Welcome to samsara. The wheel of life turns not only on earth but also in the skies. Few things will brand you as a flake on the lunatic fringe quicker than discussing UFOs or as they used to call them in ancient India, vimanas. Since some people already regard me as an eccentric, I thought it fitting for me to explore the subject from a Buddhist point-of-view. Granted, you dont hear the Dalai Lama or president Ikeda lecturing on the relationship between UFOs/Vimanas, Buddhist-Vedic history, and contemporary society, but thats because they have a greater sense of decorum than I do. I like to stir up the pot and see what floats to the top.

The subject of UFOs is not an underreported subject. Just type UFOs in your search engine and do a search. There are tens of thousands of sites, thousands of books, and millions of words on the subject. Still, there is no definitive scientific proof that is being shared with the general public. There have been millions of individual sightings since the dawn of man. There have been modern day encounters where mysterious craft have been sighted around military installations. Commercial pilots have been witness. Even astronauts have reported strange lights while orbiting the earth, but theres still no smoking laser.

Then we have personal experiences and alien abductions. People whove had such experiences and share them are generally dismissed. Because of public ridicule, many people just keep their mouth shut. And of course, there are some people who make claims just to get attention I deem these folk stranger than any experience they describe. Weighing all of that, I am coming out of the highly classified closet to confess that I have had some close encounters with UFOs. Go ahead, have your Amazing Randi laugh, but I believe Ill have the last one. Of course, encounters with UFOs are not exactly the kind of subject you give as an experience at a discussion meeting, so my friends, youre hearing it here for the first time.

Of my encounters, there have been three major events and several other mysterious ones. I can only comment on two of them. The first was in 1959, when I was eight years old. My parents and brother had gone into town late one Saturday afternoon. I was playing in my room when I heard a friendly male voice calling me, Chuckie, Chuckie. I went to see who was calling me. I checked the front door but no one was there. I went into our new addition to the south facing window, got on my tiptoes and pulled myself up to look outside. The sun was setting. To the west of our house about one hundred feet away I saw a ten foot diameter silver disc slowly turning, moving parallel to the house. I was transfixed. This was no childhood hallucination. Since it was summer, our screened window was up. The only sound was a hum, like my Lionel train transformer. It was moving at about the same speed a child would ride their bike. There were black symbols about a foot high on its midsection that I never saw before. There was a bank of windows just above the midsection. I have since discovered the origin of those symbols on the craft. It didnt stop it just meandered through our yard, over the road, down the valley, then the craft lazily rose over the trees and out of sight. The whole experience lasted only a couple of minutes. When my parents and brother got home, I told them what happened. My parents laughed and rolled their eyes. My older brother mocked me. I was never the same.

The second major experience occurred in July 1974, five months after receiving my Gohonzon. A friend and fellow member and I were on the beach in our hometown, gazing at the stars, when we saw what we thought was a star begin to accelerate and zigzag through the sky, going from north to south at tremendous speed. I had flown on commercial jet and had watched them from the ground at high altitude going at their cruising speed of 600 mph those objects we were watching had to be traveling at several thousand miles mph. It quickly disappeared over the southern horizon, but when it came back there were two stars that zigzagged, came to a dead stop, and accelerated at tremendous speed. We instantly realized that what we were seeing was no earthly aircraft and no natural atmospheric phenomena. What we were seeing was intelligently controlled, although its movements were baffling. Rapid acceleration, dead stop, 90-degree turn, acceleration in a straight line, and more zigzag. I knew enough about physics to understand that no human being could take the G forces of those turns. We watched those objects until the morning light dissipated the stars. It was an unforgettable experience.

Why do I tell you this? I do so because of our own Buddhist history. I remember reading the accounts of Tatsunokuchi and wondering what really happened there that early morning of September 12th. At meetings when we discussed this event that was defined as Nichirens hoshaku-kempon, or discarding the transient and revealing the true, the explanation was given that because Nichiren was the true Buddha of mappo, and so in tune with the universe, that a miraculous event occurred. We were told and it has been written in our study material that a meteor or comet happened to appear at the exact moment needed to thwart the execution. President Ikeda has discussed this subject and based on what he heard from astronomers was that at that particular time in 1271, based on their scientific calculations, a meteor shower occurred. How convenient. Yet it only makes sense that we in the SGI would regard this historic event as a perfectly timed astronomic event. What is the other option? ET? Rama riding to the rescue on his flaming chariot? Many people already regard us as extremists, so if we were to say that seminal event was something other than a meteor or comet, we would be classifying ourselves as another UFO cult.

