One wish: help wisdom and compassion blossom among youths…
One path: spiritual friendship…
Sabine et Sabira were respectively 22 and 26 when they encountered the Teachings of Buddha Shakyamuni. Sabine was born in a traditional rural catholic family while Sabira is of Muslim descent and a child of post Algerian independence immigration. They met in an underprivileged area of a southwestern French city where social divide is visible and the often forgotten youths rumble with anger. Sabine taught students who were recent arrivals in France; Sabira, a street social worker, took care of aimless youngsters who had lost their bearings. Their relationship soon proved to be of a particular kind: it was both shaken by violent tension from “far away”, and woven with a common aspiration towards Enlightenment and Wisdom. Their determination to progress together and their commitment to other people allowed them to gradually have access to a mutual understanding which heals wounds from the past and fosters a deep spiritual friendship. Today, they wholeheartedly strive towards young people’s happiness, helping them to get beyond their own limitations whatever their culture, as they themselves did. Sabira and Sabine build their hopes and project for the youths on their mutual personal experience: through a lay practice of the Lotus Sutra adapted to youths, young people really have a chance to build their lives on sound and deep basis, transform child/parent relationships, develop a learning spirit and a sense of responsibility, give their lives an ever broader dimension and thus contribute to spreading wisdom and compassion throughout our society.
Sabira, Sabine, Members of Reiyukai Lay Buddhism