Dear Debonaire,

I would agree with "quite one". Its most important to keep up your friendship alive and do not voice your opinion on SGI without them asking for it and if they do - be diplomatic.
Leaving a cult is like being on drugs ... they have to realise for themselves that soemthing is wrong. And do use your own time intelligently!!!
Be their friend if you you will be too critical the usual SGI jargon will tell them that you are a devil or nagative influence to their enlightment etc etc.

I just finished a uni degree a short while ago something being active in SGI would not have been possible (i.e. evening courses).



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/15/2010 12:44AM by Rothaus.

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quiet one
Nichijew, sounds like a great invitation! I'm curious about the IRG, which you said has "sprung to life this week". Who is involved? And is their agenda still to "reform" SGI, or what is it now?


debonaire, When I was a devoted member (over 30 years), I did maintain a few friendships with non-members. The best advice I can give is to just let them do their own thing and not to try to stop them or be critical of SGI. I know it is VERY hard to do this. But people I did maintain friendships with were not people that tried to stop me from my connection to SGI, and never said anything negative about SGI. Other former members may have different advice or experiences, but that is how things were for me.

Dear Quietone

I think the founding members names can be found on the group site, or on their published letters to top SGI officials. Andy Hanlen and Chris Holte, both still practicing Buddhism independently, I believe, are the two principle founders. They are no longer an organized group but Andy on SGIunofficial still criticizes SGI's practices and behavior. SGI marginalized IRG through excommunications [I believe] and memos and the remaining IRG members marginalized themselves through resignations and waning determinations, realizing that it is impossible to reform SGI from within regardless of SGI's rhetoric to the contrary. By "sprung to life", I meant, a few e-mails in response to a question, "How is everyone doing".

Dear debonaire:

It seems that your friends are on a fast track to senior leadership. Converting many members to the SGI is the surest path to becoming leaders . They are zealous SGI members and unless they burn themselves out or really study the Lotus Sutra and the writings of Nichiren Daishonin, without the SGI footnotes and warped lectures, I don't see them leaving the SGI anytime soon. I agree with the others, best to cringe and bear it if you want to remain friends but who wants to remain friends with people who make you uncomfortable? They will never stop trying to convert you and that will be foremost in their mind. You may also refer them here. The other option is to refer them to the Kempon Hokke blog because such committed members actually believe the SGI rhetoric and might be willing to debate a demon to prove the righteousness of their faith. I will plant the seed of the true teachings of the lotus Sutra and thus, the seed of doubt of the SGI teachings [Ikedaism and Gakkaism]. The seed will grow, blossom, and eventually bear fruit. Mundane reason, for many SGI members, is insufficient. Were it sufficient, no one would be SGI [Muslim or evangelical, for that matter]. It may boil down to you showing them a better way to live. Are you up to it?

Nichijew



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/15/2010 02:51AM by Nichijew.

Quiet One, the Nichiren's Coffeehouse website has information on the IRG.

nichirenscoffeehouse.net/IRG/history.html


The IRG was a group of people who were SGI members back in the late 1990's. They sent letters and memos to SGI requesting that SGI-USA actually have the autonomy that the SGI Charter says that national groups should have. The leadership of SGI, needless to say, did not respond well to that.

Also, page 49 of this thread has information on the IRG.

[forum.culteducation.com]

The IRG is far from being new. The fact that it now re-surfaced on yahoo is not anything special, jut depends who founded it ... and with what intensions.

Antony Elmore, on www.proudblackbuddhist.org, writes extensively on SGI's feud with Nichiren Shoshu. He has strong opinions, as I do -- and is also very pro-Nichiren Shoshu, which I am not. Despite that, I can agree with much of what he writes. Here, I've excerpted some of what he's written about the SGI's actions in Memphis and Ghana.

From www.proudblackbuddhist.org/

(Anti-Nichiren Shoshu Propaganda)This past January 22, 1998 Mrs. Thompson (SGI leader)gave me a copy of two posters revealing improprieties of the Nichiren Shoshu Priesthood. One of the posters read that Nichiren Shoshu had renewed ties with the Minobu sect and it featured so called Minobu Priest with High Priest Nikken Shonin at Taisekiji. When I looked at the poster I said that those were not Minobu Priests instead in the picture was Rev. Kuwabe of the Washington D.C. temple and Rev. Nagasaga of the York Temple. I had read about suits that Nichiren Shoshu filed against SGI for manipulating photographs.