However, I have been studying this subject of September 12th, 1271 since I joined and have come up with some other ideas. In the Major Writings of Nichiren Daishonin there is a Gosho titled The Actions of the Votary of the Lotus Sutra. If you read this account told by Nichiren closely, you might wonder at our simplistic explanation of a meteor arriving at the defining moment of Mahayana Buddhism.

Finally we came to a place that I knew must be the site of my execution. Indeed, the soldiers stopped and began to mill around in excitement. Saemon-no-jo, in tears, said, These are your last moments! I replied, You dont understand! What great greater joy could there be? Dont you remember what you have promised? I had no sooner said this when a brilliant orb as bright as the moon burst forth from the direction of Enoshima, shooting across the sky from southeast to northwest. It was just before dawn and still too dark to see anyones face. But the radiant object clearly illuminated everyone like bright moon light. The executioner fell on his face blinded. The soldiers were filled with panic. Page 767.

I find this whole scene fascinating on a variety of levels. At Myogyoji temple in the Chicago area, there are lithographs on the wall depicting the life of Nichiren and some are devoted to the Tatsunokuchi persecution. There are subtitles below the pictures that explain the scenes being depicted. These subtitles describe strange cloud formations and mighty flashes of lightening in the sky, immediately prior to the event, as well as the ground shaking and fabrics spontaneously starting on fire. The temple lithographs also state that the executioners sword was broken in three places before he could behead the Daishonin.

We have presented this story in a variety of ways in our publications. In the movie, The Human Revolution, the Daishonin was chanting daimoku. In another account he began to recite the verse section of the Jig-gage. In the aforementioned Gosho he was speaking his last words to Shijo Kingo. What I find fascinating is that the object in question was bright enough to illuminate the faces of everyone. If a meteor or comet was big enough and close enough to light up everyones face, there would have been a major cataclysm. A meteor also doesnt explain the other strange events of the earth shaking, and fabrics igniting. How would a meteor break a samurai sword in three places? How strange is it for the bravest warriors in the world to run away like frightened children? What is metaphoric? What is actual reporting of events without mythological embellishment? What was that object? It is easiest to say that it was a meteor and leave it at that, because if it was not a meteor, comet, or some natural atmospheric disturbance, the explanation may be more in line with the abundance of aerial phenomena reported in India both before and during Shakyamunis lifetime. That would be too kutai for us in the SGI, the reigning Lords of Ketai.

"The so-called 'Rama Empire' of Northern India and Pakistan developed at least fifteen thousand years ago on the Indian sub-continent and was a nation of many large, sophisticated cities, many of which are still to be found in the deserts of Pakistan, northern, and western India. Rama...was ruled by 'enlightened Priest-Kings' who governed the cities.
"The seven greatest capital cities of Rama were known in classical Hindu texts as 'The Seven Rishi Cities'. According to ancient Indian texts, the people had flying machines which were called 'vimanas'. The ancient Indian epic describes a vimana as a double- deck, circular aircraft with portholes and a dome, much as we would imagine a flying saucer. It flew with the "speed of the wind" and gave forth a 'melodious sound'.
D. Hatcher Childress, "Ancient Indian Aircraft Technology"
The Anti-Gravity Handbook

Okay, so you dont accept any kind of kutai explanation understandable. But this Gosho has more goodies to offer. Immediately after the failed execution, when they didnt know what to do with the Daishonin, he was taken to the residence of Homma Rokuro Saemon to await further orders. After reciting the Lifespan chapter of the Lotus Sutra, he gave a lecture to soldiers in the garden, and spoke directly to the Thirty-three heavenly gods. The Daishonin produced another totally baffling, supernatural event.

Then, as though in reply, a large star bright as the Morning Star fell from the sky and hung in the plum tree in front of me. The soldiers, astounded, jumped down from the veranda, fell on their faces in the garden, or ran behind the house. Immediately the sky clouded over, and a fierce wind started up, raging so violently that the whole island of Enoshima seemed to roar. The sky shook, echoing with a sound like pounding drums. Page 769.

