15/06/02 MOZAMBIQUE
An ardent follower of transcendental meditation, President Joaquim Chissano is getting interested in Japan's Soka Gakkai sect.
With only a dozen followers in Maputo, a Buddhist sect is trying to orchestrate a breakthrough in Mozambique by claiming the country's president as a member. Joaquim Chissano is already a follower of the type of transcendental meditation extolled by Maharashi Mahesh Yogi (ION 584), and the president's closest collaborators never fail to laud his progress in matters of levitation. In the past, minister councils have opened with séances of collective transcendental meditation or with attempts to levitate with feet joined, which so far, to our knowledge, seem not to have borne fruit. The psychological terrain being fertile, the leaders of the Soka Gakkai sect waited for a momentous event to launch their bid. The occasion presented itself with the recent funerals of the 200 victims in a terrible train accident. Nascimento Miranda, a Brazilian dancer in charge of the Min-On Concert Association, a satellite of the Japanese sect, used the event to approach members of the head of state's protocol service to try and obtain a meeting with Chissano to boast the merits of the group's Buddhist philosophy. And the Soka Gakkai leader, Daisaku Ikeda, should soon arrive in Maputo to give conferences there. He will probably not fail to invite Chissano to his table for a meal that is strictly vegetarian in nature.
THE INDIAN OCEAN NEWSLETTER N° 1000
