, believed in and communed with our souls. Sensei’s compassion has filled our hearts with hope and the joy of being born as human beings, and has enabled us to restore our trust in the world. We are truly grateful for these unfathomable blessings. (Restoring the Relationship with the Big Cross)

Guided by Sensei, we now gather in GLA and have begun to walk the path on which the most important pillar is the practice of the Divine Truth. As we have traveled that path, we have gradually become aware of the sorrow of human beings who cannot avoid being caught up in the formidable cave of karmic destiny and who lose sight of their soul’s aspirations and purpose in life.

Sensei has not only revealed these traps that lie between heaven and humans but has showed the way by which everyone can emerge from the cave of karmic destiny by aligning his or her whole way of life with the Divine Truth.

Through daily practices, we have further reinforced our conviction that this path is the way of life that we have really sought and that it is the new way of life for integrating soul, life and daily lives in the 21st century. (The Path toward New Human Renaissance)

How much blessing and salvation we have been endowed with through our encounter with Sensei. We can now believe, no matter whatever trials we face , that “A trial is a silent calling” and that a best way to resolve a situation is always reserved. We now can accept a trial not as pain or suffering, but as a “blessing of God” through which a new world can be unfolded. The joys, hopes, and light that we have been given by Sensei should not be kept only to ourselves. If we look around the world, we find many people who, just as we have in the past, lost sight of the meaning of living under the heavy burdens of life but who are still searching for the truth of life.

Bearing gratitude in our hearts for having been saved by Sensei, the Divine Truth and GLA community, we shall walk the path of becoming Bodhisattvas, who shoulder the pain of people and places with which we are associated.

If we may wish, that the GLA Community of Souls become the foundation for souls of all mankind, we will protect it for a thousand years and convey it to the furthest corners of the world. (The Path toward New World Renaissance)

Our Creed:

1. We will depend solely on the eternal bond with God and with Sensei in any and every occasion.

1. We will accept any trial as “a silent calling” which is given to us for our spiritual growth. We will change ourselves first before we try to change the outer world.

1. We will not keep the joy of being healed and saved to ourselves. With the practice of “I will change myself,” we will convey the Divine Truth preached by Sensei to those people and places with which we are associated.

1. We will be true companions who always walk beside our neighbors, by taking others’ pain as our own and others’ joy as our own.

1. We inscribe within ourselves gratitude for having been nurtured and given chances to walk this path by the GLA community. We aspire to serve and contribute to the GLA community, to lay a foundation which is to last one thousand years, in the hope of providing a gesture of friendship for members who will gather in the future.

1. We shall create “joy” where there is “pain,” “harmony” where there is “confusion,” “activity” where there is “stagnation,” and “creation” where there is “destruction.”

1. We will live each day as a precious and irreplaceable time to practice the Divine Truth, to continue to change our Ju-Hatsu-Shiki together through prayer, and to aim to fulfill our soul’s aspirations and overcome karma.

1. We will learn from Sensei as our model so that we can learn to have unwavering faith in human beings, in the world and the future.

May works of God be manifested through our daily Ju-Hatsu-Shiki as we live out this creed.

May the light from each of us illuminate the darkness of the world, and may the light of God be revealed on this earth.

April 11th, 2004
All members of GLA