What the hell happened here?! Another meteor? Perhaps it was a flaming, giant Japanese killer bee? To believe that, we would need to apply the same kind of logic the Warren Commission used when analyzing the trajectory of the bullets that killed John F. Kennedy. Supernatural? That wouldnt conform with our ketai approach to rational Buddhism. There must be a logical explanation. Later on in that Gosho, after Nichiren was released from exile, the government officials went against his admonition of having heretical priests pray for rain. While instructing his disciples another peculiar event occurred.

I had not finished speaking when a great gale began to blow. Houses of every size, Buddhist halls and pagodas, old trees, and government buildings all were swept up into the air or toppled to the ground. A huge shining object flew through the sky, and the earth was strewn with beams and rafters. Page 776

Another meteor in response to the Daishonins voice and state of mind at the exact crucial moment? What could it be? The fact that the Tatsunokuchi persecution and the events surrounding it are so crucial to the Daishonins Buddhism is reason enough to closely examine it and the history of Buddhism as a whole. We cannot dismiss seemingly supernatural events as unexplained natural phenomena while disregarding a Buddhist history replete with amazing events. We have a bad record of regarding actual events as metaphoric and accepting metaphors as facts. We also find it easier to relegate curious events like the object at Tatsunokuchi to meteors, even though doing so is an argument more flimsy than a rice cracker. The fact is that we just dont know what zoomed overhead on those execution grounds. Why cant we just say we dont know instead of asserting as fact what is truly ambiguous, apparently supernatural, and inconsistent with reason and anecdotal evidence? The problem with our logic is that on closer examination, the comforting words of natural phenomena dont hold up. If such an event as a brilliant object flying through the sky at the precise moment of spiritual import were a one time deal, than such an explanation would be reasonable, but such events have occurred many times in Buddhist and Vedic history. Legend has it that when Shakyamuni died daylight turned into complete darkness and a number of brilliant objects arced through the sky. Myth? Legend? Metaphor? You decide. There is a lot of documentary evidence to indicate, as the Lotus Sutra states, that this threefold world is not what it appears to be.

Oh, those ancients with their wild imaginations. Flying chariots that blazed like the sun, ancient astronauts, and gods descending to earth to mingle with the population what fanciful storytellers those ancient people were an they were everywhere throughout the world in all cultures. Imagine, the holy texts of the Brahmin, Hindu, and Buddhist religions rooted in the idea of gods flying through the skies in machines that could shock and awe, kill with lasers and nuclear weaponry, or travel to distant worlds throughout the universe.

"Birds croaked madly...the very elements seemed disturbed. The sun seemed to waver in the heavens. The earth shook, scorched by the terrible violent heat of this weapon. Elephants burst into flame and ran to and fro in a frenzy...over a vast area, other animals crumpled to the ground and died. From all points of the compass the arrows of flame rained continuously and fiercely."
"Gurkha, flying in his swift and powerful Vimana, hurled against the three cities of the Vrishnis and Andhakas a single projectile charged with all the power of the Universe. An incandescent column of smoke and flame as bright as the thousand suns rose in all its splendour...An iron thunderbolt, a gigantic messenger of death, which reduced to ashes the entire race of the Vrishnis and the Andhakas.... The corpses were so burned as to be unrecognizable. The hair and nails fell out; pottery broke without apparent cause, and the birds turned white.... After a few hours all foodstuffs were infected.... To escape from this fire, the soldiers threw themselves in streams to wash themselves..."
- The Mahabharata

Strange lights in the sky have been around since primitive man first drew them on the walls of caves along with the prized beasts that they hunted. Most of these lights in the sky, displaying seemingly intelligent movement have rational explanations. Some of these sightings can be categorized as the planet Venus, various types of atmospheric disturbances, swap gas, ball lightening, or the flaming flatulence erupting out of a diehard skeptics ass. However, all of the aerial sightings from antiquity to now cannot be explained away by natural occurrence. There is great irony in our advanced scientific perspective. One, were not advanced; and two, we lack historical perspective that is not grounded in ketai logic.

December 18th 2003 marks the 100 anniversary of the Wright Brothers' historic flight. It seems that weve come a long way in one century. Weve put men on the moon, landed probes on Mars, photographed distant planets, and built an international space station. But in the scheme of biological time, were not that far removed from the apes. Just a few hundred years ago the official Church doctrine taught that the earth was the center of the universe and that the earth revolved around the sun. Only a year or two ago the Pope apologized for the Churchs persecution of Galileo for contradicting that literalist Biblical dogma. In fact, our point of view - scientific, social, and religious is constantly changing. The age and nature of the universe is still being hotly debated. Some scientists believe the universe is 14 billion years old, beginning with the big bang, and the age of the universe increases or decreases by billions of years, depending on the latest discoveries. Some scientists still believe in the steady-state theory where the universe is without beginning or end. The deeper we look back in time the more mysterious the universe becomes. We speculate on the size and shape of the universe but we cant say with any certainty what our own human history before 6000 BCE was all about.