(SGI Members in Memphis, Pressures to Conform:)Earlier on I remember asking Earnest Brown why did he cut his beard and he explained to me that for image reasons every young man had to look clean cut and all American. Tommy Ray discarded his African dress in the name of organization and faith.

(Here, Elmore alleges that SGI reorganized areas where African-American leaders were becoming too popular and powerful.) Every time African\Americans grew the leadership would always break us up as if to weaken us in the name of progress. In Chicago there was a dynamic leader by the name of Mel Wright who helped the Southside of Chicago grow in leaps and bounds. Chicago appeared 50% black and at the community center I went to practice I remember seeing a great number of African/Americans chanting and practicing Nichiren Daishonin’s True Buddhism. With the snap of a finger they broke that group up like they did in Memphis and Mel Wright was no longer the top leader and when I saw Mel again he seem like a broken man. Mr. Joseph Thomas was the natural leader and in the name of faith Mr. Thomas faithfully bowed out as the structure was reorganized in the name of progress.  

Big Gun Comes Town
In the name of progress and development the leadership brought in George Kusaba to further shape and mold the minds of SGI members. . George Kusaba was a well trained SGI soldier who was capable of putting SGI members in the rank & file. On several occasions I pointed out to Mr. Kusaba that the Gosho differed from what he had espoused. Mr. Kusaba followed orders to get rid of the Nichiren Shoshu sign (NSA) to prepare the master SGI plan to break away from the Nichiren Shoshu Priesthood. In my March 1991 letter to NSA members, on page three I wrote on the first paragraph "some of our African/American leaders in Memphis articulate with Japanese accents.

(Singing Forever Sensei) We never performed a song about Nichiren Daishonin. We never sang a song about the Gosho however after each meeting we would sing the song "Sensei". Why was it necessary to sing a song about a lay believer? Physiologist teach that words do have power and if you sing a song about a person long enough that person would become a part of your sub-conscientious mind.

As long as SGI has a bad guy to focus on it does not have to worry about its own internal problems because its members would be in an angry emotional state to see facts. The further that SGI can carve a wedge between you and Nichiren Shoshu the more 
they can manipulate and control your thinking and endear you to their cause to further manipulate you.

SGI was successful in its plans to drive a wedge between SGI members and Nichiren Shoshu. The SGI plan did not just start at the excommunication of Daisaku Ikeda it started many years prior to the excommunication of Daisaku Ikeda.

The SGI wedge was an SGI policy that endeared SGI members to SGI and not Nichiren Shosu. In Nichiren Shoshu there is a teachings of the "Three 
Treasures" the Buddha, the Law & the Priest. If you review definitions of the Three treasures prior to 1979 when President Ikeda agreed to step down as President of the Soka Gakkai for violating the teaching of Nichiren Shoshu.

The three Treasures are Nichiren Daishonin, the Dai-Gohonzon, Nikko Shonin and all successive high Priests. Step by step SGI shifting their polices regarding the Priest & Laity. The Priests have always been separated from SGI members. You have to answer the question why since SGI built the Nichiren Shoshu Temples in America did SGI put each Temple as 
much as 50 miles away from each city isolated away from SGI members. The teachings of the Priest was secondary and SGI teachings were primary. Since its inception of Nichiren Shoshu Priesthood Koop lectures were given at the temple each month by the Priest. Members never knew about Oko lectures in SGI. Priest were portrayed as being above members while SGI was portrayed with the image of the propagators of Nichiren Dai-Shonin’s Buddhism.

If you were to examine the doctrines of Nichiren Shoshu you would realize that SGI was mixing things that was not Nichiren Daishonin’s teachings. One example is; Nam-myo-ho renge-kyo is the Rhythm of the universe. In 1979 President Ikeda changed the prayer-books, Carved 
Gohonzons, performed "eye opening ceremonies".

(SGI and Ghana)In Ghana members were told that the Gosho was to difficult to read and members were given the Ikeda book "From Today Onwards" as the teachings in Ghana.

