That's because last week, Silicon Graphics Inc., a computer maker in Mountain View, California, officially changed its name to SGI, trumpeting the shift in a series of newspaper ads. The problem is, that acronym already belongs to Soka Gakkai International, a Buddhist organization that promulgates Daishonin's teachings.

Both SGIs are global organizations. Soka Gakkai, Japanese for "value-creation society," was founded in Tokyo in 1930 and has 65 branches in the U.S. Silicon Graphics was founded in California in 1982 and boasts offices in more than 60 countries.

But both SGIs have offices in the San Francisco region, where, if you call Information for SGI, you'll be put through only to Soka Gakkai. "I have actually already received a number of calls" for Silicon Graphics, says Corinne Meadows, a volunteer at Soka Gakkai's SanFrancisco branch. "I always tell them, `We're not the computer place.'"

Meantime, the folks at Silicon Graphics' public-relations department say that they've never heard of Soka Gakkai and weren't aware of the problem. And they assert that they haven't received any phone calls from people who hoped to brush up on Daishonin's exegeses of the Lotus Sutra, the highest teachings of Shakyamuni Buddha, who lived 2,500 years ago.

Still, an unsuspecting caller may find the two SGIs more closely aligned than one would think. Try pinning each of the following two quotes, taken from the companies' two Web sites, on the proper SGI: A. "SGI is...dedicated to unleashing the power of human creativity."

B. SGI recognizes that people "possess the potential to develop lives of value and creativity."

(A is from Silicon Graphics; B is from Soka Gakkai.)

Given the apparently similar visions of these two SGIs, could serendipitous misdialings lead to an unforeseen bevy of computer-savvy Buddhists?

"I don't think therewill be too many people seeking religion or philosophy who are calling Silicon Graphics," says Alan Albergate, the company's director of community relations. Still, he adds, perhaps recalling Daishonin's assertion that all people possess the potential to attain an enlightened state of life, "you never know."

The Asian Wall Street Journal