Think of the possibilities. There are more than 200 billion (some say 400 billion) stars in our own galaxy, in a universe of countless galaxies, and physicists theorize the distinct probability of parallel universes and dimensions to our own. In the Lotus Sutra, Buddha clearly describes countless Buddha lands scattered throughout the cosmos in numbers beyond calculation.

Authors and philosophers have been trying to make the ancient astronaut connection for decades with little success. The world religions have left behind writings and myths to record the wonder of our origins that have become obscured in the mists of prehistory. When the matter of God, gods, and angels is looked at carefully, for some the evidence points to actual beings from another realm with spiritual and mental powers far beyond the common person, as well as technologies that enable them to traverse the skies in a blaze of glory and even destroy. If there is a higher-level civilization observing or behind the human race, what patience they must have. Our species, even though we have the ability to fly to the moon, build computers, and blow ourselves to smithereens, are possessed of the infamous monkey mind. Im not sure that we could handle the truth.

My opinion on these matters is so far from conventional thought as to seem ridiculous to some rational thinking intellects, and would probably need an entire book to convey. Therefore, I will briefly summarize some of these ideas here and wrap this up, perhaps to leave something to explore for another day.

I offer no conclusions, just questions and speculation. I find it ironic that Nichiren attained his first enlightenment while praying before the statue of bodhisattva Kokuzo the bodhisattva of infinite space how does Kokuzo get around? I find it compelling that the Buddha taught that there were trillions of Buddha worlds spread throughout the universe thats a lot of advanced beings and an infinite amount of time to advance. I find that it fascinating that Taho Buddha (Many Treasures) appeared where the Lotus Sutra was being preached from in India, coming from the land of Treasure Purity, an immeasurable thousand, ten thousand, million, asamkhyas of worlds to the east. Even if hes just a metaphor, Im sure he didnt take the Concorde.

The universe is infinitely vast and utterly mysterious. The powers of the mind, both local and nonlocal are beyond adequate description this is an aspect of myoho. In our own Buddhist cannon it is stated that there were many Buddhas that preceded Shakyamuni and that human life has existed here on this earth for a lot longer than the prevailing theories. A book titled Forbidden Archeology, delves into many anomalies in our ideas on the origins of humankind such as human footprints embedded into rock with dinosaurs, and machined metal and jewelry more than 100 million years old. And there is so much more that it makes a person wonder how long weve really been here.

The adage that there is nothing new under the sun, is, for me, truth personified. What if humanity were not a new phenomena, having just lumbered out of the trees and into caves a mere million or two years ago, but had reached an advanced state of development more than 200 million years ago? What if periodic catastrophes, both natural and man made, brought civilization to its knees and we had to start over again, not once, but many times?

One of the legends of the vimanas is that the craft were controlled by nonlocal thought and could respond instantaneously, oscillating between the third and fourth dimensions, similar to particles in the quantum world that change form from wave to particle. Now you see them now you dont. There is so much that we do not know. We cannot cure the common cold and yet scientists say with silly certainty that the universe is a certain age and configuration. Maybe we dont know a damn thing.

What happened at Tatsunokuchi will never be known for sure at our present stage of development. I believe the day is coming when there will be a paradigm shift toward the nonlocal mind where the answers to our own history and the mysteries of the universe are known. This revelation may be devastating to monotheism and capitalists everywhere. I believe that the Buddha knew all of these things. The dharma of Myoho-renge-kyo that he left behind, is a tool for us to one day transform ourselves from a species that is trying to save itself from destruction to one that can manifest the six supernatural powers; to travel anywhere at will, know past lives, know all thoughts and the truth of existence.

I dont expect anyone to agree with what I have written. I also make no apologies. This world of space-time we share, in my opinion, is not what it appears to be not by a long shot. Im not into conspiracy theories nor am I a science fiction buff. I dont even watch Star Trek. Im just a Buddhist writer who has seen some things and dares to share his opinion. One may believe that the truth is out there, but its really inside us, if we just look deep enough. Samsara is here, and its out there too. Even aliens have the ten worlds. How cool is that?