In 1990 the SGI summoned Ghana leaders to Japan and Ikeda changed the leadership. In Ghana the law mandates that religious leaders be hired or fired by Ghanaians. When Ikeda decided to replace Joseph Asomani as Ghana’s General director of the SGI, Ghanaians asked the SGI to respect their 
country’s constitution and let them decide who was the best leader for Ghana. The members in Ghana having breaking the shackles of colonialism resisted manipulation of the SGI and the SGI excommunicated 90% of the Ghanaians members who stood by Joseph Asomani

The Ghanaian members stood firm in unity against the SGI and today they just built the first Nichiren Shoshu Temple in Africa with 90% of former SGI members joined Nichiren Shoshu.  

Elmore has also commented that it's interesting that SGI has sponsored the "Gandhi, King and Ikeda" exhibit. During the Civil Rights Movement in America -- while Dr. King was alive, and working for civil rights -- Ikeda apparently said NOTHING publicly regarding Dr. King or his work. (Just as King and Gandhi opposed the death penalty, and Ikeda's apparently never said a word about Japan's heavy use of capital punishment.)

The reorganization thing, that happened in my area too, even though we don't have a large African-American population. The out-of-town senior leadership would sometimes draw lines on the map, changing our districts. I lived a couple of miles too far to the west, one year, so I was "redistricted." I was told I had to attend meetings an hour's drive away, in a town west of my home, rather than the meeting a couple of miles to the east that I had always attended. I decided to just keep showing up at the closer meeting. What were they going to do, tell me to go home? But it was just so typical of SGI's top-down style.

With leaders, also, we had some good American leaders, both white and African American. However, our senior out-of-town, (and out-of-touch) leadership pushed them aside to make a newcomer our leader, a much younger Japanese immigrant man who could barely speak English. I think that Ikeda just does not want any American leader to become too powerful or popular. He wants leaders who will be HIS men...and frankly, I don't think that he respects nonJapanese, whether white, black, or nonJapanese Asians much.

Elmore has also said that the Memphis members were discouraged from even talking to a priest without an SGI leader present, and encouraged to get guidance only from SGI leaders....and it's significant that SGI also built temples in spots that were further away from where members actually were.

That bit about the American Memphis members speaking in Japanese accents? What was up with that? It sounds very odd.

But good for the Ghanian members, for insisting that SGI respect their constitution!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/15/2010 05:52AM by tsukimoto.

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tsukimoto
Elmore has also commented that it's interesting that SGI has sponsored the "Gandhi, King and Ikeda" exhibit. During the Civil Rights Movement in America -- while Dr. King was alive, and working for civil rights -- Ikeda apparently said NOTHING publicly regarding Dr. King or his work.

Well if you look at it SGI NEVER spoke out against human rights issues: China, Tibet, Death penalty, Child abuse, not one issue that is contriversial and would mean to declare its position ... okay nuclear weapons, but thats rather common sense.

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Rothaus

Well if you look at it SGI NEVER spoke out against human rights issues: China, Tibet, Death penalty, Child abuse, not one issue that is contriversial and would mean to declare its position ... okay nuclear weapons, but thats rather common sense.

True, and Japan is also the only country that has suffered a nuclear bombing...so Ikeda's "no nukes" position would be popular with the Japanese public.

Elmore also pointed out that a Japanese prime minister (Nakasone, in the 80's, maybe?) made insulting remarks about nonwhite Americans, saying that it was no wonder that American schools had such low test scores, with so many immigrant, Latino, and African American kids enrolled. Ikeda, and other senior SGI leaders, of course, had nothing to say about this either. Well, why would he? Criticizing the Prime Minister wouldn't be a smart move politically, and would cost the Komeito Japanese votes --- and let's face it, that's what it's really all about!

@ Tsukimoto

well I myself am not to sure what to think whenever nichiren followers amongst themselves throw with dirt at each other or proclaim that they are the real McCoy. Sceptical and turned off.

The Gandhi, Ikeda, King - issue is in itself an impudence. I mean Mr. Ikeda on the same level as those two - give me a break. Those two gave their lives and felt REAL struggle in their liftime for a noble cause, a cause that was not limited by sectarian devides, but in the end at least in the case of Gandhi sectarian bigotry ended their life.
How far is SGI, amongst others, from such a view of the world. Gandhi and King to me represent a very simple idea - to show and live UNCONDITIONAL respect for others.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/16/2010 02:43AM by Rothaus.